316 Spying Fans Can't Be Wrong!

The Washington Post, whose editors surely had no problem being scooped by USA Today, conducted an overnight poll and found a nearly 2/3 majority in favor of the NSA collecting American phone records. Here was the wording of the question:

It's been reported that the National Security Agency has been collecting the phone call records of tens of millions of Americans. It then analyzes calling patterns in an effort to identify possible terrorism suspects, without listening to or recording the conversations. Would you consider this an acceptable or unacceptable way for the federal government to investigate terrorism? Do you feel that way strongly or somewhat?

According to the WaPo the timing and sampling of the survey might have produced unreliable results.

A total of 502 randomly selected adults were interviewed Thursday night for this survey. Margin of sampling error is five percentage points for the overall results. The practical difficulties of doing a survey in a single night represents another potential source of error.

Not to pick on her again, but well-regarded polling expert Michelle Malkin saw this and claimed victory for civil liberties restrictionists everywhere.

Message to the MSM from Americans with their heads screwed on straight:

We're not scared.

Begging the government to tap phones and keep a database on every American to save us from the swarming Islamofascists: Bravery in action.

Kidding aside, the debate over this story will depend a great deal on whatever polling comes out. Before this revelation, Republicans were planning to use the NSA spying issue against Democrats in the midterm elections—it was more popular than the president, after all.

(Note: Comments on last night's post included some crude language directed at Mrs. Malkin. That's completely unacceptable. And is it really so hard to shred these arguments without getting personal?)