"Recent statements from United Nations officials, that Iran is already blocking their existing efforts to keep track of what is going on in their nuclear program, should tell anyone who does not already know it that any agreement with Iran will be utterly worthless in practice. It doesn't matter what the terms of the agreement are, if Iran can cheat.

"It is amazing -- indeed, staggering -- that so few Americans are talking about what it would mean for the world's biggest sponsor of international terrorism, Iran, to have nuclear bombs, and to be developing intercontinental missiles that can deliver them far beyond the Middle East. ...

"The road to World War II was strewn with arms control agreements on paper that aggressor nations ignored in practice. But those agreements lulled the democracies into a false sense of security that led them to cut back on military spending while their enemies were building up the military forces to attack them."

"Since President Obama took office, The Wall Street Journal reports, employees of Google 'have visited the White House for meetings with senior officials about 230 times, or an average of roughly once a week.' Google's top lobbyist had more than 60 meetings at the White House. That's more meetings than most of Mr. Obama's Cabinet members. ...

"Perhaps Google should just change its name to Obamoogle, but it wouldn't be the first time a corporation has curried the favor of an administration. Between lobbyists and political donations, and even long-standing relationships, Americans have seen how some companies manage to secure Most Favored Nation-type relationships with presidents and their administrations. ...

"This revelation about the intensity of the Obama-Google merger also helps explain the Federal Communications Commission'€™s determination to regulate the Internet using the pretext of 'net neutrality.' The biggest winners of that action? Obama supporters Google (through YouTube) and Netflix, which now consume at least 50 percent of Internet bandwidth."

"The tragedy of the discussion around 'school choice' in America is the hidden presumption that 'school choice' doesn't exist already. But it does -- for the privileged. This is not only a matter of the privileged being able to afford private schools, but also the fact that, through the public school catchment system, the real estate market is really the market for schools. Every family in America wants to buy a house in a place where there are good schools. Every commonwealth tries to boost real estate values by improving schools. That's how the system works. The rich get school choice, the poor get... whatever.

"The drive for school choice is not a drive to turn schools into a marketplace, it's only to give the poor a way to access the preexisting market, which is currently closed off to them."

"'I don't understand how Jews in America can be Democrats first and Jewish second and support Israel along the line of just following their president,' vented Representative Steve King (R., Iowa) on Boston Herald Radio last week. ...

"Part of the confusion is that being Jewish and supporting Israel have never been wholly synonymous, and regrettably they are getting less synonymous all the time. This is a source of great consternation in many Jewish circles, and a source of profound confusion and frustration in conservative circles. Just as right-leaning non-Jews are embracing Israel, left-leaning Jews are pushing it away. ...

"One reason Jews are still liberal is that ideological and partisan affiliations die hard. They tend to be passed, like religion itself, from parent to child, generation after generation. But such loyalties aren't static either. And while Steve King could have phrased it better, he was absolutely right that at some point -- now or in the future -- support for the left and support for Israel must conflict. And King is right to lament it when Jews choose the former over the latter."

"Qatar's 'strict monitoring' of the Taliban 5 -- if it ever really existed -- is set to expire this spring, effectively allowing them to roam free. Lt. Gen. Vincent Stewart, director of the Defense Intelligence Agency, told the House Armed Services Committee earlier this year that there is 'very little' his agency can do to prevent them from returning to the battlefield and trying to kill American soldiers.

"So, far from the fairytale of a hero'€™s homecoming that President Obama tried to spin for the American people that Saturday morning 10 months ago, this story doesn't have a happy ending for America. In his effort to empty the Gitmo detainee facility, the president traded five hard-core terrorists for a man who now stands officially accused of abandoning his fellow soldiers. He very may well be court-martialed and spend a good deal of his life behind bars. It's the Taliban 5 who, beginning in just a few short weeks, get to live happily ever after."

"The socialist government in France usually doesn't have much in common with congressional Republicans, for whom both France and socialism tend to be anathema.

"But the French, according to a Wall Street Journal report, are taking the toughest line among the powers negotiating with Iran over its nuclear program and are alarmed by the Obama administration's accommodating approach.

"'Some US officials,' the Journal writes, 'privately believe France is seeking in part to maintain strong ties to Israel and to Arab countries deeply skeptical of Washington's outreach to Tehran.'

"When the Quai d'Orsay is more concerned than Foggy Bottom with maintaining warm ties to Israel, it is a sign of a world turned upside down."

"The House has voted nearly 60 times to repeal ObamaCare in some fashion, whether it's stripping out mandates or defunding the legislation altogether. Those efforts should continue. GOP presidential candidates will run on the promise of repealing the disastrous law, and if elected, they should follow through on those promises from the Oval Office.

"The kind of healthcare and insurance ObamaCare claims to provide isn't affordable, isn't quality and it certainly hasn't made the country better."

"Iran is an opportunity, not a threat; it's a potential partner, not an enemy.

"For more than six years, this view of the Islamic Republic has guided the decisions made by Barack Obama. The president has repeatedly declared his eagerness to welcome Iran into the community of civilized nations. His words sometimes suggest that Iran has a choice to make, that their acceptance into this mythical community depends in some way on their behavior. But there’s little over those six years to indicate that he means it. Instead, Obama has made clear that in his eagerness to salvage anything from his tattered foreign policy legacy he is willing to gamble the security of the United States on a blind and irrational hope that Iran will someday change for the better.

"To this end, he has abandoned more than three decades of bipartisan U.S. policy towards Iran -- on its nuclear weapons program, on its regional ambitions, and on its support for terrorism.

"These are radical departures. The Obama administration's goal in nuclear talks is no longer preventing Iran from obtaining nuclear weapons at all costs, but managing the process by which Iran becomes a nuclear state. The Obama administration no longer seeks to thwart Iran's expansionist aims in the region and in many respects is now facilitating its aggression. On terrorism, the Obama administration has cast aside inconvenient realities about Iran’s support for jihadists of all kinds and has chosen instead to pretend that to the extent there any longer exists a war on terror, Washington and Tehran are on the same side."

"Throughout the contentious debate between the White House and Congress over the Iran nuclear negotiations, one important piece of the equation has been largely overlooked: American public opinion. If voters were confident that President Obama was striking a good deal with Iran that would prevent Tehran from getting nuclear weapons, he'd have little trouble getting support from the legislative branch.

"But the reason the president is facing such bipartisan backlash is that an overwhelming number of voters are deeply worried about the direction of the negotiations. Think about how rare, in these polarized times, mobilizing a veto-proof majority of congressional Republicans and Democrats is for any significant legislation. Yet despite all the distractions, Congress is close to achieving that goal: requiring the administration to go to Congress for approval of any deal.

"The administration is so focused on process and protocol in attacking the opposition because it's a useful distraction from how unpopular the administration's eagerness to strike any deal with Iran has become."

"Remember. Obama made a personal trip to congratulate the new King of Saudi Arabia on his hard-won election."