"Billions of tax dollars are being lost every day to waste, fraud and corruption in the federal government, but President Obama’s administration is blocking inspectors general — the officials who are most likely to find and expose such wrongdoing — from doing their jobs. That’s the disturbing message given to Congress and the American people this week from a majority of the federal government’s 78 IGs. The blocking occurs when agency lawyers deny the authority of IGs to gain access to relevant documents and officials. ... 

"It is impossible to know exactly how much the federal bureaucracy loses every year to waste, fraud and corruption. Credible estimates put the total at more than $200 billion, but in a $3.5 trillion budget it could easily far exceed that amount. Every time an IG is barred from gaining access to vital documents or officials, it encourages even more wrongdoing. Congress must get tough with people in the executive branch who obstruct IGs from doing their jobs. And when it’s the attorney general doing the obstructing, it’s time to bring back independent prosecutors."

"It’s one thing for Democrats running in red parts of the country to sound like Republicans on the campaign trail. It’s another when Democrats running in purple or even blue territory try to do so. 

"Yet that’s what’s happening in race after race this season. 

"Faced with a treacherous political environment, many Democrats are trotting out campaign ads that call for balanced budgets, tax cuts and other more traditionally GOP positions. Some of them are running in congressional districts that just two years ago broke sharply for President Barack Obama. ... 

"Whether the Democrats running in those districts can survive what party strategists acknowledge is a deteriorating national political environment will largely hinge on how well they can appeal to more conservative voters."

"President Obama is impatient. Congress won’t act on immigration, he says, and therefore he will. The White House is coy as to exactly what the president will do. But the leaks point to an executive order essentially legalizing an enormous new class of illegal immigrants, perhaps up to 5 million people. ... 

"There’s an awful irony here. Barack Obama entered our national consciousness with an electrifying 2004 speech calling for healing the nation’s divisions and transcending narrow identities of race, region, religion, politics, and ideology. Four years later, that promise made him president. Yet today he is prepared to inflict on the nation a destructive, divisive, calculated violation of the constitutional order and national comity — for the narrowest partisan advantage.

"For this president in particular, who offered a politics of transcendence, this would constitute a betrayal of the highest order."

"The president’s constant complaints about everyone else in Washington playing politics while he high-mindedly devotes himself to substance have all the maturity of Holden Caulfield’s plaints about 'phonies.' Please, grow up. 

"Ever since he lost the House in 2010 and could no longer operate on the basis of sheer brute force, the president has relied almost entirely on tactical cleverness. It has been impressive on its own terms, whether it involves the invention of the 'war on women' in 2012 or the double-dog dare to Republicans to impeach him now. 

"But this is basically all he’s got. After 2010, Obama had two options if he wanted to revivify his presidency: either work with the opposition, which would have required making truly painful compromises, or crush it. He couldn’t bring himself to do the former and didn’t have the power to do the latter, so all he can do now is wield his 'pen and phone' — and whine."

"Two words sum up the mood of the nation: Fed up. 

"Six in 10 Americans are dissatisfied with the state of the U.S. economy, more than 70 percent believe the country is headed in the wrong direction, and nearly 80 percent are down on the country’s political system, according to the latest NBC News / Wall Street Journal poll. 

"The frustration carries over to the nation’s political leaders, with President Barack Obama’s overall approval rating hitting a new low at 40 percent, and a mere 14 percent of the public giving Congress a thumbs up."

"The total federal debt of the U.S. government has now increased more than $7 trillion during the slightly more than five and a half years Barack Obama has been president. 

"That is more than the debt increased under all U.S. presidents from George Washington through Bill Clinton combined, and it is more debt than was accumulated in the first 227 years of this nation's existence -- from 1776 through 2003."

"When John Brennan assured the country that the CIA hadn't improperly monitored the Senate team that compiled a report on Bush-era torture, he fed us false information. That much is clear from Thursday's news that 'the C.I.A. secretly monitored a congressional committee charged with supervising its activities.' Either the CIA director was lying or he was unaware of grave missteps at the agency he leads. ... 

"President Obama could surprise the country by axing his former counterterrorism adviser, explaining that under Brennan's management, employees broke laws and undermined the separation of powers core to our democracy. Obama may well make a good-faith effort to act in the national interest. But it's impossible to believe that he won't be aware of the following: No U.S. official knows more than Brennan about Obama's many drone killings. Some of the killings were solidly grounded in international law. And others may have violated the Fifth Amendment, international law, or the laws of war."

"Thanks to rockets rising over Gaza, jet debris falling onto Ukraine, and children wading across the Rio Grande, Americans barely have had time to focus on Obamacare. Mounting global and domestic chaos, however, cannot mask forever the deep and severe flaws in Obama’s pet program. From insurance cancellations to premium increases to gross ineptness, Obamacare likely will roar back into the news, just in time to stymie Democrats at the midterm election. ... 

"[U]nless Congress acts to the contrary, taxpayers are expected to underwrite a roughly $1 billion Obamacare bailout to help health insurers reduce their 2014 losses under the program. This is almost an erotic fantasy for Big Government liberals: Subsidized patients buy coverage from crony corporations that muddle through a massive, bureaucratic entitlement that will cost taxpayers $2.6 trillion over ten years. 

"Yes, Obamacare will give voters plenty to ponder at the polls."

"Immigration has emerged as perhaps President Obama's worst issue -- definitely for today, and maybe of his entire presidency -- when it comes to public perception.  

"A new poll from AP-GfK shows more than two-thirds of Americans (68 percent) disapprove of Obama's handling of the immigration issue in general. Just 31 percent approve -- down from 38 percent two months ago. 

"When you separate those most passionate about the issue, the difference is even more stark, with 57 percent opposed and just 18 percent in favor. That's more than three-to-one."

"The Obama Administration has openly declared its plan to implement a unilateral executive amnesty for 5–6 million more illegal immigrants. This unlawful amnesty — urged on by congressional Democrats — would include work permits, taking jobs directly from millions of struggling American citizens.

"Any action Congress might consider to address the current border crisis would be futile should the President go forward with these lawless actions. Congress must speak out and fight against them. It must use its spending power to stop the President’s executive amnesty.

"That the House leaders’ border package includes no language on executive actions is surrender to a lawless President. And it is a submission to the subordination of congressional power.

"After years of falling wages and rising joblessness, American workers are pleading for someone to hear them. How can it be that our President is brazenly advertising that he will nullify and strip away American workers’ immigration protections, and their own elected leaders will not rise to their defense? Or to the defense of our laws and our Constitutional order?

"There are other grave concerns with the Granger package as well: because it does not fix our asylum rules and loopholes, the end result of the additional judges and hearings will be more illegal immigrants gaining asylum and access to U.S. welfare. It is a plan for expedited asylum, not expedited removal.

"Nor will this package make our rogue President actively enforce anything, coming nowhere close to the kinds of reasonable enforcement activities needed to restore the interior application of our immigration laws.

"And finally, a package that is silent on blocking amnesty creates an opportunity for Senate Democrats to add elements of their party’s open borders and mass immigration agenda.

"This legislation is unworthy of support."