The big news in the war on terror front today is an announcement from Sen. Arlen Specter about a "compromise" of sorts between the Bush administration and Congress over what the media insists on calling the NSA's "eavesdropping" program.

According to Specter, President Bush has agreed to legislation that would require the NSA Terrorist Surveillance Program to the jurisdiction of the courts set up by 1978's Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. According to an unnamed Bush administration official (as reported in the AP article linked above) the bill's language would give the President the option of submitting "the program" (and by that I think they mean any given individual case) to the FISA court without requiring that.

If that last bit is true (and we won't know until the legislation itself is made public), then how can this "compromise" be seen as anything other than a rubber-stamp by Congress of what the President was already doing? The President has maintained all along that his executive branch war powers give him all the authority he needs to authorize this NSA program outside the jurisdiction of the FISA courts. If this legislation Specter is talking about gives the President the option for review by the FISA court, rather than requiring such a view, then clearly the legislation is a tacit admission that the President does indeed have the powers he is claiming.

The media (much as they did with the recent Pentagon memo about Guantanamo detainees and their treatment under the Geneva Conventions) is reporting this as a "setback" for the President. A "reversal of policy."

Given what we know so far, I don't think any such conclusion is warranted.

What most people have missed in all this furor about the NSA program is that what it really boils down to is a struggle not between Republicans and Democrats but between the President and Congress. The three branches of American government are endlessly duking it out with one another over who has power to do what. The President thinks his Article II war powers grant him the authority to authorize the NSA intelligence program in question. Congress, obviously, thinks that the President's constitutional powers do not extend that far and that he must bow to the statutory law they've written on the matter.

Who has it right on this one? Personally I think the President does, and though they won't admit it I believe that certain members of Congress feel the same way. Which is why they're apparently going to propose and pass a bit of toothless legislation that will allow the President to keep doing what he's doing while still making it appear as though Congress flexed some muscle.