Whose baby is being sliced in two?

The often sensible and rational David Ignatius is quoted by the eminently readable and frequently hilariously on-target Mickey Kaus about the deadlock between Gonzales/Bush and Congress/FISA.

Ignatius notes in the WaPo article linked above:

Liberal interest groups are also refusing to compromise. I'm told they were urging Democratic members of Congress this week not to amend FISA. They would rather wait until next year, figuring they will have more congressional support after the 2006 elections. They also want to pursue their lawsuit charging that the president's actions are illegal.

Mickey Kaus replies or follows up with the real-world analysis NSA has to accomplish:

Or maybe they're (inadvertently) being responsible--in effect, letting the administration spy without external supervision for another year before the program is formalized and restricted. ... P.S.: Is it the Constitution's fault? I agree [v] with RightWing Nuthouse--if the administration went through 5,000 phone calls and emails and identified 10 people suspicious enough to watch, that's a good ratio of searches to success, not a sign that the program is overbroad or useless (as WaPo's editors seem to believe). ... Maybe the government's not casting its electronic net wide enough. I'd rather they go through 100,000 phone calls and identify 20 people. ... And if the ratio to justify "probable cause" is really "right for one out of every two guys," as a "government official who has studied the program closely" suggests to WaPo, that shows how wildly obsolete the Constitution's "probable cause" requirement is when you're trying to catch not horse thieves in 1789 but people with weapons that can kill whole cities in 2006.

The Right Wing Nuthouse has one interesting take on the gridlock:

Democrats will go nuts over AG Gonzales rationale for the program. They will say that when they voted to give the President broad powers to protect the nation after 9/11, they really didn’t mean it. They were for expanding the powers of the executive before they were against it. And we know how well that meme works, don’t we?

There are certainly libertarian arguments to be made, but the Democrats' tendency to hysterical hyperbole might shift the voting public toward security rather than Bobby Kennedy-type wiretap fears.

BTW, Lindsay Graham is proving he is a younger brighter Arlen Spector, whose centrism rivals that of the baby in King Solomon’s biblical trope.