The difference is.... you trust Hayden and I know better than to trust anyone working in or for our government today. There are only a handful of elected officials that I do trust. Most of the government officials testifying before Congress have been caught lying and rationalizing and clintonizing their testimony.
LLS
I don’t “trust Hayden”; as I make clear in my post #70, I don’t know him from Adam (although if Dick Cheney vouches for him he can’t be all bad). Maybe Hayden is a liar, but if so he inadvertently told the truth about the probable cause requirement not applying to searches generally. My own understanding of the Fourth Amendment predates this article and my reading Hayden’s (uneloquent) explanation byalmost 20 years.
That whole “probable cause” thing is a red herring that is playing into Obama’s hands. The more conservatives harp about the lack of compliance with an inapplicable standard, the easier it will be for Obama to skate on the real issue, which is whether the metadata searches were “reasonable” pursuant to the Fourth Amendment.