I understand that for someone like Rand Paul, who has pretty much based his primary campaign on leading the fight in Congress to shut down the government’s ability to gather intelligence, the recent surge in Islamic terrorism is an inconvenient truth. He probably suspects that Donald Trump is somehow behind it.

I also know that those who think the NSA is the worst of the alphabet departments in Washington like to refer to Benjamin Franklin’s line about those who would sacrifice freedom for security deserve neither. If it were as simple as that, it would be hard to disagree. But it is a stretch of gargantuan proportions to pretend that the mere gathering of phone numbers infringes on anyone’s freedom, except perhaps those engaged in terrorist activities.

In all the years it has existed, nobody has ever been able to cite a single case in which the NSA actually eavesdropped on anyone’s innocent phone conversations. The notion that with billions of calls made every day, they could do it even if they wanted to is patently absurd.

The NSA claims they look for patterns of calls, specifically those between people in the U.S. and terrorists abroad. At that point, they have to provide a federal judge with their specific suspicions and be granted a search warrant, just the way it was when Bobby Kennedy was trying to make a case against the Mafia or the Teamsters. But neither of those groups was out to kill as many Americans as they could.

If I tell you that I spent eight minutes talking on the phone to Steve, five minutes to Harry and 30 seconds to Hank, what does that tell you about the contents of the calls or my relationship to those guys? However, if I also spent time talking to someone named Achmed in Syria, the very same Achmed I spoke to a week ago and three days before that, and if Achmed is on a terrorist watch list, why wouldn’t you want the feds checking me out, unless you happened to be one of the people tossing confetti in the street on 9/11?

Pointing to the potential for abuse as an excuse to not conduct surveillance makes about as much sense as suggesting that people shouldn’t own dogs because once in a while, a dog might bite a child or because some owners give their dogs free rein to defecate on their neighbor’s lawn.

As my friend Ronald Kessler pointed out in a recent article, “The NSA surveillance program is layered with oversight conducted by Congress, the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act Court, the Justice Department, and the NSA inspector general. If an abuse were to occur, the proper course would be to prosecute those responsible — not dismantle a program that, had it been in place before the 9/11 attacks, might well have foiled the hijackers’ plot.”

As even Barack Obama recently said: “The men and women of our intelligence community work every single day to keep us safe because they love this country and believe in our values. They’re patriots.”

It’s a shame they can’t say the same about him.

It was recently disclosed that the family of Ahmed Mohamed, the 12-year-old Muslim who made headlines by bringing a clock to school that had been cocked up to resemble a bomb, is now suing the city of Irving, TX, and his school for false arrest. They’re asking $15 million.

A show of hands, please — how many of you are the least bit surprised? So far, the only surprise is that Obama’s Justice Department hasn’t yet agreed to plead his case.

It seems Charlie Sheen is HIV-positive. What’s more, it seems he has been paying millions in hush money to keep it quiet. After all, he wouldn’t want a little thing like being a plague-carrier to come between him and his sex life.

In case you thought that Sheen, who’s made no secret of his use of prostitutes and drugs, had hit rock bottom as a human being, he had the chutzpah to play the sympathy card by saying during a TV interview, “What people forget is that’s money they’re taking away from my children.”

Of course that particular pile of money is not to be confused with the even bigger pile Charlie has blown over the past 30 years on hookers, coke and heroin.

Speaking of which, I am tired of hearing that addicts are innocent victims. Innocent victims are those suffering from cancer, Parkinson’s, Alzheimer’s and my young neighbor who has leukemia. People don’t just happen to wake up one morning and find themselves addicted to drugs, booze, sex, greed, power and influence. Choices are made, and those who make lousy ones are as responsible for them as those who make good ones.

There was a time, and not so long ago, that elderly people were assumed to be wise. Well, sometimes they were and sometimes they weren’t. Sometimes they were just wrinkled and smelled funny. But there is something to be said for having the time and inclination to reflect on life, both the good and the bad, because you’re out of the rat race.

But I think that because of Viagra, there has been a sea change in society. Now that pharmaceutical companies have reversed Nature’s time-tested ways, even very old men are once again thinking more with their little heads than their big ones. The wrinkles remain, but the wisdom is in increasingly short supply.

After the arrest of the three home invaders who murdered his pregnant wife, Pastor Davey Blackburn of Indianapolis said: “I choose the route of forgiveness, grace and hope. Today, I am deciding to love, not hate.”

I suppose he’s entitled to say any foolish thing he likes. Perhaps he believes that such high-sounding Pablum is exactly what people expect of a minister. But, honestly, it made me gag.

For openers, I don’t think anyone but the victim of a crime is entitled to go around forgiving people. And inasmuch as Mrs. Blackburn and her baby are dead, she’s unfortunately not in a position to do so.

I not only think that Pastor Blackburn is well off the mark, but I believe that Jesus would agree with me. I suppose if a murderer expresses sincere remorse, God is in a position to forgive him, even if I wouldn’t.

But the one thing I am confident of is that the final decision doesn’t rest with the sanctimonious Pastor Blackburn, who is my idea of a clerical error.