How many does it take...

Townhall's got two conservatives and counting blathering about the Boston Aqua Teen fiasco, and they both get it wrong.

Jeff Jacoby gives a pretty standard post-9/11, good on you, Boston, spiel, while also pointing out that we'd be better served by trying to get better intel on terrorists and nabbing them before we have to go looking for bombs.

Suppose for a moment that the harmless Lite-Brites that threw Boston into such pandemonium last week hadn't been so harmless after all. Suppose that the 38 illuminated devices attached to highway overpasses and other public spots around the city hadn't been "guerrilla art" intended to promote an animated show on cable TV, but the terrorist bombs that authorities at first feared they were. Suppose the individuals behind this operation in Boston and nine other cities had been devotees not of Aqua Teen Hunger Force, an inane cartoon about talking fast food, but of Al Qaeda and its violent, totalitarian version of Islam.

Then I hope to the great Pita in the Sky that they would have found the Aqua Bombs before they'd been up for three weeks.

However skilled first responders and security officials are at reacting to dangerous *things,* it is not the things themselves that pose the greatest danger to us in the war against militant Islam. It is the people behind those things, and the radical jihadist ideology that motivates them.

Or in this case, two disheveled starving artists sticking these things up for beer money.

We cannot be secure unless we pre-empt such people before they can act, and discredit that ideology before it poisons new minds.

Hey, maybe we can use this weird-ass abortion time travel post of Sultan Knish's as a model. Look out, Bin Laden fetus!

Uber-Libertarian John Stossel starts off well enough, pointing out that Boston was the only city that flipped and that there was plenty of stupid to go around in this mess. He also debunks the claim that Cartoon Network or Turner Broadcasting should be punished because they "didn't let Boston know" what they were doing:

The Boston Globe reports, "Turner Broadcasting acknowledged that it never sought approval or alerted authorities that it would put up the signs."

Good lord, if advertisers now have to apologize for not seeking prior approval from authorities for putting up signs, what have we come to?

Unfortunately, Stossel's final analysis departs from its focus on common sense and responsibility, and instead concludes as a pep rally for limited government.

Boston's crazy reaction reinforces the theme I've been sounding in recent columns: Decentralization of authority is always better than centralized power. Imagine if the federal Department of Homeland Security imposed procedures on all cities for when suspicious devices are spotted. The whole country might have come to a standstill.

Instead -- thank goodness -- cities and states can establish their own procedures based on their own knowledge and experience. If Boston's procedures cause the city to panic and shut down, at least New York's and L.A.'s don't.

That's the beauty of federalism.

No John, federalism has nothing to do with this. Indeed, one of the issues that has been identified as contributing to 9/11 was excessive decentralization of government, particularly in the intelligence and law enforcement communities. Letting every city "do its own thing" potentially works when the bombs are fake, but not so well when they're real.

It would be better to INCREASE communication, training, intelligence sharing, etc., so that police in Boston would ALREADY KNOW that LED lights aren't bombs before they blow them up. We need common sense and better communication. Federalism would do the exact opposite.