Pun Salad

Katherine Mangu-Ward makes The case for good faith.

Katherine's Exhibit A is J.D. Vance, whose announced views on Trump and economics pirouetted just when he felt he needed to be elected.

Also of note:

• A bad idea. And it's being pushed by my state's outgoing US Senator:

  For 5 decades, the Hyde Amendment has denied reproductive health care services to those who need them, creating chaos and putting lives at risk.
  
  It's long past time to end this cruel policy and make clear that abortion care is essential health care for millions of Americans.

  — Sen. Jeanne Shaheen (@SenatorShaheen) September 30, 2026

  Translation: she wants American taxpayers to pay for baby-killing. What a ghoul.

• Another bad idea. And it's being pushed by a "bipartisan" array of CongressCritters: Federal Film Tax Credit Would Push Industry's Labor Costs on All Americans.

  Hollywood has been in decline for years as studios cut spending and shift production overseas. Now the companies and unions that run the town are seeking a bailout from federal taxpayers in the form of a costly “incentive,” and their friends in Congress are happy to oblige.

  Last week, lawmakers released the Motion Picture, Television, and Entertainment Revitalization Act — a gilded name for an open-ended subsidy to the film industry. The bill would create a federal tax credit for movies and television shows produced predominantly in the United States, covering 20 percent of nearly all their labor costs. Bonuses for special conditions could raise a project’s subsidy rate up to 30 percent. One such bonus is for filming in declared disaster areas, which — because of last year’s wildfires — includes all of Los Angeles County until 2030.

  The NR editorialists note the irony of many Democrat pols who usually decry "trickle-down economics" supporting this, where the whole theory is that the tax credits will generate benefits (for, say, Tom Cruise) that will shower down on the nearby plebians (say, Tom Cruise's Ferrari dealer).

  But at least it doesn't kill babies.

• There are no "controlled substances"; there are only controlled citizens. Thomas Szasz said (something like) that long ago. But as Jacob Sullum notes, it's a problem: Hazy Federal Criteria for Classifying Drugs Invite Arbitrary Bureaucratic Judgments: A GAO Report Notes That the Controlled Substances Act Does Not Define 'Potential for Abuse' or 'Accepted Medical Use'

  Half a century ago, Congress approved the Controlled Substances Act, which established a system for classifying drugs based on their "medical use" and "potential for abuse." But as a recent report from the Government Accountability Office notes, the statute does not clearly define either criterion, opening the door to debatable and changeable regulatory judgments with far-reaching criminal justice implications.

  Jacob details the vagueness and (therefor) inherent arbitrariness this implies. And, of course, it's all fun and games until it's time to start sending people to jail. Bottom line:

  The GAO thinks the FDA should specify "the criteria and process for determining a substance's 'potential for abuse.'" The lack of clarity highlighted by the report is astonishing, given how long Americans have been living with the CSA, which criminalizes a wide range of peaceful conduct and prescribes penalties based on arbitrary bureaucratic distinctions.

• You could just ignore them and hope for the best. Whatever. Look at Kevin D. Williamson's article as a likely prediction and good advice: How to Think About Impeachment No. 3—and the One After That. (Dispatch gifted link)

  The Democrats are sitting on a clutch of very promising-looking political eggs, but they won’t be hatched until the first Tuesday in November. You never know about chickens, but the widely held consensus is that the Republican majority in the House is fixing to be as dead as the fried ones over at KFC, and more than a few observers are betting on a Senate flip, too.

  It is of some interest that Republican dogs are not barking much about impeachment. Donald Trump’s foundering popularity is such that Republicans rat-paddling away from the sinking ship of his administration evidently have calculated that there is not a lot of cheese to be got from squeaking about the threat of a third impeachment. Rep. Jim Jordan, who is only the second most detestable Republican from Ohio on the political scene, complained last week that Democrats would conduct a campaign of “nonstop weaponized investigations” once in the majority. Coming from a Trump loyalist, that is a little like hearing the ghost of Sonny Barger complaining that a few of the mourners didn’t wear ties to his funeral.

  Mostly, Republicans are not talking much about the possibility of another Trump impeachment, mainly because doing so would perforce remind voters that Donald Trump is still the president of these United States and that they are sycophants groveling along behind in his debased wagon train and making barely a peep as he and his circle loot and murder their way around the globe.

  In case you need reminding why impeachment is richly deserved:

  There are three broad categories of misdeeds to consider, those being personal corruption (the improper enrichment of the Trump family and its allies in matters ranging from the largesse of Russian oligarchs to questionable government contracts awarded to Trump-connected firms), lawlessness (the illegal wars in Venezuela and Iran, the illegal imposition of a new national system of taxation in the form of unauthorized tariffs, ongoing attempts to rule by decree, etc.), and incompetence (Pete Hegseth is always ready for his close-up).

  A new month, and a new round of Dispatch Gifted Links! I hope to choose the rest as wisely as I did this one.

• Justin Wolfers is right. I want to get that out of the way, because he recently admitted: My Libertarian Friends Were Right. Key paragraphs:

  My libertarian-leaning friends have consistently argued against a powerful federal government in favor of individual freedoms. I had — somewhat naively — never taken their views seriously enough. My friends who worked in government were good people, I reasoned, and surely that’s true more broadly.

  But I’ve had to admit to my libertarian friends that they were right. Concentration of power can be abused. We’re seeing it happen right now.

  And that’s led me to become more small-c conservative. The old conservative idea was that we have rules of the game that have served us well for generations. We should be slow to change them. Our children should be handed the same set of opportunities we had, if not better ones.

  Pun Salad has not always been kind to Wolfers. It's been a mostly unmixed bag. See my (1) cheer and (3) jeers here (cheer), here (jeer), here (jeer), and here (another jeer).