Holy crap, where to start? The revelation Friday that President George W. Bush authorized the National Security Agency to monitor telephone calls originating or terminating in the U.S. with “clear links to al-Qaeda” or other terrorist organizations has sparked so much commentary, outrage, and happenings, that I can barely keep up. Today I’ll try to bring you the highlights.

First of all, on Monday U.S. District Judge James Robertson, a member of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, resigned without explanation. Robertson had previously expressed concerns over the surveillance program.

When Sen. Jay Rockefeller (D-W.V.) was briefed on the program in 2003, he hand-wrote a letter to Vice President Dick Cheney, and wrote another copy for himself. He never got a response from the White House. In the letter he expressed his deep concern over the program and “As I reflected on the meeting today, and the future we face, John Poindexter’s TIA project sprung to mind, exacerbating my concern regarding the direction the Administration is moving with regard to security, technology, and surveillance,” Rockefeller wrote.

And Congress doesn’t think the few briefings members did receive conformed to the requirements of the National Security Act.

Signals intelligence people are creeped out by the program. “It’s drilled into you from minute one that you should not ever, ever, ever, under any fucking circumstances turn this massive apparatus on an American citizen,” one source says. “You do a lot of weird shit. But at least you don’t fuck with your own people.” Another says that people ten or twelve degrees separated from terrorists could have been monitored. Since there’s only six degrees of separation between everyone and everyone else, that pretty much covers everyone on the planet.

Then comes the revelation that the program did indeed intercept calls within the U.S. (This can happen when a call from one place in the U.S. to another place in the U.S. temporarily leaves the country.)

Security expert Bruce Schneier has two excellent essays on surveillance of Americans, covering the history of illegal surveillance and the threat of unchecked presidential power.

And some are trying to justify Bush’s illegal actions by saying Clinton did it too. They’re trying to stave off impeachment, which some people are already discussing.