hard cases make bad law
It's an expression they taught us in law school, meaning that legal decisions that are difficult to make, when applied to different cases, end up in the wrong result. We've got a number of hard cases in the news, lately. Cases that are exigent because of heinous crimes and war.

Yes we are at war. I am very much aware of that, and I strive to support it in the ways that I can. We are at war with a people who hate us because of our freedom, and that it so contrasts with their views as to how the world should be managed (at least that's the best that I can figure). Religious and political oppression would suit them just fine.

Well there are plenty of our own who have the same goal, to have their vocal minority exert political and religious oppression over the flaccid majority. And they are surfing the wave of crisis to get there.

The police in Storm Lake, Iowa have sought the disclosure of all of Planned Parenthood's local records of pregnant women to solve a horrible child murder case. They are surfing, or rather fishing. The police have no suspect, and yet they want to force the disclosure of very private information.

Similar situations are occurring here in Delaware. I have been recently fending off fishing expeditions by the IRS. They want the customer records of a local private business, under the guise of protecting us from terrorism, and they won't even go to the trouble of writing out a subpoena. Bald and unsupported assumptions lie at the crux of their position, that...if the IRS is investigating these people, they must be criminals. And they ask me, why I as an attorney and a U.S. citizen would harbor terrrorists and criminals.

To allow this sort of trampling of our rights would be to surrender to the goals of the terrorists. These terrorists of our own scare me much worse than the bomb toters.