We’ve been amused for years by the tax-avoidance schemes of the wealthy, which largely consist of creative ways to tax the poor. A straightforward graduated income tax would work wonders, but of course that would have the same effect as consolidating credit-card debt: scaring the shit out of you.

So instead we scatter taxes all over the place, pretending it doesn’t all come from the same wallets anyway, especially the thinnest.

And with state budgets bleeding red in the billions, state lawmakers are discovering a new untapped revenue stream, just around the curve from those wallets.

Ladies and gentlemen — well, gentlemen, mostly — welcome to the Porn Tax.

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As we know, George W. Bush prefers to await the Verdict of History on his presidency, instead of fleeting matters like popularity polls or just about every objective statistic you can cite.

And if the first round of voting is any indication, there’s room for hope: Shrub is only the seventh worst president in two centuries, following James Buchanan, Andrew Johnson, and four other trivia questions.

Give the dude credit: We were sure he’d place in the bottom five.

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Through some miracle of God’s will, Australians don’t fall off the bottom of the Earth. But, as our Oz Correspondent informs us, one of the Lord’s minions is doing his best to try.

Our guest preacher today is Pastor Danny Nalliah, who dreamed last October of raging fires. Upon awakening, he realized it was…

“a flash from the Spirit of God: that His conditional protection has been removed from the nation of Australia, in particular Victoria, for approving the slaughter of innocent children in the womb”.

We’ve seen Gallipoli, so we’re not entirely sure when that conditional protection began. Perhaps it was when Steve Irwin died for Aussie sins.

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On this, the bicentennial of Darwin’s birth, we celebrate the 61 percent of Americans who either do not accept or have no opinion about evolution.

We celebrate the Brazilian priest who floated out to sea in a chair held aloft by hundreds of helium party balloons.

We celebrate the New York bird hunter who grabbed his loaded gun by the muzzle and started swinging it angrily at his dog, only to have it shoot him dead when it struck the ground instead.

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55 A.D.: Tiberius Claudius Caesar Britannicus — you know him as I, Claudius — dies under mysterious circumstances in Rome, to be succeeded by Nero.

1812: Massachusetts governor Elbridge Gerry signs into law a redistricting bill, giving rise to the term “gerrymander”.

1861: The House of Representatives unanimously passes a resolution guaranteeing noninterference with slavery in any state.

1902: Police assault universal-suffrage demonstrators in Brussels, not giving rise to the term “Brussels sprouts”.

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PETA dresses in KKK garb outside Westminster Dog Show [USA Today]

Today’s installment of DisappointmentWatch involves the Office of Inquisition Faith-Based Initiatives, one of Shrub’s notable efforts to trim the Bill of Rights from the top.

You’ll recall that Candidate Barry didn’t have a problem with the office as such — and neither did we, not if it was retrofitted to serve its stated purpose instead of providing fundie pork:

“If you get a federal grant, you can’t use that grant money to proselytize to the people you help, and you can’t discriminate against them — or against the people you hire — on the basis of their religion.”

That was Barry last July. And here it is February already! Guess what?

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