AFTER PLUTO, where will NASA's New Horizons spacecraft go?

FEDERAL AGENCIES fear bill giving greater access to hunters, fishermen will spur lawsuits.

And it probably will -- from that small minority of environmental lunatics who seem to think that our federal lands belong exclusively to them.

VICTOR DAVIS HANSON: Keystone Kops government. Remember, these people are our betters (snicker).

EARLIER THIS MONTH I wrote about Paul Allen’s Stratolaunch aircraft. Here are more pictures.

SEN. TED CRUZ announces presidential bid.

FAIRLY UNFAIR: The top 1% receives 19% of all income, pays 49% of all income taxes.

Since in America we tend to see ourselves in one of three classes (upper, middle, lower) I tried to manipulate the data from the link above into three (roughly equal) groups; first by percent of tax returns filed (i.e., population), and second by percent of income earned.

Here are the results:

The lower third generally gets a credit back larger than the taxes paid. The upper third pays the bulk of income taxes, between 72% and 95%, depending on where the cutoff between the middle and upper classes is defined. The middle third (roughly speaking, those with incomes between $50-$125 thousand) pick up the tab for the lowest income class and then contribute (again, roughly) $200 billion of the total tax burden.

I did find two things somewhat surprising in the report, the first being the 'lowness' of the average tax rate. I am by no means in the top third of incomes as defined above, but I estimate this year that I will pay roughly 12% of my gross annual income in federal income taxes alone. And that number is consistent with previous years. So why is my actual tax rate 4 points higher than the average cited?

The second surprise required downloading the 'Fairness and Tax Policy' pdf, where I found projections for mean and median income (page 18):

The staff of the Joint Committee on Taxation estimates that, in 2015, the mean income of all tax returns ... is projected to be $77,821. The mean taxable income of all returns is projected to be $42,268. The median income of all tax returns is projected to be $43,930; the median taxable income of all tax returns is projected to be $11,034.

The difference between mean and median is explainable by the simple fact that the minimum income is zero, while the maximum income is ... whatever Mark Zuckerberg makes. Still, the skew is more than I would have expected.

But what I find surprising is the difference between income and taxable income. For mean income, taxable income is 54% of total income; for median income, it is 26%. For me, the ratio of taxable to total is consistently about 78%. So, again, what am I doing wrong?

AGREED. It’s Election ‘Day’ for a reason. And voting should be limited to those who care enough to understand the consequences.

YEMEN: I don't think we can stand any more of Obama's "success stories."

STARBUCKS: Where Only The Coffee Is Black! More mockery.

FRANK J: You, too, can be a sociapath.

TWEET OF THE DAY: "Get @instapundit to hook you up with a good lawyer. You have a great case for getting a refund from Duke."

This is what happens when civics is dropped from the curriculum.

RICHARD NIXON FOUNDATION: The 40TH anniversary reunion of the release of the Vietnam prisoners of war. The anniversary was in 2013, but it’s still worth watching.

SOON THERE WILL BE MORE REPUBLICANS: Half of Americans unaware of ObamaCare penalty.

At least hopefully. Given the fact that nearly half of Americans vote consistently for Democrats, it’ll be interesting when they find out that ‘free stuff’ costs them real money....

MANDATORY VOTING guarantees ignorant votes: "Let Make the dart-throwers stay home."

GOTHAM 'GUN SHOP' appears as ruse to preach anti-firearm message. It lasted two whole days.

Officials for SUPGV local New York office say that the stunt was cleared with the city, through the office of Mayor Bill de Blasio, and that they applied for filming permits. All the guns within the shop were props and no ammunition was on hand.

The lengths the gun-control fascists will go to may include breaking the law. But that's okay, because it's about 'speaking truth to power'.

FROM THE RADIO, a definition of MSM'S political journalists: "starving jackals on crystal meth."

RUINOUS COMPASSION: Thomas Sowell on the minimum wage:

Go to your local public library and pick up a copy of the distinguished British magazine "The Economist."

Whether it is the current issue or a back issue doesn't matter. Spain, Greece and South Africa will be easy to locate in the table near the back, which lists data for various countries. Just look down the unemployment column for countries with unemployment rates around 25 percent. Spain, Greece and South Africa are always there, whether or not there is a recession. Why? Because they have very generous minimum wage laws.

While you are there, you can look up the unemployment rate for Switzerland, which has no minimum wage law at all. Over the years, I have never seen the unemployment rate in Switzerland reach as high as 4 percent. Back in 2003, "The Economist" magazine reported: "Switzerland's unemployment neared a five-year high of 3.9% in February."

But they’re compassionate. They fight unemployment with welfare programs using your tax money.

BLOOMBERG: Stand down the sky police (air marshals). And allow concealed carry on every domestic flight in America.

MEET AL GORE'S heir apparent.

DID I DO THAT? Democrat Senators claim they didn’t know what they were voting for.

Remember ObamaCare? When they (claimed they) did know what they were voting for? Now that the shoe’s on the other foot, so to speak, and it’s their ox being gored, they’re all a-twitter and demanding a recount.

In the future every Senator and Representative voting in favor of a bill should be required to certify, on pain of expulsion, that they have read and understand every element of the entire bill.