Boortz, that great champion of libertarianism, today puts up what to me is probably the dumbest scenario I have ever seen put before the public:

OK .. before we get into this, let's explore a scenario. Some reports over the weekend have suggested that this scenario might be more fact than fiction. U.S. Intelligence agencies overseas discover the phone number of Osama bin Laden's satellite phone. Osama makes a satellite phone call to a U.S. citizen living outside of Chicago. Nobody's home. Intelligence operatives are certain that bin Laden will try to place the call again, but it may be from a different phone. They know that Osama changes phones frequently, so there is no time to waste in mining this resources. Their best chance to intercept bin Laden's next phone call is to place a tap on the U.S. citizen's phone. The next phone call may be in a matter of minutes, or hours. There is no time to go before a court to get a wiretap order. So ... what do you do? Do you put the wiretap in place immediately, or do you take the chance of missing the next phone call from Osama while trying to get a court order? Now, before you answer, imagine that this might have been a phone call from bin Laden to Mohammed Atta an hour before Atta was to board that American Airlines flight in Boston. The call was bin Laden giving Atta the final go-ahead for the attacks of 9/11. Without a court order you intercept the call, discover the plot, and save 3000 lives. Wait for a court order and the 9/11 attacks go forward.

What if cutting your mothers throat would have prevented 9/11 Neal? Surely you would have had no objections.

These people absolutely amaze me with their “what if” analogies that make other fairy tales pale in comparison.

Waiting on a call from Osama? Good God. Two-bit dealers in reefer know better than to run their operations via cell phones and I would be willing to bet that Osama Bin Laden hasn’t even seen a cell phone used in years much less used one himself.

There is nothing that cannot be justified in the minds of many. Over 80% of the respondents to Neal’s poll say that the President did not overstep his bounds by allowing the spying in question.

If you were to ask these people whether or not they thought the President had any bounds he could possibly overstep I would predict that their answer would be, “Not as long as we are expecting a call from Osama.”