Here's another idea. Let's borrow from history. Prisons should be first and foremost PROFIT Centers. Here's a population of able bodies (able to perpetrate crimes=able to work). So, why not work them? Work them from dawn til dusk for the life of their sentence. Make them maintain their facilities, dig ditches, clean windows, wash cars, pick up trash, mow lawns, etc, etc. Any revenue produced should go to victims/victims' families as restitution. Any revenue in excess of restitution should be incorporated into public sector financial operations. Either way, stop spending productive people's money to give law-breakers an unjustified vacation.

4/2/09, a new error. G20 = U.S. surrender. 233 years after declaring our independence, our "most popular president" just gave our freedom (and several billion taxpayer $) to a bunch of corrupt European bureacrats. Thanks prez.

Why is it that our elected officials feel like they must force us conform to a bunch of ancient failed ideas so we can be "popular"? The U.S. is the most successful, prosperous nation on the face of the earth. Being #1 is not a popularity thing, it's a leadership thing. Instead of selling out the hard working citizens of the greatest nation in the world, why not ask the rest of the world to emulate us?

To return to the principle of smaller government, there are several changes (many already expressed here) and some others we should seriously consider as follows...
1 Term limits - public office was never intended to be a life-time career.
2 Eliminate the DCEX (District of Columbia Vote Exchange) - political contributions must be contained to legal U.S. citizens only, i.e. "We the people". And they must be capped to keep the uber-rich from holding undue influence.
3 Public office holders cannot practice law in D.C. or otherwise "lobby" in D.C. for at least 8 years after leaving office.
4 Eliminate Federal Employee unions and tax-payer funded benefits
5 Eliminate Federal funding of any "special interest" groups convicted of fraud, i.e. ACORN.

Just a few off-the-cuff to spark discussion...