Brett Kavanaugh's pal was Mark Judge

Brett Kavanaugh’s High School Friend Isn’t Helping the Nominee’s Case:

The New York Times reported that the friend the woman alleged to be in the room with Kavanaugh was conservative writer Mark Judge, who attended Georgetown Prep with the nominee. On Friday, Judge told the Weekly Standard that no such incident took place. “It’s just absolutely nuts,” he said. “I never saw Brett act that way.” ... The amount of drinking Judge describes himself undertaking [at the time] might suggest that his memory of those days may not be entirely reliable.

Muslim attacker at Orly Airport is a dead hypocrite

Notice how quickly the French get the toxicology report finished, here:

Yelling that he wanted to kill and die for Allah, according to the Paris prosecutor, Ziyed Ben Belgacem can be seeing trying to wrestle away the soldier's assault rifle near the small cluster of people. ...

Earlier Saturday, a police officer was shot in the face with birdshot when officers stopped Belgacem for a traffic violation.

Authorities say Belgacem, a 39-year-old Frenchman, had a long criminal record of drug and robbery offenses.

Autopsy toxicology tests found traces of cocaine and cannabis in Belgacem's blood, according to the Paris prosecutors' office. He also had 0.93 grams of alcohol per liter of blood when he died Saturday, the prosecutors' office said. That is nearly twice the legal limit for driving in France.

In an interview Sunday with French radio Europe 1, a man identified as the suspect's father said that Belgacem wasn't a practicing Muslim and drank alcohol.

You will search this New York Times Hillary Clinton health "conspiracy" story in vain for the words "blood clot", caused by dehydration, caused by, you know, alcoholism

Here. 

Flashback here to the New York Times January 2, 2013:

Hillary Rodham Clinton, whose globe-trotting tour as secretary of state was abruptly halted last month by a series of health problems, was discharged from a New York hospital on Wednesday evening after several days of treatment for a blood clot in a vein in her head.

Mrs. Clinton, 65, was admitted to NewYork-Presbyterian/Columbia hospital on Sunday after a scan discovered the blood clot. The scan was part of her follow-up care for a concussion she sustained more than two weeks earlier, when she fainted and fell, striking her head. According to the State Department, the fainting was caused by dehydration, brought on by a stomach virus. The concussion was diagnosed on Dec. 13, though the fall had occurred earlier that week.

The clot was potentially serious, blocking a vein that drains blood from the brain. Untreated, such blockages can lead to brain hemorrhages or strokes. Treatment consists mainly of blood thinners to keep the clot from enlarging and to prevent more clots from forming, and plenty of fluids to prevent dehydration, which is a major risk factor for blood clots. ...

Dr. David J. Langer, a brain surgeon and associate professor at Hofstra North Shore-LIJ School of Medicine, said that Mrs. Clinton would need close monitoring in the next days, weeks and months to make sure her doses of blood thinners are correct and that the clot is not growing. Dr. Langer is not involved in her care. ...

The fact that Mrs. Clinton had a blood clot in the past — in her leg, in 1998 — suggests that she may have a tendency to form clots, and may need blood-thinners long-term or even for the rest of her life, Dr. Manley said. ...

No surprise: National Health Interview Survey finds just 2.4% of respondents, WHO WERE MUCH SICKER ON AVERAGE, were lesbian, gay and bi

Except the story never does the math to show how small a minority is LGBT, and never once mentions rampant sexually transmitted diseases among perverts because of their promiscuity, just "distress" from "discrimination" leading to increased alcohol and tobacco abuse.

Here:

Overall, 67,150 survey respondents were heterosexual, 525 lesbian, 624 gay and 515 bisexual. The average age was about 47.

Now that fascist Trump has kids pledging to HIM never to take drugs or smoke cigs, and go easy on the alcohol

The horror.

Here.

Young "journalist" recently making $5,600 a month actually believes it's cheaper to eat out

Seen here:

'Technology has had a hand in widening the wealth gap and eliminating much of the middle-class since this industry shift began decades ago. But with the other hand, tech scoops up and delivers old promises of middle-class life and delivers them to the new poor. It’s cheaper to eat out, to shop, to entertain yourself, and to obtain consumer technology that makes all those things even more convenient, even on just $21,000 a year. A knowledge economy is sometimes referred to as “an economics of abundance, not scarcity.” It’s really an economics of scarcity with the appearance of abundance.'

Uh huh. She spends more time tweeting (14x/day) than researching, thinking or cooking, otherwise she'd know a single person can eat like a king three times a day for less than $3,500 a year simply by shunning food prepared in restaurants, fast food eateries and delicatessens and cooking entirely for oneself at home. Alcohol and toilet paper included. At $12.75 twice a day it costs $9,300 a year to eat out, once a day over $4,600. And you have to use the public sandpaper.

Spending a minimum of 22% of income on food for just one meal a day is crazy, and way too close to the housing component which should never exceed 28-32% of income.

Kids these days.

Hillary Clinton just loves the Dr. Mengeles and their founder, the racist Margaret Sanger

Accepting the Sanger Award in 2009

Hillary Clinton, quoted here:

As much as Planned Parenthood loves Hillary, Hillary’s an even bigger fan of Margaret Sanger, the racist eugenicist founder of the organization. Clinton specifically honored Sanger at a 2009 Planned Parenthood event in Houston.

“I admire Margaret Sanger enormously,” Clinton told the event’s attendees. “Her courage, her tenacity, her vision.”

Margaret Sanger, quoted here, who wanted to sterilize those "unfit" to reproduce, in the opinion of the State and its experts:

"Like the advocates of Birth Control, the eugenists, for instance, are seeking to assist the race toward the elimination of the unfit. ... We who advocate Birth Control, on the other hand, lay all our emphasis upon stopping not only the reproduction of the unfit but upon stopping all reproduction when there is not economic means of providing proper care for those who are born in health. ... These are gongenital feeble-mindedness; schizophrenia, circular insanity; heredity epilepsy; hereditary chorea (Huntington’s)’ hereditary blindness or deafness; grave hereditary bodily deformity and chronic alcoholism. Surely everyone will agree that the children of parents so afflicted are no contribution to the nation for even if they do not inherit these defects they are children of parents so handicapped that life will give them little, owing to their necessarily bad environment."

Avowed liberal and Democrat, actor Robin Williams, supposedly commits suicide

Nikki Finke here:

The actor suffered a lifelong struggle with depression, alcohol and drugs. After starting his battle with addiction in the 1970s he once explained it this way: "Cocaine for me was a place to hide. Most people get hyper on coke. It slowed me down." ... [A]vowed liberal and Democrat, Williams was a frequent supporter of and contributor to progressive causes and campaigns.

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Some people would say self-destructive behavior ending in suicide is the logical conclusion of liberalism, and that Robin Williams simply finally realized that.

We'll see if it really was suicide.

I for one think the liberalism is an artifact in this case. It's more an example of the tragic hero whose incredible gift almost depended on a deeply profound curse from which it derived its sheer magnitude and excellence, a bipolar extremism which few can imagine or understand who haven't experienced it for themselves.

Stupidest thing P.J. O'Rourke ever wrote

Here:

"Imagine trying to make the Ten Commandments into laws."

Hm. I thought we already had.

Stock markets remain closed on Sundays, Good Friday, Thanksgiving and Christmas. At least five states still explicitly prohibit car sales on Sundays, and most dealers elsewhere are closed anyway. Alcohol sales remain restricted or prohibited on Sundays in many places. Massachusetts still has a one-day-of-rest-in-seven statute. Most banks are closed on Sundays, along with many other businesses. Congress rarely works on Sundays, let alone Monday through Friday.

And then we have these trifles of the law which never seem to go out of style, unless you are a feminist, a banker or a politician:

Thou shalt not kill.

Thou shalt not steal.

Thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbor.

That's the problem with libertarianism. It has no imagination.

Larry Kudlow's Kudlow Report On CNBC Ended Tonight

CNBC posted the farewells here on the day ending the television show's 5-year run, which wraps up 25 years with the network so far.

Kudlow remains affiliated with CNBC in a senior capacity and will appear daytimes on occasion instead of nightly at 7:00 PM.

Kudlow, 66 and an avid tennis player,  has had back problems requiring surgery in the last year, according to his own remarks on his 10:00 AM Saturday radio program on WABCradio.com, where you can download podcasts.

Ending his television program was reportedly his own choice and was made in the interest of slowing down.

Others have pointed to the show's very poor ratings as the reason for ending it, but the show has an enthusiastic and devoted, if not large, following.

The Reaganite supply-sider is known for his belief in free market capitalism as the best path to prosperity, as well as for strong dollar policy, growth oriented economic policies and a militarily strong America which welcomes and befriends others wishing to be free.

Kudlow credits his conversion to Roman Catholicism with helping him overcome a drug and alcohol addiction.

Obama thinks he has achievements, which must mean he is suffering a psychosis

From the long story in The New Yorker, here, by image-accommodating biographer David Remnick:

As Obama ticked off a list of first-term achievements—the economic rescue, the forty-four straight months of job growth, a reduction in carbon emissions, a spike in clean-energy technology—he seemed efficient but contained, running at three-quarters speed, like an athlete playing a midseason road game of modest consequence; he was performing just hard enough to leave a decent impression, get paid, and avoid injury.

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Let's see.

Starting with the economic rescue, Obama said at the time in early 2009 that he had more than enough on his plate without having to worry about the financial crisis.

So who fixed that?

Ben Bernanke and the Federal Reserve. While everyone was fixated on the controversy over TARP and the crony capitalist, fascist character of that bailout in the mere hundreds of billions of dollars as millions of Americans were losing their homes, behind the scenes the Fed was providing multiple trillions of dollars of short-term loans to just about any bank or business in the world which was in trouble, at rock-bottom low interest rates which homeowners could only dream about, right into 2010. They all got fixed while 5.6 million Americans went on to lose their homes through 2013.

And what did Obama do in response to that?

Disgracefully fire Bernanke in public by saying he'd overstayed his time at the Fed, but that came only long after everything looked like it was truly stabilized. And I do mean "looked". The fact of the matter is extraordinary measures remain in place at the Fed because the banks' condition is still not healthy enough to do without them. When those end, the crisis will be truly over, not before. The rescue is still underway, with no end in sight.

Then there's the 44 months of job growth claim. Well, the truth is we are in the 72nd month of the jobs recession as we speak today, the longest jobs recession in the history of the post-war by a long shot. Bush's had been the longest previously, at 47 months. And it is estimated that the current jobs recession will not be over for another 6 months, which means we'll finally have matched the number of payroll jobs which existed at the time the recession began, but only after about 6.5 years have gone by.

But that says nothing about a return to normalcy. Include the shortfall which exists in the numbers because of net population growth over the period and the country will still be in a serious jobs deficit once the jobs recession is over, and for a long time to come without some major driver for jobs appearing on the scene.

Finally, I'm not sure how anyone measures a reduction in carbon emissions when China keeps them billowing into the air at a record rate, burning coal and oil in huge quantities. Obama can point to the closing down of coal power plants in this country if he wants, but all that does is make American electricity more expensive as China's waves of pollution waft ever eastward over the Pacific, polluting our air, water and farmland.

But if anyone's contributing to the reduction in carbon emissions in this country, it's the American worker who isn't working. Travel on the road in this country has been stuck at levels first reached between 2004 and 2005 for five long years because so many people no longer have a job to which to commute. Every month that goes by shows the same statistical result: no progress in miles traveled back to the levels of the 2007 peak. It's an odd thing to be taking credit for.

If it is clear from these facts that Obama is delusional and lives in a separate reality, it is also clear from Remnick's story that Obama has to work hard at crafting it, even about what is probably at the heart of his mental problems in the first place: 

When I asked Obama about another area of shifting public opinion—the legalization of marijuana—he seemed even less eager to evolve with any dispatch and get in front of the issue. “As has been well documented, I smoked pot as a kid, and I view it as a bad habit and a vice, not very different from the cigarettes that I smoked as a young person up through a big chunk of my adult life. I don’t think it is more dangerous than alcohol.”

Is it less dangerous? I asked.

Obama leaned back and let a moment go by. That’s one of his moves. When he is interviewed, particularly for print, he has the habit of slowing himself down, and the result is a spool of cautious lucidity. He speaks in paragraphs and with moments of revision. Sometimes he will stop in the middle of a sentence and say, “Scratch that,” or, “I think the grammar was all screwed up in that sentence, so let me start again.”

Why does the smartest president ever have to edit everything, all the time, until it makes sense to him?

Who do you call to have the president committed?

John Tamny's Libertarian Myopia On The Plan B Pill

John Tamny, libertarian ideologue extraordinaire, asks us to join him in complete denial about reality, here:

"[G]overnments don’t nor can they exist as our Nanny."

An awful lot of people chafing under Nanny Bloomberg in NYC would beg to differ with that statement.

Does it really need to be pointed out that the mayor of New York routinely acts like he's everyone's mother? I think Bloomberg would be just as amused as we are to learn that his own perception that he even exists is as mistaken as is our perception that he exists. The man does exist, and gets away with what he does because there are plenty of people in the world who want him to, at least in New York City. The fact of the matter is that there are plenty of people just like Bloomberg who are all too happy to accomodate those who want to be ruled. Lately these characters also want in the worst way to be president of the United States for some reason. Just because we wish these things were not so doesn't mean that they are not so. The assertions of success of five-year-plan after five-year-plan in the Soviet Union eventually bowed to reality, as must we.

This sort of denial of reality is what lies behind Tamny's analogy between teen use of alcohol and teen use of the plan B pill, which he evidently advocates not because it is necessarily good but because it is not preventable for the same reason we cannot prevent teen use of alcohol. But this is not the proper analogy. The proper analogy is between the alcohol and the sex, both of which are desirable for the sensations which they provide, which is why it is difficult to regulate them. The reality is that a profound difference exists between the alcohol and the plan B pill: the pill is designed to kill, while the beer is not.

The plan B pill provides no pleasure analogous to beer which makes us desire it, except of a psychological sort such as any medication or placebo may provide. For that reason alone it should be as easy to regulate as any other medication. It alleviates a condition like an aspirin does after too much beer, but it does so by taking a human life. The utility of it masks its gravity.

Deregulation of the plan B pill for minors stands in stark relief against the FDA's own labeling regulations: Warnings "to keep product out of children's reach" must appear on over-the-counter medications like aspirin bottles, they say. My bottle says,  for example, "Reye's syndrome: Children and teenagers who have or are recovering from chicken pox or flu-like symptoms should not use this product." My aspirin bottle even comes with a child-thwarting cap in compliance with the FDA regulations: "Many OTC medicines are sold in containers with child safety closures. Use them properly.  Remember—keep all medicines out of the sight and reach of children." Contrary to its own stated mission, the FDA will be placing the plan B pill in plain sight of them.

One would think that a libertarian, being consistent, would be calling also for the abolition of all such age restrictions on medications and on alcohol, if the plan B pill is to be allowed to minors. But that, too, is conspicuously missing from Tamny's argument, which is sort of what one would expect of the perpetual childishness of the libertarian. Johnny still can't tell the truth. 

If government really no longer has any interest in preventing young girls from murdering their unborn children, which is what the plan B pill debate is really all about, then we might as well disband police departments everywhere.

No wonder gun stores are running empty. The people know too many of us have given up just like Tamny.

High Taxes On Imports A Chief Cause Of The Civil War

So says Michael Sivy for Time, here:

The income tax has always been hated – but so were the taxes it replaced. In Colonial America and the early U.S., taxes were typically on goods like sugar, tea, or whiskey (which triggered the Whiskey Rebellion in 1791). Other taxes were on land or were poll taxes (which was a flat amount per person and had nothing to do with voting). Later on, there were high custom duties on imports, which were one of the chief causes of the Civil War because they pushed up the prices of manufactured goods, helping the North but hurting the agrarian South. Real estate taxes were always extremely unpopular and still are.

It wasn't until 1863 when The War of Northern Aggression was going badly for Lincoln that it became officially about slavery.

Not Only Should The Young Have No Guns, They Should Have No Movies

And while we're at it, no one shall vote for president who isn't also at least 35 years of age.

ABC News reports here that the gunman's gear and m/o resembled the film:

Holmes was wearing a bullet-proof vest and riot helmet and carrying a gas mask, rifle, and handgun, when he was apprehended, according to police. Federal Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms sources told ABC News that agents will begin tracing an assault rifle, shotgun, and two handguns used in the attack. ...

The highly-anticipated third installment of the Batman triology opened to packed auditoriums around the country at midnight showings on Friday morning, and features a villain named Bane who wears a bulletproof vest and gas mask. Trailers for the movie show explosions at public events including a football game. Though many moviegoers dressed in costume to attend the opening night screening, police have made no statements about any connection between the gunman's motives and the movie.

As ObamaCare Goes To The Supremes, Will It Stand Or Fall On Tax Grounds?

The individual mandate which is at the heart of ObamaCare insists that everyone buy health insurance in every state.

Once the mandate was challenged by opponents after passage, however, the Obama regime quickly began defending its penalties as a tax, which it was loathe to do in selling the law to the public for political reasons. While the law contains tax provisions, the penalty associated with not securing coverage is not a tax.

The tax argument raises important constitutional questions of fairness and substance. If the penalties really are taxes, aren't also the premiums, since the penalties take their place? And will everyone in every state pay the same premium tax for coverage? If some pay only the penalty, which is low compared to the premium, doesn't the law enjoin inequity?

Another question is whether anyone can avoid the tax. This in turn touches on the distinction between direct and indirect taxation. If the tax can be avoided, it is an example of indirect taxation which is permissible, but which must still be uniform. If it cannot be avoided, then the tax must be apportioned according to population so that everyone, rich and poor alike, everywhere pays the same tax, which would be easy for the rich, but not for the poor. But presumably under ObamaCare plans will vary from state to state as they do now, with premiums which vary according to coverage, so Americans will be forced to pay, and pay unequally.

Consider the income tax. If you take no ordinary income in the form of salary and wages, you are not liable to pay it. Wealthy individuals regularly take income in the form of capital gains, which is taxed under different rules with lower rates than ordinary income. The same avoidance obtains when taking income from municipal bonds and other tax-free bond investments. In important respects the federal income tax is thus indirect, and therefore does not need to be apportioned according to population.

Similarly with excise taxes. If you choose to drink wine over spirits the tax you pay per bottle will be substantially less for wine. You pay the tax on the wine, but you have avoided the tax on the bourbon. But if you drink neither at all, you avoid the excise taxation altogether. Hence the popularity of stills.

Some of these points get an interesting airing here as they apply to Obamacare:

The legal wrangling over whether a particular tax is direct or indirect, as Willis and Chung discuss, has been complicated and persistent for more than two centuries. In 1794, for example, Congress passed a tax on carriages, which opponents considered a direct tax and thus invalid because it was not apportioned by population. The Supreme Court found it was an indirect tax on the use of carriages, valid so long as it was uniform.

Obamacare imposes an annual penalty of $95 per adult, or 1 percent of income, whichever is greater, in 2014. The annual penalties are the greater of $325 or two percent of income in 2015 and the greater of $695 or 2.5 percent of income in 2016 and subsequent years.

Willis and Chung argue these are not indirect, but instead direct taxes, unconstitutional because they are not apportioned by population. It could also be argued, though, this provision is a mixed bag. The fixed annual penalty portion, for example, could be viewed as indirect and uniform and thus constitutional, while the income percentage amounts could be deemed direct but not apportioned and thus unconstitutional.

The tax could therefore be unconstitutional for those who pay income percentages but constitutional for those who pay a fixed penalty. This may be a ridiculous and unprecedented view, but it does illustrate the complexity of this issue—leaving us with a tangled legal web indeed.

The ruling of the Supreme Court is expected next June after oral arguments in March 2012.

Fireworks are expected.

Federal Revenues Came From Tariffs and Land Sales in First Half of 1800s, From Tariffs and Excises in Second Half

A largely forgotten fact when discussing the history and meaning of US tax policy.

Gary M. Anderson and Dolores T. Martin examined the role of land sales in considerable detail in 1987 here.

I provide a few excerpts:

[F]rom 1800 until the beginning of the Civil War, proceeds from the sale of public lands constituted a major source of revenue for the federal government, accounting for 48 percent of net receipts in 1836. ...

After 1820, receipts from land sales became a major component of federal revenues. During 1836, for example, receipts from land sales exceeded 48 percent of total federal revenues. From 1820 to 1860, receipts from land sales averaged 10.8 percent of total federal receipts per annum.

From the program’s beginnings in 1796 until 1862, privatization of the public lands via sales to the private sector scored several major successes. By 1862, acreage equaling about 67 percent of the public domain in 1802 had been sold, and land sale receipts provided a significant, although fluctuating, fraction of total federal revenues. ...

Before the Civil War, proceeds from land sales and tariff revenues were the two major components in federal receipts. The proceeds from these different sources were highly substitutable; one dollar of revenue from land sales could replace one dollar from a tariff and vice versa. There is strong evidence to suggest that this substitutability may have been a significant factor in the demise of the system of revenue-maximizing land sales.

Of course the rise in reliance on excises from 1862 onwards could also explain why reliance on land sales declined to almost nothing by century's end, quite apart from the so-called rent-seeking aspects of tariff politics which the authors explore. But they seem not to notice the role of excises.

Excises on alcohol and tobacco ramp up dramatically to $100 million to $150 million per year from 1862, from next to nothing beforehand, while tariffs move up and down around a trendline of $200 million in revenues per year starting also at the same time, having been in the $50 million and below range per year for most of the century prior to the War Between the States.

The importance of alcohol, and tobacco, in the social and economic history of America should not be underestimated, as Daniel Okrent's important recent book on Prohibition has reminded us.

Gotta go. Time to light up and have a drink!

The 1913 Income Tax Enabled Stark Increases to Government Revenues to Pay for WWI

Revenues went up by a factor of 6 in three short years, and dramatically reversed federal reliance on tariffs, excises and other taxes of one kind or another to finance the preponderance of government spending. Note the overnight reversal between 1917 and 1918 in the income tax share of the federal revenue. The analogy today would be like going from $3 trillion in revenues to $18 trillion.

Excises on alcohol started disappearing in 1920 with enactment of Prohibition. Such taxes had routinely accounted for 20-40 percent of all federal revenues from the War Between The States until that time. Over the course of a decade from 1920 through 1932 alcohol excises dropped in the end by a factor of 10, but instantly surpassed their 1920 levels with Repeal in 1933, a year in which everyone desperately needed a drink.

By 1875 One Third of Federal Revenues Came From Taxes on Alcohol

According to Daniel Okrent's Last Call: The Rise and Fall of Prohibition:

After lapsing in 1802, the alcohol excise was reimposed under James Madison to pay for the War of 1812, suspended in 1817, and then brought back by Abraham Lincoln in 1862 to finance the Civil War. This time the tax did not fade away . . . For most of the next thirty years the impost on alcohol annually provided at least 20 percent of all federal revenue, and in some years more than 40 percent. By the time the excise was doubled to cover the cost of the Spanish-American War, the brewers had finally realized that the tax they had once so strongly opposed might be their salvation, and they patriotically (and shamelessly) declared that they had financed 40 percent of the war's cost.

By way of comparison, tariffs in 1875 funded 55 percent of the federal budget. Seven years after the passage of the Income Tax, tariffs in 1920 funded barely 13 percent of the federal budget.

The significance of Daniel Okrent's recent history of Prohibition is not in the least that it shows how much federal government had depended on liquor taxes in addition to tariffs and property taxes to fund itself.

The perfidy of Prohibition is that it was brought to us by the same folks who gave us the Income Tax in the first place. They knew something would be needed to replace the federal revenue which would be lost when alcohol sales were finally banned. But when Prohibition got the boot, the Income Tax did not.

So the flipside to the Temperance movement is its Intemperance toward the original intent of the constitution, which was to prohibit direct taxation without apportionment by population in favor of tariffs, excises and ad valorem taxes.

Before The Income Tax, Federal Tariffs and Real Estate Taxes Punished Farmers

From a helpful history of the estate tax from the IRS, here (emphases added), which is unaware of the significant federal revenue contributed by alcohol taxes (between 30 and 40 percent):

The War Revenue Act of 1898

Throughout the last half of the 19th century, the industrial revolution brought about profound changes in the U.S. economy. Industry replaced agriculture as the primary source of wealth and political power in the United States. Tariffs and real estate taxes had traditionally been the primary sources of Federal revenue, both of which fell disproportionately on farmers, leaving the wealth of industrialists relatively untouched. Many social reformers advocated taxes on the wealthy as a way of forcing the wealthy to pay their fair share, while opponents argued that such taxes would destroy incentives to accumulate wealth and stunt the growth of capital markets.

Against this backdrop, a Federal legacy tax was proposed in 1898 as a means to raise revenue for the Spanish-American War. Unlike the two previous Federal death taxes levied in times of war, the 1898 tax proposal provoked heated debate. Despite strong opposition, the legacy tax was made law. Although called a legacy tax, it was a duty on the estate itself, not on its beneficiaries, and served as a precursor to the present Federal estate tax. Tax rates ranged from 0.75 percent to 15 percent, depending both on the size of the estate and on the relationship of a legatee to the decedent. Only personal property was subject to taxation. A $10,000 exemption was provided to exclude small estates from the tax; bequests to the surviving spouse also were excluded. In 1901, certain gifts were exempted from tax, including gifts to charitable, religious, literary, and educational organizations and gifts to organizations dedicated to the encouragement of the arts and the prevention of cruelty to children. The end of the Spanish-American War came in 1902, and the tax was repealed later that year. Although short-lived, the tax raised about $14.1 million. [About 2.5 percent of the federal budget].

Prohibition: An Alliance Between Evangelical Christians and Criminals

So said George Will last year in his review of Daniel Okrent's book which details how the women's war on men's drinking inspired a chain of constitutional and social changes ills:

Women's Prohibition sentiments fueled the movement for women's rights -- rights to hold property independent of drunken husbands; to divorce those husbands; to vote for politicians who would close saloons. ...

Women campaigning for sobriety did not intend to give rise to the income tax, plea bargaining, a nationwide crime syndicate, Las Vegas, NASCAR (country boys outrunning government agents), a redefined role for the federal government and a privacy right -- the "right to be let alone" -- that eventually was extended to abortion rights. But they did.

Now the "darkly hilarious" story has been immortalized by none other than Ken Burns on none other than PBS.

Don't miss it.

You can watch it online, here.