Abolish the IRS

As Mark Levin and others have observed, the recent IRS abuses are not unique to the Obama administration.  (See 5/20/13 broadcast, elsewhere.)  As L. Gordon Crovitz says,

There is a long history of presidents using the IRS against political enemies. FDR went after newspapers that opposed the New Deal. JFK had his Ideological Organizations Audit Project target conservative groups like the American Enterprise Institute. Richard Nixon used the IRS to harass people on his enemies list.

Postscript on Creeping Environmentalist Totalitarianism

Speaking of “efficiency”, I knew that the EPA already had the power to tell us how much water could come out of our showerheads (which is bad enough), but I didn’t know that “The venerable Consumer Reports” had turned someone in; I’ve now independently verified that this appeared in the October 2009 issue of Consumer Reports (page 36):

. . . the $500 Hudson Reed Theme Thermostatic AS333 shower tower’s forceful spray seemed too good to be true — or legal. 

Lights Out

Did you know that Congress has already banned incandescent light bulbs in the future?  Neither do most Americans.  The law was passed in 2007; the phase-out begins with the 100-watt bulb in 2012.  (You can also read more about it at a Web site created for the movement to repeal the ban.)

Practically speaking, like most overweening big-government schemes, this will have unintended consequences.  In this case, we already know what some of them will be: 

1 — Scientists find that the main alternative, compact fluorescent light bulbs (CFLs), should be used sparingly and not left on for very long, because they are poisonous and may give you cancer: 

On Conservatism and Global Warming

I had a conversation a few days ago with a (liberal) friend of mine about conservatism and liberalism, liberty and tyranny, regulations, “entitlements”, and other things.  It was a good conversation, but she asked one question that got lost in the back-and-forth and I never answered:

What is the conservative answer to global warming?

It’s a good question.  I have some thoughts.  My answer can be divided into two parts. 

New Patch on Old Cloth?

(Or do I just want to teach an old dog an old trick?)

The Constitution originally provided that, while the members of the House of Representatives would be elected directly by the people, members of the Senate would be chosen by state legislatures.  This part of the Constitution remained unchanged for most of our country’s history.  Then, about a hundred years ago, the Seventeenth Amendment made senators directly elected, like congressmen.