President Bush signed a revamped Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act into law last week at the White House. The bill reestablishes the Bush Administration's terrorist surveillance program, which had lapsed when the Protect America Act of 2007 expired in February. The Bush Administration counts the passage of the bill as a victory both in its efforts to protect the country from terrorist attacks and in its design to provide the next Administration with all the tools necessary to keep the country safe into the future.

The bill's detractors, and critics of the surveillance it authorizes, see the whole issue differently. Civil liberties advocates complain that the law gives the government too much authority, and provides too little oversight, to listen in on the conversations of ordinary Americans. They say that the program is a violation of the Constitution's protection against unreasonable searches and seizures, as well as a violation of FISA itself. Administration critics see the program as a first step on a slippery slope toward a police state, where all communications are subject to prying government eyes and ears.

But the program is nothing of the kind. It is a necessary part of fighting the war on terrorism. Surveillance has always been conducted in war. Only the times and tools change. The difference in this war is that the enemy could be hiding among us, plotting and planning. Whereas in prior wars, the enemy was safely overseas. The passage of the new FISA, complete with the authority to conduct warrantless wiretapping, is a triumph of reason over emotion, pragmatism over ideology, and bipartisanship over polarization.

A federal judge in the Northern District of California has ruled in favor of a challenge to the Bush Administration's terrorist surveillance program, saying that the Executive branch has no authority to conduct warrantless surveillance except under the conditions set forth by Congress in the 1978 Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. The lawsuit, brought by the Al-Haramain Islamic Foundation, a Muslim charity, alleged that the National Security Agency violated the FISA Act when it secretly monitored the foundation's communications under the controversial program. The judge ruled that FISA is the "exclusive" means of conducting such surveillance and agreed with the foundation's complaint.

"Congress appears clearly to have intended to - and did - establish the exclusive means for foreign intelligence activities to be conducted. Whatever power the executive may otherwise have had in this regard, FISA limits the power of the executive branch to conduct such activities and it limits the executive branch's authority to assert the state secrets privilege in response to challenges to the legality of its foreign intelligence surveillance activities."

The Bush Administration has consistently argued that the president's authority to order the surveillance stems from his inherent power as commander-in-chief of the armed forces. It says that enemy surveillance is a function of war fighting and not subject to congressional or court oversight. The Administration also argues that the terrorist surveillance program is legal since it monitors only communications in which at least one of the parties is outside the United States.

The judge's ruling in the case seems to run afoul of Constitutional law. Constitutional powers cannot be "limited" by statute, only by an amendment to the Constitution. Just as a presidential Executive Order declaring that Congress cannot pass a law raising taxes would be unconstitutional, it is similarly unconstitutional for Congress to pass a law limiting the president's authority to command the armed forces in war time. Supporters of the terrorist surveillance program argue that the war on terrorism trumps Congress's intent in the 1978 FISA Act, while the program's detractors say that FISA is the legitimate governing standard. Whatever the opinions of the opposing sides, this case seems destined to one day be decided by the Supreme Court.

After Democratic Senators Chris Dodd and Russ Feingold issued a strongly worded statement opposing the FISA bill that passed the House of Representatives yesterday, rumors of a filibuster quickly began to circulate. But nowhere in the actual statement did it say that Dodd and Feingold would filibuster the legislation.

On Amy Goodman's TV/radio program Democracy Now, Goodman pushed for a clarification from Feingold:

GOODMAN: Senator Feingold, will you filibuster this bill?

FEINGOLD: We are going to resist this bill. We are going to make sure that the procedural votes are gone through. In other words, a filibuster is requiring sixty votes to proceed to the bill, sixty votes to get cloture on the legislation. We will also-Senator Dodd and I and others will be taking some time to talk about this on the floor. We're not just going to let it be rubberstamped.

GOODMAN: Would you filibuster, though?

FEINGOLD: That's what I just described.

Dodd and Feingold have their legislative bag of tricks out and they are going to make passage of the so-called FISA compromise as painful as possible. At the end of the 2007 Congressional session, Dodd ran out the clock on an earlier version of FISA that included telecom immunity.

Via RedState's Moe Lane: Sen. Russ Feingold will not filibuster FISA. As Lane points out, Feingold is a star in the McCain constellation, having co-sponsored the famous, or infamous, Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act, otherwise known as McCain-Feingold.

Senator Feingold promises the FISA compromise won't pass quickly, but not that it won't pass. He refers to the surveillance program of the last six years as misstep, and is seeking a commission to assess our surveillance needs, but the former McCain ally won't be filibustering. That's something I file under: Hmm. Interesting.

Democratic leaders in the House of Representatives are set to introduce a new version of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) today. The bill will be offered as a substitute to a Senate-passed extension of the Protect America Act, which included controversial provisions authorizing the Bush Administrations Terrorist Surveillance Program and granting retroactive immunity to telecommunications companies that assisted the government in setting up the program after the September 11th attacks. Last month, House Democrats allowed the law to expire rather than bring the Senate bill up for a vote, sparking a war of words between Republicans, Democrats, and the White House.

Now the House is upping the ante in the debate by introducing the new legislation. The bill not only excludes the immunity provision, it authorizes lawsuits against telecommunications companies to go forward. The Administration had been blocking the lawsuits by using the "state secrets" defense, arguing that documentation needed for the lawsuits is classified. House Judiciary Committee Chairman John Conyers (D-MI) said that the House has no interest in granting the immunity sought by the White House and backed by the Senate. "We are not going to cave in to a retroactive immunity situation. [T]here's no law school example in our memory that gives retroactive immunity for something you don't know what you are giving it for. It just doesn't work in the real world, or on the Hill either."

The Chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, Silvestre Reyes (D-TX), said on Sunday that a deal was in the works to pass a controversial extension of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, or FISA, as early as this week. Speaking on CNN's "Late Edition with Wolf Blitzer," Reyes said that the House is moving closer to approving a bipartisan Senate passed extension of the law, which contains immunity for telecommunications companies that have previously assisted the government in listening in on potential terrorists' communications.

Democrat leaders in the House had been holding up the bill over the immunity issue, refusing to allow the Senate legislation to come up for a vote despite majority support for it in the chamber. Before the President's Day recess, minority Republicans and a group of moderate Democrats joined forces to prevent the House from taking up a temporary extension of the law. The Democratic leadership chose at the time to allow the law to expire on February 16, rather than bring the Senate bill up for a vote. Republicans in Congress and Administration officials have been pressuring Democrats ever since to restore the law and the Administration's ability to eavesdrop on suspected terrorists.

Attorney General Michael Mukasey became the latest Bush Administration official to pressure Congress for an extension of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, or FISA, Friday, saying that Congress's failure to pass the bipartisan extension makes it harder "by the day" to track terrorists. Mukasey made his comments as Congress prepares to return to Washington from its President's Day recess. The issue will be high on the list of priorities in the coming week.

The Senate, after much debate, passed an extension of FISA in the first week of February, leaving the House one week before a temporary extension of the law expired. But Democratic leaders in the House refused to allow the Senate bill to come up for a vote before the deadline, causing the law to lapse on February 16th. The Senate bill is supported by a majority of House members on a bipartisan basis, and would surely pass if it were allowed to come to the floor.

The Protect America Act, passed by Congress last August, temporarily extended the intelligence community's authority to conduct its terrorist surveillance program. The law is set to expire at midnight tonight unless Congress acts. The law has already been extended once, at the end of January for two weeks. But another temporary extension is off the table, thanks to procedural maneuvering by minority Republicans in the House.

The bill is being held up over the issue of immunity for telecommunications companies believed to have assisted the government in setting up the surveillance in the days following the September 11th attacks. The Senate resolved its differences on the issue earlier this week when it passed a permanent extension of the authority on a bipartisan vote of 68-29. But late yesterday, refusing to act on the Senate bill, House Democrats left Washington for a week-long recess.

By a resounding 68 to 29 vote, the Senate has approved "sweeping measure" to "expand the government's clandestine surveillance powers." Of course, this references the FISA court and warrentless wiretapping of communications between the United States and foreign terrorist groups.

As I've written before, the hypocrisy of most liberal Democrats on this issue should be regarded as among the most shameful scandals tainting their party. Many vehemently decried the loss of liberty in America due to President Bush's "domestic spying program," before promptly voting in favor of the program's obviously-necessary national defense measures.

However, there are two important exceptions to the shame of hypocrisy: Sen. Hillary Clinton and Sen. Barack Obama. They have not proved hypocrites. Rather, they have proved either incalculably incompetent on national security or depravedly opportunistic in their vying for left-wing financial and electoral gain.

Senators are meeting at 10 a.m. today to vote on amendments to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act of 1978, which has some telecommunication companies stuck between a rock and a very hard place.

FISA, which prohibits unauthorized electronic surveillance, has been under debate for some time as lawmakers try to decide, among other things, whether to offer retroactive legal immunity to telecom companies being sued for their alleged cooperation with the National Security Agency's warrantless wiretap program. Various amendments have been brought up, including one by Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., that would let a court decide whether the firms believed they were acting legally and under "objectively reasonable" "good faith" when they shared e-mails or phone conversations with the government.

Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse, D-R.I., who, along with Sen. Arlen Specter, R-Pa., has offered an amendment that would substitute the federal government as a defendant in pending lawsuits, said any "all or nothing" alternative amendments are "flawed." He also said many lawmakers haven't had enough access to classified administration documents regarding the program to even make a well-informed decision.