Archie Bunker continues to be misconstrued as an idol.

The unmistakable tone of someone auditioning for a Supreme Court seat while extolling the flavor of boot. Disgraceful. https://www.reuters.com/legal/government/trump-appointed-judge-argues-us-constitutions-rights-do-not-extend-non-citizens-2025-12-16/

Oh Volkswagen supports this retreat? Trying to remember what I know about them in the context of emissions. Hmm. It’ll come to me. https://www.reuters.com/business/autos-transportation/eu-relent-combustion-engines-ban-after-auto-industry-pressure-2025-12-16/

Dumbest of all possible timelines.

"No tax on overtime" doesn't exist. The 2025 tax-and-spending law’s overtime tax break, pitched as relief for working-class taxpayers, is a testament to how policy falls apart when it’s designed for news network soundbites rather than administration […]

The thing to remember when Marjorie Taylor Greene says the occasional sensible or decent thing these days is that she's demonstrating that she's been capable of being sensible and decent all along, but was deliberately choosing not to be.

The new "thoughts and prayers" is letting your oaf at the top say whatever he likes and then, as an underling, spitting out some kind of "this isn't who we are" half-denouncement.

Person of interest held in the fatal shooting at Brown University is reportedly a US Army veteran. https://www.cnn.com/2025/12/14/us/benjamin-erickson-brown-university-shooting?Date=20251215&Profile=CNN

“In Rio de Janeiro, several Talipot palm trees have begun the only flowering of their entire existence.Offering a spectacle as striking as it is ephemeral.” https://en.jardineriaon.com/The-talipot-palm-trees-of-Rio-de-Janeiro-bloom-for-the-first-and-only-time.html

I got an email from some kind of ghostwriter/book agent hybrid noting how much they enjoyed my piece on SSRN on the death penalty (note link below) and asking if I'd be interested in coming up with something for a full length book. 🤔 https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=5912422

Huge swaths of the discipline of economics seems to be dedicated to, essentially, pushing back in your chair and saying "hmm, that seems to happen a lot when that other thing happens." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baumol_effect

Subsidizing behavior with one portion of the tax code just to levy a tax on it ("sin tax" or otherwise) elsewhere in the code has never made sense. https://news.bloombergtax.com/daily-tax-report/week-in-insights-australia-is-right-to-cut-sin-r-d-tax-breaks

The Manhattan Project, but our Trinity Test is making a feature-length motion picture wherein a shirtless Gaston travels to D.C. to perform a push up salute at the Presidential Walk of Fame […]

You're telling me a department did this? https://www.nytimes.com/2025/12/12/us/politics/transportation-dept-threatens-to-withhold-funds-from-ny-over-noncitizen-licenses.html

As we're working on Collections (an upcoming feature similar to "starter packs"), and improvements to the design of user profiles, we would like to hear from you! Please use our - short & anonymous! - User Experience Survey to share your thoughts. #mastodon #userexperience #design […]

Procrastinated grading by taking my "writingrules.txt" file and formatting it into something somewhat more readable by others. I present, with no fanfare and only sincere apologies: Rules for Law Writing (That Doesn't Suck) https://github.com/ajleahey/rulesforlawwriting/blob/main/rules.md

::My family inevitably discovers I have eaten all the Christmas cookies.:: Me: “Ahh…” ::sweeping arm:: “…an American Canto.”

Fun little bit to bring to your holiday dinners. "No tax on Social Security?" Nonsense. Doesn't exist. https://www.forbes.com/sites/andrewleahey/2025/12/10/the-truth-about-no-tax-on-social-security/

Someone's lifelong dream of being berated by Clarabelle Cow is about to come true.

If anything there should be /more/ tax on gambling. Like, way more. Like a 100% tax on gambling winnings. https://www.foxbusiness.com/politics/trump-says-hell-think-about-eliminating-tax-gambling-winnings

Feels a bit like Disney just lashed itself to the Titanic.

Not a surprising result, but one denied as meaningful by opponents to congestion pricing. It works! https://e360.yale.edu/digest/new-york-congestion-pricing-pollution

Poetry, really. Like reciting from an ancient rune. Probably entirely unrelatedly, I feel unwell and my internal monologue has been replaced with a kind of gurgling sound. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nt-SP4I8m8A

Last year I wrote "Fediverse for Freedom" https://andypiper.co.uk/2024/08/15/fediverse-for-freedom/ a post about why governments should own their own social presences, rather than rely on bad actors like the owner of X. I followed up with an additional post about public institutions in the […]

CBP is proposing that travelers to the US from such countries as France, Germany, South Korea and the UK submit extensive personal info, including social media histories, email addresses used in the past 10 years and parents’ birthplaces. https://public-inspection.federalregister.gov/2025-22461.pdf

A+ gingerbread house by my daughter. No notes.

Half thinking out loud half fishing for ideas. I have been toying with ways to integrate the Mastodon instance (https://esq.social) into my Law, Technology, and Regulation (undergraduate) class for Winter. Maybe group working through a privacy policy? TOS? I'm […] [Original post on esq.social]

If Pazuzu is ever made flesh or Satan slips his icy binds, we'll first get word when Jimmy Fallon asks them if they ever light candles with their fingertips or what Judas Iscariot's flesh tastes like.

Poetry Foundation's daily poem email nailed it today. https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/44750/sonnet-19-when-i-consider-how-my-light-is-spent

Are we building local economies or renting them by the square foot? If your local budget is imperiled when the definition of “received” changes in the state tax code, you haven’t built a durable economy—you’ve built a dependent one […]

And you can look up how much other folks paid—but they see you did so. Like viewing a LinkedIn profile. https://mastodon.social/@blogdiva/115686862856695635

Reading this like a guy living in a world where hypocrisy matters. https://www.propublica.org/article/trump-mortgage-fraud-florida-principal-residences

Hey esq.social friends. You will see you can now quote toot folks, and be quote tooted by folks when you want to be. The default for old and new posts is disallowance. You can change that setting in Settings > Preferences > Posting Defaults

Dammit, and I was in the mix for that FIFA prize until the last minute.

Not there today, but thinking about #cabinchristmas.

Every once in a while the podcast gets a pop of new listeners (or at least downloads) and I very briefly consider adding some kind of analytics to find out the cause.

Referring to the "fog of war" as if it is an actual fog is top tier.

The death of the penny as an opportunity for sales and use tax modernization. https://news.bloombergtax.com/tax-insights-and-commentary/pennys-death-should-drive-states-to-revamp-sales-tax-systems

Just need to scream a little bit about how there are actually hard limits to how much stuff we can have in orbit without severe consequences! It's ok to say that out loud, even if the techbros don't want to hear it! It's ok (and vitally important) to have in your list of recommendations for […]

Costco files a lawsuit asking for a full refund of tariffs the warehouse club giant has paid since President Trump imposed “reciprocal” and “fentanyl” tariffs. https://www.cnbc.com/2025/12/01/costco-sues-trump-tariffs-trade-supreme-court.html

RE: https://mastodon.social/@mellifluousbox/115569669020807811 If you like your Mastodon server and want it to stick around, you should consider donating some money to it, if you can.

Hey cool, I got invited to give a talk at a conference and they will let me switch to a remote talk rather than just un-inviting me! That hasn't happened in a while. (Conference organizers, please please PLEASE continue to have remote options, it's really stupid not to.)

Do you think they bonded over how they both have like an uncountable number of Zs in their names?

It's not just that the United States has stopped trying to promote liberal democratic ideas internationally. It's that the United States is actively trying to promote the contrary. It's trying to turn more countries into Hungary. www.nytimes.com/2025/11/26/u...

The UK mansion tax is a modest step in the right direction. That's refreshing. https://www.forbes.com/sites/andrewleahey/2025/11/26/uk-mansion-tax-the-beginning-of-a-british-wealth-tax-regime/

RE: https://federate.social/@mattblaze/115613132555490013 🗣FEES ARE TAXES IMPOSED ON WORKING CLASS PEOPLE TO AVOID TAXING BILLIONAIRES do not normalize $250 fees and proof of citizenship to enter national parks.

The peculiar little niche I occupy means I get the weirdest spam/scam emails. Everything from story pitches to vanity textbook publishers and podcast guest hosts. Now I've started getting (I think) scam literary agent offers.

My favorite part about Trump loving Bloodsport (1988) is remembering the entire "based on a true" story was made up by a guy who bought a Halloween costume army uniform, said he was in the Marines, claimed he won the Medal of Honor, and was champion of a made up underground fighting tournament.

Urban Institute TPC tracking tariffs across types of consumer goods (among other things). https://taxpolicycenter.org/features/tracking-trump-tariffs

Surely the answer is more data centers, more tax breaks for data centers, more rate breaks for data centers. More data centers. https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2025/11/24/power-shutoffs-surge-electric-bills/