Under this wording, the statute's reach is unclear. Could the urban teenager selling $10 rocks of crack on the street be charged as a "narco-terrorist" if the cocaine he was retailing was proven to come from a shipment ultimately controlled by the Colombian paramiliaries or the FARC, both of which reportedly earn fortunes in the business? Whether the crack seller is transformed into a "narco-terrorist" could depend on nothing more than the ambition and ruthlessness of a young Assistant US Attorney somewhere.

Just this week, Patriot Act was used to bust a marijuana smuggling ring.

Now, here's the important thing. The version of the Patriot Act that passed the Senate Judiciary Committee does not have this provision. The full Senate will vote on its version after the August recess. So get ready to send your Senators the message: Leave the narco-terrorim provisions out of the Patriot Act.

I have written before about the Administration's efforts to sneak what had been Patriot Act II and the Victory Act into other legislation on a piece-meal basis.

Let's hope members of Congress aren't asleep at the switch and starry-eyed with cookie-cutter patriotism when the provisions of Patriot Act II and Orrin Hatch's Victory Act hit their desks. Patriot II is especially dangerous since it is being divided into smaller units and introduced piecemeal, in an attempt to avoid the Patriot Act label and the certain opposition another big bill with that name would bring.

We don't need new drug laws:

I don't doubt that some of the money earned from Afghan poppy farming finds its way into the hands of terrorists. But let's not paint with too broad a brush without something more. And let's be vigilant about keeping terror laws and drug laws separate, except in such instances where the two clearly are linked. We already have laws that penalize terrorism and laws that penalize illicit drug activity. There is no need to combine them.

All-Spin Zone is also covering this topic.