While I'm on the subject of editorials about the NSA eavesdropping case, let me note the New York Sun's, which notes that "The administration plans to appeal, and, while we hope it will prevail, it's clear the hard-left is going to play the courts for all it's worth."

It seems to me that the proposition that Congressional judgments about the proper scope of surveillance (even surveillance aimed at catching foreign terrorists) prevail over Presidential judgments is hardly a "hard-left" view. If the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act prohibits the NSA program (my reading is that it does), the Authorization for the Use of Military Force doesn't implicitly authorize what FISA forbids (and it's at least quite plausible to say that it doesn't implicitly authorize it), and the Congress has the constitutional power to constrain the President this way (and again it's at least quite plausible to say that it has such a power), then the NSA program is illegal. And even if the program is nonetheless valuable for national security, there are perfectly sensible non-hard-left arguments for concluding that the rule of law should trump even national security concerns (especially if one believes, as I do, that the constraints on the program are statutory and can thus be removed, if necessary, simply by getting Congress to change the law).

Again, one can certainly argue that the program is legal. But it seems to me a mistake to derogate many people's legitimate concerns about the program by connecting them to the "hard-left." Doubtless parts of the hard left (however you define such a group) are interested in sinking this program and many others -- but many people who criticize this program are most certainly not on the hard left.