"You can't fix a fundamentally broken law; you've got to replace it. That's why Congress can't save Obamacare with a few tweaks, despite what its defenders say. No quick fix can correct the main flaw: The law takes power away from patients and hands it to bureaucrats. ...

"But just because we can't fix Obamacare doesn't mean we can't start to get rid of its worst features. On Thursday, the House will take up a bill to define 'full time' as 40 hours per week, so more people can work full time.

"Ultimately, the law will collapse under its own weight. Until then, we have to start building a better health care system in its place. And we need to start with a new principle: Put the patient in the driver's seat. That's how we can build a healthy economy."

"They'€™re back -- new and, some hope, improved.

"Tuesday marks the official start of the 114th Congress, one that will be led entirely by Republicans for the first time in nearly a decade. The GOP now has a 54-46 advantage in the Senate and its biggest majority in the House since 1929. Buoyed and emboldened by big wins at the ballot box last year, Republicans are prepared to push top party priorities right out of the gate, from the Keystone pipeline to Obamacare, while also attempting to show American voters that they can effectively govern.

"This endeavor will require some craftsmanship from GOP leaders, especially Mitch McConnell. The new Senate majority leader will need to pick off a handful of Democratic votes to pass most legislation while also uniting Republican members, some of whom have ambitions beyond the upper chamber.

"House Speaker John Boehner also faces the continuing challenge of forging compromise within his own conference on certain contentious issues. A Democratic-led Senate is no longer standing in the way of House Republicans, and those GOP lawmakers hope to get more of their priorities to the president'€™s desk. But Republicans still don't have a filibuster-proof majority in the Senate, so the fine, and seemingly lost, art of legislating will be in play."

"The new Republican Congress should move full speed ahead to repeal and replace Obamacare. It would be unwise to wait for the Supreme Court to perform this service for the American people.

"With GOP command of Capitol Hill starting tomorrow, Republicans should use their hard-won mandate to obliterate Obama's medical Godzilla. A record 58 percent of registered voters want to junk Obamacare, according to a December 10 Fox News survey. As well they should. Among other recently revealed shortcomings - according to the Kaiser Family Foundation's Employer Health Benefits, 2014 Annual Survey ('Employee Cost Sharing' chapter) - the average deductible for individual plans has climbed from $826 in 2009 to $1,217 in 2014. This is an average annual increase of approximately 8.1 percent on Obama'€™s watch. Also, a Commonwealth Fund survey discovered that 40 percent of working-age adults have skipped medical treatments because they cost too much.

"So much for Obama's promise of 'quality, affordable health care.'"

"I hope that in this year to come, you make mistakes.

"Because if you are making mistakes, then you are making new things, trying new things, learning, living, pushing yourself, changing yourself, changing your world. You're doing things you've never done before, and more importantly, you're Doing Something.

"So that's my wish for you, and all of us, and my wish for myself. Make New Mistakes. Make glorious, amazing mistakes. Make mistakes nobody's ever made before. Don't freeze, don't stop, don't worry that it isn't good enough, or it isn't perfect, whatever it is: art, or love, or work or family or life.

"Whatever it is you're scared of doing, Do it.

"Make your mistakes, next year and forever."

"'I haven't used the veto pen very often since I've been in office,' Obama told NPR. 'Now, I suspect there are going to be some times where I've got to pull that pen out. And I'm going to defend gains that we've made in healthcare; I'm going to defend gains that we've made on the environment and clean air and clean water.'

"Indeed, the standard for overriding a presidential veto -- a two-thirds vote in House and Senate -- could become the only limit Obama observes in the next couple of years. For example, Obama takes executive action X. Republican lawmakers, along with some moderate Democrats, oppose X. They pass a bill repealing X with a 60-vote, filibuster-proof majority in the Senate. Obama vetoes the bill, preserving his executive action. At that point, opponents would have to muster 67 votes to override the veto. That's a very, very tough hill to climb. As long as Obama can get 34 Democrats to support him in the Senate, his executive action will stand."

"Dozens of members of Congress will be retiring next month, and some should be missed. But there is only one Tom Coburn, the Oklahoma senator the Christian Science Monitor has dubbed 'a rabble-rousing statesman.'

"Those two qualities together are rare in politicians, but they found a happy union in the 66-year-old obstetrician who is leaving the Senate early next month to battle prostate cancer. On the one hand, Coburn never retreated on his core values: He is staunchly pro-life, for traditional marriage, and resistant to all manner of fads from climate-change regulation to mindless intervention overseas. As the Senate'€™s 'Dr. No' from 2004 to today, he held up hundreds of special-interest boondoggles and end-runs around common sense. At the same time, he maintained a standard of honest dealing and integrity that many more in Congress should aspire to. ...

"Tom Coburn never forgot that members of Congress are spending the hard-earned money of the people back home. Even a lot of conservatives end up forgetting that. Here's hoping that back in the private sector, Tom Coburn keeps up the fight for his beliefs and that he remains a constant reminder to lawmakers and the White House of ethical standards to which all should aspire."

"And so [we'€™re] offering this simple phrase to kids from one to ninety-two, although it's been said many times, many ways, Merry Christmas to you!

"Top IRS officials specifically targeted tea party groups and misled the public about its secret political targeting program led by ex-official Lois Lerner, according to a bombshell new congressional report.

"The Daily Caller has obtained an advance copy of a House Oversight and Government Reform Committee report set to be released Tuesday morning that definitively proves malicious intent by the IRS to improperly block conservative groups that an IRS adviser deemed 'icky.' (That's right. 'Icky.')

"'The Committee has identified eight senior leaders who were in a position to prevent or to stop the IRS's targeting of conservative applicants,' the Oversight report states. 'Each of these leaders could have and should have done more to prevent the IRS's targeting of conservative tax-exempt applicants.'"

"Former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani is condemning President Barack Obama for anti-police 'propaganda' in the wake of the murders of two New York City police officers in Brooklyn.

"When asked on 'Fox News Sunday' if he had ever seen the city he once governed so divided, Giuliani shook his head and said, 'I don'€™t think so.'

"Giuliani said blame rests on 'four months of propaganda,' which he said started with Obama, 'that everybody should hate the police.' He said the nationwide protests against several recent police-involved deaths lead to one conclusion: 'The police are bad. The police are racist. They're wrong.'

"Police, Giuliani said, are 'the people who do the most for the black people in America, in New York City and elsewhere.'"

"Obama is hardly the first president to seek rapprochement with our adversaries and reconciliation with our enemies, of course. But his determination to make nice -- even in the face of clear and repeated rejection from the other side -- is unparalleled. For Obama and his team, diplomacy with rogue regimes is an end in itself, and any deal, however one-sided, is a win, especially one that the White House communications mavens think that friendly media will call a 'breakthrough' or 'historic.'

"In that sense, Obama is America's first postmodern president. If his predecessors tended to see the world in terms of good and evil, Obama sees the world in terms of victims and victimizers -- with the United States often in the role of victimizer. In that view, long favored by the academic left that shaped a young Barack Obama, American foreign policy is one long train of abuses, marked by casual aggression and eager imperiousness."