“Republicans traditionally say, ‘Oh, we’ll cut domestic spending, but we won’t touch the military,’” Paul explained. “The liberals — the ones who are good — will say, ‘Oh, we’ll cut the military, but we won’t cut domestic spending.’”

As for Paul and his tea party friends, “Bottom line is, you have to look at everything across the board.”

To Paul’s credit, he’s honest about his desire to make changes to Social Security and Medicare, saying the age of eligibility might have to increase. But his other talking points — cutting federal worker wages and freezing hiring, ending earmarks — sound surprisingly like those of some of his less serious Republican colleagues. The question likely to dominate the next Congress is what programs and/or parts of government Republicans will point to when it comes time to put their proposed cuts into writing. The idea of cutting spending is often, as the recent elections demonstrated, quite popular, while specific cuts are just as often not. So far, however, even Paul is staying largely mum on the big question.

The court did not comment on its order Monday rejecting the call by Leo Donofrio of East Brunswick, N.J., to intervene in the presidential election. Donofrio says that since Obama had dual nationality at birth — his mother was American and his Kenyan father at the time was a British subject — he cannot possibly be a “natural born citizen,” one of the requirements the Constitution lists for eligibility to be president.

Although the Constitution does not provide a definition for “natural born,” according to federal law, anyone born in the United States is a citizen by birth, or in other words, “natural born.”

The high court can still take up a case further challenging Obama’s eligibility for the presidency that, without a shred of evidence, contends that Obama’s birth certificate issued in Hawaii is a fake and the president-elect was actually born in Kenya — in which case he would not be a “natural born citizen.” The court is not expected to hear this case, either.

Better luck next time, conspiracy freaks!