Matthew Yglesias writes:

Via Julian Sanchez a nice rundown of the origins of FISA. It's particularly crazy that we're going down this path because the surveillance restriction were so specifically written in response to a long and well-documented chain of abuses of power. It's not like anyone's going to be able to plead ignorance when it turns out that President Someone Or Other is using these powers to spy on political opponents.

(My bold)

Well, nobody but the 50% of Americans who don't know that the word "civics" can describe something other than those cute little Hondas. Nobody but political junkies and lawyers know what "FISA" is, fewer of them know where it came from, and fewer of them care about this "path" we're going down.