The proper role for government to play, if we admit that government should exist at all, is to protect each of us from those who would infringe upon our rights. 

What’s wrong with Mitt Romney?

For conservatives in the primaries, the answer seems to be that he is not perceived as a conservative. And there’s good reason for that. Just look at the Massachusetts’s health care system championed by the Governor. For all intents and purposes, its pretty similar to Obamacare.

It’s so similar that even Obama once alluded to it. Writing for The New York Times in March 2010, op-ed columnist Gail Collins recalled the President’s remarks on the issue to Matt Lauer on the “Today” show. “I mean, a lot of commentators have said this is sort of similar to the bill that Mitt Romney, the Republican governor and now presidential candidate, passed in Massachusetts,” Obama said at the time.

This suited Collins, and probably the Times just fine.

Collins wrote: “...it really does seem as though the two plans are a whole lot alike, and Romney deserves credit for working with the Massachusetts Democrats to get such an ambitious, sweeping reform enacted.”

Opinions vary on the cause of the increases, but fear and speculation seem to be the driving forces. Kevin G. Hall, writing on the issue for the Seattle Times, reported that some think speculators are behind the increased prices at the pump.

Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg recently traveled to Egypt where she gave advice to that nation’s new leaders regarding the adoption of a new constitution. Alarmingly, she told Egyptian television that they should not model their new national charter on the U.S. Constitution.

"I would not look to the U.S. Constitution, if I were drafting a constitution in the year 2012," she told Al Hayat television. "I might look at the constitution of South Africa. That was a deliberate attempt to have a fundamental instrument of government that embraced basic human rights, have an independent judiciary. It really is, I think, a great piece of work that was done."

So what kind of constitution is it that South Africa has created and that Justice Ginsburg finds so appealing?

Unlike the U.S. Constitution that actually attempts to place limits on the power of government, the South African constitution authorizes a theoretical grant of total power to the South African government.

In 1787, philosopher and economist Jeremy Bentham proposed a new plan for a jail that would allow a very few officials to continuously monitor the inmates. He called his plan the panopticon.

"The essence of it consists, then, in the centrality of the inspector's situation, combined with the well-known and most effectual contrivances for seeing without being seen," he wrote in describing his plan. Under the plan, because the inspector — i.e., the jailer — could see without being seen, the inmates could never know whether they were being watched or not. As a result, they had to assume that they were under complete surveillance at all times, with the hoped-for result being that they would modify their behavior accordingly.

Describing Bentham's plan for the panopticon in 1975, French philosopher Michel Foucalt, noted that it was intended,

Sixteen-year-old Laura Dekker has skillfully and fearlessly conquered the world’s vast oceans, but there is one force that strikes fear into her: the power of government.

The young sailor was only 14 when she departed the Netherlands aboard her sailboat, Guppy, for her epic journey around the world. Yet she did so despite attempts made by Dutch authorities to stop her.

Dekker ended her voyage in St. Maarten, in the Caribbean, rather than sailing home to the Netherlands. In a January 18 message she posted to the blog where she documented her amazing journey, she described her treatment at the hands of Dutch authorities.

As Ron Paul has surged over recent weeks becoming a front-runner for the Republican nomination despite mainstream attempts to derail his growing popularity, among some conservatives, concern is growing.

Specifically, among those conservatives most concerned with foreign policy, Ron Paul is viewed with skepticism, if not disdain. Support for the Texas congressman, they say, will mean weakening America’s position in the world, leaving Israel weak and undefended, and giving Iran a free hand to go nuclear. On the basis of these concerns, Paul’s conservative critics say, he would be bad, and possibly dangerous, for the country as president.

Nothing could be further from the truth. Not only would a Ron Paul presidency help the country become economically stronger and militarily more secure, it would reinvigorate the conservative cause.

Blue collar workers, the foundation of the middle class in America, have long belonged, heart and soul, to the Democratic Party. I should know, I come from a solid blue collar family.

Growing up, my dad worked in the local mills. He spent decades, until his retirement, in one in particular, running heavy equipment and doing some of the most dangerous work in the world. He wasn't the only one in the family working in the mills or doing other blue collar jobs either. Grandparents, uncles, cousins all did the same. My wife's family is the same way.

These people worked hard (and still do) and many of them, when it came to politics, believed (and still do) that the only legitimate vote is one cast for a Democrat, regardless of what that Democrat's record or position on the issues might be. Why this attitude? Because as I've been told repeatedly by my own family members, "the Democrats are for the working people."

Visitors to The Atlantic’s Website on November 1 were likely enticed by the prospect of learning from “Murrow Award winning legal analyst and commentator” Andrew Cohen what George Washington, the nation’s first president and most well-known Founding Father, “thought about the Constitution.” Darkly, Cohen warned in the subhead to his article, Washington “probably wouldn’t agree with Antonin Scalia or Clarence Thomas.”

Cohen’s argument is that Washington would not agree with those present day jurists, and conservatives in general, who believe that the Constitution should be understood in the light of the Founders’ original intent. Instead, Cohen enlists Washington among the ranks of radical liberals who believe the Constitution should be reinterpreted whenever it becomes necessary, from the liberal point of view, to justify various nanny state programs.

When blogger Jill Filipovic, who writes at Feministe.us, opened her luggage after passing through a TSA checkpoint, she found an unexpected surprise.

Taking to Twitter, she wrote: “Just unpacked my suitcase and found this note from TSA. Guess they discovered a ‘personal item’ in my bag. Wow.”

The note, handwritten on an official TSA baggage check notification slip read: “Get your freak on girl.” Filipovic published a photo of the note on her blog.

According to ABC News, Filipovic, feeling that the note was an invasion of privacy, concluded that it was offensive and said she planned to file a complaint with the agency.

In the past week the world lost two great leaders and visionaries in Steve Jobs and Al Davis. At first blush, there doesn’t seem to be a link between the two other than the fact that they both led successful organizations for years. But there was a link, and it underscores the success the two organizations had over many decades.

The concept linking the two men and the organizations they led was best exemplified by a slogan coined by Davis and long embraced by his team, the Oakland Raiders: “A Commitment to Excellence.”

The slogan has been so central to the Raiders that the team has trademarked it, along with its Al Davis corollary, “Just win, Baby!” The two go hand-in-hand: Davis believed, correctly, that winning required a commitment to quality and excellence. Though the Raiders have not always been successful, they have been among the NFL’s elite teams for much of their existence.

According to conventional wisdom, the U.S. government’s legislative process is broken. What’s more, this opinion is held on both sides of the aisle and by the media. If there is anything anyone in America can agree on about politics it’s that the U.S. government is hopelessly botched.

Helpfully making the media’s case is CNN. “Is Congress capable of doing anything right?” asks Alan Silverleib in a column titled “Why Congress won't stop hurting you” published by CNN on September 26.

Discussing the latest contentious funding bill before Congress and the specter that government will shut down if not funded by passage of the measure, Silverleib writes: “The details have differed with each threatened shutdown, but the basic plot remains the same. Democrats want to spend more while Republicans are using a series of statutory deadlines to force an agenda of spending cuts. The two sides have proven incapable of compromising until the last possible second.”

The New York Nightlife Association, in cooperation with the New York City Police Department, has issued the second edition of its Best Practices for Nightlife Establishments [PDF]. The guide covers the normally expected topics for a publication about best practices for nightclubs. Subjects like how to handle age verification and intoxicated customers are covered. The guide, however, gets interesting (and depressing) when it covers “Counterterrorism Best Practices.” In it, for instance, club goers will find out that they better not get too sweaty on the dance floor or they just might be identified as a terrorist.

It sounds like a bad imitation of a Jeff Foxworthy “you might be a redneck” joke. But the Best Practices guide is serious. Its section on “Identification of Suicide Bombers” notes:

Everyone who can has been pontificating on the meaning of 9/11 during the last week. Establishment types, led by the likes of John Yoo, have been claiming that the Bush years were amazingly successful. We beat back the barbarian terrorists without sacrificing our open society too much, they claim. The country implemented “[R]easonable counter-terrorism policies that worked,” Yoo has opined.

Or did they?

It seems instead that, ten years after, America lost — and lost a lot.

Start with privacy. We don’t really have any since 9/11. Back in the Cold War days of the 1980s, Americans proudly spoke of the difference between the “Free World” and the Soviet Bloc. This won’t mean anything to Generation Y who are blithely ignorant of anything that happened before they were born, but there are millions of other Americans who can recall the period. Many can also recall the 1950s, 1960s, and 1970s.

When riots broke out in London the overall narrative was that dissolute “youths” were engaging in an orgy of thievery and violence for no particular reason. Supposedly, it was chaos for the sake of chaos.

As in many things, although this is an exaggeration, there is likely a component of truth here. Some thugs just enjoy thuggery. But there’s more to the story. Large scale riots and violence over several nights don’t just happen because thousands of people want to get new TVs without paying for them. Something else motivates the mob.

In this case, as in Greece earlier this year, the mob has been motivated by impending doom of failed socialist policies. Everywhere in Europe socialism has been the norm for decades. The nations of European Union provide universally lavish entitlements. In the UK there is the NHS, providing state-funded health care. There is income support for people who work less than 16 hours per week. There is a housing allowance to help offset the cost of rent. There are many other entitlements benefits, all described at the UK government’s Directgov site.