Individual Liberty — Individual Responsibility 

Finally, I can vote for John McCain in good conscience

John McCain has finally made his Vice Presidential pick. He chose the governor from Alaska, Sara Palin. She's a conservative, and she's a political reformer. And naturally, the left has already started to look for dirt. According to the Associated Press…

More recently, she has come under the scrutiny of an investigation by the Republican-controlled legislature into the possibility that she ordered the dismissal of Alaska's public safety commissioner because he would not fire her former brother-in-law as a state trooper.

If that's the worst they find I'm not worried. It would have been worse if she ordered the dismissal of Alaska's public safety commissioner because he would not hire her former brother-in-law. Anyway, we'll be hearing more about this from the left soon.

One of the things I like about her is that she's willing to do what it takes to reform not just government, but her own party. She ousted a governor during the Republican Primary to get elected. She's also willing to take on Congress, rejecting Ted Steven's pet project.

“Thanks, but no thanks on that bridge to nowhere”
— Alaska Governor Sara Palin, accepting the Vice Presidential Nomination

[Update: It seems quite natural that the “Republican-controled legislature” in Alaska would be investigating Mrs. Palin — after all, according to the Wall Street Journal…

[S]he took on not only a sitting governor from her own party but also Alaska's Republican establishment -- vowing to clean up a political system that had been rocked by an Federal Bureau of Investigation corruption probe.

After handily winning, her popularity in Alaska soared as she went on to sack political appointees with close ties to industry lobbyists and shelved pork projects.

Now that's what I call a reformer!]

The problem of setting limits on government seems to be similar to herding cats. As soon as you get one cat going in the direction you want, two or three others take off in a completely different direction. With government it's much the same. As soon as you reign in one bureaucratic department, two or three others expand their reach.

I noted in a recent post that laws are made to restrict behavior. Laws made to restrict the behavior of the government are particularly difficult to craft successfully. Government intrudes in our lives in so many ways that establishing restrictions on its reach would be a never ending process. Once you managed to restrict its reach in one direction you'll find that it's extending its reach in two or three new ones.

This is what I like about the tenth amendment…

Amendment X

The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.

That's the way to restrict a government — tell it what it can do and prohibit it from doing anything else. Now if only we can convince our Legislators, our Presidential candidates, and our Courts to abide by that amendment.

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