OUR REPUBLICAN PRESIDENT:

The sensational disclosure that the US government's National Security Agency has been scooping up phone and internet records of millions of Americans might have surprised ordinary citizens in Topeka or Milwaukee, but it did little to excite politicians in Washington, DC.

"As far as I know, this is the exact three-month renewal of what has been the case for the past seven years," Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif, said of the news about Verizon telephone and mobile log monitoring.

In an uncommon show of bipartisanship, Georgia Republican Sen. Saxby Chambliss supported Feinstein, his colleague on the Senate Intelligence Committee.

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