What the hell is the point of having a Democratic Congress if they're going to roll over for shit like this?

For anyone who isn't already familiar with FISA, let's recap:

As currently written, the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act already gives U.S. spies broad leeway to monitor the communications of foreign terrorism suspects, but the 30-year-old statute requires a warrant to monitor calls intercepted in the United States, regardless of where the calls begin or end.

Note that this warrant comes from a secret court and in some cases can be issued retroactively. And the court is a notorious rubber-stamper.

So when the Bush administration started violating FISA in 2002, the only possible reason is because they wanted to conduct wiretaps that no sane judge could possibly issue a warrant for.

This bill is the result of them getting caught. Instead of being prosecuted for it, they're asking for a change to the law so they can conduct business as usual - except this time, while the wiretapping is still flagrantly unconstitutional, at least they have a bill to back them up. A bill which, amazingly, only 28 senators opposed.

According to TPMmuckraker, the Director of National Intelligence actually signed off on an earlier compromise version of the bill which the administration then squashed.