Last night on The O'Reilly Factor Bill was discussing the problems the airlines are having with luggage delivery. New security restrictions are causing more passengers to check their luggage instead of carrying it with them in the cabin. This has caused the airlines to lose so much luggage that some travelers are shipping their luggage through Fedex rather than risk it with the airlines. Bill's solution: More government regulation of the airlines!

He said that the airlines are focusing on the most lucrative routes and are, therefore, neglecting most of the less lucrative routes. If I were a shareholder in an airline I would certainly hope that is what they're doing. The airlines are businesses, not social services.

I agree with O'Reilly on most of his positions but on some he is just out there. Perhaps he takes an occasional sip of that Kool-Aid that he likes to talk about. How he could think that the government could manage air travel more efficiently than the free market is beyond me. Cheap air travel is not a right. If people want to travel the less lucrative routes and have their luggage delivered on time they will just have to pay more.

O'Reilly's belief that 'Big Oil' is an elaborate conspiracy to keep gasoline prices high is another one of his strange ideas. He wants the government to regulate the oil industry. How about the news media Bill? Do you want the government to regulate that? Do you think we would get more reliable opinions from you if you were government regulated?

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The Associated Press reports that University of Florida football coach Urban Meyer passed up a chance earlier this year to speak to Congress about the Bowl Championsip Series. They say that Meyer declined the invitation because he was too busy with recruiting. Busy with recruiting or not I would have declined because Congress has no bussiness involving itself in how colleges determine their national champions.

Congress also had no business conducting hearings into drug use by professional baseball players. I believe that Congress could find more important issues to concern itself with than how professional and college sports are run. We have millions of illegal immigrants invading our country while some puffed up toads in Congress investigate sports activities. Some of these illegals are assaulting and murdering our citizens. Others are insidiously destroying our culture of freedom. Almost all are consuming our limited resources for assisting our needy citizens.

But the toads have their own priorities. Apparently they have found a way to buy some votes with the BCS issue.

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Do you remember the member of Congress who crashed his car late one night in DC and told the police that he was on his way to the Capitol to vote? The one who somehow escaped having a Breathalyzer test administered? The one who soon announced that he was not drunk but just on medication? The one who checked himself into rehab anyway? The one who is the son of Senator Edward Kennedy of Chappaquiddick fame? Well, an overwhelming majority of the citizens of Rhode Island returned him, Patrick Kennedy, to Congress last month.

Apparently they were unable or unwilling to find a better person to represent them. I know RI is a small state but surely they could have produced something better than a supercilious drunk.

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George W. Bush has used his veto authority less than any other President in recent history. His father used it more than most other Presidents. I believe that all Presidents should use it much more often. In fact, I believe that any law to be foisted on the American people should be compelling enough to gain the support of a two-thirds majority of both houses of Congress. That is, a strong argument can be made that the President should veto every bill that reaches his desk -- even those he likes. A possible exception is any bill that rescinds an existing law.

The country could manage very well without most of the laws that Congress passes. Many come from knee-jerk reactions to isolated incidents blown into impending catastrophes by the media. An example is the McCain-Feingold Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act precipitated by the perception that 'big money' was taking over campaigns for national office. Unfortunately a veto-everything policy won't protect us from all bad law; the Sarbannes-Oxley, Public Company Accounting Reform and Investor Protection Act of 2002, coming out of the Enron and WorldCom scandals, passed 423-3 in the House and 99-0 in the Senate.

The Senate already has rules in play that essentially require at least a 60 percent majority for a bill to be passed. It would only take seven more votes to make it a two-thirds majority. But the Senate could eliminate that rule and make it possible for them to pass a bill with a vote of 51-50 (tie vote broken by the Vice President). The house can pass a bill with a 218-217 vote. So laws can be passed that have a major impact on our lives by 269 members of Congress with 267 members dissenting.

Some might say that is the way a democracy is supposed to work -- by majority rule. But our form of government is not a pure democracy; it is a constitutional republic. In a nutshell that means that we get to elect representatives by a plurality of the voters, but once elected they are on their own. Practically speaking, our only recourse then is to vote against them when they are up for re-election. As far as I know there is nothing in the constitution to prevent the President from vetoing every bill that comes before him, forcing the Congress to try to override the veto.

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In an Associated Press article on White House veto threats, Representative Rahm Emanuel, D-IL, said: "My view is that the country paid a huge price for a Congress that acted like it was not an equal branch of government." He was referring to the premise that President Bush used his veto power only once in his first six years because the Republican Congress was cooperative.

Be that as it may, what I'm calling Emanuel on is his implication that Congress is an equal branch of government. We could debate forever the relative powers of the three branches of the federal government, but one thing is certain: none of them are equal. Their separate functions are much too complex for there to be any chance that any two are equal. To say that the legislative and executive branches are equal is like saying that cows and horses on a pioneer era farm are of equal importance to the farmer.

I consider Congress to be more powerful than the executive and judicial branches. Congress has the power to pass legislation over the President's veto. The constitution cannot be ammended without Congress' approval. The President can't spend money without Congress' approval. Congress can even remove the President from office. Congress can pass legislation that effectively overturns decisions of the Supreme Court. Congress should have the most power because it most directly represents the people (at least that's what is intended).

OK, I know that Emanuel just didn't choose his words carefully; he probably understands that they aren't equal branches. He should have said 'separate branch' instead of 'equal branch'. I just wanted to point out that Democrats also misspeak.

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Steven Milloy asks that question in a column at FoxNews.com. He quotes studies that found the number of deaths per year attributable to the Corporate Average Fuel Economy (CAFE) standards range from 1,300 to 3,900. The CAFE standards force auto manufacturers to build lighter cars and trucks in order to achieve the required lower mileage rates. The lighter cars and trucks result in higher numbers of fatalities and injuries from accidents.

The fatality rate from the CAFE standards is higher than the fatality rate among the American military in the Iraq war. Do you see any liberals lining up to protest President Bush's proposal to increase the CAFE gasoline mileage requirements? Liberals apparently don't mind if large numbers of Americans die for a cause as long as it is their cause.

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In a column decrying the weak work ethic of Congress, Dick Morris states that Congress took a whole day off work in January because of the championship college football game between Oklahoma State and Florida State. Apparently he only remembered that one team's name starts with an 'O' and the other is from the state of Florida.  The actual participants were Ohio State and Florida. I just hope his collection of facts on the slothfulness of Congress is more reliable than his college football facts.

I'm not as concerned as Morris about members of Congress goofing off a lot. The shorter the time they're in session the less damage they can do. And there's not much point in complaining about their pay; they control that. Just vote against the incumbents when they are up for re-election.

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It irritates me that after every disaster the media sing the same tired old refrain: If the government had been more involved and had spent more money this wouldn't have happened. We're hearing it now in regard to the Minnesota bridge collapse and the Utah mine cave-in. They seem to believe that no cost should be spared when it comes to public safety. They don't seem to understand that 'safety at any cost' is just a slogan. But any reasonably intelligent engineer or bureaucrat knows that safety has to be balanced against cost and functionality. Wouldn't surface travel be a lot safer if everyone had their own highway? Couldn't all bridge collapses be avoided if no bridges were ever built?

An AP article discussing the decisions made by authorities on maintenance of the bridge contains this statement:

The inspection strategy was also deemed to be more cost effective, but (senior engineer Gary) Peterson and state bridge engineer Dan Dorgan denied that money played a role.

If money played no role, the inspection strategy could not be deemed the more cost effective approach. 'Cost effective' is a fancy term for 'the most bang for your bucks' or, more formally, the right balance of cost and effectiveness -- where effectiveness includes safety and functionality. That is, if an approach is deemed the more cost effective, cost had to be considered by definition. Peterson and Dorgan were obviously pandering to the media; they have to know that money always plays a role.

Not only bureaucrats, but users of public transportation infrastructure discount the importance of safety every day. Consider this scenario: Bureaucrats inspect a bridge and find it structurally unsound. Instead of closing the bridge they publicly disclose that it is unsafe and that those who continue to cross it do so at their own risk. They post overhead signs advising motorists to exit now to avoid crossing the unsafe bridge.

Here's what I think will happen: Traffic across the bridge will decline dramatically and increase dramatically along alternative routes in the short term. Then motorists will gradually return to the unsafe bridge to avoid delays along the alternative routes. Traffic across the unsafe bridge will eventually stabilize at a level somewhat lower than before it was found to be unsafe.

People who regularly travel along I-10 in Northwest Florida have experienced a similar scenario since hurricane Ivan washed out the bridge across the bay at Pensacola. The washed out eastbound span was temporarily repaired while a new span was being built. People continued to cross the temporary span although it was clearly not as safe as some alternative routes (some trucks were not allowed to cross and low speed limits were imposed).

People will accept some risk in order to save travel time and money -- like they also do in almost every aspect of their lives. And it is absurd to not recognize that bureaucrats must weigh the cost of safety considerations in the construction and maintenance of the nation's infrastructure.

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Yep, the nanny state is on the job; it saved me from myself today. I ventured out with reckless abandon (at least I learned later that it was with reckless abandon) this morning on a trip to the local Lowe's Home Improvement store to purchase a couple of doors for the new garage I'm building. But that's not the reckless part; the reckless part was that I intended to purchase and install doors with those nice sunset style windows across the top. But that is not going to happen. The Lowe's clerk informed me that the state doesn't allow them to sell garage doors with windows, and the state doesn't allow me to install them. Silly me. I thought that how I decorated my garage doors would be pretty much up to me and my wife.

Why am I not allowed to have windows in my garage doors? Because I live in a designated 130-140 mph hurricane wind zone. I live about 25 miles inland from the Gulf of Mexico in Northwest Florida. Some bureaucrat has decided that it's too dangerous for me to have the windows. Never mind that in my 67 year lifetime there have never been hurricane winds of more than about 110 mph where I live. Never mind that my garage is not even attached to my house. Never mind that no one is going to seek refuge in my garage during a hurricane. Never mind that well over half the garage doors in my town have windows. Never mind that it is alright with the state if I don't even put doors on my garage. Never mind that it is alright with the state if people build carports with no walls. Never mind that it is alright with the state if I climb to the top of a tall tree to ride out a hurricane. Somehow the state has decided that it is just too risky for me to have that attractive row of windows across the top of my garage doors.

I tried to figure out the lobbying angle with this prohibition. Most building restrictions result from some trade group or company lobbying the legislature or the bureaucrats for rulings that will benefit them. But it's not clear how that would play here; garage doors without windows cost less than doors with windows. I suppose it could be the insurance industry wanting to avoid some window replacement costs.

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In a column at FoxNews.com Lis Wiehl discusses a case in which New York City School Chancellor Joel Klein fired John Halpin, a construction supervisor who has worked for the Department of Education for 21 years, for repeatedly leaving work early. Halpin was fired because his employer-supplied, GPS-equipped cell phone ratted him out. The phone documented that he left work early 83 times in about five months.

Questions that taxpayers in New York City should be asking: Why does Joel Klein need GPS devices to ensure that his employees are getting their jobs done? Where was Halpin's supervisor while the time cheating was going on? What about Halpin's performance on the job? Are the Department's managers measuring productivity or just the amount of time spent on the job?

If an employee has to be tracked using an implanted device to keep him or her on the job, I would say that employee is most likely not really needed. One notable exception might be when the job primarily involves traveling from point A to point B, such as driving a long-haul truck. Even then it should be relatively easy to determine if cargo is being delivered on-time and to the right place.

I don't buy the argument that employers are entitled to invade the privacy of their employees in any way they see fit. You won't be able to convince me that the NYC Schools are only monitoring their employees during working hours. I'll bet that some functionary has gleefully noted that Jack's phone and Jill's phone seem to be in the same place for a couple of hours after work two or three times per month.

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