We are going to wait for someone smarter than us about cybersecurity and the intelligence community to explain it to us, before we try to explain it to you. But here is what the Post says.

Under a classified pilot program approved during the Bush administration, NSA data and hardware would be used to protect the networks of some civilian government agencies. Part of an initiative known as Einstein 3, the pilot called for telecommunications companies to route the Internet traffic of civilian government agencies through a monitoring box that would search for and block malicious computer codes.

AT&T, the world's largest telecommunications firm, was the Bush administration's choice to participate in the test, which has been delayed for months as the Obama administration determines what elements of the Bush plan to preserve, former government officials said. The pilot was to have been launched in February.

And it is basically another "the NSA promises not to break any laws despite having the ability, if not explicitly the authority, to do whatever the fuck they want" thing, we think.

There will be no news on the news tonight, so the magical power of a Friday afternoon newsdump is even more potent. Any weekend coverage will garner even less attention than usual, and by Monday we'll all be mourning the next celebrity tragically murdered by Twitter. So. Let's see.

• Not only is Mark Sanford not resigning, he is comparing himself to the Biblical King David, who fell in love with a married woman after seeing her bathe, and then he killed her husband.
• Democratic Representative Maxine Waters is fighting for her right to earmark money to name things after herself, and various on-the-fence Democrats now support the climate bill (they picked a good time to come down off that fence!).
• And hey, what's this? "The Obama administration, fearing a battle with Congress that could stall plans to close Guantanamo, has drafted an executive order that would reassert presidential authority to incarcerate terrorism suspects indefinitely, according to three senior government officials with knowledge of White House deliberations." This is because dealing with Congress is impossible. Also arrrrrgh wtf.

Honestly, though? That last nugget aside, this is SMALL POTATOES. Step up your game, politicians!

Caldera, Clinton's Secretary of the Army and Obama's director of the White House Military Office, has "resigned," before the "review" of the whole fuckup even finished!

All he did was have a 747 circle the financial district, trailed by fighter jets, for the sake of a photo-op, while knowing full well that that would cause a panic. And then he ordered everyone briefed on the flyover to keep it secret from the public, for fun! Oh, how New York laughed, that morning.

Hey, what time is it? It is late Friday afternoon! So we will probably even get the photo of not-Air Force One going all North by Northwest on Lady Liberty by, say, 5!

Update: Or by 4:25, either way! Here is the photo of Air Force One, on an ugly-looking day, flying over a brown river, with a background of beautiful Jersey City. Yeesh. You guys couldn't touch this up a bit? Make it look like the panic was worth it? Hah, no, because this was a stupid idea for a photo op to begin with.

[Photo: BMcCluskeyNYC]