Gonzales the rotten apple is Gonzales the distraction. And the White House must be delighted we've fallen for it.

The legal problem wasn't the data mining itself, but instead that the uses of the data that were mined violated FISA. The Times story hints at this -- that perhaps it was not so much the data mining itself, but instead what what NSA did with the mined data, that caused the legal uproar: "Some of the officials said the 2004 dispute involved other issues in addition to the data mining, but would not provide details. They would not say whether the differences were over how the databases were searched or how the resulting information was used."

Everybody is rushing around talking about Gonzales -- look at the catalogue of opinions and appearances posted this afternoon at the Washington Post, a follow-on to the New York Times story.  Specter is here saying this; Feingold is stating this and that over there; Glenn Greenwald does a very thorough job analyzing the Gonzales problem here. 

So far only a few have shown they really know what evil lurks in the hearts of men, well behind the scrim of the impossibly awful Attorney General of the United States.  Marty Lederman is one of them and he wants to go after the bitterest fruit, not the lowest hanging.

Most of the reaction to the Times story is about the question of whether it helps or hurts the allegations that the Attorney General lied to Congress. Folks, really, that's a sideshow.

Gonzales has lied over and over again to Congress.  Let's nail him.  But let's not put nailing him ahead of more urgent business.

There was a serious cover-up here, but it largely occurred before the Times broke the NSA story in 2005. Since that time, the scandal is not that any particular Administration witness wrongly reassured any member of Congress about anything -- it's not as if anyone listened to Gonzales's testimony and then said, "well, then, ok, never mind about that NSA thing" -- but instead that the Administration (and those in Congress aware of the details of the NSA program) have continued to hide the details of the program, and the legal justifications during the lifespan of the program, from Congress as a whole and (with the exception of some technical details that should remain classified) from the public, as well. The focus now, in other words, should be on the substance of the NSA and FBI conduct, on DOJ's justifications therefore, and on the breakdown in the separation of powers -- and not the parsing of the Attorney General's testimony, which has never been useful for anyone in Congress anyway.

Bingo.