Today, the sun rose in the East

As I rolled out of bed this morning, I said to myself, "I wonder what new outrage from the Bush administration we'll learn about today." It didn't take long to find it on the front page of the NY Times:

WASHINGTON, March 8 — The Justice Department’s inspector general has prepared a scathing report criticizing how the F.B.I. uses a form of administrative subpoena to obtain thousands of telephone, business and financial records without prior judicial approval.

The report, expected to be issued on Friday, says that the bureau lacks sufficient controls to make sure the subpoenas, which do not require a judge’s prior approval, are properly issued and that it does not follow even some of the rules it does have.

Under the USA Patriot Act, the bureau each year has issued more than 20,000 of the national security letters, as the demands for information are known. The report is said to conclude that the program lacks effective management, monitoring and reporting procedures, officials who have been briefed on its contents said.

Of course, we've long known about these administrative subpoenas, but we didn't know for sure how common they were nor how uncontrolled. Of course, that's no great surprise given the history of this administration. It falls in the same category of surprise as the fact that the sun rose in the East this morning.