Sullivan’s first letter is from me.

The provocation of my note is the discussion of a “war tax” to pay for our ongoing conflicts. I think we should pay for our wars — maybe a tax hike would make us more circumspect about military engagement. My problem with a war tax is more technical — they tend to stick around after the war is over. The phone tax to pay for the Spanish American War lasted for 108 years.

Yesterday, I tried out Limbaugh again — I turn him on about once a quarter to see if he has regained his sanity. He hadn’t. He was responding to the claim that no President has started a war and cut taxes at the same time. His first line of defense was to attack the source of the claim. Only after bashing them did he come up with the weak defense that Reagan cut taxes while ramping the Cold War. Which is fine except that Reagan raised taxes. Twice.