Picking on Perry?

Well, maybe so. But at the moment he's the new boy in the race, and he needs looking at.

So let's look at this:

While the debaters clashed, firefighters in Texas fought scores of fires, hampered by a lack of resources due to Perry administration budget cuts.

Jim Linardos, Lake Travis fire rescue chief, told Los Angeles Times reporters that Texas fire district funding is limited by the state at 10 cents per $100 valuation in property taxes. In Lake Tahoe, Nev., where he had been fire chief, he had five times the money to fight fires.

Times reporters Ashley Powers and Molly Hennessy-Fiske reported that volunteer fire departments, which serve much of Texas, face a 75 percent state budget cut under Perry and the Republican-controlled Legislature.

That makes no sense to most people, although it probably does to a lot of Republican primary voters and certainly to the conservatives who run the House of Representatives.

Plus, of course, the governor has no problem taking federal emergency money for those fires.

Just so we're all clear on it: I don't say Texas doesn't deserve or shouldn't get that money. Of course they do; of course they should. I'm just saying if government spending is so awful, if Perry really thinks the only reason he has so many uninsured citizens is the horrible guys in Washington, why is he asking for it?

Answer: now it's his ox being gored, that's why. Federal money is only bad when it goes to them, not when it comes to us.

Perry's not unique in most of this. But he's out there now, running for president.