Old man or man-child?

The difference isn’t over the taxes owed, but over who should be sending them to the state. You might not know this, but if you buy something that’s taxable in Texas, you owe the taxes whether the seller collects them from you or not. That’s true for over-the-counter sales, mail-order sales or online sales. It’s called the use tax, and it’s the state’s levy on purchases from companies that don’t have a physical presence, or “nexus,” in Texas.

The only way I can think of to get around this problem, to allow journalists to report and analyse politics in an honest and intelligent fashion without worrying about accusations of bias based on the contents of private emails, would be to have a newspaper where the reporters don’t have any bylines, where everything is written in a collective voice. But that’s a crazy idea that would obviously never work.

Friedman also recounted advice that his friend Willie Nelson gave him before his most recent campaign: “He said, ‘If you’re going to have sex with an animal, always make it a horse, because that way, if things don’t work out, at least you know you’ve got a ride home.’