In her column in today's NYT, Maureen Dowd comments on the telephone tapping conducted by NSA. The program was exposed last Thursday by USA Today and denied by the phone companies yesterday and today.

Here is what she has to say about the prospects of her phone being tapped by the NSA.

"I hope the N.S.A. isn't tapping my phone at The Times, or tracing my calls, or whatever it calls its maniacal military-industrial civil liberties transgressions. I'm not worried that it'll overhear meaty — or fishy — exchanges with sources at the Bush White House. I don't have any sources at the Bush White House. If I'm talking container problems, it's ice cream, not ports. If I mention Scooter, I'm merely making plans for a Saturday Vespa picnic. Alas, I fret that Gen. Michael Hayden and Crazy Dick Cheney will not hear anything to make all their illegal snooping and Caine Mutiny-style hunting for leakers worthwhile."

Had Ms. Dowd been your average Fatima Abdullah, the subject will be more traumatic. Even, if our fictional Ms. Fatima is just innocuous as Ms. Dowd