Yep, they are scrutinizing journalists phone-records.

According to ABC's Brian Ross ...

The FBI acknowledged late Monday that it is increasingly seeking reporters’ phone records in leak investigations.

“It used to be very hard and complicated to do this, but it no longer is in the Bush administration,” said a senior federal official.

The acknowledgement followed our blotter item that ABC News reporters had been warned by a federal source that the government knew who we were calling.

Ross's report is still awfully murky. But it suggests that the FBI is using new provisions of the Patriot Act which allows for the expanded use of so-called National Security Letters. As Ross explains, "the NSLs are a version of an administrative subpoena and are not signed by a judge. Under the law, a phone company receiving a NSL for phone records must provide them and may not divulge to the customer that the records have been given to the government."

In rule of law terms, I guess there's some extremely mild solace to be taken in the fact that the administration has apparently deigned to follow the law in this case. But a police state law still gets you a police state.

This is what the Patriot Act is being used for. In a free society, law enforcement goes before independent magistrates. Apparently we're now beyond that.