"'There has been zero accountability at the Department of Justice. … The leaking of classified information represents a major threat to national security, and your office faces a clear conflict of interest, yet you will not appoint a special counsel,' Cornyn told the attorney general. 'Meanwhile, you still resist coming clean about what you knew and when you knew it with regard to Operation Fast and Furious. You won’t cooperate with the legitimate congressional investigation, and you won’t hold anyone — including yourself — accountable.
 
"'It is more with sorrow than regret and anger that I would say that you leave me no alternative than to join those who call upon you to resign your office,' Cornyn said, joining three other Republican senators and several dozen House members who have called on Holder to go. 'Americans deserve an attorney general who will be honest with them. They deserve an attorney general who will uphold the basic standards of political independence and accountability. You have proven time and time again, sadly, that you’re unwilling to do so. … You have violated the public trust, in my view.'"

"If politicians talked not of 'growth' versus 'austerity' but of 'borrowing and spending' versus 'fiscal discipline,' then there would be very little public support for their disastrous agendas. Instead, we are supposed to like the nurturers who 'grow' and despise the 'austere' who hack away.
 
"It’s that simple."

"So Attorney General Eric 'Fast and Furious' Holder has let slip the dogs of war on those intelligence leaks that had President Obama in such a swivet Friday — assigning a pair of US attorneys to the case.  
 
"Puppies of war is probably more like it, given the obstructionist pace the Justice Department has adopted in the now-infamous 'Fast and Furious' gun-running scandal — to say nothing of other politically sensitive subjects. ... 

"The leaks amount to slow-motion treason, and must be treated as such. If Obama is as offended as he says he is, let him appoint that special prosecutor."

"The uproar in Congress includes both sides of the Capitol and both sides of the aisle. Lawmakers are making furious calls for FBI investigations and for tightening up the nation’s espionage laws. The reason: a spate of New York Times articles and a new book by its chief Washington correspondent, David Sanger. Last Friday, Sanger revealed a state secret that is arguably more sensitive than any other state secret that has been revealed since the Rosenbergs tipped off Stalin about the American atomic bomb. Sanger’s new book reveals that the Obama White House is conducting a coordinated campaign of industrial sabotage against Iran by means of cyber weapons. Remember the Stuxnet virus or the more sophisticated worm known as Flame? According to Sanger, all were components of an American government plan to sabotage the Iranian nuclear program. Or as Pogo famously pointed out: 'We have met the enemy and he is us.' 
 
"The foreseeable harm done by Sanger and his Times colleagues now includes the likelihood of Iranian retaliation because industrial sabotage, like blockades and air raids, are acts of war. You might remember how, earlier this year, the Iranians forced down our beyond-top-secret spy drone, apparently by spoofing its GPS system. Given the sloppy condition of our cyber defenses, the mullahs must surely be contemplating retaliation, say against the notoriously computer-dependent American infrastructure. Could Iran really do that? Obama’s own cyber-czars have long acknowledged our vulnerabilities to such attacks. Although few Americans now realize it, The New York Times has brought us closer to another horrific day like 9/11, when the lights go out, the ATMs don’t work and the gas pumps at the local filling station aren’t open."

"We'll be talking about Tuesday's Wisconsin recall election for a long time to come. 

"The results were a historic setback for organized labor, which failed to oust Gov. Scott Walker in a citadel of modern progressivism. And how it must have stung that 38% of union households voted for Mr. Walker, up a point from 2010 when he was first elected. ... 

"Before Tuesday's vote in Wisconsin there was already evidence that Democrats nationally didn't have quite the ground game they brag about. Witness the fact that they are so far losing the voter-registration war in the eight battleground or 'swing' states (as recognized by the media and the two campaigns) that enroll voters by party. ... 

"If the Wisconsin results are cause for concern among Democrats, they provide a call to action for Republicans, especially in battleground states. To beat Mr. Obama, Republicans must duplicate the ground game deployed by the GOP in Wisconsin that registered, persuaded and produced a massive turnout."

"The year-long saga of the Wisconsin recall is, at long last, over, and Scott Walker is still standing. The low-key Republican governor has withstood a sustained (and expensive) onslaught from the forces of Big Labor and its allies on the Left that featured everything from the coordinated cross-border retreat of intransigent Democratic lawmakers, to the occupation of the state house by a band of radicals, bongo drummers, and high school truants, to ill-fated attempts to nullify Republican legislative majorities and pick off uncooperative judges. Walker’s enemies did everything but release the kraken. 

"And yet, he won. ... 

"Walker won because his reform program is popular, and because it is working."

"President Barack Obama is racing down the trail blazed by Sen. George McGovern, who in 1972 was buried by the largest popular vote landslide in American history. ... Sen. McGovern was too far to the left, swing voters thought, and not very competent -- an image reinforced by the shambles his supporters made of the Democratic national convention. 

"Swing voters are forming a similar opinion about President Obama, who sometimes seems as if he's deliberately trying to dismantle the coalition that elected him in 2008. ... 

"But if President Obama goes down this year, he'll drag lots of Democrats in Congress with him. They're identified too closely with his failed policies to avoid sharing blame. ... 

"Though few other Democrats suffered when Sen. McGovern tanked, the election produced much bitterness and recrimination within the party. Come November, those may seem to Democrats the salad days."

"A single election rarely determines a democracy's fate, but some matter more than others. Tuesday's recall election of Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker is one that matters a great deal because it will test whether taxpayers have any hope of controlling the entitlement state and its dominant special interests. ... 

"Students of democracy from Alexis de Tocqueville to Mancur Olson have pointed out that the greatest threat to self-government comes from the tendency of democracies to become barnacled with special interests that vote themselves more benefits than society can afford. This is the crisis of the modern entitlement state, which is unfolding from California to Illinois, Greece, Italy and even Washington. Wisconsin is a critical test of whether democracies can reform before the crisis becomes debilitating."

"So the peacemaker, Nobel laureate, nuclear disarmer, apologizer to the world for America’s having lost its moral way when it harshly interrogated the very people Obama now kills has become — just in time for the 2012 campaign — Zeus the Avenger, smiting by lightning strike.
 
"A rather strange ethics. You go around the world preening about how America has turned a new moral page by electing a president profoundly offended by George W. Bush’s belligerence and prisoner maltreatment, and now you’re ostentatiously telling the world that you personally play judge, jury, and executioner to unseen combatants of your choosing, and whatever innocents happen to be in their company."

"Pointing out the hypocrisies of the Obama administration is becoming a sport, and the New York Times is only providing more targets. Candidate Obama promised to close Guantanamo Bay, but President Obama had no plan for an alternative prison. Candidate Obama criticized the Bush-administration interrogation policies (on which I worked), but President Obama sought to create exceptions to Miranda warnings (which he demands) for terrorists so that FBI questioning can continue. Candidate Obama criticized the Bush administration’s war approach to terrorism, but President Obama has ramped up the use of drone attacks to kill terrorist leaders. 

"But the most disturbing aspect of the latest NYT insider’s account of the war on terrorism, no doubt timed to shore up Candidate Obama’s national-security credentials for his re-election campaign, is the selection process for drone targets. Apparently President Obama personally selects the targets and approves each operation. This is both an incredible misuse of presidential time and a serious distortion of proper war management. ..."