McCain speaks with a forked tongue. So much for the "Straight Talk Express."

If McCain wants a fair tax, he need look no further than Federalist Paper No. 12, where Alexander Hamilton wrote:

The ability of a country to pay taxes must always be proportioned, in a great degree, to the quantity of money in circulation, and to the celerity with which it circulates.

It sounds like Hamilton was envisioning something that wouldn't have been possible until the age of computers. Hamilton seems to be envisioning something that would be like a toll tax on the movement of all moneys--including Internet transactions. It could probably replace the income tax and perhaps a lot of sales taxes.

Hamilton also had a view of money that supports the view that money is to the body politic as blood is to the body. In Federalist Paper 30, Hamilton wrote:

Money is, with propriety, considered as the vital principle of the body politic; as that which sustains its life and motion, and enables it to perform its most essential functions.

McCain was also proposing some kind of dual tax that would be left to the option of the taxpayer--a flat tax or the current income tax. CNN then cut away.

That sounded like some kind of hydra-headed monster that would be so riddled with loopholes that only large corporations with a bevy of tax accountants could navigate.

McCain also spoke of a "lean government." He didn't mention "good government" like our founders intended.