"There is no presidential election that is not said to be the most important in our lifetime. It was even said in 1996, when Bill Clinton won a decisive but not particularly consequential victory over Bob Dole. But Clinton had been chastened by the Republican sweep in 1994, and in a period of peace and prosperity, the country could afford to debate the meaning of 'is.' Now, we are truly at an inflection point, between the Barack Obama and Paul Ryan approaches to government, between consolidation of the past three years of historic government expansion and rollback. 

"The downbeat musings on the right are driven by the dreary primary season and the belief that the party’s nominee will be weak. But so is the president, who leads likely nominee Mitt Romney only narrowly even after his season of self-inflicted wounds. For Republicans, the general election is still winnable, and there is no substitute for victory."

"President Barack Obama has a bleak message for House and Senate Democrats this year when it comes to campaign cash: You’re on your own. 

"Democratic congressional leaders, including Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid and House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, have privately sought as much as $30 million combined from Obama for America and the Democratic National Committee — a replay of the financial help they received from Obama in 2008 and 2010. 

"But that’s not going to happen, top Obama aides Jim Messina and David Plouffe told Reid and Pelosi in back-to-back meetings on Capitol Hill on Thursday, according to sources familiar with the high-level talks. It was a stark admission from a presidential campaign once expected to rake in as much as $1 billion of just how closely it is watching its own bottom line."

"President Barack Obama looks down on drilling almost as much as he does on people clinging bitterly to their guns and religion.

"At a recent campaign event, he mocked Republicans for their three-point energy plan, every point of which he said is a call for more drilling. ... 

"The president may snicker all he likes. But the first three points of any energy plan worthy of the name should be drill, frack, and repeat."

"Can Afghanistan be stabilized so as not to pose a threat to America and American interests? Probably not, if the surge forces pull out on schedule and America continues to fight under restrictive and self-imposed rules of war while the enemy does not.  

"So what's the point? Are we to stay only until after the election so President Obama won't be asked, 'Who lost Afghanistan?' If our troops are coming out anyway and if the administration can't define victory, or commit the resources necessary to achieve it, waiting longer only ensures more casualties. As with Vietnam, that is a waste of blood and treasure. Ask the ghosts of the more than 58,000 fallen whose names appear on the Vietnam Veterans Memorial Wall in Washington, or the ghosts of the politicians who are responsible for putting them in their graves."

"Never underestimate the brilliance of our federal bureaucracy. 

"The Department of Health and Human Services has announced that it must delay implementation of new reimbursement codes for Medicare. Those new regulations would have increased the total number of reimbursement codes from the current 18,000 to more than 140,000 separate codes. The delay will undoubtedly come as a relief for physicians who will have additional time to try to understand the bureaucratic complexity of rules that, for example, apply 36 different codes for treating a snake bite, depending on the type of snake, its geographical region, and whether the incident was accidental, intentional self-harm, assault, or undetermined. The new codes also thoroughly differentiate between nine different types of hang-gliding injuries, four different types of alligator attacks, and the important difference between injuries sustained by walking into a wall and those resulting from walking into a lamppost. 

"And Democrats wonder why Americans still resist having the government control our health care?"

"... Iran and its nuclear intentions are rapidly emerging as the ultimate wild card in this year's presidential race. 

"Obama campaign aides probably worry more about an Iranian-induced economic crisis than any other potential threat to their re-election strategy. Tensions with Iran already are contributing to a march of gasoline prices toward $4 a gallon, which have become a cudgel in the hands of Republicans critiquing Obama energy policies."

"The facts are that the Korans were seized at a jail because jihadists imprisoned there were using them not for prayer but to communicate incendiary messages. The soldiers dispatched to burn refuse from the jail were not the officials who had seized the books, had no idea they were burning Korans, and tried desperately to retrieve the books when the situation was brought to their attention. 

"Of course, these facts may not become widely known, because no one is supposed to mention the main significance of what has happened here. ..."

"I was impressed by the President’s analysis of this situation where we have no control over the global price of oil, we’re dependent on oil from unfriendlies and he says, as we heard, drilling for oil to relieve our dependency is not a solution, it’s not a plan; he said we’ve got to go into clean energy and he talked about something really revolutionary today:  algae.

"A 14 million-dollar grant for the development of algae.

"So it’s not oil – his solution – it’s algae.

"And because we know that the Secretary of Energy is a physicist who won the Nobel Prize, the President, knowing all this stuff, said that one of the reasons we that should be doing this is because we can grow algae here in the United States.

"Now, it happens, that algae will grow anywhere on earth.  I looked it up … I did research. It grows in oceans, in lakes, in ponds, in your swimming pool when the pool-man’s on vacation, in snow, in ice, on soil, in soil, on turtles, sloths, the bark of trees and rocks.

"Why are we drilling for oil?  We are the Saudi Arabia of rocks.  We have a mountain range called the Rockies.  And we are allowing ourselves to be dominated by these oil-producers. I think he’s on to something here that is truly revolutionary. 

"Why would you build a pipeline -- the Keystone Pipeline -- that would bring real oil from Canada to put in real refineries and put in real existing cars, when you could do algae?  I think he’s onto something and I think it shows the vision, the hope and change that he promised in 2008."

"Confronted with an energy shortage, Congress debates opening the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge for drilling. Senator Maria Cantwell (D-WA) argues that 'oil extracted from the wildlife refuge wouldn’t reach refineries for seven to ten years.' Senator Jeff Bingaman (D-NM) is more pessimistic, saying 'drilling in ANWR wouldn’t get us any oil for at least ten years.' Leading the successful filibuster of the provision, Senator John Kerry (D-MA) echoes Bingaman, saying, 'If we opened ANWR today it wouldn’t produce any oil for at least ten years.'

"This exchange happened in 2001, when President Bush proposed opening ANWR to drilling in his energy plan. But one need only change some of the details to update the story for today. ...

"Even if oil from ANWR wouldn’t hit the market for a decade, other benefits would accrue during that period. One of the stated reasons for the GOP’s inclusion of ANWR in this year’s highway bill is that the site’s leasing fees would help pay for infrastructure projects. To that end, the CBO predicts $2.5 billion of net federal revenue from ANWR over the next decade. Republicans argue that the figure will be even higher. The preparations for drilling would also create thousands of jobs, though estimates range wildly, from 65,000 to 770,000. Many of these jobs would have to be filled before drilling starts, in order to build the 75-mile pipeline spur required to transport the oil to port.

"In short, the argument that oil from ANWR won’t help for another decade shouldn’t turn anyone off of drilling. Prohibiting all oil drilling in ANWR has brought us nothing except endless arguments about drilling in ANWR."

"According to the Institute for Energy Research, there is enough natural gas in the U.S. to meet electricity demand for 575 years at current fuel demand, enough to fuel homes heated by natural gas for 857 years and more gas in the U.S. than there is in Russia, Iran, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and some place called Turkmenistan combined. Oil? The U.S. Energy Information Administration estimates that the United States could soon overtake Saudi Arabia and Russia to become the world's top oil producer. There are tens of billions of easily accessible barrels of offshore oil here at home -- and much more oil around the world. ...

"Yet in the end, high gas prices are part of the plan. This is what the administration wants."