A musing Beam

Yeah, sometimes the feds overreach.  Does power corrupt?  Of course.  The NSA's unconstrained surveillance is an obvious example, as is the IRS targeting of specific groups based on their political allegiances.  Those should be dealt with. Before I get into the rest of this post, I want to note that I sometimes tire of the recent conversation being so stilted.  Tea Party-esque people have taken over the dialogue.  I would love to see real discussions about trade-offs in the war on drugs, on Department of Education overreach, of our goals with the EPA, of how current IP law stifles growth in the fastest growing areas of our economy, etc.  Instead, we fight over whether to repave our crumbling highways or even whether we should pay our national bills.  The self-righteous feel of many making the (obviously) fallacious arguments is also taxing. The point of this post, though, is to respond to many postings I see about how the federal government is constantly overreaching and contro