February 23, 2026

PHIL HAMBURGER: When Is a Tax Not a Tax? When it’s a taking, like California’s proposed wealth levy.

California’s proposed billionaire tax is unconstitutional. The ballot initiative calling for one-time retroactive 5% tax on the net worth of the state’s billionaires has prompted much unease, but the legal arguments against it have remained elusive. It’s therefore important to recognize that this tax is an uncompensated taking or at least a deprivation of property without due process, contrary to the Fifth and 14th amendments.

Disgruntled taxpayers often grouse that taxation is state-sanctioned theft, and libertarians frequently complain about regulatory takings. But the billionaire tax is a problem for more basic reasons—reasons that are crucial for all of us, not only the hyperwealthy.

Although taxes are generally lawful, that isn’t true of everything called a tax. Consider a hypothetical Bill Gates Tax (imagined by legal scholars Calvin Massey and Eric Kades) that imposes an income tax of 100% on Mr. Gates and no one else. In form, it’s a tax; in reality, it’s a confiscation.

The example of the Bill Gates Tax is extreme in demanding 100% of income from one person. It’s less extreme, however, than the California tax in taking only income, not wealth, and in being prospective.

Three considerations coincide to make it especially clear that the California proposal is confiscatory.

It’s also an admission that the California machine has stifled growth and now has to confiscate available wealth in order to maintain desired levels of fraud and defalcation.

(Archived version here.)

Posted at 12:34 pm by Glenn Reynolds

THE POLITICO IS NOT HAPPY: RFK Jr.’s billionaire running mate is making a comedy about the pandemic.

Covid contrarians tight with Robert F. Kennedy Jr. are pitching Hollywood on an unlikely leading man: National Institutes of Health Director Jay Bhattacharya.

Nicole Shanahan, Kennedy’s running mate in the 2024 presidential campaign, is searching for investors to fund a movie that pokes fun at the pandemic response with a star based on Bhattacharya, who rose to prominence with his anti-lockdown manifesto and relentless tweets opposing social distancing.

The script for the satirical comedy, “The Rash,” is by renowned author Walter Kirn, who wrote the novel “Up in the Air” that became an Oscar-nominated movie starring George Clooney. The new Kirn screenplay stars a “no-nonsense” public health professor at a Stanford-like California university — mirroring Bhattacharya — who speaks out against mass hysteria amid a mysterious outbreak of a contagious skin condition.

I’m not at all sure that this is the team to be making it or if the results will be watchable, but given how elites acted and continually reversed their decisions in 2020, there’s a huge opportunity for a black humor comedy along the lines of Dr. Strangelove, Robert Altman’s M*A*S*H or The Death of Stalin.

Fauci and Birx as James Bond supervillains, lockdown obsessives having trysts, cocktail parties – and sex parties – celebrities singing “Imagine” from their mansions, newspapers siccing social media mobs on those celebrities who refused to go along with lockdowns and vaccine mandates, healthcare officials who pivoted on a dime from lockdowns to championing riots in the street – there’s so much material here to mine.

Posted at 12:30 pm by Ed Driscoll

WHY IS THE DEMOCRATIC PARTY SUCH A CESSPIT OF RACISM? Newsom Tells Black Audience ‘I’m Like You…960 SAT…I Cannot Read a Speech.’

California Gov. Gavin Newsom (D-Racist) basically told a group of black voters in Georgia, Vote for me. I’m stupid just like you!
While out promoting his autobiography and his likely 2028 presidential campaign, Newsom started out with the usual-usual pandering Democrats employ with black voters. Then it quickly devolved into the kind of racist condescension we’ve seen from modern-day Democrats, reaching back to when they created the Jim Crow South.

This is really something…

I’m not trying to impress you. I’m just trying to impress upon you I’m like you. I’m no better than you. I’m a 960 SAT guy. And I’m not trying to offend anyone; trying to act all there if you got 940. But literally a 960 SAT guy. You’ve never seen me read a speech because I cannot read a speech. Maybe I’m in the wrong business to be in.

The highest possible SAT score is 1600, and here Newsom is slowing his speech, talking in bite-sized pieces, and saying to black voters, I’m just like you. I had a lousy SAT score, and I have trouble reading.

That’s what he honestly thinks of black people. That’s what he sees when he sees black people… He sees a dumb and uneducated underclass.

Unbelievable… Actually, it’s not if you know anything about the modern Democrat Party.

Rap superstar Nicki Minaj tore into Newsom.

“His way of bonding with black ppl is to tell them how stupid he is & that he can’t read.” She wrote on X. “He’s not just TELLING them that they’re all probably stupid & probably can’t read, he’s LITERALLY SLOW-ING-DOWN-HIS-SPEECH to make them understand the words that are coming out of his mouth!!!!”

The corporate media and Democrats (but I repeat myself) will do their best to spin this away. I can already see Abby Phillips on CNN saying, Newsom was obviously relating to and showing empathy with everyone forgotten and left behind in this racist country. Whatever. The problem for Newsom is that it’s not 2009 anymore. That clip will never stop haunting him and is tailor-made for a 30-second campaign ad.

Flashback to last week, when Newsom (or the staffer who writes his tweets) claimed he was dyslexic because Ted Cruz (or the staffer who writes his tweets) called him historically illiterate:

Exit question:

 

Posted at 12:00 pm by Ed Driscoll

HE TURNS OUT TO BE RIGHT ABOUT A GREAT MANY THINGS: Trump Is Right About the Mexican-American War,

After more than a century and a half of virtual apologies and silence from America’s leading political figures, President Trump finally broke one of the oldest taboos in American politics by issuing a statement celebrating the 178th anniversary of America’s victory in the frequently maligned Mexican-American War. Although the war was condemned at the time and in later generations as a land grab perpetrated by President James Polk, in truth it was brought about by Mexico: Mexican double standards, Mexican chauvinism, Mexican intransigence, Mexican belligerence, and a Mexican attack on the army of the United States.

The road to war was set in motion by the 1845 U.S. annexation of Texas, which had been de facto independent since at least 1836 but over which Mexico still claimed sovereignty. Few, however, are familiar with the history of that time and the many factors muddying questions about the justice of the war, including Mexico’s status at the time, claims of Texan independence, and the effect these facts would have on later Mexican claims.

Some good history here, well told.

Posted at 11:40 am by Stephen Green

NO ENEMIES TO THE LEFT:

Based, indeed:

Posted at 11:24 am by Stephen Green

DON’T BE A SOFT TARGET: Hope Isn’t a Plan: Is Your Church a Sitting Duck? “I’ve been to a handful of churches that have top notch safety teams and like many, I’ve been to churches that not only had multiple unlocked and unmonitored entrances — some dark by the way — that had no safety team at all. Unfortunately, unprepared or ill-prepared is still the norm. Yes, even at events and major religious holidays that bring crowds.”

Posted at 10:38 am by Stephen Green

PRIORITIES:

Posted at 10:22 am by Stephen Green

VIDEO: Four Years Of Crashing Margin. “If we have a look at this table, it shows what’s been happening with producer prices over the past 12 months. And the scale on the right hand side here starts at zero and goes down to minus 4%. And as you can see, in every single one of the past 12 months, Chinese producers have been cutting their prices. This chart is also referred to as the factory gate prices. So this is the price of products when they’re leaving Chinese factories. And the latest data for January 2026 shows that year on year prices were down by 1.4%.”

Posted at 9:36 am by Stephen Green

THIS:

Posted at 9:21 am by Stephen Green

KRUISER’S MORNING BRIEFING: U-S-A! Yeah, That Was Fun. “These Olympic Games have seen an unfortunate share of pathetic, ungrateful Americans. Thankfully, our biggest winners have been red, white, and blue patriots. Our hockey champions have really carried the flag. The future of the United States of America is in great hands with the young men and women we’ve just seen win hockey gold.”

Posted at 9:05 am by Stephen Green

HAPPY MONDAY! Warm up with this blast from the past.

Posted at 8:46 am by Glenn Reynolds

K12 IMPLOSION UPDATE:

Posted at 8:39 am by Glenn Reynolds

RELIGION OF PEACE UPDATE: Taliban Legalizes Wife Beating: Afghanistan’s Shocking 2026 Penal Code and the World’s Outcry.

In a move that has shocked the international community and deepened the plight of women in Afghanistan, the Taliban has enacted a new penal code that effectively legalizes domestic violence against wives and children — provided no bones are broken or open wounds inflicted. Signed by the group’s supreme leader, Hibatullah Akhundzada, on January 7, 2026, this 90-page document, titled the De Mahakumu Jazaai Osulnama or “Criminal Procedure Code for Courts,” has been circulated to provincial courts for immediate implementation across the country.

The code not only permits husbands to physically punish their wives and daughters but also erects near-impossible barriers for any woman seeking justice — effectively making the family home a legal cage. The revelation, first published by Kabul-based human rights organization Rawadari on January 21 after they obtained the original Pashtu document, triggered an immediate global firestorm. The United Nations, world governments, human rights organizations, and prominent public figures lined up to denounce what many are now openly calling gender apartheid — a legally enforced system of sex-based oppression that has no parallel anywhere in the world in 2026.

This is the full story of what that code says, who it is already hurting, and why the world’s outrage — however loud — is struggling to find an answer powerful enough to reach inside Afghanistan’s courts.

Cue outcry from Western feminists in three… two… never.

Posted at 8:34 am by Stephen Green