This past Wednesday, I was granted a unique opportunity to interview the President of the United States. His press people came to my house before dawn and had a bag over my head so quickly I couldn't even thank them for not waking the children. We rode in silence and in darkness, but with a great new car smell.

What surprised me most of all, of course, was that I hadn't even requested an interview. I guess they must have just read my e-mails and inferred my interest. What an elegant touch!

When we got to our interview location, a representative of Homeland Security did a "background check" on me, and as he was washing his hands afterwards, I asked him if that was routine, but he didn't respond. At least, I think he was Homeland Security.

They hooked me up to a lie detector and asked whether or not I had voted for Republican Presidential primary candidate Ron Paul, Constitution Party candidate Chuck Baldwin, or Libertarian Party candidate Bob Barr.

"Bob Barr is no libertarian!" I shouted. The needle on the machine went berserk. But I wasn't lying.

"Does the Second Amendment guarantee an individual the right to bear arms?" he asked. I said yes, of course, and he made a little red mark with his pen. Then he asked if I opposed any of the following: the U.N., the Federal Reserve, the income tax, the universal service program, and a mandatory ID card. I said I opposed them all.

He left the room, and just as the door closed, it dawned on me: They were relying on the Missouri Information Analysis Center report that recently analyzed domestic "extremists" and noted that they often support the Constitution, individual rights and related political parties and candidates. The report has been widely discredited, but similar profiling memos continue to make the rounds.

After they took my fingerprints, retinal scans and DNA sample (I was surprised where they took that from), I got the impression they were about to let me go, but I couldn't help myself and said under my breath, "Damn socialist Obama."

Everyone stopped short. They escorted me right back into the interrogation room. They brought in a cordless phone, put it on speaker and left. I could hear muttering, then: "This is the President."

"How do you do, Mr. President?" I said, cordially.

"Fine. Listen, I am, uh, not a socialist. I would like nothing better than to let the free markets solve these problems, but free markets have failed."

"Sorry," I interrupted. "How can freedom fail? How can a market fail? What does that even mean?"

"Just look at the market, the economy, the unemployment. Unregulated freedom doesn't work. We need checks and balances on greed and fear."

"What if I don't want your checks and balances? What if I just want a constitutional government with free... "

"Then you'll get the problems we got. Look at what happened with the banks, the whole financial..."

"The financial sector was one of the most regulated of all! We have a central bank, for Bernanke's sake. That's not a free market. That's fascism."

"We had a little deregulation and just a few years later, a crisis. How much more obvious can you get?"

"What crisis? Some banks that should have failed are not being allowed to fail, and you're taking money from us by force to keep them afloat. The banks are going to be fine, just as they always are in a central, socialist government. I'm worried about the people."

"No! I'm worried about the people. And I'm not a socialist. The Socialist Party president even said I'm not a socialist. Socialists want to bring our troops home, and I'm not going to do that."

"So you're saying because you're a war-mongering socialist, you're not really a socialist?"

"Yes! No! Wait. Look, we have a lot of problems and we need them to be solved. We need more people to do public service, not be enslaved by their personal passions and desires."

"Okay," I told him. "Now you've gone Orwellian on me. Can I have my DNA sample back?"

One exasperated presidential sigh later, I was released. When I got home, I had twelve voicemails — all from Obama, all denying he was a socialist. Methinks he doth protest too much.

Dammit, he just called again. I'd change my number, but what good would that do?