Jan
2
2026

It's Pretty Warm in Hell, I've Heard

Ann Althouse captures a quote from "We will replace the frigidity of rugged individualism with the warmth of collectivism."

And she's not alone. Mediaite has a "pounce" headline: Conservatives Hit the Roof Over Mamdani’s Inauguration Day Vow to Bring ‘The Warmth of Collectivism’ to NYC. But they, to their credit, quote a number of tweeted reactions from Our Side. Picking a good one:

Well, best of luck to NYC. Get used to hearing that Mencken quote quite a bit in the coming months:

Democracy is the theory that the common people know what they want, and deserve to get it good and hard.

Also of note:

  • Now he tells us. Jason Willick points out The Epstein files fiasco was completely foreseeable. (WaPo gifted link)

    Who could have foreseen that the bipartisan trashing of hundreds of years of legal norms to satisfy political demand would not bring the catharsis supporters hoped for?

    Rep. Clay Higgins (R-Louisiana) was the single member of Congress out of 535 to vote against the ongoing exercise known popularly as “releasing the Epstein files.” As Higgins — a former sheriff’s deputy — noted last month, the indiscriminate release of investigative material to the public “abandons 250 years of criminal justice procedure in America.”

    That didn’t concern Higgins’s colleagues with fancy law degrees. They stampeded to pass the Epstein Files Transparency Act, which requires the Justice Department to release any information in its possession — real or fake, confirmed or unconfirmed — related to the notorious sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, who died in jail in 2019. The Justice Department also has to publish any material, again regardless of its veracity, about anyone “referenced” in legal proceedings involving Epstein, and any “entities” with “ties” to Epstein’s “networks.” The bill authorizes redactions for information that could identify victims or interfere with current investigations.

    Needless to say, the Justice Department is not set up for document dumps. It’s set up to investigate crimes, build cases and punish those responsible. But now Congress’s herd of independent minds has ordered the department to toss its records into the political maelstrom, overriding grand jury secrecy and witness expectations of privacy. The result so far is an inconclusive muddle that has predictably satisfied no one. Consider what this pursuit of “transparency” has accomplished so far.

    I am not holding my breath until someone finds a pony amongst the piles of horseshit.

  • It's a devouring black hole. Jeff Jacoby writes the obvious: Trump's ego isn't just unpresidential. It's un-Republican.

    DONALD TRUMP'S obsession with putting his name and face on things long ago passed the point of parody. So far in his second term as president, Trump has moved to affix his name or picture to public buildings and government websites, to national park passes and a savings account for babies, and to a special $1 million visa, the so-called Trump Gold Card, for rich foreigners. The Treasury Department plans to mint a commemorative $1 coin depicting Trump next year. There is even a proposed "Trump class" of US Navy warships.

    The president's "long love affair with his own name and likeness," as The New York Times recently described it, is certainly vulgar and narcissistic. But more than that, it is utterly at odds with the Republican presidential tradition. For most of the party's history, Republican chief executives generally refrained from personal self-glorification; many of them regarded it as a vice — something corrosive to judgment, dignity, and republican government itself.

    In that sense, Trump's self-worship, besides being a severe character flaw, amounts to a repudiation of one of the most consistent and admirable moral instincts of GOP leadership.

    Jeff doesn't even mention the Kennedy Center renaming.

    Really, there's something wrong with that guy.

  • Betteridge's Law of Headlines applies. Veronique de Rugy asks the musical question: Should We Listen When Wealthy People Offer to Pay More in Taxes?

    There is something emotionally satisfying about watching a wealthy person call for higher taxes on people like himself. It feels civic-minded, even noble. A recent commentary by former Utah senator, Massachusetts governor and Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney fits squarely into this tradition. Faced with a looming fiscal cliff, Romney concludes that entitlement reform is unavoidable and that higher taxes on affluent Americans must be part of the solution.

    Don't be fooled, though. Yes, the status quo is unsustainable, and pretending otherwise is reckless. But taxing the rich can't meaningfully solve our underlying fiscal problems. Worse, pursuing that illusion risks making those problems harder to fix while foreclosing opportunities for the next generation.

    Start with a basic arithmetic problem that never goes away: High-income households already shoulder a disproportionate share of the federal income-tax burden. The top 1% pay roughly 40% of income-tax revenues; the top 10% pay well over two-thirds. And when taxes and other transfers of wealth are factored in, the system has become increasingly progressive over time.

    Vero points out that the current wealthy class has already "made it", and can absorb any realistic tax increase pretty easily. But it will make it harder for everyone else to prosper when you take entitlement means-testing off the table for current and near-future recipients.

  • Something I Kinda Got Wrong in 2025. Looking back at my early-April reaction to Trump's "Liberation Day" tariff announcement, I was pretty pessimistic about the economic future. (I wasn't alone in that.) I pretty much expected the stock market swoon to be the New Normal. But it wasn't.

    Don't get me wrong: Trump's tariffs are still stupid.

    But Don Boudreaux is a devout free trader, and so his headline commands attention: The National-Security Exception to Free Trade Is Real. So Are Its Tradeoffs.

    The most credible exception to the case for free trade policy is rooted in concerns about national security. If complete freedom of trade jeopardizes our national security, some protectionism arguably is justified because, as even Adam Smith insisted, although free trade is enriching and important, “defence … is of much more importance than opulence.”

    As Smith’s statement implies, protectionism pursued for purposes of national defense will reduce the country’s material well-being, but this cost is worth paying if the protectionist measures result in a large enough enhancement of national security. (Caleb Petitt argues, not implausibly, that Smith really didn’t believe that national-security concerns justify a retreat from free trade. But that’s a topic for another time.)

    While most free traders today admit the national-security exception, they also warn that it’s very easy to abuse, as shouts of “national security!” are given enormous deference by the public and politicians. Free traders also warn that, even when the national-security exception isn’t intentionally abused, extraordinary care is required to prevent its application from undermining its goal of promoting national security. The surprising practical difficulty of identifying trade-policy measures that are most likely to adequately protect national security is revealed by two recent developments regarding US trade with China.

    Don looks at Nvidia selling AI chips to China, and us getting "rare earth" minerals from them.

  • It impresses the TSA folks, though. C.J. Ciaramella notes recent courtroom testimony: DHS says REAL ID is too unreliable to confirm U.S. citizenship.

    Only the government could spend 20 years creating a national ID that no one wanted and that apparently doesn't even work as a national ID.

    But that's what the federal government has accomplished with the REAL ID, which the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) now considers unreliable, even though getting one requires providing proof of citizenship or lawful status in the country.

    In a December 11 court filing, Philip Lavoie, the acting assistant special agent in charge of DHS' Mobile, Alabama, office, stated that, "REAL ID can be unreliable to confirm U.S. citizenship."

    The argument that REAL ID was necessary to prevent terrorism was always bogus.