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On his show last Friday, while the NSA story was blazing its way through the tubes, Rush Limbaugh said, “So there is clearly — somewhere, somehow, in some form or another — a coup taking place, and there is an assault on privacy, and there are assaults on people because of their politics and their ideology. It is taking place; it’s undeniable.”

An assault on privacy, he said. Limbaugh continued, “I don’t want my government doing this. I do not want my government preoccupied with paying this close attention to what every citizen is doing every minute of the day. This government’s already too big, it’s too damn powerful, and it’s too unforgiving — and this doesn’t have anything to do with competent intelligence gathering. Throwing wide nets like this is BS. It’s assuming way too much to think that this is not a big deal. Left-wing overreaction, my backside.”

Uh-huh. Yeah. Rewind several years to 2007 and 2008 when Congress and the Bush administration passed the Protect America Act, along with the FISA Amendments of 2008. The entire Republican establishment was lined up in jingoistic lockstep behind the Bush administration’s efforts to eavesdrop without warrants and spent countless hours both scaring their listeners to death while shaming liberals and the Democratic Party over any and all resistance in codifying the administration’s illegal covert wiretapping.

But as we’ve learned time and time again, selective amnesia doesn’t seem to permeate the zero barrier between January 19, 2009 and January 20, 2009, so let’s take a look at some history, shall we? Yep. Here goes…

On August 15, 2007, Limbaugh said, “[Then Senator Hillary Clinton] opposed the FISA reforms that would allow us to listen into communications and see the communications of international terrorists who are communicating with other international terrorists, even outside the country whose messages simply happened to flow through US telecom networks. You know, again, I’m a little bit surprised that somebody with a record so weak on these things would somehow deign to lecture this president.”

On February 29, 2008, Limbaugh said, “Nancy Pelosi is refusing a vote on the new security bill, the new FISA bill. They still, the Democrats, when it comes to national security, the defense, the protection of this country, I don’t care who our candidate is, they cannot be trusted with it, the Democrats cannot.”

On July 10, 2008, Limbaugh said, “Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, the Democrat Party, have tried to undermine the FISA court, they’ve tried to undermine the FISA bill, they have stood in the way every time it’s come up for a vote, though, after all the huff and puff that they do, they eventually pass it.”

And now these very same surveillance programs are egregious invasions of privacy, according to Limbaugh — the laws he helped to pass as the central media spokesman for the Republican Party and the Bush administration are now considered a “coup taking place.”

Who else on the right has suddenly emerged as a Johnny-come-lately Greenwald civil libertarian?

Monday morning, Joe Scarborough, during an interview with Glenn Greenwald, referred to the the NSA’s eavesdropping and data monitoring operation as “excessive” and “expansive,” even though Scarborough has been one of the most vocal supporters of the CIA’s use of torture as a counter-terrorism measure, going so far as to shout down guests on his MSNBC show.