With an air of wonder, POLITICO.com reported yesterday that Sharron Angle, facing Senate majority leader Harry Reid in the upcoming fall elections, "has previously made eyebrow-raising statements about withdrawing the U.S. from the United Nations, eliminating the departments of Energy and Education, and privatizing Social Security."

Eyebrow-raising?

As in "who could possibly stand for such things"?

Outside of Washington (and even in pockets within it), there actually are people who believe that American taxpayers should not be paying for the play things of such human-rights respecting exemplars as Cuba, China, Russia, and their ilk, all of whom sit on the United Nations Human Rights Council.

And, for some reason, we actually did have both energy and education in this country before the Departments of Energy and Education were created, hard as that is for some people to believe.

We also had things like art, philosophy, and radio before the National Endowment for the Arts, the National Endowment for the Humanities, and National Public Radio were created.

People also retired, on their own savings, before the Social Security system was invented.  Speaking of which, it might be useful to note that that particular Ponzi scheme is now operating in the red, six years earlier than expected.  Now THERE'S a reason to raise one's eyebrows.