You really, really don't. And, judging from the flurry of e-mails received by journal@abqjournal.com, you like President George W. Bush ("King George") and his warrantless electronic snooping on al-Qaida-connected phone calls ("illegal wiretaps") even less.

A few e-mails manage to wrap both Bush's appointment of Alito and his "imperial presidency" in one angry blast.

The e-mails condemning Bush for his electronic surveillance began coming shortly before 1:30 p.m. Tuesday and we ended up with 21 on Tuesday and another 14 before they tapered off on Wednesday.

But by then the anti-Alito e-mails started coming, 28 in all on Wednesday and five since 4:43 a.m. today. And not one is pro-Alito or pro-Bush.

Now we've seen this e-mail equivalent of what the blogosphere calls a "blogstorm" before, usually in connection with some hot-button political or media event.

The ill-fated Harriet Miers nomination to the Supreme Court, and before that alarm over the nomination of now-Chief Justice John Roberts raised an e-mail ruckus -- and of course this week the president began his highly-publicized effort to sell electronic eavesdropping on terrorists as a good thing. And, of course, Alito went before the full Senate this week for a confirmation vote, after being OK'd by the Senate Judiciary Committee on a straight party-line vote.

But we have to wonder how many of these e-mails are a spontaneous response to some current event, when so many of the "illegal wiretap" offerings come in with virtually the same title ("No president is above the law" or "The president is not above the law" to name a dozen or so). All of the e-mailers are from New Mexico, most from the Albuquerque area, and there are enough individual differences to suggest this isn't entirely a cookie-cutter operation.

But the appearance of so many e-mails at roughly the same time with similar language on similar themes has the vaguely unpleasant feel of mass merchandising or, worse, telemarketers calling at dinner.

There's an old rule of thumb lawmakers used to use that each letter from a constituent could be translated into a certain number of votes.

That probably isn't so true any more, but in this age of instant electronic communication, an earnest effort to sway politicians or newspaper (or online) readers shouldn't be reduced to mere spam.

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