2013-05-24T00:01:00-04:00 2013-05-25T03:35:20Z David Limbaugh

Apple employs 600,000 people in the U.S. and is the largest corporate taxpayer in the country. Last year alone, the company paid $6 billion in taxes. This year they expect to pay $7 billion. 2013-05-24T00:01:00-04:00 2013-05-25T03:35:20Z Bob Beauprez

2013-05-24T00:01:00-04:00 2013-05-25T03:35:20Z Rich Galen

2013-05-24T00:01:00-04:00 2013-05-25T03:35:20Z Fred Lucas

2013-05-24T00:01:00-04:00 2013-05-25T03:35:20Z Charlotte Hays

2013-05-24T00:01:00-04:00 2013-05-25T03:35:20Z Mark Davis

The Street loved the statement but hated the reality that accommodation may be reeled in sooner rather than later. The fact of the matter is there are a number of issues here. 2013-05-24T00:01:00-04:00 2013-05-25T03:35:20Z Charles Payne

2013-05-24T00:01:00-04:00 2013-05-25T03:35:20Z Mona Charen

John Mueller, Mark G. Stewart and Benjamin H. Friedman

In one respect at least, the reaction to the Boston Marathon bombings was commendably restrained. A number of commentators across the political spectrum have tried to put the danger in context and argued that the best way to undermine terrorism is to avoid being frightened by it.

To be sure there were some overwrought responses by public officials. The Federal Aviation Administration established a no-fly zone over the bombing site, San Francisco banned back packs at crowded events, and tourists near the White House were backed off an additional 40 yards.

And a few pundits immediately began making extravagant claims about the relevance of the attacks. The New York Daily News proclaimed that the Boston bombs “once again blew up the idea that any of us will ever be safe again,” and The National Journal’s Ron Fournier claimed that the bombing “makes every place (and everybody) less secure.”

“The best way to undermine terrorism is to avoid being frightened by it.”

Yet for pretty much the first time there has been a considerable amount of media commentary seeking to put terrorism in context — commentary that concludes, as a Doyle McManus article in the Los Angeles Times put it a day after the attack, “We’re safer than we think.”

Similar tunes were sung by Tom Friedman of the New York Times, Jeff Jacoby of the Boston Globe, David Rothkopf writing for CNN.com, Josh Barro at Bloomberg, John Cassidy at the New Yorker, and Steve Chapman in the Chicago Tribune, even as the Washington Post told us “why terrorism is not scary” and published statistics on its rarity. Bruce Schneier, who has been making these arguments for over a decade, got 360,000 hits doing so forThe Atlantic. Even neoconservative Max Boot, a strong advocate of the war in Iraq as a response to 9/11, argues in the Wall Street Journal, “we must do our best to make sure that the terrorists don’t achieve their objective — to terrorize us.”

James Carafano of the conservative Heritage Foundation noted in a radio interview that “the odds of you being killed by a terrorist are less than you being hit by a meteorite.” Carafano’s odds may be a bit off, but his basic point isn’t. At present rates, an American’s chance of being killed by a terrorist is about one in 3.5 million per year — compared, for example, to a yearly chance of dying in an automobile crash of one in 8,200. That could change, of course, if terrorists suddenly become vastly more capable of inflicting damage — as much commentary on terrorism has predicted over the past decade. But we’re not hearing much of that anymore.

In a 60 Minutes interview a decade ago filmmaker Michael Moore noted, “The chances of any of us dying in a terrorist incident is very, very, very small.” Bob Simon, his interlocutor, responded, “No one sees the world like that.”

Both statements were pretty much true then. However, the unprecedented set of articles projecting a more restrained, and broader, perspective suggests that Simon’s wisdom may need some updating, and that Moore is beginning to have some company.

When evaluating post-9/11 U.S. counterterrorism policy, including the increase of over $1 trillion on domestic homeland-security spending, the starting question has typically been the wrong one: “are we safer?” Instead, reflected in the new commentary, it should have been “how safe are we?” Or, as risk analyst Howard Kunreuther put it in 2002, “How much should we be willing to pay for a small reduction in probabilities that are already extremely low?”

The beginnings of an adult reaction to the Boston attacks in the media suggest that politicians and policymakers might safely start to ask Kunreuther’s question. In doing so they would be following the lead of New York mayor Michael Bloomberg who declaimed in 2007, “Get a life. You have a much greater danger of being hit by lightning than being struck by a terrorist.”

Thus far, that has been just about the only instance in which an official has said such a thing, and Bloomberg received quite a bit of flack for the remark at the time. But politicians should note that he was still handily reelected two years later.

John Mueller is a political scientist at Ohio State and a senior fellow at the Cato Institute. Mark Stewart is a civil engineer at the University of Newcastle in Australia and a visiting fellow at Cato. Benjamin H. Friedman is a research fellow at Cato and co-editor of Terrorizing Ourselves. Mueller and Stewart are the authors of Terror, Security, and Money.

A top Republican lawmaker blasted President Obama after he held an Oval Office meeting this week with illegal immigrants, despite having ignored recent requests for a sit-down from the union representing immigration officers. 

**Written by Doug Powers

It’s being asked: Did Eric Holder lie under oath during his congressional testimony last Wednesday?

Here’s part of Holder’s sworn testimony:

In regard to potential prosecution of the press for the disclosure of material. This is not something I’ve ever been involved in, heard of, or would think would be wise policy.

Fast forward to this headline from NBC News yesterday:

If the reports are correct that Holder signed off on the Rosen warrant — which listed the Fox News reporter as a possible criminal “co-conspirator” — then Holder lied to congress… under oath.

I’m sure Holder will get to the bottom of this when he investigates himself as ordered by the president.

RB at The Right Sphere:

I’m sure Holder and his allies will say that they never intended to prosecute Rosen, but that’s 1) not the point and 2) even worse. If that’s their defense, they knowingly lied to the judge who would, hopefully, reject the request if they admitted it was just a fishing expedition for information.

They’re stuck. Either he (by signing the request for the records) lied to the judge or Holder lied directly to Congress.

Your move, Darrell Issa.

Meanwhile, calls for Holder to resign are coming in Fast & Furious. Et tu, HuffPo?

**Written by Doug Powers

Twitter @ThePowersThatBe

Four girls killed in an Alabama church bombing during the civil rights movement are receiving the highest honor Congress gives to civilians. 

The State Department official who played a key role in massaging the Obama administration's storyline on the Benghazi attack has been put up for a promotion -- a move that could trigger a heated confirmation battle on the Hill. 

The biographer whose extramarital affair with then-CIA director David Petraeus triggered his resignation says she regrets the relationship.

Anthony Weiner's campaign for New York City mayor got off to an energetic, but bumpy, start this week after his campaign website briefly featured an image of the wrong city's skyline -- instead of showing the Big Apple, the website featured a shot of beautiful Pittsburgh. 

While Attorney General Eric Holder is taking heat for his department's seizure of reporter records, the U.S. attorney who is personally overseeing those investigations is himself starting to face complaints that he's gone too far in pursuing leaks. 

The Justice Department acknowledged late Friday that Attorney General Eric Holder was on board with a search warrant to obtain the personal emails of a Fox News reporter, as media and civil liberties groups continued to raise concerns about the case. 

President Obama is tasking someone with intimate knowledge of alleged abuses by Attorney General Eric Holder’s Justice Department to investigate the matter: Holder himself.

President Obama is tasking someone with intimate knowledge of alleged abuses by Attorney General Eric Holder’s Justice Department to investigate the matter: Holder himself.

The IRS official who refused to testify this week -- while claiming she had done nothing wrong -- signed letters to Tea Party groups a year ago that asked them to turn over everything from printouts of their Facebook pages to the credentials of speakers who participated in their events.