"The Gang of Eight bill being debated in the Senate does not require any security advances before illegal immigrants are granted a decade-long 'temporary' legal status. And all that is required before those same immigrants move on to permanent legal status and citizenship is that a 'Comprehensive Southern Border Security Strategy' be 'substantially deployed and substantially operational.' 

"What does 'substantially' mean? It could mean anything, which is why lawmakers who don't want to place specific security requirements before permanent legalization like it. ... 

"Both Democrats and Republicans have been happy to let the public think the bill is tougher than it is. For example, Sen. Marco Rubio, the leading Republican on the Gang of Eight, talks all the time about the importance of putting new security measures in place, but he means before immigrants are given permanent status, not before the temporary, decade-long legalization that starts the process."

"Congress is boring. It can’t even make new false promises. 

"On border security, it keeps making the same assurances. The Gang of Eight immigration bill, which could well be the signature legislative accomplishment of President Barack Obama’s second term, travels in the well-worn ruts of past immigration promises. The Gang of Eight is offering this basic deal: 'We will pretend to enforce the law, if you pretend to believe us.' ... 

"The Gang of Eight bill is powered, in large part, by pretense and word games. If this bill passes, and then a decade or so from now we need another amnesty, the road map to passage will be easy: Congress can promise to follow up on the Gang of Eight’s enforcement measures — yet again."

"The Obama administration and European leaders, so predictably, are swooning over Iran’s newly elected 'pragmatic moderate' president Hassan Rouhani, who is actually a Khomeini disciple and supporter of the current, despicable Khameini regime — and who (a) would not have been permitted to run without the regime’s blessing, (b) enthusiastically supports Iran’s nuclear program, (c) called for the execution of 'green revolution' activists in 2009, and (d) ardently backs the Assad regime in Syria because it, like Rouhani himself, is an implacable enemy of Israel."

"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."