"The Obama administration's handling of its multiple scandals paints a picture of those who believe they are above the law. There's a pattern of arrogance, dismissiveness, denial, scapegoating, stonewalling, lying, false professions of ignorance, assurances of accountability and punishing whistle-blowers. ... 

"Congress must not be deterred by the administration's evasions. It must turn up the heat and be just as persistent in demanding accountability as the administration is in dodging it."

"The case against the NSA is: Lois Lerner and others of her ilk. 

"Government requires trust. Government by progressives, however, demands such inordinate amounts of trust that the demand itself should provoke distrust. Progressivism can be distilled into two words: 'Trust us.' The antecedent of the pronoun is: The wise, disinterested experts through whom the vast powers of the regulatory state’s executive branch will deliver progress for our own good, as the executive branch understands this, whether we understand it or not. Lois Lerner is the scowling face of this state, which has earned Americans’ distrust."

"Suicidal Republicans have supported illegal alien amnesties dating back to the Reagan era. They have paid a steep, lasting price. ... The progs' plan has always been to exploit the massive population of illegal aliens to redraw the political map and secure a permanent ruling majority. 

"Now, in the wake of nonstop D.C. corruption eruptions, SchMcGRubio and Company want us to trust them with a thousand new pages of phony triggers, left-wing slush-fund spending and make-believe assimilation gestures. Trust them? Hell, no. There's only one course for citizens who believe in upholding the Constitution and protecting the American dream: Stop them."

"Obama asks us to trust that he's using power judiciously. Under President Bush, liberals were never given reason to fear that government power was being used to persecute them. Enough said. 

"The president assures us that 'no one is listening to our phone calls,' and that may be true. But this administration also assured us that no sweeping data collection on American citizens was going on, that the IRS was not unfairly singling out conservatives, that the Justice Department had not attempted to prosecute journalists, and that the Benghazi attack was the response to a video. 

"It would be nice to trust the president, but it wouldn't be wise."

"The most sweeping overhaul of the nation's immigration system in nearly three decades finally arrives on the Senate floor this week. 

"Leaders in the upper chamber are aiming for passage by July 4 of a measure that would open up a road to citizenship for millions of undocumented immigrants living in the United States. A bipartisan group of four Democrats and four Republicans spent several months crafting the bill, and the Senate Judiciary Committee put the finishing touches on it last month.  

"But with zero hour at hand, the fate of reform legislation is uncertain."

"How ironic that the Obama phone-record grab should be revealed 64 years to the day after publication of Orwell's '1984.' As it happens, it also comes 225 years to the day after James Madison warned the Virginia Ratifying Convention that 'there are more instances of the abridgment of the freedom of the people by gradual and silent encroachments of those in power, than by violent and sudden usurpations.'

"The great Founding Father was arguing for adoption of his Constitution of limited government.

"It is questionable, however, whether he would recognize where exactly the limits are anymore."

"There are three big losers from President Obama’s cynical appointment of Susan Rice as his new national security adviser: Secretary of State John Kerry, Congress and the American people. ... 

"Rice has the weakest credentials of any national security adviser in the history of the office, but she has the president’s ear as his old pal. And she’ll work in the White House: Proximity to POTUS is trumps in DC. Kerry’s desk in Foggy Bottom might as well be a hundred miles from the Oval Office. 

"However incompetent, Rice may become the most influential national security adviser since Henry Kissinger eclipsed the entire State Department. Which means that Obama’s foreign policy, already disastrous, is now going to get worse."

"Almost half of Americans say President Barack Obama isn’t telling the truth when he says he didn’t know the Internal Revenue Service was giving extra scrutiny to the applications of small government groups seeking tax-exempt status.  

"Forty-seven percent of Americans say they don’t believe Obama compared with 40 percent who say he is being truthful, according to a Bloomberg National Poll of 1,002 adults conducted May 31 through June 3.  

"More than half of political independents -- 53 percent -- say Obama’s explanation that he learned it from media reports is untrue, while 34 percent say they believe him."

"Secretary of State John Kerry said Monday that the Obama administration would sign a controversial U.N. treaty on arms regulation, despite bipartisan resistance in Congress from members concerned it could lead to new gun control measures in the U.S.  

"Kerry, releasing a written statement as the U.N. treaty opened for signature Monday, said the U.S. 'welcomes' the next phase for the treaty, which the U.N. General Assembly approved on April 2.  ... 

"The treaty would require countries that ratify it to establish national regulations to control the transfer of conventional arms and components and to regulate arms brokers, but it will not explicitly control the domestic use of weapons in any country.  

"Still, gun-rights supporters on Capitol Hill warn the treaty could be used as the basis for additional gun regulations inside the U.S. and have threatened not to ratify. "

"[T]he Obama administration is in an unexpected and sharp state of decline. Mr. Obama has little influence on Congress. His presidency has no theme. He pivots nervously from issue to issue. What there is of an Obama agenda consists, at the moment, of leftovers from his first term or proposals that he failed to emphasize in his re-election campaign and thus have practically no chance of passage. 

"Congressional Republicans neither trust nor fear the president. And Democrats on Capitol Hill, to whom Mr. Obama has never been close, have grown leery of him. ... 

"The Obama breakdown was not caused by the trio of scandals -- IRS, Justice Department, Benghazi -- now confronting the president. The decline preceded them. It's the result of what Mr. Obama did in his first term, during the campaign and in the two months following his re-election. But the scandals have worsened his plight and made recovery next to impossible."