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Sentencing Reform

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Back in 2007, a Los Angeles judge sentenced actress Lindsay Lohan to one day in jail for misdemeanor drunk driving and cocaine charges. California's prisons are notoriously crowded, so Lohan walked out of the joint after just 84 grueling minutes. She didn't even have time to change into an orange jumpsuit. Lohan's "sentence" drew headlines as an example of lax justice. But now comes news that a judge has sentenced a 79-year-old widow to less than one minute of probation — for tax evasion, no less. Can the punishment possibly suit the crime?

First, a little background. The Justice Department has made cracking down on secret foreign bank accounts a top priority. Those efforts got a huge boost when Bradley Birkenfeld, a banker for Zurich-based UBS, blew the whistle on the bank's efforts to help U.S. depositors avoid tax on their accounts. UBS settled the case by paying a record 780 million dollar fine and turning over information on nearly 5,000 U.S. depositors.

Can You Keep A Secret?

Benjamin Franklin famously said that "three may keep a secret, if two of them are dead." And that was before the National Security Agency and other government agencies could track your phone calls, browsing history and even your driving habits. Keeping secrets is especially hard in politics — just ask Carlos Danger or Client Number Nine! But now a couple of Senators think they've found a way to rewrite the entire tax code behind closed doors. What could possibly go wrong?

Senate Finance Committee chair Max Baucus (D-MT) wants to pass a tax reform bill before he leaves office at the end of next year. He and ranking minority member Orrin Hatch (R-UT) recognize that the actual rate you pay doesn't matter much if you use special preferences and loopholes to avoid reporting taxable income in the first place. So they've boldly decided to start with a "blank slate," wiping out a trillion dollars' worth of deductions, credits, loopholes, and strategies off the books. Then their colleagues can propose adding back goodies like tax-free health

Putting for Dough

is almost here, and golf season is in full swing. Duffers are filling the air with curses as colorful as their outfits. Tiger Woods is taking a break from romancing pancake-house waitresses to work on his game. And Phil Mickelson is the latest man of the hour. Earlier this month, he took a one-hole playoff to win the Scottish Open at Inverness. Just one week later, he posted a 3-under 281 to take the British Open at Muirfield. Mickelson's £1,445,000 in winnings translates into almost 2.2 million in U.S. dollars.

So, he's got that going for him, which is nice. But how much will he actually get to keep?

Mickelson has already told the world how he feels about paying taxes. Back in January, he said he might leave his home state of California because of recent hikes in federal and state taxes. These include 39.6% for Uncle Sam (up from 36%), 3.8% for Medicare (up from 2.9%), and 12.3% for the Golden State (up from 9.3%). "If you add up all the federal and you look at

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What's Not to "Like"?

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Let's imagine, just for a minute, that you decided on a new line of work: ripping off the IRS. How do you think you would launch your new business? Maybe you'd open a secret bank account in one of those "sunny places for shady people" like the Cayman Islands or Bahamas. You might rent a secret flop house where you could hide evidence of your crimes. And you'd probably look for someone who could make you a fake passport, just in case the heat comes down and you have to flee the country under a secret identity.

You probably wouldn't post anything about your new career online, would you? Right? But if you're Rashia Wilson — the self-appointed "first lady of tax fraud" — you'd brag about it all on Facebook! Why play it safe and discreet when you can

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Hotties and Notties

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Junior high school is a difficult time for parents as well as students. It's a time when boys start to discover girls, and girls start to discover boys. (Reports differ on exactly which group discovers the other first, but it's equally terrifying for most parents.) One of the very first things junior high boys and girls start doing when they discover each other is rating each other — usually on a scale of 1-10. The 9s and 10s form cliques to congratulate each other on their good fortune, while the 3s and 4s learn to tell jokes, plan on making money, or learn to get by with a "great personality." (In case you've forgotten, junior high school can be really cruel.)

It turns out, though, that junior high kids aren't the only ones rating the world around them. Now comes news that two German economics professors

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Bada-Ching!

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The acting world lost one of its brightest lights when Sopranos star James Gandolfini died of a sudden heart attack while touring Italy with his family last month. Gandolfini was the iconic face of HBO's acclaimed drama, which made cable television, rather than the movies, the place for serious actors to "make their bones." Gandolfini himself became the model for a new breed of anti-heroes like Breaking Bad's Walter White and Mad Men's Don Draper. Few critics would dispute The Sopranos place as one of the greatest dramas in TV history.

Hollywood stars have always been famous for bringing home the big bucks, and Gandolfini was no exception. He fought as hard as a real mobster to maximize his pay. But he was legendarily generous, too. Co-star Steve Schirripa, who played Bobby Baccalieri on The Sopranos, recalled that in Season Four, Gandolfini gave each of his co-stars $33,000 for "sticking by him." And after holding up filming on