First of all, full disclosure: I am a member of the "stupid party," i.e. the GOP.

So-called conservative politicians and pundits (Michael Medved comes to mind) are making a big mistake by getting so worked up over Amtrak. Amtrak is a $1.5 billion budget item; in other words, something like .00038% of the federal budget. To get that nutty about a program that size doesn't make Republicans look fiscally responsible, it makes them look stupid with a capital "S". The kind of money we're talking about here is basically a rounding error, when viewed in the context of federal spending of $4 trillion a year, 1/3 of that borrowed.

On top of that, any president who made dismantling Amtrak a top-of-his-to-do-list priority would be by definition ignoring much larger wastes of money, and would rightly be criticized for that.

Now, philosophically I don't like the government being involved in things the private sector can do. This is not a controversial idea, or at least it shouldn't be; even Obama has made perfunctory statements to this effect. Ideally, Amtrak should be privatized; I like the idea of selling it to its employees, and letting them turn it into a non-union operation. But as long as the government is going to subsidize other forms of transportation, well, a case really can't be made that Amtrak should be given the stiff-arm treatment.