Knee jerk politics

One of the reasons I don't mind grid-lock in our national legislative process is that it prevents knee-jerk politics. What do I mean knee-jerk politics? How about the time Congress was going to pass a law making the public destruction of our flag a federal crime. I do not like seeing our flag burned as a protest to events taking place in America, but it seems to me that taking that step of outlawing that form of protest is taking a step down the road of becoming a police state. I served in the U.S. Army for four years back in the 60's and while I hate that form of protest I do not think it should be outlawed.

Now, the "bail out" bill is being rethought. First of all it won't be implemented immediately. There are some columnists that are commenting that by the time the "bail out" bill is implemented the crisis will be over. Now Paulsen wants to rethink the use of the funds, perhaps taking ownership in banks by the purchase of equity will be best. Hell, we didn't know how to the attack the problem in the first place. Yes, the adjustment may be massive and ugly, but our economy was built on too large of a credit base. It has to be reigned in.