From Michael Barone:

It takes 47 permits and 19 government agencies to elevate a bridge that is blocking the newest supertankers in New York’s harbor.

A lifeguard is fired for saving a swimmer outside his beach zone.

Day care centers are required to have two sets of blocks, each with at least 10 blocks.

A community center must be shut down because it serves potluck meals and has no kitchen to be inspected.

Meanwhile, Nancy Pelosi is greeting and welcoming masses of children at the South Texas Detention Facility. These “children” include members of criminal gangs, whose idea of murder is no big deal. Barack Obama claims these teenagers “love” America. But as Thomas Sowell asks, how could he possibly know that?

The arrogant abuse of power by all levels of government is stifling our freedom.

Michael Barone points out in National Review how clunky statism and overregulation are choking the economy. “Case in point: The 2,700-page Obamacare, with a 28-word definition of ‘high school’ and a (so far) seven-foot-high pile of regulations.”

“The people who wrote the Constitution of the United States understood what dangers there are to the freedom of the people—and that freedom can be quietly eroded by degrees, rather than taken all at once,” writes Mr. Sowell. “Too many people today seem oblivious to such dangers.”