In an appearance on CBS’s “Face the Nation,” National security adviser Stephen J. Hadley said, “A lot of lawyers in the executive branch spend lots of time to try to make sure that the things we did are within the law. That is what you’d expect and that’s what we do. But the terrorist surveillance program that has been talked about in the press is a narrowly defined program.”

So again the Bush administration is hiding information by parsing its words. The program that has been talked about in the press is narrowly defined. The program that we know about only targets calls to people suspected of being terrorists around the world. The program that got leaked is marginally legal. You can impeach Bush and throw the rest of us in jail based on information you got on this particular program.

Hadley refused to confirm this week’s reports about the NSA going through records of millions of American households looking for information and infringing of privacy rights. But he didn’t deny existence of the program, either.

And the team of lawyers who make sure the things Bush does are legal? As counsel to the president, al Gonzales assured Bush that torture was legal, as long as Bush secretly ordered it in an executive order that, b the way, was not important enough to be released to the press.