FOXNews.com - A Few Questions for the Presidential Candidates

My man The Agitator, whose fantasy football league I am playing in this yr, offers up some questions that shows we have two flip-floppers. It would be outstanding if the first debate including any of these questions, but it would just show what a fraud all these people are, so doubt we will see that.

For the Bush man...

— You also said in 2000 that you trust Americans to spend their own money more than you trust the government. But during your first term, with your party in control of both houses of Congress, you’ve spent more taxpayer dollars (adjusted for inflation) than Bill Clinton (search), Jimmy Carter, Richard Nixon — more than every administration since Lyndon Johnson (search). That’s true no matter how we measure “spending.”

Even when we adjust for defense and homeland security spending, you’re still the biggest spender in four decades. You’ve increased funding to such non-conservative causes as the National Endowment for the Arts, the Departments of Health and Human Services and Education, the Peace Corps, and of course the prescription drug benefit (which your administration pushed through Congress based on misleading information about its cost).

Given your professed views on government spending, how do you justify growing government faster than any president in 40 years?

— You ran in 2000 as a “free trade president.” Since you took office, you’ve imposed tariffs on steel, shrimp, furniture, lumber, sugar, lingerie, wire, computer chips, catfish, cotton, textiles, clothing, and flowers, to name just a few. You also signed a $190 billion bill to reinstate the federal farm subsidies program, which was scheduled to be phased out. Are these the policies of a “free trade president?”

For Kerrymister...

— You’ve demagogued the outsourcing issue throughout the primaries and so far in the general election. You’ve said corporate executives who export manufacturing jobs overseas are “Benedict Arnold CEOs.” But you and your wife still own 4 percent of the H.J. Heinz Corporation, which operates 57 factories overseas, but just 22 here in the United States. The Hill newspaper reports that your campaign has accepted $370,000 from the CEOs of companies that heavily outsource jobs to other countries.

Given your vigorous opposition to outsourcing, are you prepared to ask Heinz to close all of those overseas factories, or to sell off your stake in Heinz if it doesn't? Will you give back campaign contributions from corporate executives whose companies outsource?

— You recently said of the Patriot Act: “We are a nation of laws and liberties, not of a knock in the night. So it is time to end the era of John Ashcroft. That starts with replacing the Patriot Act with a new law that protects our people and our liberties at the same time. I’ve been a District Attorney and I know that what law enforcement needs are real tools not restrictions on American’s basic rights.”

Eloquently put. So why did you vote for it?

Ouch.....