Oh my god.

NBC seems to have reason to believe Bush wiretapped CNN's Christiane Amanpour. If you're not familiar, this is an excerpt from her official CNN bio:

For her reporting from the Balkans, Amanpour received a News and Documentary Emmy, two George Foster Peabody Awards, two George Polk Awards, a Courage in Journalism Award, a Worldfest-Houston International Film Festival Gold Award and the Livingston Award for Young Journalists. She also was named 1994 Woman of the Year by the New York Chapter of Women in Cable and Telecommunications, and she helped the network win a duPont Award for its coverage of Bosnia and a Golden CableACE for its Gulf War coverage.

Amanpour has been awarded a number of other prizes, including a further Emmy for her documentary 'Struggle for Islam'; the 2002 Edward R. Murrow Award for Distinguished Achievement in Broadcast Journalism; the Sigma Chi Award (SDX) for her reports from Goma, Zaire; two George Polk Awards for her coverage of Bosnia in 1994 and for her work on the CNN International special Battle for Afghanistan in 1997 to name but a few.

As a side note, she's also been cited several times on Gilmore Girls as Rory's ultimate role model.

So in other words, exactly the sort of person we want our government to wiretap in order to better protect us. Which, after all, is the only reason they'd do it. Oh. Unless, of course, it were one of these other reasons. On that same AmericaBlog post linked above:

anyone who uses any of Christiane's telephones or computers (work or home) could also have had their conversation bugged.

This includes Christiane's husband, former Clinton administration senior official Jamie Rubin, who was spokesman for the State Department.

Jamie Rubin was also chief foreign policy adviser to General Wesley Clark's presidential campaign, and then worked as a senior national security adviser to John Kerry's presidential campaign.

Did Jamie Rubin ever in the past four years communicate with any elected officials in Washington, DC - any Senators or members of the US House? Any senior members of the Democratic party?

So let me get this straight. NBC appears to have reason to believe that President George W. Bush wiretapped one of the most prominent journalists in the world. With a chief advisor to a couple of his opponents in the last election thrown into the bargain.

I don't want to jinx it by saying he's toast, but...this sure should be an interesting story to follow for the next few days, that's all I can say.

ETA: Talking Points Memo adds a little more on that subject.

...the president is arguing that his powers as commander-in-chief give him the authority to set aside that law. Such an unlimited assertion of presidential authority just has no place in our constitutional system; and his continued assertion of such authority is a plenty big enough scandal right there.

But if this were to take a truly Nixonian turn and it turns out that this was being used against political enemies, anti-war groups or journalists then we're talking a whole 'nother ballgame.

More reporting needed.