JUST BRILLIANT – AT 8:51 A.M. ET:  It's hard to make this up.  From CNN:

Belgian authorities may have had the chance to arrest one of the Paris attackers two days after terror struck the French capital, but were unable to do so due to a law limiting police raids on private homes, the country's justice minister said Wednesday.

Koen Geens told Belgian media Wednesday that police had tracked Salah Abdeslam to an apartment in Brussels just two days after the Nov. 13 attacks killed 130 people and injured 350 others. However, authorities were forbidden to carry out a raid to capture the terrorist dubbed "Europe's most wanted man" due to an obscure law that prohibits police from entering private homes between the hours of 9 p.m. and 5 a.m. The only exceptions to the law, which dates to 1969, are if a crime is in progress or if the home is on fire.

The apartment where Abdeslam was believed to be hiding out was located in Brussels' western suburb of Molenbeek, which has been singled out by authorities as a hotbed of jihadist activity. Abdeslam grew up in the neighborhood, as did the mastermind of the Paris attack, Abdelhamid Abaaoud, who was killed in a raid by French police Nov. 18

A spokesman for the Belgian federal prosecutor's office acknowledged to The New York Times that authorities did not seal off the area during the night and that Abdeslam was gone when police returned the following day to carry out their operation. Belgian media reported that investigators found evidence during their search that Abdeslam had indeed been in the apartment during the night, though that was not explicitly confirmed by authorities.

COMMENT:  Moral of the story:  Keep laws up to date, and interpret them sensibly.  Human lives are at stake.

December 17,  2015