I've gone through dozens of sources, the original laws, and done some research on the technology.

FISA was written in 1978. It should be obvious to the dimmest bulb that rewriting it describing the new technology would pretty much invalidate it.

If you read the whole interview, and I'm beginning to doubt you did, this was what was said:

Q General, can you tell us why you don't choose to go to the FISA court?

ATTORNEY GENERAL GONZALES: Well, we continue to go to the FISA court and obtain orders. It is a very important tool that we continue to utilize. Our position is that we are not legally required to do, in this particular case, because the law requires that we -- FISA requires that we get a court order, unless authorized by a statute, and we believe that authorization has occurred.

The operators out at NSA tell me that we don't have the speed and the agility that we need, in all circumstances, to deal with this new kind of enemy. You have to remember that FISA was passed by the Congress in 1978. There have been tremendous advances in technology --

Q Sir, can you explain, please, the specific inadequacies in FISA that have prevented you from sort of going through the normal channels?

GENERAL HAYDEN: One, the whole key here is agility. And let me re-trace some grounds I tried to suggest earlier. FISA was built for persistence. FISA was built for long-term coverage against known agents of an enemy power. And the purpose involved in each of those -- in those cases was either for a long-term law enforcement purpose or a long-term intelligence purpose.

This program isn't for that. This is to detect and prevent. And here the key is not so much persistence as it is agility. It's a quicker trigger. It's a subtly softer trigger. And the intrusion into privacy -- the intrusion into privacy is significantly less. It's only international calls. The period of time in which we do this is, in most cases, far less than that which would be gained by getting a court order. And our purpose here, our sole purpose is to detect and prevent.

Again, I make the point, what we are talking about here are communications we have every reason to believe are al Qaeda communications, one end of which is in the United States. And I don't think any of us would want any inefficiencies in our coverage of those kinds of communications, above all. And that's what this program allows us to do -- it allows us to be as agile as operationally required to cover these targets.

Add to that the quote I already mentioned, and I think the issue is obvious.

I can simplify it a bit for you:

Publicizing it and bringing it into the legislative process to the extent the Democrats, and apparently the press, want it to be publicized, would destroy the program.

Now if that's their goal, fine. I doubt that it is for most of them.