April 15, 2024 — Lloyd Billingsley

Tax Day Reminder

Featured image Some taxpayers are aware that any refund on their return is their own money. On the other hand, many may be unware that the government got their money before they did. This takes place through the practice of withholding money from workers’ paychecks, a development dating to World War II. “Wars have always been the most important occasions for the introduction of new forms of taxation,” writes Robert Higgs (Crisis »
April 15, 2024 — Steven Hayward

The Daily Chart: Red v. Blue on Tax Day

Featured imageWith everyone’s favorite day (April 15) hard upon us, worth noting how state income tax rates fall out. Pick your home state accordingly: »
April 15, 2024 — John Hinderaker

Trump Goes On Trial

Featured imageAlvin Bragg’s criminal case against Donald Trump goes to trial today. It says something about the world we live in that we haven’t even bothered to mention it lately. I summed up Bragg’s case against Trump here. In a word, it is pathetic. Trump made one or more “hush money” payments to Stormy Daniels, which was perfectly legal. The alleged crime is that his business documents reflect falsely that the »
April 15, 2024 — John Hinderaker

Grotesque Bias Against Trump

Featured imageI find this, from this morning’s proceedings in Trump’s “hush money” trial, inexplicable: Prosecutor Joshua Steinglass looked for a backdoor way of introducing Donald Trump’s infamous “Access Hollywood” interview into the hush money trial Monday morning, where he recited, word for word, Trump’s “grab ’em by the p—y” speech. Justice Juan M. Merchan had previously ruled that the Manhattan District Attorney’s Office could not play Trump’s interview to a jury »
April 15, 2024 — Scott Johnson

Strategy à la Biden

Featured imageWhen it comes to Iran’s massive missile and drone attack on Israel this past Saturday evening, President Biden has instructed Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to let bygones be bygones. I don’t think he cited Sun Tzu in support of the Biden doctrine, but the White House has not released a readout of Biden’s call to Netanyahu following the attack. Rather, the White House released this statement publicly seeking to deter »
April 14, 2024 — Lloyd Billingsley

The Hoop and the Harm

Featured imageIowa basketball star Caitlin Clark, who drains three-pointers with the ease of Stephen Curry, has earned an estimated $3.1 million in NIL revenue from marketing her name, image and likeness. Purdue center Zach Edey also took his team to the final, but as he told reporters, “I obviously lost out on a lot of money this year.” The towering center hails from Toronto, and under a student visa NIL earnings »
April 14, 2024 — John Hinderaker

Not a Race, a Mismatch

Featured imageThe “trans” fad continues to make waves around the Western world. In the U.K., the National Health Service commissioned pediatrician Dr. Hilary Cass to investigate and report on the treatment of gender-confused children and young people in that country. Her report is long and measured, and I am still making my way through it. But it has been seen as a watershed moment in the pushback against the “trans” ideology »
April 14, 2024 — Steven Hayward

Podcast: The 3WHH, Letter from the Birmingham Starbucks

Featured imageI hosted this crisp episode despite having a creaky voice from a springtime bug (and Lucretia is partly hobbled, too) and we cover a lot of ground, starting with a brief recap of the latest (unanimous!) property rights victory at the Supreme Court, but then moving quickly on to initial reactions to the outbreak of World War III yesterday. What to make of Iran’s attack on Israel? Many things are »
April 14, 2024 — Scott Johnson

After last night

Featured imageThe Iranian regime has been at war with Israel, the United States, and the West roughly since the Ayatollah overthrew the Shah of Iran. It is not a war that Israel has chosen. It is a war that has been thrust upon it by a regime of genocidal maniacs. Thirty years after the fact the Court of Cassation in Buenos Aires issued a ruling blaming Iran for bombing the Asociación »
April 13, 2024 — John Hinderaker

A Slow-Motion War [Updated Again]

Featured imageWar has broken out between Iran and Israel, with Iran for the first time launching attacks against Israeli soil. By the time you read this, the situation likely will have changed. But for now, according to the frequently-updated Times of Israel, Iran has launched more than 100 unmanned drones toward Israel proper. Those drones will take some hours to reach Israel, and in the meantime the Iron Dome system and »
April 13, 2024 — Scott Johnson

The deep meaning of “don’t”

Featured imageWould that President Biden had not warned the Iranian regime not to attack Israel with his pitiful “don’t” yesterday. In Bidenspeak, “don’t” is an invitation. It something like the shout-out for contestants to “come on down” on The Price Is Right. And as night follows day, the Iranian regime has launched a large drone attack on Israel from Iranian territory. At the moment the targets are unclear. Among the many »
April 14, 2024 — Steven Hayward

Loose Ends (251)

Featured image• Bill Maher has gone off the reservation once again, debunking lefty talking points about the greatness of our neighbors and Scandinavia while ignoring facts: • The late John Von Kannon, one of the founders of The American Spectator back in the 1960s, persuaded me many years ago that professional wrestling was a conservative sport, because it is a melodramatic morality play, with clear good guys and bad guys. (This »
April 14, 2024 — John Hinderaker

The Times Finds a Prosecutor It Likes

Featured imageWe have written a number of times about Mary Moriarty, the leftist who now serves as County Attorney for Hennepin County, Minnesota. Moriarty is a former public defender who thinks her job as prosecutor is to take the side of criminals. When she was sworn in as county attorney, did she put her hand on the Bible or perhaps a copy of the Constitution? No: she rested it on a »
April 14, 2024 — John Hinderaker

In Defense of Joe Biden

Featured imageThat’s a post title you won’t often see on this site! I want to move on to Iran, but first, what did Joe Biden actually tell Prime Minister Netanyahu yesterday? I can’t see that an official readout of the conversation has been published, but this account, based on conversation with a “senior White House official,” seems as authoritative as any: Biden told Netanyahu the joint defensive efforts by Israel, the »
April 13, 2024 — Lloyd Billingsley

The File on X

Featured imageBiden’s HHS boss Xavier Becerra misses California and might want to run for governor, Katy Grimes of the California Globe reports. In his current post, Becerra “doubled down on tyrannical COVID policies, including mandatory masking and vaccines for everyone including pregnant women and infants, as well as business and school lockdowns.” Before that, Becerra, was “up to his eyeballs” in a scandal that started when the DNC’s Debbie Wasserman Schultz »
April 13, 2024 — John Hinderaker

Who Pays the Taxes?

Featured imageEvery well-informed person knows that upper-income taxpayers shoulder a disproportionate share of the nation’s fiscal burden. The problem is that most people aren’t well-informed. The Wall Street Journal reports: President Biden and Democratic tax raisers always say the rich don’t pay their “fair share.” Maybe one reason this line works politically is that most voters have no idea who really pays how much in taxes. “To the best of your »
April 13, 2024 — Steven Hayward

War Drums Sounding?

Featured imageIt is hard to conclude from media accounts exactly what is up between Israel and Iran right now, because for all of the leaked and disclosed information, there is always more going on behind the scenes that we never find out about for a long time. But this news item just breaking a couple hours ago seems possibly significant: Biden Rushes Back to White House as Iran Weighs Attack on »