[Eroteme]

This tax is a hard one to oppose intellectually

Only if you believe that the constitution allows for selective, punitive taxation.

[sickoflibs]

So lets see, we cant raise income and business taxes because they suppress activity, and we cant raise sin taxes because they are punitive (even though by rule # 1 they suppress the sin) BUT we can spend lots of money on everything, on top of social spending, war , nation rebuilding, homeland security, etc. If we can never raise taxes on anything then GWB/republicans had no business even passing a budget,.