"The bigger that government gets, the more employees who are hired, and the more unaccountable power that accrues to bureaucracies, the more government takes on a life of its own. Public grandees resemble Hollywood's out-of-control androids or Frankenstein monsters that turn on their creators -- in these cases, us, the taxpayers. ...

"Big government has become the new Terminator, at war with those who created it, who fund it -- and who must obey it."

"Hillary seems rattled, so rattled that she invokes Benghazi to deflect attention from the email scandal. 'Here is what I won't do,' she said at a rally at 'a wing ding' at Storm Lake, Iowa, 'I won't play politics with national security or dishonor the memory of those who we lost.'

"The irony, which she may not appreciate, is that it was the Benghazi investigators who stumbled on to the lady's private server and the emails. Tall oaks from little acorns grow."

"The Internal Revenue Service announced in May that hackers had gotten into its system, and it estimated then that 114,000 taxpayers' accounts had been compromised. But a thorough review of activity on the IRS site throughout the 2015 tax-filing season revealed that the intrusion affected nearly three times that many accounts, the agency said Monday.

"In its investigation, the IRS found about 220,000 additional instances where intruders were able to clear a verification system meant to keep sensitive tax information safe, as well as about 170,000 failed attempts to get around the verification system. ...

"The hackers filed $50 million in fraudulent tax refunds, the IRS said in May."

"Dear Democrats: It's too late to start over.

"As in, there's no replacing Hillary Rodham Clinton as your party's front-runner for the presidential nomination. Not with Vice President Biden -- even if he runs. Not with former vice president Al Gore. (I mean, come on.) Not with your ideal rich-person-with-no-record-and-a-fresh-faced-appeal. ...

"The idea of a late entrant reshaping the race -- and unseating Clinton -- might make sense to doubting Democrats. But the nature of the modern presidential contest makes it more fantasy than reality. Democrats threw their lots in with Clinton more than a year ago. Now they just have to try to ride it out. They don't have any choice. Not really."

"The first rule of Clintonism is that someone else is always to blame. That's why the first iteration of Clinton's defense was that evil Republicans were simply smearing her. When that didn't stick, Team Clinton expanded the indictment to include the partisan witch hunt by that famously right-wing organ the New York Times and two independent inspectors general (one at the State Department, the other for the intelligence community). ...

"So now that the FBI and the Justice Department, both run by Obama appointees, are on the case, attacking the motives of inconvenient people no longer works. So the Clinton campaign has invoked a little-known codicil to the first rule of Clintonism: Blame an inanimate object. ...

"Hopefully the server will one day be able to testify on its own behalf: 'I was just following orders.' ...

"I've talked to several lawyers who assure me that the FBI doesn't conduct criminal probes into anthropomorphized IT equipment. The bureau does investigate criminal abuses of them -- by people."

"The only thing more outrageous than the EPA's release of three million gallons of toxic waste into Colorado's Animas River has been its cavalier response to the disaster in the days since. ...

"This is an agency that will aggressively fine businesses, municipalities and anyone or anything else for even the slightest violation of its ridiculously strict standards, but that will face zero fines for its own environmental catastrophe.

"It's an agency that claims that even the tiniest levels of pollutants are extremely hazardous, yet has been busy downplaying the damage after its own incompetence caused the release of millions of gallons of toxic waste. ...

"The 'safe' level for arsenic in drinking water is a tiny 10 parts per billion. ...

"Yet tests have shown lead spiking at thousands of times higher than government-approved levels, arsenic at 800 times and extremely high levels of beryllium, cadmium and mercury because of the EPA spill."

"President Obama says those who oppose the Iran nuclear deal are either ideological or illogical. I support the deal, yet I think this assessment is incorrect and unfair. ...

"Obama once understood, even celebrated, this gray zone of difficult policy choices. He was a man who took pains to recognize and validate the legitimate concerns of those on the opposite side of nearly any complex debate.

"The new Obama, hardened and embittered -- the one on display in his American University speech last week and in the follow-up spate of interviews -- has close to zero tolerance for those who reach contrary conclusions."

"The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's clumsy, tone-deaf response to the toxic disaster on the Animas River was an embarrassment even to the EPA. One agency official managed to admit the reaction was 'cavalier,' but that's putting a mild face on it.

"The agency was so slow in notifying people downstream, for example, that New Mexico officials complained they didn't hear about the spill of 3 million gallons of contaminated water from the Gold King mine for 24 hours.

"And the information wasn't only tardy -- when it finally came, it was often incomplete and ill-informed. An agency accustomed to demanding answers and accountability from private polluters was unprepared when the tables were turned and its own reputation was on the line."

"All Americans who bought health insurance policies this year - not just those enrolled in Obamacare - face a 41 percent increase in excise taxes because of hidden fees contained in an obscure section of the Affordable Care Act, according to an investigation by The Daily Caller News Foundation.

"Virtually everyone who pays for health care insurance this year will be affected by the tax. The little-known tax was imposed on all consumers regardless of whether they obtained their insurance through Obamacare or through their employer or as individuals in the private market.

"This year the tax will cost individuals more than $500 in extra premiums according to one actuarial estimate. Families who purchased insurance will see their premiums go up by more than $700."

"Two top congressional Democrats announced late Thursday that they would oppose President Barack Obama's nuclear deal with Iran.

"Sen. Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., the No. 3 Senate Democrat, and Rep. Eliot Engel, D-N.Y., the leading Democrat on the House Foreign Affairs Committee, both announced their objection to the deal in a blow to the Obama administration ahead of next month's vote. ...

"Schumer's decision also puts him at odds with the Democrats' likely presidential nominee, Hillary Clinton, who has cautiously embraced the deal. The Senate's No. 2 Democrat, Dick Durbin of Illinois, supports the accord and has been working hard to persuade lawmakers to do the same."