A bill to overhaul foreign-intelligence gathering passed the House with an overwhelming bipartisan majority--and now enjoys the freshly minted backing of the consistently inconsistent Barack Obama, who once threatened to filibuster the legislation.(The Week)(Brief article)

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A bill to overhaul foreign-intelligence gathering passed the House with an overwhelming bipartisan majority--and now enjoys the freshly minted backing of the consistently inconsistent Barack Obama, who once threatened to filibuster the legislation. For decades the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act empowered the intelligence community to gather information overseas without judicial restrictions. Then last year a FISA court ruled that because modern technology often routes overseas digital communications (between, say, Pakistan and Afghanistan) through U.S. networks, such phone and e-mail contacts fall within FISAcourt supervision, regardless of whether those communications involve Americans. Negotiations for a permanent solution to the court's mistake stalled on, among other things, the matter of ...