The Three Whisky Happy Hour: On Earthquakes, Physical and Political

John Yoo takes command of host duties this week, as Steve was on the road at an academic conference at City University of New York, where a knowledgeable faculty member remarked that he was surprised Steve didn't need an armed guard. The conference was largely devoted to the intellectual history of the liberal tradition, and was designed perfectly to induce a scornful snort from Lucretia who disdains all such flim-flummery. The bonus was that Steve apparenlty brought an earthquake with him, and we're not referring to his conference paper!Aside from these unexpected things, there were fresh tremors for Trump's legal problems, Biden's long-expected turn against Israel that was designed to appear to a constituency of one (hint: the person insists on being called DOKTOR), fresh encomiums for Mitch McConnell (okay—it was not unanimous), and finally into some tremors for the income tax.  As Stan Evans liked to say, "Any country that can land a man on the moon can abolish the income tax," and now a member of the House has proposed repealing the 16th Amendment. Especially salient in light of the pending Supreme Court case that might allow the government to tax unrealized asset gains (a back-door wealth tax), which will guarantee that the government will adopt a de facto policy of 10 percent inflation forever.