Titled: The Leave-Me-Alone Coalition Grows... in Surprising Ways

Republicans have sometimes been the party of federalism, railing in the 1990s about "unfunded mandates" from the federal government making it impossible for states to run their own affairs and complaining that federal involvement in education was ruining local schools.

Unfortunately, the party has been willing to abandon this principle whenever it's convenient -- with President Bush's No Child Left Behind law recently, and for years over the issue of states wanting to legalize medical marijuana.

But now a large number of disenfranchised Democrats seem willing to form a leave-me-alone coalition. They don't want Bush and his theologians deciding whether or not to fund stem-cell research, they want California to step in if the federal government won't. They don't want a federal constitutional amendment banning gay marriage, they want their individual states to decide.

I hope this is the beginning of the end for our two party system. I would love to see the libertarian leaning people in both partys break off and create a viable third party. Maybe the Laissez Faire Party.

Laissez faire: leave the people alone, let them be, in their economic activities, in their religious affairs, in thought and culture, in the pursuit of fulfillment in their own lives.