(This post is from our new blog: Unofficial Sources.)

Media coverage of the USA Freedom Act surveillance reform bill has been strikingly schizophrenic — and nowhere more clearly than in two consecutive recent front-page articles in The New York Times.

That’s because how you analyze the bill depends on which of two questions about Congress you think is more important in the wake of NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden’s revelations about a metastasizing U.S. surveillance apparatus.

Those questions are: “Will Congress do anything at all?” And: “Will Congress do enough?”

Some in Congress — led by Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell — want the answer to the first question to be: No. In the face of the June 1 sunset of some key provisions of the Patriot Act that the NSA has cited as legal justification for its bulk metadata collection, McConnell simply wants the whole thing renewed.

So to people for whom that would be intolerable — a calamitous moral failing, an abnegation of legislative oversight, a green light for the NSA to do whatever it wants, forevermore — the fact that this “reform” legislation is being seriously considered is a very big deal.

That was the point of view reflected on the front page of Friday’s newspaper of record, published online with the headline: “Patriot Act Faces Revisions Backed by Both Parties.”

Jonathan Weisman and Jennifer Steinhauer announced “a bipartisan wave of support … to sharply limit the federal government’s sweeps of phone and Internet records.” They described an “overhaul” of the Patriot Act, and reached a triumphant conclusion:

The push for reform is the strongest demonstration yet of a decade-long shift from a singular focus on national security at the expense of civil liberties to a new balance in the post-Snowden era.

Would that it were so.

Because in the context of the incredibly broad and largely unfettered invasions of privacy here and around the globe exposed by the Snowden revelations, passing the bill would be almost inconsequential — at best a first very little baby step.

That was the point of view reflected on the front page of Saturday’s newspaper of record, published online with the headline: “Why the N.S.A. Isn’t Howling Over Restrictions.”

My immediate thought: