TAX GAS MORE: All of your opposition merely convinced me I was right. Here's my Time column on why raising gas taxes would be a very good thing. Here's Ramesh Ponnuru's critique. Make your own mind up.

The worst knock against a gas tax is that it is, well, a tax. Who likes that? But with soaring deficits and a war to pay for, taxes are not an option — they're a necessity. The only relevant question is, Which taxes? The case for a gas tax is a straightforward one. Gas prices are strikingly lower in America than anywhere else in the world; such taxes are relatively easy to collect; since an overwhelming majority of Americans drive, few avoid the tax; and by adding a cost to the wanton consumption of gasoline, you actually encourage conservation, accelerate fuel efficiency, reduce pollution, cut traffic and help wean Americans off the oil that requires the U.S. to be so intimately involved in that wonderful cesspool of rival hatreds, the Middle East. So what's not to like?

• Canada.com. Headline: Blues centre Mike Danton charged in alleged murder-for-hire scheme. [He's a winger; I thought you Canadians knew hockey. Also, it's spelled "center" on American teams.]
  
  
• St. Louis Post-Dispatch. Headline: Danton was learning to play waiting game.
  
  
• (San Jose) Mercury News. Headline: Blues player arrested in alleged murder-for-hire plot

"Canada is exporting to us the crack of marijuana and it is a dangerous problem," Walters told reporters in Miami, where he kicked off a campaign to cut marijuana use by Hispanic youths.

Don't be fooled.

I usually preach moderation, but not when moderate is 2 drinks a day? (Only a pint and a half of beer.) My definition of moderation is enjoying something not into excess. As long as I'm not getting drunk every night, missing work, or delinquent on my bills, I don't see the problem. I can stop at any time, and usually about once per year, go an entire month without drinking. (Just to prove I still can.) Besides, I'd rather live fast and die young than lead a long, boring, long, dull, long life.

1. Get a cash advance against your paycheck.
2. Get a cash advance on your credit card.
3. Pawn your diamond ring.
4. Take out a personal loan.
5. Charge your tax bill.
6. Use your home equity.
7. Gamble on the float (write a check without funds in your account)
8. Dig into your retirement account.
9. Hit up the folks.
10. Pay off the government monthly.

1. In plasma. Much of which is not even yours.
2. With a bag of cash in which the dye pack is yet to explode.
3. In North Korean Won.
4. In allocations of barrels Iraqi oil, dated 1998.
5. Just sign over some Air America checks.
6. Pay? Constitutionally, I am not obligated to pay income tax.

President Bush and the Republican Congress, who believe fervently in cutting taxes for the rich, are quietly presiding over a most remarkable kind of tax increase for high-income Americans.

The Alternative Minimum Tax is becoming a miserable annual tradition for a growing group of prosperous taxpayers. (If you've just received a nervous phone message from your accountant—that's probably what she's calling about.) The AMT traces its origins to a minimum tax enacted in 1970 when Americans were scandalized to learn that some 155 high-earning taxpayers owed no income taxes in 1966. The AMT was originally designed so that people who had a lot of income but loads of deductions—through the standard exemption, the ability to write off property taxes and state income taxes—couldn't reduce their taxable income to next to nothing. Historically, it applied to a tiny minority of taxpayers. But with every passing year, more and more citizens are ushered behind the velvet ropes. This congressional backgrounder suggests that 1.8 million Americans paid it in 2001. Newsweek's nearly infallible Allan Sloan wrote earlier this month that "about 2.3 million returns for 2003 got nipped by the AMT." The numbers are set to rise exponentially in the next several years. A two-income couple in New Jersey—he's an accountant, she's a public school teacher—with combined income of $230,000, three kids, and annual property taxes of $15,000, could easily fall into paying the AMT. Even government bureaucrats get nailed. Last year, IRS Taxpayer Advocate Nina Olson paid the AMT.

Republicans don't want to fix the AMT because fixing the AMT would require undoing their beloved tax cuts. Without the billions generated by millions of taxpayers getting slammed by the AMT, the marginal rate cuts would be impossible to sustain for the next several years, let alone make permanent. Without the AMT, the deficit picture would look far worse than it does.

Let's go ahead and get one thing out of the way: the Blues will never win the Cup in our lifetimes.

Whew. Boy, it feels good to get that off of my chest.

Let me say it again. The Blues will never win the Cup in our lifetimes.

Anyone who knows me knows that this is what I say any time the words "Blues" and "Stanley Cup" come up in conversation. It's not that I'm particularly knowledgeable about hockey or am smarter than anyone else. (I think I've proven that fact time and again in this space.) I'm just fairly certain that I'm right.

Big tot day, Mondays. No school, no Nana, just us - and since I decree that the TV shall be silenced after two morning programs, that means puzzles and books and coloring and painting and so on. Usually I have the radio or the news on while we play, but like I said last week, I hit a point where I can't take it right now. I just can't take another "we're there for the oil" call. I can't take another 37 minute discussion about whether the PDB said OBL wanted USA DOA PDQ. I browse the news sites and the blogs, then go play with my daughter for the rest of the morning. I think April will be my month off from marinating in the news 24-7, if only to get my blood-pressure down from hummingbird levels.

The multicolored set of plastic bracelets many Palm Beach County middle and high school students are sporting these days aren't just a fashionable fad.

At some schools, boys and girls snap off one of their classmate's colored gel wrist bands in exchange for a corresponding sexual favor, health department officials told school board members Monday.

For example, a person wearing a white band may mean she is willing to kiss to the person who pulls it from her wrist. A red band means a lap dance and black is intercourse. The meanings may vary from school to school.

1. If you're talking to him on the phone, if his mother interrupts through call waiting as you tell him you're not wearing underwear, he'll talk to her instead.
2. He talks to her a lot on the phone.
3. He cancels a date in which you will not be wearing underwear to help her move furniture.
4. He quotes his mother a lot.
5. He compares you to his mother a lot.
6. His mother decorated his house.
7. His mother visits his home frequently.

Now, the NIAAA has backtracked a bit. It now defines a binge as five drinks in two hours or less for men, four in two hours for women. Seems more plausible, and seems like a definition that would at least put most people over .08.

Budget Totals

Old budget was $3251.488 billion
($2264.172 billion in spending, $987.316 billion in tax expenditures and cuts).

New budget is $1727.29 billion
($1318.51 billion in spending, $408.78 billion in tax expenditures and cuts).

You have cut the deficit by $1524.2 billion.

Your new deficit is $-1167.19 billion.

Oops!

You've cut so much that the federal budget now contains a substantial surplus. Many economists warn that this budget may help induce or prolong a recession, and ordinary citizens demand a refund. You might want to cut taxes or raise spending.

• "An Aluminum Dream", in which an arena usher gets the chance to meet the songstress with whom he's obssessed whose music he likes.
  
  
• "Reading Faces", wherein a literary writer reading on a college campus confronts the worst type of audience.