It took forever, but it finally happened: A deal on foreign intelligence monitoring. You generally can't rely on the press to report accurately on this sort of super-detailed legislation, but the Washington Post is reporting that the key moves of the new legislation are these:

Under the surveillance agreement, which is expected to be approved today by the House and next week by the Senate, telecoms could have privacy lawsuits thrown out if they show a federal judge that they received written assurance from the Bush administration that the spying was legal. . . . The legislation also would require court approval of procedures for intercepting telephone calls and e-mails that pass through U.S.-based servers -- another step that the White House and GOP lawmakers previously resisted.

  That sounds pretty sensible, although I'll need to read the language first to get a sense of what really happened. Stay tuned.