“Where in the Constitution, pray tell, do we find the authority for such crusades? Or for the national restrictions on abortion supported by the fifth signatory, Tony Perkins of the Family Research Council?”

Well, there are a couple obvious answers. Since every major country has always banned murder since the beginning of time (yeah, yeah, 6 trillion years ago), I guess the founders didn’t think they needed to single it out. A better question would be: Where do you find in the Constitution some provision that provides an exclusion to a national law banning murders, based upon age?

Here’s another morsel that boggles the [functioning] mind:

“Or for the national regulation of broadcast speech pushed by the seventh guy on the list, Brent Bozell of the Parents Television Council?”

Again, the First Amendment provides for free speech, but with several common sense exceptions. We are not free to endanger others with our speech, to incite violence or other unrest, to spew vulgarities or obscenities, or to make death threats. This isn’t news Jesse, and you seem like the kind of guy who would be smart enough to know it. Broadcast television bandwidth is a public resource, and it’s free for consumers. That means just about everyone can view it. Naturally, there are sane limits on what kind of trash the public can be subjected to, in order to access television.

He actually kicked things off by defying logic (I always hated logic, go get ‘em Jesse):

“Ed Meese, who as attorney general during the Reagan administration happily prosecuted national wars on dirty pictures and politically incorrect intoxicants”

Well Jesse, there’s an explanation for that too: He was the attorney general. Your quote even says that. Since child porn and drugs are all illegal, how much sense does it make to bash on the attorney general for prosecuting such cases? We could possibly agree on the “politically incorrect intoxicants”, but how could overlooking child porn peddling be a “good thing”?

I’m saddened that you didn’t choose the one obvious point where conservatives trip all over themselves to screw up: Nation building.

Why would someone want to cheapen a good political platform like the Libertarians with such ridiculous arguments?

“If our leaders cannot agree to the Mount Vernon Statement, they are part of the problem and should be replaced.”

I would tend to agree. As far as small government and limits of government intervention in our lives, the Mt. Vernon Statement would seem to fulfill every conservative’s wildest dreams. However, such agreements aren’t really new. Allegedly conservative politicians know full well what their platform dictates. It’s the threat of losing votes (primarily from senior citizens) that leads them to bad decision making time and again.

With the February 25th meeting with Obama looming, the GOP may just get a chance to prove they can by softening their resistance to Medicare cuts. It’s a $32.4 trillion dollar problem that desperately needs a Mt. Vernon solution.