The government‘s predilection for waiting until late Friday to deliver bad news remains unchanged. Two memos justifying wireless wiretapping were released Friday night, buying it a few days time to prep before dealing with any uncomfortable questions raised by these documents.

Both memos [PDF links: first, second] have multiple redactions. The first memo has had entire groups of pages withheld, as well as pages so heavily-redacted they may as well have been deleted. Additional details are scant, leaving readers to read between the redactions in hopes of cobbling together the government‘s rationale for the warrantless wiretapping of calls originating in the United States.

What does remain is mostly post-9/11 justifications about needing to respond to a new threat in new ways. And that „new way“ was apparently to give the President a blank surveillance check to do with what he wished.