Perhaps it is in light of the Logan Act that White House Press Secretary Dana Perino emphasized, “The president believes that if president Carter wants to go, that he is doing so in his own private capacity, as a private citizen, he is not representing the United States.” It is all well and good for the White House to distance itself from the behavior of Jimmy Carter, but there is a limit to how far any American government can go in condemning the actions of a former president.

The station of ex-president carries a diplomatic heft, and no one has used it with more inelegance and opportunism than Jimmy Carter, whose sabotage of American foreign policy has not been limited to Republican presidents (see Bill Clinton and North Korea). By calling on the United States to include Hamas in peace talks, and by meeting with the leader of said terrorist group in the capital of a country with which the United States does not even maintain diplomatic relations, Carter undermines a crucial plank in America’s Middle East policy.

Many experts believe that gasoline taxes should be increased for a variety of reasons. Their arguments are unpersuasive. Oil is not disappearing, and when it becomes more expensive, market agents will substitute away from gasoline to save money. The link between oil price shocks and recessions, although real in the 1970s, has been much more benign since 1985 because of the termination of price controls. Market actors properly account for energy costs in their purchasing decisions absent government intervention.

State and federal gasoline taxes should be abolished. Local governments should tax gasoline only to the extent necessary to pay for roads when user charges are not feasible. If government feels compelled to more aggressively regulate vehicle tailpipe emissions or access to public roadways, pollution taxes and road user fees are better means of doing so than fuel taxes. Regardless, perfectly internalizing motor vehicle externalities would likely make the economy less efficient -- not more -- by inducing motorists into even more (economically) inefficient mass transit use.

The arguments advanced against increasing gasoline taxes are applicable to the broader discussion about America’s reliance on oil generally. The case for policies designed to discourage oil consumption is nearly as threadbare as the case for increasing the gasoline tax -- and for largely the same reasons.

No doubt about it, April 15 is the ugliest day on America's calendar. Some have suggested it would be a lot less ugly, however, if Election Day immediately followed on April 16. It's an intriguing idea.

If moving Election Day would unburden the nation of its annual tax nightmare, we're all for it. The federal tax system is miserable. Not only are we taxed too much (government should not be free to help itself to one out of every five dollars), the way we are taxed borders on criminal.

So does the complexity of the tax code. Our "voluntary" system is hopelessly byzantine, with regulations that go on for more than 9 million words across thousands of pages. This year, Americans will spend roughly $325 billion to comply with them. Next year it'll be nearly $350 billion.

There's also a lot of valuable time, more than 6.6 billion hours a year, wasted by individuals, business and nonprofit organizations on tax preparation. For those who think of April 15 as just another day, or that scrambling for last-minute deductions and racing to the post office to beat the deadline are annual rites that will be over in a few hours, consider that Tax Freedom Day, the day we've earned enough to pay our federal, state and local taxes, as figured by the Tax Foundation, is still eight days away.