When the New York Times first exposed the NSA's terrorist surveillance program it was a day or two later that President Bush publicly confirmed the existence of the program and his approval of the program.

I was working that day and saw the headline on the San Diego Union-Tribune's front page story on that issue which read something along the lines of: "Bush OK'd spying on Americans." I pointed out to the editor that what Bush had OK'd was surveillance on phone calls entering and leaving the U.S. that had a connection to terrorists -- the Americans (and it's unknown how many were actually Americans and how many are not) who got caught up in that were practically an afterthought. The headline, I believed, was placing the emphasis bass ackward. The editor cut through the nuance and stated that the President had OK'd the program, the phone calls of Americans had been monitored, therefore the headline was accurate.

Fair enough. I'm not a big fan of nuance anyway, so I let it go. But I was reminded of that encounter when I got the latest e-mail from Factcheck.org. Factcheck.org is a nonpartisan watchdog group that gets things correct more often than not -- but, I believe, still leans a little bit left. Factcheck.org was defending Sen. Russ Feingold's proposed censure resolution from GOP charges that Feingold going after President Bush for defending the nation.

A GOP radio ad accuses Democratic Sen. Russ Feingold of Wisconsin of proposing to censure President Bush "for pursuing suspected members of al Qaeda," which isn't true.  Feingold has stated he supports wiretapping suspected terrorists. His measure would censure Bush for ordering wiretaps on US soil without a court warrant, for failing to notify all members of the Senate and House intelligence committees, and for "efforts to mislead the American people" about the legality of the program.

Factcheck.org is reintroducing nuance into the debate. What they say about Feingold's censure resolution is accurate. However, like the argument over what the surveillance program was really all about vs. its practical effect, Feingold is targeting President Bush because Bush was going after al Qaeda. If Bush doesn't take going after the terrorists with the seriousness and zeal that he did by instituting this program, then there is no censure resolution.

Is the GOP charge unfair? Probably. However, it's not any more out-of-bounds than what many newspapers did in the days following the initial New York Times story.