GARY TAUBES: Is Sugar Toxic? “If Lustig is right, then our excessive consumption of sugar is the primary reason that the numbers of obese and diabetic Americans have skyrocketed in the past 30 years. But his argument implies more than that. If Lustig is right, it would mean that sugar is also the likely dietary cause of several other chronic ailments widely considered to be diseases of Western lifestyles — heart disease, hypertension and many common cancers among them.” Tom Maguire has more, including evidence that Jack LaLanne was ahead of his time. But we knew that!

BINGO: “But they are not apologizing for their own manliness. They are purporting to apologize for other men, whom they are demonizing. Really what you’ve got are the insufficiently manly men, who think that by insulting other men, they will get the women.”

Sort of like the “patriotic millionaires” who want taxes raised on other people.

PAUL RAHE: Prostate Cancer: New Procedures For Diagnosis And Cure. “Here is some news that, before too long, some of you may be able to use. There is a new technique for diagnosing prostate cancer. It is being deployed on an experimental basis at the National Institutes of Health (NIH) in Washington, DC. And it works. I know. I am a guinea pig.”

Faster, please.

IN THE MAIL: Fatal Risk: A Cautionary Tale of AIG’s Corporate Suicide.

UNSURPRISING: AP poll shows 6 in 10 Americans want spending cuts, not tax hikes.

THEN: FALSE RAPE ACCUSATION. NOW — MURDER? The woman who accused three Duke University lacrosse players of raping and beating her in a small bathroom of a house off campus stabbed a “boyfriend” earlier this month.

REASON TV: 47 Ways To Say “IRS.”

IS THE TAX CODE VOID FOR VAGUENESS? Courts strike down laws on vagueness grounds when an intelligent person must necessarily be uncertain of their meaning. Vagueness is unfair both because it does not allow honest people to conform their conduct to the law, and because it vests excessive discretion in the law’s administrators. With that in mind, consider this:

While researching today’s column, I came across a 2010 report (PDF) from the National Taxpayers Union that summarizes various experiments showing that professional tax preparers disagree about the proper way to file returns for hypothetical families. Worse, the people conducting the experiments—including the Government Accountability Office, which consulted with experts at the Joint Committee on Taxation—could not definitively say who was right and who was wrong.

And I love this bit: “All 46 tested tax professionals got a different answer, and none got it right. The professional who directed the test admitted ‘that his computation is not the only possible correct answer’ since the tax law is so murky.”

Yet you can be jailed, or fined, or otherwise punished if you get an answer that is deemed “wrong.” This sounds like the very definition of void for vagueness. But would any court have the backbone to so hold?

What’s funny is that it’s the critics of this system who are often characterized as crackpots.

FAUX JOB NUMBERS COULD LEAD TO REAL TROUBLE. “While it’s nice that the government thinks there is an employment boom coming, this won’t be a good development if that boom turns out to be imaginary yet still causes the Federal Reserve to prematurely tighten credit conditions.”

PRESIDENT BORING: What is it about Barack Obama that caused his vice president Joe Biden to fall asleep during the president’s speech Tuesday? “Barack Obama has become the most tedious president in my lifetime. He is like those college professors whose classes you did everything you could to avoid but, if you had to go, sat as far back as possible in order to get a little shut-eye yourself. But what is it about Obama that makes him so boring? I submit it is something quite simple — he has nothing to say.”

CHANGE: Obama, Spending Three Times as Fast as Bush, Blames Bush.

WE’RE NOT TALKING CHAMPAGNE BUBBLES HERE: Chinese Real Estate Bubble Pops: Beijing Real Estate Prices Plunge 27% In One Month. (Via Bill Quick).

OBAMA FACES a grueling day today.

MICHAEL TOTTEN: Lebanon Is More Important Than Iraq. Well, it’s getting less attention from the Obama Administration, which given their track record in the Mideast is probably a good sign.

Meanwhile, I highly recommend Totten’s book, The Road To Fatima Gate.

JIM TREACHER: Today in the New Civility: Maddow & Maher share a chuckle over how much they hate Republicans.

HIGHER EDUCATION UPDATE: The Unexamined Veil Of Tenure.

CRACKING the tax-hike code.

MARKDOWNS ON jumpstarters and emergency power supplies.

THERE’S THAT WORD AGAIN: Jobless Claims Unexpectedly Rise; Inflation Pressure Grows. I kind of expected it to be unexpected.

And inflation rising? Welcome back, Carter! Though as I say, that’s now a best-case scenario.

UPDATE: Losing The Present.

JOHN HINDERAKER: “One of the frustrating things about our political scene is that the Democratic Party is making war on our children, and our children don’t seem to have noticed.”

I’ve made a small suggestion.

RETIREMENT REFORM: Make 70 The New 65. “There is simply no good reason 21st-century workers should operate under obsolete 1930s-era expectations and 1970s rules. We’re living longer, working longer, and in general, holding down jobs that are far less physically taxing than those of previous generations.”

UPDATE: I had some related thoughts.

HEH: “Wait a second, these rich folks formed a tax exempt corporation (‘nonprofit organization’ to use the lefty term) to protest the fact that rich people can evade taxes? . . . I realize that liberalism is for rich social climbers, but this one seems to be climbing the Empire State building.”

DONALD LUSKIN: Remembering The Real Ayn Rand:

Tomorrow’s release of the movie version of “Atlas Shrugged” is focusing attention on Ayn Rand’s 1957 opus and the free-market ideas it espouses. Book sales for “Atlas” have always been brisk—and all the more so in the past few years, as actual events have mirrored Rand’s nightmare vision of economic collapse amid massive government expansion. Conservatives are now hailing Rand as a tea party Nostradamus, hence the timing of the movie’s premiere on tax day.

When Rand created the character of Wesley Mouch, it’s as though she was anticipating Barney Frank (D., Mass). Mouch is the economic czar in “Atlas Shrugged” whose every move weakens the economy, which in turn gives him the excuse to demand broader powers. Mr. Frank steered Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to disaster with mandates for more lending to low-income borrowers. After Fannie and Freddie collapsed under the weight of their subprime mortgage books, Mr. Frank proclaimed last year: “The way to cure that is to give us more authority.” Mouch couldn’t have said it better himself.

But it’s a misreading of “Atlas” to claim that it is simply an antigovernment tract or an uncritical celebration of big business. In fact, the real villain of “Atlas” is a big businessman, railroad CEO James Taggart, whose crony capitalism does more to bring down the economy than all of Mouch’s regulations. With Taggart, Rand was anticipating figures like Angelo Mozilo, the CEO of Countrywide Financial, the subprime lender that proved to be a toxic mortgage factory. Like Taggart, Mr. Mozilo engineered government subsidies for his company in the name of noble-sounding virtues like home ownership for all.

There’s a big difference between favoring free markets, and favoring big business.

CHANGE: Gallup: Obama’s Approval Drops Below 50 Percent Among Poorest Americans; No Longer Enjoys Majority Approval In Any Income Class.

CLIVE CROOK: Obama’s Speech Was A Waste Of Breath.

Obama had a difficult assignment in this speech, partly because of the exaggerated hopes for it (see previous post). Even allowing for that, it was weak both politically and substantively. My instant unguarded reaction, in fact, was to find it not just weak but pitiful. I honestly wondered why he bothered.

There was no sign of anything worth calling a plan to curb borrowing faster than in the budget. He offered no more than a list of headings under which $4 trillion of deficit reduction (including the $2 trillion already in his budget) might be found–domestic non-security spending, defense, health costs, and tax reform. Fine, sure. But what he said was devoid of detail. He spent more of his time stressing what he would not agree to than describing clear proposals of his own.

And this is from a guy who doesn’t like the Ryan plan.

UPDATE: Krauthammer: “I thought it was a disgrace.”