Why the government should stop while it's ahead (or not too far behind)

While reading a Michael Long column about a Texas legislator who wants to add to report cards a child's "body fat" report, I came across this lovely paragraph that I could not resist sharing:

Join me now as we revisit the most basic tenets of civics, a dusty old discipline once actually taught in school, and considered boring because it was so obvious. Let's start with the practical: Government can do only a limited number of things. The more things it tries to do, the fewer resources it has to devote to each of them. That means the more things it does, the fewer things it does well.

And that's it, in a nutshell. There are some things government does extraordinarily well, and should continue to do: wage war, maintain roads, umm, ummm (I'm sure I'll think of the other things in a little while). However, as every mother knows, once you have children, work, household maintenance, and the bizarre wish to have some time to yourself that does not include children, work or household maintenance, your inbox is so full that, while everything gets done, nothing gets done well. You'd think some of the think tanks advising our government -- or even some smart people within our government -- could have figured this one out.