Here’s Sen. Al Franken (D-Minn.), circa 2006, talking about national security scares and surveillance:

“They’re trying to justify these warrantless wiretaps by saying “Oh, it’s al Qaida!” One guy is saying it’s just al Qaida — the Hayden guy, and then on the other hand, you hear from the FBI that they were inundated with referrals on all kinds of stuff with these calls, so much so that they couldn’t get to their real work, and that none of the referrals led anywhere.” …

Back to Franken: Absent his willingness to share specific cases involving Prism that are more convincing than the main one we’ve heard about so far – and absent his willingness to include even his fellow Gopher State legislator into the cognoscenti, let me suggest that his turnabout on the question of state surveillance is the result of nothing more complicated than partisanship.