"I feel like the Republicans pulled a fast one and the actual mechanisms they used should be exposed."

The "fast one" they pulled was Pelosi and Reid letting this come to the floor and letting their caucus break ranks on it.  That's it.  The Republican "mechanism" was to shout "boo!!!" in a scary voice.  Now we will no doubt listen to Pelosi and Reid talk about how many Dems voted against the bill, as if it mattered.  They let it become law, and they knew exactly what they were doing.  

Hello citizens. The Constitution here. I have a message for you.

You have been betrayed, and I am about to die.

Every loyal American citizen in this country must immediately register as an Independent voter, and abandon the Republican and Democratic parties who abandoned me, or I can protect you no longer, and my life will end.

The only legal way to change the rule of law I embrace is by amendment, and a proposed Amendment must pass with two-thirds majority vote in both the House of Representatives and U.S. Senate, or a Constitutional Convention must be called by two-thirds of the state legislatures. If the amendment passes both the House and the Senate with two-thirds majority, then three-fourths of the states (38) must ratify it.

And yet here is the latest of my most cherished laws to be illegally declared null and void.

Amendment IV
The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.

...an intelligence official is now empowered to sort through the legalistic, secretive world of FISA, rather than a judge or the nation's highest law enforcement officer.

Lisa Graves of the Center for National Security Studies, which advocates for civil liberties, said the new law will potentially allow the government to intercept millions of Americans' calls and e-mails without warrants - as long as the NSA and other authorities have a foreign suspect in their sights.

    "This power that they have obtained is a dramatic expansion," she said.

    The Bush administration also fixed an odd quirk of the surveillance law that it said had emerged with the rapid technological growth of the past two decades: The government had to get legal approval to listen in on foreign suspects who are located overseas but whose conversations cross into the extensive U.S. communications network, as millions of international calls and e-mails do each day.

    While the law is in effect, that legal approval will no longer be required, officials acknowledged.

    The power may last longer than some people expect, Graves noted, thanks to a little-noticed provision of the bill. While the law expires in February unless Congress acts to extend it, any surveillance orders that are in place when it sunsets can last up to a full year, she said.

    Without a repeal, lawmakers "weren't just giving them the power for six months. They were giving it to them for the rest of the administration," Graves said.