GOOD NEWS FOR TERRORISTS: DEMOCRATIC REVISIONS TO THE PATRIOT ACT

By Dick Morris And Eileen McGann 10.5.2009

If only terrorists would be so accommodating as not to change cell phones, the new curbs on the Patriot Act being pushed by Democrats in Congress would not be so dangerous. But, unfortunately, even a book entitled Terrorism for Dummies would tell them to use multiple cell phones to plot their mayhem.

In the aftermath of Oklahoma City, President Clinton asked Congress for authority to order roving wiretaps, targeting the terror suspect rather than one specific phone. If he changed phones, the FBI could tap each new phone he used without getting a separate warrant. Congress unwisely and unaccountably refused. But when President Bush renewed the request, after 9-11, Congress included the authorization in the Patriot Act. But this provision and many other essential investigatory tools is subject to sunset at the end of the year. Unless affirmatively renewed by Congress, they will lapse.

Drug enforcement agents have long used roving wiretaps but anti-terror investigators will not be able to use them if Congress doesn’t extend the authority. Our anti-terror investigators will be back to the one phone-one warrant rule.

Former Bush Attorney General Michael B. Mukasey, writing in an op-ed in Friday’s Wall Street Journal notes that roving wiretaps “helped thwart a plot earlier this year to blow up synagogues in Riverdale, New York.” Yet liberal Democrats are fighting the renewal of the roving wiretap authority as part of a broad offensive against the very Patriot Act provisions which have kept us safe (often by narrow margins) since 9-11.

via GOOD NEWS FOR TERRORISTS: DEMOCRATIC REVISIONS TO THE PATRIOT ACT at DickMorris.com.