I have a lot of friends and family who work for the federal government, and I'm proud of them. I bring this up because Debra Medina lost her primary bid in the Texas gubernatorial contest yesterday. 

You may remember Ms. Medina as the candidate who wouldn't quite say that the U.S. government wasn't involved in September 11th when asked about it on Glenn Beck's program. 

But she's also the candidate who wanted to 'send EPA packing' out of Texas, saying that EPA costs thousands of jobs, etc. etc. 

This is a common refrain amongst a set of people in our country right now -- that the federal government is the enemy. That rules, regulations, spending, and so forth are serious evils, and the answer is to abolish all or some of them. 

Texas alone has 124,000 federal employees -- and that was in 2007. Nationally, close to two million people are employed by the federal government. 

My issue with the fringe element of the conservative movement -- the Teabag movement -- is not so much their politics, which are just obviously counter to mine in almost every way, but in their overly simplified nature. 

All due respect to Mr. Beck, if you can explain a political theory on one black board, with one piece of chalk, in under an hour, odds are it won't actually work for a nation that is the world's largest economy and which holds over 300 million people. 

That's why you can't just 'send the EPA packing', as some in Texas would like to see be the case, just like you can't 'kick out Texas'. 

I just don't think it's that simple, but that mindset IS that dangerous.