Qwest's Refusal of N.S.A. Query Is Explained  —  WASHINGTON, May 12 — The telecommunications company Qwest turned down requests by the National Security Agency for private telephone records because it concluded that doing so would violate federal privacy laws, a lawyer for the telephone company's former chief executive said today.

Polling hysteria and the NSA program  —  Somehow, The Washington Post — on the very same day most people learned about the new NSA data-collection program — managed to conduct a poll which purports to show that "63 percent of Americans said they found the NSA program to be an acceptable way to investigate terrorism."

Phone-Records Surveillance Is Broadly Acceptable to Public  —  May 12, 2006 — Americans by nearly a 2-1 ratio call the surveillance of telephone records an acceptable way for the federal government to investigate possible terrorist threats, expressing broad unconcern even if their own calling patterns are scrutinized.

Gathering data may not violate privacy rights, but it could be illegal  —  WASHINGTON — The U.S. government's secret collection of Americans' phone records may not breach the Fourth Amendment's privacy guarantee, legal analysts said Thursday, but it could violate federal surveillance and telecommunication laws.

ABC/WAPO ON NSA PHONE RECORDS  —  Did yesterday's USAToday story on the collection of domestic telephone records by the NSA do President George Bush a backhanded favor?  An overnight survey released earlier this morning by ABC News and the Washington Post suggests that it may be doing just that.

D.C. Vote's Stars Are Aligning, Davis Says  —  Co-Sponsor Sees Enough Support On House Panel  —  A bipartisan proposal to give the nation's capital a vote in Congress has "more than enough votes" to win approval in one House committee, the panel's chairman said yesterday …