This may be of some use to people. Reposted from a comment on Atrios.
How often did Bush authorize illegal spying by the NSA?
It has been 52 months since 9/11. Bush has reauthorized this 30 times. That works out to about six weeks between authorizations. Which is UNLIKELY, because the government doesn't generally do things in six week intervals.
See some calculations after the flip.
More likely, I think, is that it was first reauthorized every month, after 9/11, and then Bush got tired of that and switched to every two months or three months for authorization.
Calculating it for 1 and then 2 months, we get
x+y = 30 (authorizations)
x+2y = 52 (months)
Solving, y=22, x=8. Bush would have authorized on a monthly basis for the first 8 months, and then bi-monthly afterwards.
This would place the point at which they tired of monthly authorizations at about 10 months after 9/11, or sometime around April 2002.
If it was every three months, we get
x+y = 30
x+3y = 52
Solving, y=11, x=19.
Bush would have reauthorized every month for 19 months, and then switched to a quarterly basis.
This would have placed the switchover from monthly to quarterly to about 19 months after 9/11.
That would be around March of 2003. Mission Accomplished time.
Make of it what you will. I find the latter more likely. After Mission Accomplished, they probably felt like their balls were too big for their pants and they could give their fascist tendencies freer reign.