Obama's Common Sense

Roger Simon made an interesting point that

"Common sense puts Obama on virtually the wrong side of everything with nowhere to go but the center and a hoard of ideologues from the Daily Kos and Moveon, chomping at his heels."

That common sense problem worries me. In February 2008 Obama said

"There is an individual right to bear arms, but it is subject to common-sense regulation just like most of our rights are subject to common-sense regulation. So I think there's a lot of room before you getting bumping against a constitutional barrier for us to institute some of the common-sense gun laws that I just spoke about."

As the saying goes, common sense ain't that common. Nowadays common sense gets replaced by laws and zero-tolerance policies (the refuge of the unimaginative). These approaches are for those who can't seem to apply priniciples to develop policy. It's leads to things like strip searching a child to find Advil or confiscating Granny's only means to protect her home.

For some people, having an armed populace during a civil emergency defies common sense. For others, it is the essence of it.