Earlier today The Whistler put up a humorous joke about a man facing an IRS audit.  I laughed when I read it, but I also got to thinking about how we all accepted the premise of a man visiting a federal investigator to have the intimate details of his financial life gone through without a warrant all because said investigator suspected the man might be guilty of tax fraud.

Isn’t that amazing?  How we don’t even notice such invasions of our privacy?

The liberals in this country went bezerk when it was disclosed (through an illegal leak to the New York Times, naturally) that the President had authorized the monitoring of communications between people here in the U.S. and international contacts who were known to have ties to terrorism.  Yet those same liberals overwhelmingly oppose any effort to modify our current tax system that is so invasive that IRS auditors can, almost on a whim, demand to know every single detail of your financial life.

Like maybe receipts for your Viagra prescription.  Or check stubs that show how often you go down to the local bar.  Or maybe some credit card charges for that porno site your wife doesn’t know about.

How funny that the left is willing to allow the government such wide-ranging and unchecked access to our lives, yet finds the idea of the government monitoring communications from known terrorists to people inside the U.S. reprehensible.  As a national security-minded conservative, I feel just the opposite.  I find the idea that our revenue system for the government is so invasive that my personal life can be laid bare for federal investigators on little more than a tax fraud fishing trip reprehensible, but the idea of monitoring communications sent to people in this country by terrorists to be plain old common sense.