Civil libertarians will also be pleased with a strongly worded section on Electronic Privacy, opposing government surveillance of all sorts, and opposing the implantation of Radio Frequency Identification Chips in humans, a program which no one has ever actually proposed and which only exists in the minds of the crazies at the John Birch Society, but which certainly ought to be opposed on principle whenever we're pretending we live in a Science Fiction novel.

To keep Governor Perry happy, there is a section supporting the Boy Scouts of America and rejecting "any attempt to undermine or fundamentally change the ideals of the
organization," which I guess ought to include the attempt by the Mormon church to take the BSA over and purge it of homosexuals, though I'm pretty sure that's not what they meant. Of course given that there is every indication that Robert Baden-Powell, the founder of the Boy Scouts, was a heavily repressed homosexual, it could be argued that the Scouts were gay from the word go. Perhaps Perry's anti-gay crusade is just a symptom of how similar he is to Baden-Powell. Can you say 'overcompensation'?

There's more evidence in this section of a very confused reading of the Constitution and of our history, with a demand that we "return to the original intent of the First Amendment and toward dispelling the myth of separation of church and state." I wonder what other Constitutional amendments they think are mythical.

There's a very strongly worded section on Protecting Citizens from Crime which has some good ideas like opposition to property seizure and asset forfeiture, but also includes a statement against drug legalization, support for the death penalty for rape and the nasty idea that consensual sex between people less than 36 months apart in age should be considered rape if one is a minor.

Strengthening the Economy

Up until this point we've seen some good ideas and some bad ideas and a lot of planks included to pander to the religious right. In this section the fiscally conservative right gets to dance its dance of victory, with some clear influence from the Ron Paul movement, though surprisingly the section does not include a call for abolishing the Federal Reserve and getting rid of paper money.

The section does include many ideas to reduce federal spending, including a hard cap on federal expenditures, a balanced budget, cutting federal offices, prosecuting profiteering government contractors, abolishment of the Congressional retirement program, elimination of corporate welfare and an end to earmarks in budget items.

The sub-section on the Tax Burden is particularly interesting. It calls for the repeal of the 16th Amendment and the elimination of the IRS, replacing the income tax with a national retail sales tax, though it does not specifically endorse the Fair Tax scheme.