House and Senate negotiators reached agreement today on a new bill to amend FISA, which looks like it will be brought up for an up-or-down vote in both houses of Congress, and will almost certainly pass. Opponents in Congress (like Patrick Leahy and Russ Feingold) and liberals and libertarians in the blogosphere are unhappy, primarily (though not exclusively) because the bill would effectively grant immunity to telecoms who abetted President Bush’s wiretapping scheme. Courts would be required to dismiss any lawsuit as long as the government can demonstrate it provided assurances to the company being sued that the program was legal–that is, courts won’t be conducting any independent review of whether the program actually was legal.