To be streamed live at noon eastern, 10 here in the mountain time zone. Via AEI. You can watch the live stream here.

Let me quickly establish today’s posting theme. From CNS: The U.S. Treasury has released a final statement for the month of March that demonstrates that financial madness has gripped the federal government. During the month, according to the Treasury, the federal government grossed $194 billion in tax revenue and paid out $65.898 billion in tax refunds (including $62.011 to individuals and $3.887 to businesses) thus netting $128.179 billion in tax

Another way to skin a cat? CNS: CNSNews.com asked Gohmert whether defunding the automatic spending in Obamacare was negotiable for him and whether he would vote for a continuing resolution that didn’t rescind the spending. He said the defunding needed to happen but that it could be done as a stand-alone measure. “There are different ways to do that,” [Louie] Gohmert [(R-Texas)] said. “Jack Kingston (R-Ga.) came up with a

Stephen Moore reminds us: “More Americans work for the government than in manufacturing, farming, fishing, forestry, mining and utilities combined.” Still, any suggestion that the US is turning into a bureaucratic state committed to growing centralized authority emanating from a federal government and its regulatory agencies is, of course, ludicrous — as plenty of “pragmatists” in both political parties are willing to assure you. In Latin, if they feel they

= the GOP, elected on a mandate to significantly cut spending, must accept a $31 billion cut to a budget that includes $1.65 trillion in deficit spending, after having run on cutting $100 billion (itself a piffle). Or, to put it another way, the “realities of Washington politics,” according to Washington establishment politicians, is that fiscal responsibility gets trumped by their own refusal to cut spending in any significant way,

Unfortunately, the GOP also moves not to. So. What’s say we call it a day and go get a couple dozen hotwings and a pitcher of Sam Adams?

Graham: “Frankly, I don’t think placing certain restrictions on the use of maple syrup or powdered sugar is at all unreasonable, given their sweet, sweet tendency to lure basically well-intentioned plump people into making poor dietary decisions. “– And if it just so happens that, as a potential victim of fat person gluttony, such restrictions work to my benefit , well, that’s purely coincidental — and I don’t like that

After all, it’s a free country. Right? Right?

Money corrupts! Well, unless the left is spending it. Then it is blessed and good and spent to fend off the evil of monied interests in politics: The great campaign spending limitation experiment is dead, and it died without a whimper from those who have spent lifetimes decrying monies influence on politics — all because their favored candidate wielded the knife. In Wisconsin, Republicans are re-learning this lesson as incumbent

Technically, the York blob is one half of a York 100lb dumbbell. Lifting the blob has long been considered one of the markers of real strength. To train for the blob lift, other block weights and devices are used, including smaller York “blobs”. As the weight progresses, so does the width of the blob — and though the changes in width are objectively quite small, the changes in terms of