The fight is on in a big way over FISA:

Washington, D.C. – U.S. Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell delivered the following remarks (as prepared) on the Senate floor Friday regarding the need to update terrorist surveillance law before the Senate breaks for August recess.
“Earlier this week the Vice Chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee and I introduced a bill that would give our intelligence community a tool it urgently needs to detect the terrorist plots we know are being hatched against us. The Director of National Intelligence has pleaded with us in person about the problem, which involves a glitch in the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act of 1978, or FISA, that’s causing our intelligence community to miss significant, actionable intelligence.
“The principle behind the FISA law is the same today as it was thirty years ago: it’s the principle that foreign terrorists are a legitimate target for electronic surveillance. But because of changes in the way terrorists communicate, U.S. intelligence personnel is no longer able to act on this common-sense principle with the speed and flexibility the law was originally meant to give them.
“In a significant number of cases, our intelligence professionals are now in the position of having to obtain court orders to collect foreign intelligence concerning foreign targets overseas. This is absurd: We’ve never believed the targeting of a foreign terrorist overseas should require a FISA warrant. Yet that’s the outrageous situation we find ourselves in. And it would be even more outrageous not to correct this glaring problem now.
“Congress created FISA in 1978 because it believed the terrorist threat was real. That belief has been tragically confirmed since the law was created. And intelligence officials remind us repeatedly that the threat remains real. An unclassified version of the recent National Intelligence Estimate tells us that Al-Qaeda is reconstituting itself and that its lethal intent is just as strong today as it was on the morning of Sept. 11, 2001.
“This legislation couldn’t be more urgent. And while the administration submitted FISA modernization language months ago, the only legislation before us is S. 1927, the McConnell-Bond bill — a bill specifically requested by the Director of National Intelligence. We know this bill provides our intelligence community with the necessary tools to protect our homeland. We know that if we pass this measure the President will sign it into law. We know we have a duty to pass it today to protect the American people. Why wait?
“The recent National Intelligence Estimate on terrorism contained a finding that cooperation on the part of our allies may wane as 9/11 becomes a more distant memory and perceptions of the threat recede. Has that memory faded so greatly in our minds that we would leave for an August recess with taking the reasonable step of revising this law? The Intelligence Community assures us that Al-Qaeda is not taking an August break.
“The principle behind our electronic surveillance has not changed since 1978. But the terrorist threat has. As we’ve tried to adapt to this asymmetrical threat, the terrorists have adapted too — by using increasingly modern and increasingly lethal tools and technologies against us. They’ve used planes and, if they get their wish, they’ll use chemical and even nuclear weapons. They’ve killed our citizens and our soldiers by the thousands. And they’ve shown their intent to continue to kill at an even larger scale.
“We must not let these enemies of America exploit a weakness that we can clearly see. Didn’t we learn this lesson after 9/11? Some have blamed our failure to prevent those attacks on a failure of imagination. Some have said it was because we didn’t connect the dots. Well, we’ll never be able to connect the dots if we can’t collect them. And failure to pass this legislation would suggest an indifference on the part of Congress about our ability to connect the dots.
“This threat is real, this threat is urgent, and we must not, we will not, leave for recess until we pass this urgent and necessary law.”