Whatever happened to the advice of Mr. Republican, Senator Robert Taft, "If you want security go to jail?"

If Republicans are really against cradle to grave government suppose we agree that anti-drug programs or campaigns to eradicate pornography will exempt from regulation any drug or kinky sexual behavior that anyone in Congress or occupants of the White House have experimented with. For purposes of this legislation inhaling means use.

Why do conservatives promise to bring the government closer to the people? I don’t want government closer to me. I want it as far away as possible. Preferably, in Tierra del Fuego.

Unfortunately, President Bush and his new drug czar, Honcho John Walters favors cracking down on crack, etc. He wants government in our face 24 hours a day. 

Contrary to worn-out Republican rhetoric they also plan to throw buckets of money into this bottomless pit that has proven to be the daughter of Prohibition. Prohibition taught our Mediterranean immigrants the advantage of switching from low alcohol wine-drinking to liquor which is quicker and can therefore be more profitabiy smuggled. Thus, not only did Prohibition increase alcoholism, it created an opportunity organized crime seized. The Mafia is ruthless. Government is dumb. I lean slightly in the direction of voting for the crooks rather than the naïve. The naïve don’t even learn from yesterday’s newspaper, much less history.

Democrats had a monopoly on the uncontrollable craving to do good when government can’t even do well. Republicans used to run cost/benefit analyses. My father was a Democrat but honest. "Well, son," he said, "government does cost less under the Republicans because they give only to their rich contributors and God made fewer of them." Now Republicans are proposing spending big bucks to save Americans too dumb to look after themselves . . . and never fail to call this "freest nation on earth."

How can this be the freest nation on earth if we have more citizens per capita behind bars than any other country? And almost 10% of them are in jail for smoking pot or even selling native arts and crafts . Who cares? We have more immediate concerns like a spike in midair collisions due to an implicit agreement between Al Qaeda and Homeland Security.

If we were willing to let the air out of the Drug Czar and shrink the DEA just a smidgen, we would be able to close the IRS forever. 

If we could get agreement on that, the following bi-partisan windfall for all will be a concrete reality that we can reach out and touch. These are not estimates. These are vigilant, hard figures.

1. We could close at least 20% of prisons and turn them into locked down high schools.

2. Two millions "citizens" are behind bars mostly for sinning in the eyes of "born twice" fanatics both religious and of the eugenics variety. Each occupied pair of prison pajamas costs the taxpayer $30,000 for what?--preferring to smoke vegetables to cooking them first. Ending this self-defeating policy will have the same effect Prohibition did. Many may surprise us and turn from welfare recipients into smoking taxpayers. After all, this is what Clinton and Bush lamely confess they did with their puffing without inhaling.

3. Downside police department around the country so none exceeds the number of residents it polices.

4. Reduce our criminal court backlog to the point where all judges, including the Supreme Court, could be on a part-time schedule. Many could work at home which would allow the sale of rat-infested courthouses to realtors for conversion into condominiums. These properties would then be back on the tax rolls.

As a result we could have guns, butter, caviar, vacations, high-speed rapid transit, a modernized air traffic system and billions for tribute to United Nations declared peace actions and even a cent for defense. You name it.

But here are some of the specific presents we could give ourselves by minding our own business in the tradition of Patrick Henry who said "Give me a little libertine or give me boredom"

1. Fully funded prescription drug coverage for everyone including DEA agents who now have to steal their supplies.

2. Federal college scholarships for any young person who graduates from high school whether or not literate.

3. A greater reduction in the national debt than either party now proposes.

4. A really whopping tax cut for the rich who don’t need it, the middle class that needs it desperately, the working poor which when combined with their unlivable wages would enable them to move to the suburbs and sink a swimming pool in their backyard.

5. Women’s shelters on the scale of four star hotels so they’ll want to leave on the first hint of domestic strife and never marry again.

6. Homes for the homeless, maids for day care centers for their out of wedlock children run by private preparatory schools like Groton, the sort liberals in Congress send their kids to.

7. And they’d still be plenty of pork left for Congress to line the pockets of their favorite constituents.

8. Reinstate supply and demand rather than Soviet style central planning to determine the price of drugs. With drugs no longer commanding grotesque profits, the cartels will look elsewhere, like selling presidential pardons.

Adolescents have nothing better to do than tease authorities by doing anything they are prohibited from doing. That was the definition of adolescence until psychiatrists discovered turning it into an illness could provide a mother lode.

9. Free psychiatric counseling for psychoanalysts. That would keep them occupied long enough to shrink their years of practice which would reduce studies that define bullying by children as a felony. Perhaps it is rare among children who tragically grew up and become psychoanalysts. But it is standard practice among normal children. Not to worry. Wiser heads have noted that such cold-blooded behavior reaches the highest level among 5^th and 6^th graders. By the 9^th grade it drops dramatically as teenagers find even more destructive things to get involved in, thanks to "the helping profession" that for sure helps itself to the cookie jar.