Is a bailout of the newspaper industry even remotely constitutional?  The free market is at work in the corrupted realm of journalism right now, shutting down one biased paper after another and demonstrating the collective will of the people without anyone overtly lifting a finger.  It is a beautiful thing to witness. Is our president seriously considering removing the cleansing element of failure right now, at this critical time?  Or more sinister than that, is his motive to bludgeon the free press into submission with the heavy hand of government?

President Obama has described our constituion as a document of “negative liberties“, and apparently implied that one of its failings was that it did not outline actions the government must take on your behalf.  His actions thus far suggest that this “failing” on the part of the founding fathers is something he would like to personally redress (I guess the courageous, brilliant group of men who gathered to found our country didn’t have it quite right the first time).  I’m interested in how he plans to reconcile his beliefs and actions with the oath he took to support and defend the constitution.  I took a similar oath myself when I enlisted in the Army, and it was for me a very solemn and powerful moment, even in a windowless room deep in the bowels of a dreary government building known as a Military Entry Processing Station.  I truly wonder what it meant to Obama.

In the spirit of bipartisanship and goodwill I have compiled a list of some other actions not expressly forbidden by the constitution that the government might be interested in.  If nothing else, they are more entertaining and/or profitable than the New York Times:

• Operation “Pot O’ Gold”; a bold plan to solve the budget deficit by finally finding the end of a rainbow.
• Genetically engineer mythical creatures and force them to fight to the death on PBS.
• Divert asteroids into earth’s orbit for the purpose of “space-mining”.
• Attempt to change the weather of the planet.  What?  Oh yeah…the government is already trying that.
• Price fixing!  It failed when the Romans tried it, it failed when FDR tried it, it failed when the Soviet Union tried it…and every other time in history.  But it might work for Obama?
• With inflation looming in the distance, we should probably just start printing as much money as possible. Then we’ll have more for when the tough times come.

To our stupid, arrogant government: please leave us and our constitution of negative liberties alone.