This business of states freezing tax refunds is an outrage. One is almost obliged to raised the question of the constitutionality of such an action. And an appropriate response: To freeze tax payments until refunds are made, perhaps?

It is true, what Tea Parties there are that as yet haven't been pre-empted by Republican Party operatives of the Sarah Palin variety, are very likely to describe themselves as unconcerned with social issues. But it would be just the worst sort of naivete to take that description on its face. This remainder, libertarian to a man with few exceptions, has no identifying moral compass whatsoever, absolutizing instead vague and adolescent notions of personal liberty that are tantamount to Social Darwinism in the economic sphere and a perverse psychopathy in the social arena. Its not that they are unconcerned with social issues per se, its rather that they recognize no social constraints and that, believe me, makes for a world of very important difference. Truthfully, if it weren't for the obvious opera buffa that libertarianism is at core, what with its outrageous apologetic for the slave-holding Confederacy and its vision of the Constitution as though it were divinely inspired, these people ought to be considered armed and dangerous. But, then again, what can you expect of an ideological movement led by a self-centered septuagenarian that sounds like he's inhaled helium when he speaks.