"You win some, and some get stolen."

That's how Rep. C.L. Butch Otter (R-Idaho) explained it. I would have liked to watch this on C-SPAN:

By a 210 to 210 tie vote that GOP leaders prolonged for 23 tumultuous minutes while they corralled dissident members, the House rejected a proposed change to the USA Patriot Act that would have barred the Justice Department from searching bookstore and library records. White House officials, citing the nearly three-year-old law's importance as an anti-terrorism tool, warned that an attempt to weaken it would be vetoed.

But the victory came only after GOP tactics infuriated Democrats and a number of Republicans. The vote, scheduled to last 15 minutes, dragged on for 38 minutes despite outraged shouts and a unified chant of "shame, shame, shame" from Democrats across the aisle.

Republicans say this portion of the law has been seldom used and there is nothing to worry about. I defer to the good Senator from Vermont:

Addressing the House before the vote, [Rep. Bernard] Sanders (Vt.) said: "All of us want to support the law enforcement officials going after terrorists, but we can defeat terrorism without allowing the government to get a secret order from a secret court without any showing of any evidence that the person whose reading records are sought is engaged in any kind of illegal conduct."

The other question in my mind was what kind of concessions were made to get those nine senators to change sides.