It's a fun business I work in

And it's pretty remarkable how ephemeral one's work can be--how quickly it can become irrelevant:

Today, the House of Representatives will hold a vote on the RESTORE Act, an amendment to the amendment to the surveillance law that civil libertarians have been assailing since August, when, in the hours before Summer recess, House Democrats caved to White House demands and handed the president a six month reign to spy on American citizens.

The vote itself is a victory for Speaker Nancy Pelosi. Moments after the Congress passed the August measure enshrined in the so-called Protect America Act -- Pelosi demanded her committee chairmen get to work fixing it.

So I wrote early Wednesday. Four hours later, though, it looked remarkably daft and embarrassing. What a hoot! So it had to be followed with this:

When the House Democrats prepared to rein in the administration's surveillance program Wednesday morning, Virginia Republican Eric Cantor knew just what buttons to push to make them panic. He announced a poison pill amendment: Nothing in the bill, Cantor wrote, "shall be construed to prohibit the intelligence community from conducting surveillance needed to prevent Osama Bin Laden, Al Qaeda, or any other foreign terrorist organization … from attacking the United States or any United States person."
The amendment was clearly a political stunt, but it was worse than that -- it was a sure-fire torpedo for sinking Speaker Nancy Pelosi's much-anticipated second shot at reforming the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. Indeed, if Democrats had voted the amendment down, they would have handed Republicans ample material to accuse them of being soft on terrorism. But if Cantor's amendment had passed, it would have forced Pelosi's bill -- the so-called RESTORE Act -- back into committee, creating an indefinite delay and potentially writing a redundancy into the bill. RESTORE, according to New York Democrat Jerrold Nadler, already "includes emergency provisions, including the ability to get a warrant after the fact, to ensure the government will never have to stop listening to a suspected terrorist."

Unable to keep the caucus together for a "no" vote, but also unwilling to allow such a chink in the bill, Democratic leadership decided not to allow a vote at all -- and what could have been a tremendous victory for Pelosi turned into a major defeat.

And yet, if Cantor's shenanigans can be overcome and the caucus reined in, it might yet again be a major victory for Pelosi. And round and round we go. Whee!