Via NRO, ease yourself back into the post-vacation news cycle with this soft blanket of mindless progressive bromides, from the eternally popular, eternally vague “fair share” mantra to the Warren-esque idea that there’d be no Apple if there wasn’t an America and therefore the company owes the government whatever amount liberals think is best. To repeat a point I made after Rand Paul’s righteous rant in the Senate last week, I can’t believe they chose Apple, of all companies, to scapegoat as some sort of corporate freeloader. This Forbes piece by Tim Worstall cuts to the heart of it: Apple’s profits likely represent only a small fraction of the “consumer surplus,” i.e. the value of a product to consumers beyond its cost, created by its famously innovative machines. They’ve gifted Americans with enormous productivity gains and entertainment; they occupy what may well be a unique place in the public imagination as a corporate leviathan that fully deserves the money it makes. And yet this guy can only shake his head that they’re not willing to shovel a few billion more of their own cash into the feds’ deepening welfare-state sinkhole. If you were an Apple shareholder and discovered that the company’s directors could have minimized its tax burden through legal means but chose not to because they didn’t want to disappoint Keith Ellison, how would you feel?

Exit question from John Sununu: Why are congressional Democrats who helped write the country’s tax laws blaming a company for obeying them?