John Fund, Author, Columnist and Former WSJ Editor, Regarding the Supreme Court Ruling that Voter Identification Requirements Are Constitutional:

“In ruling on the constitutionality of Indiana's voter ID law – the toughest in the nation – the Supreme Court had to deal with the claim that such laws demanded the strictest of scrutiny by courts, because they could disenfranchise voters. All nine Justices rejected that argument.

“Even Justice Stephen Breyer, one of the three dissenters who would have overturned the Indiana law, wrote approvingly of the less severe ID laws of Georgia and Florida. The result is that state voter ID laws are now highly likely to pass constitutional muster.”

Regarding Congressional Complicity in the Rising Costs of Food and Fuel:

“It may surprise Americans to discover that the United States is the third-largest oil producer, behind Saudi Arabia and Russia. We could be producing more, but Congress has put large areas of potential supply off-limits. These include the Atlantic and Pacific coasts and parts of Alaska and the Gulf of Mexico. By government estimates, these areas may contain 25-30 billion barrels of oil (against about 30 billion of proven U.S. reserves today) and 80 trillion cubic feet or more of natural gas (compared with about 200 tcf of proven reserves).

“What keeps these areas closed are exaggerated environmental fears, strong prejudice against oil companies and sheer stupidity.”

— Robert Samuelson, Newsweek and Washington Post Contributing Editor

“This is a classic case of the law of unintended consequences. Congress surely did not intend to raise food prices by incentivizing ethanol, but that's precisely what's happened. A jump in food prices is the last thing our economy needs right now.”

— Congressman Jeff Flake (R-AZ)

Victor Davis Hanson, Hoover Institution Senior Fellow, California University Professor Emeritus and Nationally Syndicated Columnist, Regarding the Nomination of General David Patraeus to Centcom Commander:

“Petraeus’ recent nomination to Centcom commander suggests that, like the growing influence of Gens. U.S. Grant and William Tecumseh Sherman in 1863, or of George Marshall when he reconfigured the Army in 1940, we at last are beginning to get the right officers in the right places at the right time.

“The despairing enemy seems to sense this as well. The more al-Qaida mouthpiece Ayman al-Zawahiri threatens the West, the more he sounds like Hitler's shrill propagandist Joseph Goebbels in his bunker as the Third Reich was crumbling.

“In his latest desperate rant, a suddenly ‘green’ Zawahiri was reduced to appealing to environmentally conscious Muslims to fault the United States for our supposed culpability for global warming! No wonder polls across the Middle East show a sharp decline in support for his boss, Osama bin Laden.”

This Week On the Trail:

“A reader of mine who is a clergyman e-mailed after Obama's press conference: ‘As a pastor, I have this take: It is inconceivable that Obama had no knowledge of Wright's views after 20 years as a member of that church. As a pastor, my heart-held, deepest beliefs and passions cannot be silenced. It is what I am. If I were given a microphone at the National Press Club, I would not speak on something that I had guardedly kept secret for most of my life. No, I would go to my main point, the center of my ministry, the core of my passion, to speak truth as I know it to be. How can Obama actually claim that this is news from his pastor? His mailman, butcher or plumber? No problem. His pastor? No way!’”

— Michelle Malkin, Author, Syndicated Columnist

“When Wright came to Trinity Church in Chicago in the 1970s — invited to give the worship a more black inflection and foster stronger ties to the community — the middle-class parishioners who had beckoned him left when they got a dose of his radicalism. The national United Church of Christ denomination considered distancing itself from the Wright-led church. Yet Obama came — and stayed.”

— Rich Lowry, National Review Editor

“When North Carolina Republicans recently ran an ad featuring Wright in full cry, McCain mounted his high horse, from which he rarely dismounts, and demanded that the ad be withdrawn. The North Carolinians properly refused. Wright is relevant.

“He is a demagogue with whom Obama has had a voluntary 20-year relationship that implies, if not moral approval, certainly no serious disapproval. Wright also is an ongoing fountain of anti-American and, properly understood, anti-black rubbish. His Monday speech demonstrated that he wants to be a central figure in this presidential campaign. He should be.”

— George F. Will, Nationally Syndicated Columnist

“Nobody should hold the junior senator from Illinois responsible for his friends’ and supporters’ violent terrorist acts. But it is fair to hold him responsible for a startling lack of judgment in his choice of mentors, associates and friends, and for showing a callous disregard for the lives they damaged and the hatred they have demonstrated for this country. “

— John M. Murtagh, Attorney, Yonkers City Council Member and Fordham University College of Liberal Studies Adjunct Professor of Public Policy

“Wright knows the true nature of his relationship with Obama. He knows what they have said to each other. He knows whether Obama finds Wright’s views as offensive as he has said. There are more than six months left before the general election, and if Obama becomes the Democratic nominee, that is a lot of time for the voluble — and publicity-loving — pastor to remain silent.”

— Byron York, National Review White House Correspondent

“Obama and his defenders have insisted that the bits from Wright’s sermons that got wide circulation last month had been taken out of context. His infamous sound bites were grounded in concrete theological or factual foundations, they claim. He was quoting other people. He’s done good things. Nothing to see here, folks.

“And so God bless Wright because he’s left all of these folks holding a giant, steaming bag of ... well, let’s just call it a bag of ‘context.’”

— Jonah Goldberg, National Review Online Editor-at-Large

“Chelsea Clinton, while giving one of her recent speeches for Mother Clinton, was asked whether, like Hillary, she recalled running from gunfire at the Kosovo airfield in 1996. The audience, no doubt filled with true believers, first groaned at the impertinence of anyone daring to question the First Daughter, then rewarded Chelsea with an ovation for saying nothing more than ‘I was there.’

“Now that Chelsea is all of 28, I suppose, like her parents, she is mastering the technique of avoiding direct questions as the all-important first step in carving out a political career. The fact is, by 2016, when Hillary expects to be winding up her second term, her daughter would be 36 and of an age to make a run for the White House herself. Heck, if things pan out, none of the Clintons might ever have to pay rent again.”

— Burt Prelutsky, Author, Humor Columnist and Movie Critic

“Hillary Clinton loves to tell the story about how the Chinese government bought a good American company in Indiana, laid off all its workers and moved its critical defense technology work to China.

“It’s a story with a dramatic, political ending. Republican President George W. Bush could have stopped it, but he didn’t.

“If she were president, Clinton says, she’d fight to protect those jobs. It’s just the kind of talk that’s helping her win support from working-class Democrats worried about their jobs and paychecks, not to mention their country’s security.

“What Clinton never includes in the oft-repeated tale is the role that prominent Democrats played in selling the company and its technology to the Chinese. She never mentions that big-time Democratic contributor George Soros helped put together the deal to sell the company or that the sale was approved by her husband's administration.”

— Steven Thomma, McClatchy Newspapers Chief Political Correspondent

“What does a McCain victory mean for conservatives?

“Probably a veto on tax hikes and perhaps a fifth justice like Antonin Scalia, Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito or John Roberts, to turn two pair into a full house. Fifty years after Warren, it could be game, set, match for the right.

“But McCain may also mean more Middle East wars, more bellicosity, more manufacturing jobs lost, malingering in the culture wars, and more illegal aliens and amnesty.”

— Pat Buchanan, Syndicated Columnist and Founding Editor, The American Conservative Magazine

“He’s not the best of drivers. I drive most of the time.”

— Cindy McCain, Regarding Sen. John McCain