There’s an interesting development that almost got lost yesterday in the escalating partisan warfare over House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s claims that the CIA misled her about interrogation tactics. Sen. Arlen Specter may be getting some traction with his idea on how to avoid future misunderstandings between Congress and the executive branch: Start keeping transcripts of the intelligence briefings for top lawmakers.

Specter, D-Pa. (we’re still getting used to that too), wrote a letter yesterday outlining his suggestion to CIA director Leon E. Panetta, White House counsel Gregory Craig, and the top Democrats and Republicans on the House and Senate intelligence committees. His idea: To avoid any future misunderstandings about what was said in the intelligence briefings, keep transcripts of every briefing given to the Gang of Eight — the four top intelligence committee members and the four highest-ranking House and Senate leaders.

In an interview on MSNBC yesterday, Senate Intelligence Chairwoman Dianne Feinstein of California said Specter might be on to something. She said she’ll discuss the proposal with other committee members and suggested it could become a provision of the annual intelligence authorization bill the committee will start writing soon.

So how’s the Guantánamo Bay debate going so far for Senate Democrats? They’ve already said they’re going to strip out the money President Obama wanted to close the detention facility. But that hasn’t protected them from having to debate the issue. Republicans are still filing amendment after amendment to the supplemental spending bill to ensure that the Democrats keep talking about what to do with the detainees.

Senate majority whip and Obama friend Richard J. Durbin, what have you got?

It was up to Durbin, Obama’s Illinois colleague during his Senate days, to figure out how to argue against the Republican amendments without having a solid post-Gitmo plan to talk about — exactly the situation Senate Democrats wanted to avoid. So in a floor speech this morning, Durbin tried a talking point most Democrats haven’t even mentioned. We already have terrorists on U.S. soil, Durbin said, and they’re not roaming around in our neighborhoods because they don’t get out of prison.

President Obama has asked Congress to send him a credit card regulation bill by Memorial Day. That day is fast approaching. But the bill has been complicated in the Senate with the addition of a gun amendment that liberal Democrats hate, and there’s probably no way to avoid the issue in the House.

How will the House Democrats get the bill to Obama by the deadline? According to Majority Leader Steny H. Hoyer, D-Md., they’ll probably do the only thing they can do: Have separate votes on the credit card bill and the gun amendment, and then merge them together and send the whole package to Obama for his signature.

It’s an acknowledgement that the pro-gun rights majority is now strong enough in both the House and the Senate that neither Obama nor the Democratic leadership are willing to pick fights with them — or put their own priorities in jeopardy.

Hey, it’s worked before. Trying to bounce back a bit after last week’s lousy week for the GOP, Senate Republicans returned to a classic theme today: national security and the terrorist threat.

Specifically, they’re warning about the prospect of terrorists running loose in our neighborhoods.

Today’s talking point after the weekly Senate Republican luncheon was about how closing the Guantánamo Bay detention center within a year will be a lot harder than President Obama thinks. And to make it that much harder, Sen. Saxby Chambliss, R-Ga., said he’ll introduce a bill Wednesday that would bar the use of federal funds to release former detainees on U.S. soil.