There's been so much in the news about wiretapping without court
permission.  What I haven't found mentioned yet is why Bush doesn't
just get judicial ok's to wiretap, if the people he's after seem so
guilty.  How tough or how slow could getting permission really be that
he can't do this legally?

This is just a free comment, no "answer", and also just a personal
understanding of the situation.
I think that wiretapping has to be selective, i.e., that there has to
demonstrated  reason to tap someone's telephone  - what the court
order establishes.  The problem was/is that the wiretapping was a
fishing expedition, tapping phones of persons who just had "funny"
names, invading their privacy (a constitutional right).

The 1978 Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act actually allows for
circumstances where investigators can go get permission to eavesdrop
after the fact. The defense put forth by the White House is that
modern technology has raced ahead of the law.

Huh? If you can get permission after the fact, what's the big deal?
That's where part of the problem lies.

A gray area of the law is how to treat data that move through the US
that doesn't originate or end here. If a person in Korea emails
another person in Sri Lanka and some of the data packets move through
the US, can they be sniffed legally?

"A gray area of the law is how to treat data that move through the US
that doesn't originate or end here. If a person in Korea emails
another person in Sri Lanka and some of the data packets move through
the US, can they be sniffed legally?"

From what I understand the answer is Yes. 

As it was explained to me, you need permission to intercept the
packets within a private network, you do not need permission to do so
on the net. Not only can the government do it, you can legally do it
as there is no law against it, and until there is one specifically
barring people from doing so, it can be done legally.

But the original question was about phone wiretapping, and there are
laws making that illegal without a court order. A gray area would be
if you were using the phone over a net carrier such as Vonage, that
would be something the courts would have to determine.