"A special court that has routinely approved eavesdropping operations has put new restrictions on the ability of U.S. spy agencies to intercept e-mails and telephone calls of suspected terrorists overseas, U.S. officials said Wednesday." According to The Los Angeles Times, "The previously undisclosed ruling by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court has prompted concern among senior intelligence officials and lawmakers that the efforts of U.S. spy agencies to track terrorism suspects might be impaired at a time when analysts have warned that the United States is under heightened risk of attack."

The Washington Post reports, "The Bush administration is pressing Congress this week for the authority to intercept, without a court order, any international phone call or e-mail between a surveillance target outside the United States and any person in the United States." "The proposal, submitted by Director of National Intelligence Mike McConnell to congressional leaders on Friday," according to the report, "would amend the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) for the first time since 2006 so that a court order would no longer be needed before wiretapping anyone 'reasonably believed to be located outside of the United States.'"

"The Bush administration's chief intelligence official said yesterday that President Bush authorized a series of secret surveillance activities under a single executive order in late 2001," reports The Washington Post. According to the report, "The disclosure makes clear that a controversial National Security Agency program was part of a much broader operation than the president previously described" and "appears to be the first time that the administration has publicly acknowledged that Bush's order included undisclosed activities beyond the warrantless surveillance of e-mails and phone calls that Bush confirmed in December 2005."

The New York Sun reports that a federal judge in Florida has ruled that using a Catholic church as a polling place does not violate the Constitution, even if voters are told to cast their ballots in a room containing crucifixes and other religious icons. According to the report, "Judge Middlebrooks said no reasonable person would conclude that the county was endorsing Catholicism or any religious symbols found in the church."

The New York Times reports, "A 2004 dispute over the National Security Agency's secret surveillance program that led top Justice Department officials to threaten resignation involved computer searches through massive electronic databases, according to current and former officials briefed on the program." According to the report, "It is not known precisely why searching the databases, or data mining, raised such a furious legal debate. But such databases contain records of the phone calls and e-mail messages of millions of Americans, and their examination by the government would raise privacy issues.