Apparently the latest criticism of Michelle Bachmann is that she gets migraine headaches. That hardly disqualifies someone from high office.  After all, Thomas Jefferson suffered from the same ailment.

Meanwhile, Bill's post below points out that "Isabel Sawhill of the Brookings Institution has made a similar case, arguing that a nation whose government has 'most of its budget on automatic pilot and a fifth of its expenses unpaid for' has abandoned 'fiscal democracy.' That is, all of the budgetary decisions that matter were made decades ago when social insurance programs were created."

That reminds me of Jefferson's belief that the earth belongs in usufruct to the living, and "that the dead have neither powers nor rights over it."  For one generation to bind another with debts and other obligations to pay is for one set of people to tax another without their consent.  According to Mr. Jefferson, that is a version of involuntary servitude.  Our entitlement programs are moving close to that line, if it has not already crossed it.