To the extent that it pushes all your other assets over those thresholds, now you're paying a 50 percent tax.

Private Letter Ruling is where somebody requests a ruling from the IRS on a particular set of facts as they apply to them. The IRS rules with respect to that particular situation, but that does not have binding effect on everybody's situation.

If you're in that position that you know you're going to spend the money anyway, you're far better off to pay it now and relieve yourself of the risk of dying in that interim period and paying a significant tax rate on that.

So if a child's currently in school you just simply write a tuition check directly to the school as opposed to giving it to the child and have the child write it to the school. This is an exemption to the $12,000 number.

The logic of collective security is flawless, provided it can be made to work under the conditions prevailing on the international scene... The odds, however, are strongly against such a possibility.

On the human rights side, administration policy has been marked by indifference. When the people of Iran flooded the streets to protest the theft of their presidential election in June 2009, President Obama was silent for 11 days.