With evil day of April 15 nigh, it is time to demand of the various presidential candidates to show how they propose to lift the unconscionable burden of the IRS off our oppressed shoulders.

As is well known, the current U.S. income tax system and the Internal Revenue Service are a huge and unnecessary drag on both the economy and individual liberty. The IRS code and regulations have become hopelessly complex and grown to about 7 million words.

No one can possibly understand the present code, including even those at the IRS. Thus no matter how well-meaning, the taxpayer is always at risk for noncompliance -- such laws are characteristics of totalitarian, not free, societies.

Such laws need to be abolished.  There are two serious proposals for doing so:  the "Flat Tax" and the national sales tax, better known as the "Fair Tax." (See Flat Tax Revolution by Steve Forbes, and  The Fair Tax Book by Neil Boortz and Congressman John Linder.)

President Barack Hussein Obama's State Department waited until the cusp of Labor Day weekend before publicly backing Latin America's dictators in their assault on democracy.

Our thug-worshipping diplomats figured they'd slip it by us. With the nation focused on barbecues and the beach, they announced that, if Venezuelan strongman Hugo Chavez's client, Manuel Zelaya, isn't returned to power in Honduras, the United States won't recognize the results of that country's upcoming free elections.

Mr. Obama hasn't uttered a single word of criticism for the dictatorships of Chavez or his protégés in Ecuador and Bolivia, nor once demanded free elections in Cuba.  But he's going to show those wicked Hondurans, by Hugo! They can't boot out a crazy leftwing president just because he's trying to subvert their Constitution.

We open the HFR this week by asking:  Dare we hope for Hillary?

It's a fun debate over who would be easier for McCain to beat, Obambi or the PIAPS, almost as much fun as watching them rip each other's political guts out.  McCain could score a Reagnesque electoral victory over either of these two losers, but I want him to go up against Her Shrillness.  There's suddenly real hope that he will...

... Which brings us to the delightful subject of the North Carolina GOP Anti-Obama ad.  It is fabulous -- And it is really funny to see how many smart conservatives - even Rush Limbaugh who's normally really smart - have been suckered by John McCain's denouncing it...

... Let's raise a more than half-full glass of congratulations to the brave leaders of the North Carolina Republican Party.  We need more Republicans with their courage.  What we need fewer of is the editorial writers of the New York Times, whose op-eds provide the propaganda marching orders for the entire liberal media.  Looks like we get our wish...

... We close the HFR this week with absolutely the most thrilling and uplifting headline of recent times:  Food Crisis Starts Eclipsing Climate Change Worries

How great is that?  Nothing like a little mass world-wide starvation to make people doubt in the religious dogma of warm-mongering.  Finally - finally - it just may be that people aren't willing to go back to the Stone Age in order to placate Algore.

If you knew how to make life better for your fellow Americans, would you? The political class in Washington constantly claims it "cares about you," but when it comes to policy many do just the opposite.

Most people understand the Republicans messed up by allowing nondefense spending to grow faster than the economy. The Democrats ran against the irresponsible Republicans by claiming they would be "fiscally responsible."

So, rather than present a budget that would reduce the growth rate of domestic spending, they have just proposed one that would increase it, even above Republican proposals, and require increases in taxes.

You can only wonder if they are even more brain dead than the Republicans.

The classified status report from Afghanistan by Gen. Stanley McChrystal was censored by the White House before its submission. As a result, it's all bun and no burger.

The administration preferred a politically expedient blah-blah "report" that grants the White House a time-out. But there's no time-out for our soldiers and Marines (our enemies won't listen to the ref). Guess who pays the price while Obama plays Hamlet?

The result? We've got a general who's been gagged, a president trapped by his campaign promises, a muddled mission, crippling restrictions on our troops, a resurgent enemy, a worthless Afghan government -- and an AWOL establishment media that, after hammering the Bush administration, gives Obama a pass on American casualties.

Are you absolutely sure you paid the exact amount of income tax you owed last year -- not too much and not too little?

I am willing to bet the vast majority of those reading this paid either too much or too little -- not because they intended to but because the tax code is so complex it is almost impossible to know precisely the right number.

As Americans sit down to file their taxes before the infamous April 15 deadline, most will feel some anxiety and many will feel trapped - trapped in a system they cannot understand, nor can they obtain the help that will fairly represent them against the government or protect them against having their hard earned monies misspent.

At this moment, some in Congress are on a rant about the unsupported claim that more than $300 billion in taxes due last year were not collected, and demanding even more coercive measures.

Why is there not equal outrage in Congress about all the Americans who pay too much each year because they cannot understand, or the IRS has made it too costly to obtain, the deductions to which they are legally entitled?

In Iraq on Monday (8/24), Islamist terrorists staged massive suicide bombings in Baghdad. Over a hundred Iraqis died, with more than a thousand wounded. The foreign and finance ministries lie in rubble. The Iraqi government is reeling.

Our president went to the beach.

In Afghanistan, the Taliban crippled the national elections so severely that the eventual "winner" won't have much of a mandate. Despite madcap ballot-box stuffing, the final tally will probably show that less than half of the eligible population voted -- fewer than one in five in the crucial south.   On Sunday (8/23), Adm. Mike Mullen, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs, admitted that the Afghan situation is "serious and deteriorating."

That's what happens when, instead of killing our enemies, we try hugs.

Why do non-Americans so dislike Americans or, at least, the American government?  Could part of the reason be because the U.S. State Department appears to think its mission is to be rude, insulting and condescending?

This month, the State Department has set a new record by managing to insult the citizens of 123 different lands at one time in the International Narcotics Control Strategy Report: Volume II, Money Laundering and Financial Crimes.

The 450-page report discusses what other countries are doing to reduce money laundering and financial crimes, which is fine. But then the authors go on gratuitously lecturing each of the countries by name about how they could do things "better."

The Report, produced by the global nannies and nags at State, is filled with endless demands that other countries do a better job enforcing their laws, pass more laws, sign more international treaties and engage in some practices that would be illegal and unconstitutional in the U.S.   

Some examples:

The financial unraveling of California currently on display in Sacramento has prompted a long overdue debate on what caused the seeming demise of the once most prosperous state of the union.

Outrageous retirement and health care demands on the taxpayer by public employees, and sabotaging the economy through ever more onerous regulations and pie-in-the-sky environmental fantasies like renewable energy, have run against the limits of abuse the system can take and must be sharply scaled down one way or another if California is to remain economically viable.

Unfortunately, there is yet another problem that presents an even greater systemic threat to California, even if the ones above were to be somehow fixed. A problem known to all that neither the state's mercenary political establishment nor its politically correct media dare even mention. 

It is the irreparable damage to California's human capital potential that nearly 30 years of unrestrained illegal immigration has done.