THE ERA OF BIG GOVERNMENT CONSERVATISM

Here's a piece I wrote recently about President Bush's increasingly flagrant contempt for limited government. It's already dated, due to the latest revelations: an extra $140 billion needed over the first 10 years of W's pill giveaway (which they've known about for months), and the funding increase for the NEA (if your only objection to coercive funding of the arts was"Piss Christ", then this is the administration for you).

It'll be interesting to see how the President plans to make headway on half-a-trillion-dollar deficits as far as the eye can see by cutting nondefense, non-homeland-security discretionary spending--which is $362 billion, or less than 20 percent of the federal budget. There's some talk of program cuts, but my guess is that they'll boldly go after that old standby "waste, fraud, and abuse."