On last night’s (still pre-Katie Couric) CBS Evening News, the IRS’s capo Mark Everson assured America that his agency has “stepped up the credibility of enforcement.” Not only against “the rich” (on whom it’s always open season), but also against the poor slobs who work for cash and then succumb to the temptation to “underreport” their income to the otherwise omniscient (and, of course, omnibeneficent) guv’mint.

Most of da guv’mint’s tax sheep “follow the rules” by aiding and abetting their own fleecing, Everson proudly noted. He promised a crackdown on “Others,” however, who enjoy an “unfair advantage” in managing to hold onto their own money. Audits have doubled in the last five years, and in the near future will target and, if necessary, dragoon even more runaway slaves.

You see, “any money that doesn’t come in, in this era of deficits,” our Commissar for Extortion Services nearly wept, “is just more debt for our children and grandchildren.”

The gall! Bush’s current budget is $2.7 trillion, up from last year’s $2.4 trillion but, if we care about our children, we will applaud the IRS's enforcement of a virtual Fugitive Slave Act on those who work for tips.

On the same day, libertarian Republican Congressman Ron Paul’s essay “Cough Up” appeared on LewRockwell.com. It is both chock full of facts and charmingly naïve. Perhaps someday the Honorable Mr. Paul will believe and confess that A taxes B, C, ... n because (nearly) all of them believe it is "God's Will" or "in the Natural Order of Things" for A to do so. Once that proposition is granted, it is only a matter of time before a Republic becomes an Empire.

Really, Sir: if the State Massachusetts may tax, just why may the District of Corruption not also do so? Because, you say, the Constitution makes no provision for such predation? Contempt for that response characterized the prevailing attitude no less in oh-so-civilized 1913 than in 2006.

The permission to tax, tacitly granted or cheerfully embraced, is a moral hazard.