On to the Senate!.

The vote today, following last night's special closed session, was 213-197. As we discussed yesterday, the bill does not contain amnesty for lawbreaking telecoms - rather it allows them the chance to defend themselves in court. It does unfortunately still contain provisions for basket warrants. It is a much better bill than what the Senate produced - let's see if they take the bait.

In the end, of course, as Glenn Greenwald points out, this bill is not going to become law anytime soon. The Senate is unlikely to pass it, and even if they did, President Bush wouldn't sign it. That's actually probably the best scenario of all. As Greenwald writes:

The reality is that the best possible outcome here is nothing -- we lived quite well for 30 years under FISA and if no new bill is passed, we will continue to live under FISA. FISA grants extremely broad eavesdropping powers to the President and the FISA court virtually never interferes with any eavesdropping activities. And the only "fix" to FISA that is even arguably necessary -- allowing eavesdropping on foreign-to-foreign calls without warrants -- has the support of virtually everyone in Congress and could be easily passed as a stand-alone measure.

You can read the ACLU's press release on the House vote here.

Update: For fans of parlimentary procedure, here's a quick and dirty summary of some of the FISA bill maneuverings. Representative democracy is a wonderful thing.
Hat tip Atrios