Regardless about how you feel about Pres. Barack Hussein Obama, his foray into the presidential waters is historic as he is the first half-black man to become president. As such, we should be glad that anyone can become president no matter their walk of life, but Obama's presidency is also historic in the sense that it seems, at least with what was implied during his inaugural speech, he is about to embark on a process over the next four plus years to radically change many government policies that have been held sacred and good for the last 50 plus years.

During his speech, he said this:

"Now, there are some who question the scale of our ambitions — who suggest that our system cannot tolerate too many big plans.... What the cynics fail to understand is that the ground has shifted beneath them — that the stale political arguments that have consumed us for so long no longer apply. The question we ask today is not whether our government is too big or too small, but whether it works."

Prior presidents may have acted off of this premise, but not since FDR, I believe, has a president actively spoken that the scale of government and its programs cannot be limited to a set of core principles, only by necessity of a perceived situation.

This idea is dangerous on a whole range of levels, not the least of which is that if a government has the power to give you everything you've ever needed, it also has the power to take it away. And, rest assured, given that power, over the course of time, sometimes which is not very long, government will use power that it has been given in a negative way.

Another principle to keep in mind is that once a government gains a power, it is nigh near impossible to take that ability away from government without some form of a revolution.

Case in point is the patriot act which allows domestic espionage and is hundreds if not thousands of pages long in its entirety. For years, the Democrats have derided Bush and declared for the protection of individual privacy. But now that they have complete control over two branches of government, will they follow through with what they seemed to want and take that power away from government? I think not, but we'll see.

So, if the purpose of government is to do whatever is necessary to get the economy working, regardless of the size of government, where is the incentive to find a job on your own? Won't people all over this nation just wait for government to provide for their needs?

But even if the answer to the last question is a negative, a more insidious and fundamental problem looms with the seeming flippant attitude toward growing government bureaucracy wherever it is deemed necessary at the moment.

To be man is to err said the famous poet. What happens if a policy is implemented that is flawed? The consequences may not be felt for years, but they are felt eventually and it is all-to-often not pretty.

Case in point is the legislative committees who oversaw the Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac regulations. The committee was warned well over a year before their collapse that something was wrong, yet they chose to do nothing. Had they not erred in their judgment of the problem, the collapse may have been prevented and no bailout would have been called for.

The problem is that all government actions have consequences that don't fade easily and are sometimes not felt in complete force for many years. And there is a very real danger of wanting to grow government bureaucracy in whatever way is deemed necessary, especially when it is fraught with human error in judgment.

Besides, if one studies history, the nation that changes and adapts on the whim to every vicissitude of the economy, alliances abroad, or domestic concerns is not a government that protects freedom, but is an absolute dictatorship. Freedom cannot last with a government that is determined to solve all of society's ills with the magic formula of an ever larger bureaucracy.

Rightly did our first president, George Washington, say that society should use caution when changing fundamental government principles, no matter how pleasant sounding they are because changing a policy merely on a hypothesis, whim, or opinion creates a precedent of perpetual change and instability.

And to help determine whether a policy is good or not, Washington again shared his insight into human institutions and government in that it is experience and an understanding of history is the surest test of the tendency for good or ill of governmental principles.

In our government, thankfully, our policy leaders, Pres. Obama included, are ultimately beholden to the people and Deity for their actions, rather than having a carte blanche to do whatever they want. After all, it is the people who retain or give up power and authority to government as the people deem necessary and not the other way around. Government leadership is a trust that should be held sacred and its power should only be used with the greatest care.

It will be good to remember that the purpose of governments and the reason they were instituted was to protect people, not babysit them. Governments were designed to protect life, liberty, and property, not keep them in a perpetual childhood where they suffer no consequences or responsibility.

John Walker

There is nothing like a close sports game to make your hands tense up, your heart start to pound,  and adreneline start pumping through the veins.  The lopsided victories are perhaps not as fun to watch, but there is still an excitement that comes from watching one's favorite team storm onto the field and play their hearts out.

Often times during games, referees will make calls and decisions that have radical consequences on the outcome of the game. If the ruling is in favor of the home team, the fans will voicefully shout their pleasure at the greatness of the refs decision making abilities. On the other hand, if the decision gives an advantage to the opposing team, the fans are likely to shout their displeasure with equal, if not greater vitality.

At times, one can even hear snide jokes about the de facto judges of the legal viability of a play in a game, such as one that was told by Jay Leno:

When I was young, I wanted to be involved in sports, but I was to short for basketball, to thin to play football, to slow to run track, and I had perfect vision so I couldn't become a referee!

While these jokes are fun and, in many cases all to true, they also belay the point that without someone on the field to judge the actions of the players or rule on a question of conduct, no final score or record would be fair or a trusty representation of which team was better than another. All sports have many rules, procedures for how to proceed under any number of circumstances and have a certain format for playing the game. Love them or hate them, if no one is there to judge on or enforce the rules, no one could be sure of how to play. Consequently, chaos would reign.

In real life, the officials in our government are like the teams playing ball against each other. Sometimes they perform well and are worthy of praise. Sometimes they allow circumstances to blunt their skills and they get creamed. When government fails, however, it is not because of unqualified people playing a position they've never seen before. And it isn't because the system is flawed, though at first glance it may seem that way. The framework that government must play under is called the Constitution. If government acts against that code of law and changes that fundamental structure, then it changes the game in such a fundemantal way that is similar to a pop-up out to first base in baseball being ruled an inside-the-park home run in an actual game.

The answer, in short, as to what allows the government to act outside the framework of the game is that the referees of the game and judges of conduct literally drop the ball and allow government to do whatever it wants to, for free. If the referees knew the framework the game was supposed to be played, however, they could not only tell the players of the game, the government, when they were breaking their own set of rules, but also force them to make a course adjustment.

Though it may be the referees who have allowed the government players to make their own set of rules, the question remains: who are the referees? Is it the courts? In essence, no. Though the courts like to say they are the protectors of the Constitution, they are a branch of the government and are players in the game as well.

No, the real referees in the game of government policies are the people as a whole. They can abnegate their right to rule on the veracity of the policies, but if they do, then the players get to judge themselves what was a strike and what was a ball. If the people knew the framework of the game and called the players out when they went against the rules, there would not be much incentive to break the rules because the players would know that the refs would catch them and replace them.

How sad it is when so many of the referees of the greatest and freest country of all have decided that the framework that the game is played under is outdated, incomprehensible, and completely unnecessary in this day and age. Anyone who disagrees with this fundamental assumption, only need to ask family members, friends and colleagues how many times they have picked up and read the Constitution in the past year. Then ask them how many times they have done so their entire life. Then ask them what they comprehended from that experience. The answer, I warrant, is probably a negative, which is not what it used to be three or four generations back.

Another case to prove that the Constitution is not seen as a document that rules government actions today is the fact that though many Democrats derided Pres. George W. Bush for the Patriot Act that breaks all manner of privacy laws we hold dear, how many Democrats will move to eradicate that law now that they are completely in power?

To those in power, the Constitution seems to only be a document that is worth keeping as long as it helps them retain or gain power. Once it becomes a thorn in the side, they gloss over it and ignore it. This would not happen if the true judges of government actions actually cared about enforcing the following of the framework that government must act under, no matter the consequences.