" We are going to give a new definition to hypocrisy in the U.S. Senate today," Sen. John Kerry portentously announced during debate last week over the tobacco bill. And so the Massachusetts Democrat did. Kerry objected to the idea that raising the price of cigarettes should be called a tax. "To use the word 'tax,'" he intoned, "is to use the word that has been the centerpiece of a billion-dollar advertising campaign. If this is a tax, this is the one tax in America that nobody has to pay -- nobody -- unless you buy a pack of cigarettes. This is a tax that is purely voluntary." Hmm. If the tax is "purely voluntary," to use the senator's eloquent phrase, then that must mean that buying and smoking cigarettes is purely voluntary. And if this is the case, then smokers are responsible for their own habits and are neither in the grip of an addiction nor under the spell of advertising campaigns, billion-dollar or otherwise. THE SCRAPBOOK happens to believe this is true, but the tobacco bill the senator was defending had no room in it for the concepts of individual responsibility and voluntary action. Hypocrisy, thy name is Kerry.