The supposed leak of information in the NY Times has become a powerful PR weapon in Republican hands. (Even I knew the feds were monitoring bank accounts from earlier news stories. Didn't we all?) It covers up the Valerie Plame leak and serves for a lot of moral posturing. It has become a vector to use in election issues; truth is being lost in the process. The Party that Follows the Leader, also known as the Party that Speaks with one Voice, is winning this round simply by saying the same simplistic thing over and over. It therefor becomes necessary to speak the truth over and over: Dems care about national security and also about rights. We demand only that the president get approval for such measures. He is sworn by Oath to protect the Consitution. Let him do so!
Objections to eavesdropping and monitoring of communications have never been about stopping terrorists. Had Bush and Co. used the legally sanctioned approval method, no one would have objected. And we know that if a Democrat were in office, as may well happen, a Democratic president would have the same heavy responsibility to keep the country safe, and might use eavesdropping. What the populace is afraid of is the constant abandonment by the executive of any restraint of law.
Our Founding Fathers knew that power could be abused and gave us some protections. It is necessary now for anyone who values those protections to state the case clearly in the face of a barrage of public relations touting the president's power.