What is it about the Bush administration that gets even its opponents to capitulate to it? Earlier this year, the president wanted an appropriations bill for the Iraq War, and Democrats refused to give it to him unless they were allowed to insert a provision into the bill calling for mandatory timetables. Bush said no. Then, they wanted to insert non-binding timetables, but even that was too much for the Bush administration. Democrats finally caved after Bush suggested they were "playing politics" with The Troops, and passed an appropriations bill that gave Bush everything he wanted.

Now, we have both the House and the Senate voting to amend the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) to permit warrantless wiretapping on suspects whose communications travel through the U.S. According to the Associated Press, the bill's provisions expire in six months and the Director of National Intelligence -- not the Attorney General -- would have to sign off on wiretapping. These are described as "wins" by the Democrats, but the fact that this bill even got passed is staggering.

In the tradition of the Bush administration, the legislation, S. 1927, is known by the Orwellian name "Protect America Act of 2007." Let's have a look!

FISA is known to history as 50 U.S.C. 1801 et seq. For one, it defines "United States persons" as any citizen or legal resident of the United States and stipulates that foreign intelligence surveillance cannot occur under the auspices of FISA if a "United States person" is involved. S. 1927 alters that, saying that electronic surveillance cannot be used against a person "reasonably believed to be located outside of the United States." Reasonably believed? That's helpful. "Oh, sorry, we didn't mean to capture all of this information; we reasonably believed that he was outside the country!"

NYT reports:

Congressional aides and others familiar with the details of the law said that its impact went far beyond the small fixes that administration officials had said were needed to gather information about foreign terrorists. They said seemingly subtle changes in legislative language would sharply alter the legal limits on the government’s ability to monitor millions of phone calls and e-mail messages going in and out of the United States.

Now, it would appear, it doesn't matter if the communications of "United States persons" are intercepted. All that change I had hoped for last November seems to be going away.