STEPHEN HAYES: A tax is a tax is a tax is a penalty is a ... ?? (whatever). I think the correct term should be 'tax penalty'; that is, a penalty for not following tax law (as in I pay a penalty for not filing on time).

Michelle Malkin has more. And Virginia's Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli has some additional thoughts.

SHADOW'S WORLD blogging will be light and intermittent for the next two weeks while I'm on 'vacation.' Shadow and Daisy are lousy typists and I can't rely on them to keep the blog going....

PEGGY NOONAN: Ennui the People.

THE INCREDIBLE SHRINKING PRESIDENT.

TALKEETNA, ALASKA'S long-time mayor is a cat named Stubbs. So why shouldn't Diamond be elected President?

CHRIS MUIR: RahmboCop. A girly man.

DANG! I missed all the good stuff! Many more photos here.

IF YOU WANT TO PROVE AN AIRCRAFT IS IDIOT-PROOF, let a journalist fly it.

THE NEXT BEST THING to concealed carry.

ISN'T SUGAR supposed to be bad for you?

FAST AND FURIOUS is not a D.C. law firm.

"IF CLASS WARFARE RHETORIC about taxes leads to more votes for him [Obama], that is his bottom line, whether the government gets a dime more revenue or not. So long as his lies go unchallenged, a second term will be the end result for him and a lasting calamity for the country."

Read it all.

VICTOR DAVIS HANSON: "Who would have thought that a few fracking innovators in Texas would change the world's carbon footprint far more than did Nobel laureate Al Gore...."

Read it all.

FEDS BACK DOWN: Florida gets access to the Homeland Security SAVE database. That 'punch back twice as hard' thing works both ways, doesn't it?

UNION BENEFITS: Average teacher makes $44G while their top union bosses pull in nearly $500G.

PAUL GREENBERG on judicial restraint: "The essence of this latest instance of judicial restraint is that We the People have a right to our own mistakes. And the right to correct them."

IT TAKES A VILLAGE [IDIOT] to raise a family. Not even Hillary Clinton would approve.

SOLAR STORM ARRIVES TODAY, Earth not expected to boil away. More here and here.

IF YOU WERE IN TEXAS, you’d be rich.

IF IT'S TOO GOOD TO BE TRUE, it must be a government program.