Technically Morons

clipped from www.powerlineblog.com The unworkability of FISA in its present form was dramatically highlighted in Congressional testimony yesterday: U.S. authorities racing to find three kidnapped American soldiers in Iraq last May labored for nearly 10 hours to get legal authority for wiretaps to help in the hunt, an intelligence official told Congress on Thursday. But wait! The surveillance was on terrorists in Iraq. So why was authorization needed first by the Attorney General, and then by a FISA judge? McConnell told the committee last week that an outdated provision in the eavesdropping law made the approval necessary because the targeted foreign communications were carried in part on a wire inside the United States. "We are extending Fourth Amendment (constitutional) rights to a terrorist foreigner ... who's captured U.S. soldiers," he said, arguing that this was unnecessary and burdensome. This infuriating state of affairs will continue if the Democrats get their way.