Arianna Huffington: On the Washington Post NSA Snooping Poll

What Do Americans Really Think of Bush's "Caller ID-to-the-Billionth-Power" Program? (And Why It Doesn't Matter)
By Arianna Huffington

If we needed one more example of why the results of political polls should be consigned to the same section of newspapers as the comics, Sudoku, and the daily horoscope, and not used as the basis for top-of-the-fold front page stories -- and, even worse, national policy -- we now have the contradictory results of two new polls purporting to show how the public feels about the NSA's massive collection of billions of our phone records.

Or, as I like to think of it, The Ultimate Pentagon Speed Dial (and you thought it was a drag when Paris Hilton lost her Sidekick).

On Friday, a Washington Post/ABC poll found that a very impressive 63 percent of Americans indicated that they were okay with the NSA collecting and keeping a permanent phone log on the calls made and received by tens of millions of Americans. I imagine the Bushies reacted as if they'd just heard that Stephen Colbert had been cancelled, and the Democrats began fretting about the president finally finding traction on something. For its part, Time magazine, inspired by the imposing result, put together a press release touting its new issue with the headline "Controversial Spying Program Could Give Political Boost to President Bush". (See how fast a "snapshot" becomes the Conventional Wisdom?)

Then, on Saturday, Newsweek (the Washington Post's corporate cousin) released a poll, according to which, the exact opposite was true: the majority of Americans thought that Bush's "Caller ID-To-The-Billionth-Power" Program was too big an invasion of privacy.