"One of the biggest obstacles to economic recovery is that politicians and the media are both focused on how government can MAKE the economy recover, rather than on how it can LET the economy recover."

"Tomorrow morning the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) will mark the winter solstice by taking an unprecedented step to expand government's reach into the Internet by attempting to regulate its inner workings. In doing so, the agency will circumvent Congress and disregard a recent court ruling... 

"Nothing is broken and needs fixing, however. The Internet has been open and freedom-enhancing since it was spun off from a government research project in the early 1990s. Its nature as a diffuse and dynamic global network of networks defies top-down authority. Ample laws to protect consumers already exist. Furthermore, the Obama Justice Department and the European Commission both decided this year that net-neutrality regulation was unnecessary and might deter investment in next-generation Internet technology and infrastructure. 

"Analysts and broadband companies of all sizes have told the FCC that new rules are likely to have the perverse effect of inhibiting capital investment, deterring innovation, raising operating costs, and ultimately increasing consumer prices..."

"The defeat of a pork-laden $1.1 trillion 'omnibus' spending bill in the Senate Thursday night was the first serious indication after the Nov. 2 election that the Tea Party movement has staying power and will be a force into 2011. 

"Some Republicans on Capitol Hill said Thursday night that GOP leadership played a pivotal role as well. Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell was said to have pressured key GOP lawmakers to stand firm against the legislation, though some in leadership said the conference was fairly united against it from the beginning. 

"What was agreed upon by most is that the same grassroots wave that propelled Republicans to a huge November win had just made its sting felt for the first time in the legislative arena. 

"'[It was] 100 percent grassroots … The American people took it down,' said John Hart, spokesman for Sen. Tom Coburn, Oklahoma Republican."

"The weeks since Election Day have provided nauseating confirmation of Mark Twain's observation: 'There is no distinctly native American criminal class except Congress.' 

"Exhibit A is the 'omnibus' spending bill Harry Reid is trying to push through the Senate. This monstrosity contains about 6,500 earmarks -- special provisions inserted on behalf of lobbyists to benefit special interests. The lobbyists get big fees, the interest groups get handouts and the politicians get rewarded with contributions from both. 

"It's a win-win-win for everyone -- except the taxpayers who finance this carousel of corruption.  

"Defenders of earmarks and other forms of pork-barrel spending argue that this behavior can't possibly be corrupt because it's legal. But not everything that's immoral is illegal and not everything that's illegal is immoral -- and earmarks definitely belong in the first category. Normal people would call it bribery, but it's business as usual on Capitol Hill."

"The proposed Senate omnibus bill makes for truly amazing reading. It’s like the Democrats have decided to wear proudly the mantle forced on them by Republicans in the last election — the mantle of pork, waste, and Obamacare... 

"This 2,000 page monstrosity stuffed down the country’s throat in the last moment of the 111th Congress would be the epitome of everything the voters rejected. Is this the first major piece of legislation President Obama wants to sign after the election? Is this how the Senate Democrats who are up in 2012 want to start their reelection cycles? Republicans must staunchly oppose it, and if it still passes they need to make it very clear to those Senate Democrats that this vote will not be forgotten: It will serve as a symbol of the old way, and together with the 2009 stimulus bill and the health-care bill will hang around the neck of every member of Congress who supports it."

"Only a few months ago, the White House and its allies on the legal left dismissed the constitutional challenges to ObamaCare as frivolous, futile and politically motived. So much for that. Yesterday, a federal district court judge in Virginia ruled that the health law breaches the Constitution's limits on government power. 

"In a careful 42-page ruling, Judge Henry Hudson declared that ObamaCare's core enforcement mechanism known as the individual mandate -- the regulation that requires everyone to purchase health insurance or else pay a penalty -- exceeds Congress's authority to regulate the lives of Americans... 

"As the Virginia case shows, ObamaCare really does stretch the Commerce Clause to the breaking point. The core issue is whether the federal government can order individuals to do anything the political class decides it wants them to do. The stakes couldn't be higher for our constitutional order."

"In 2008, candidate Obama told Joe the Plumber that he wanted high taxes on high earners in order 'to spread the wealth around.' He told ABC's Charlie Gibson that he wanted higher capital gains taxes even if they produced less revenue in the interest of 'fairness.' 

"Now after his party's 2010 shellacking, incumbent Obama seems to have discovered the virtues of a 'growing economy.' The New York Times reports that he has asked his administration to develop proposals to eliminate tax preferences and lower tax rates, as the 1986 bipartisan tax reform did. 

"Perhaps the president is learning that you can't plunder the private sector endlessly, Chicago-style, without ill effects."

"Barack Obama won the great tax-cut showdown of 2010 — and House Democrats don’t have a clue that he did.  In the deal struck this week, the president negotiated the biggest stimulus in American history, larger than his $814 billion 2009 stimulus package.  It will pump a trillion borrowed Chinese dollars into the U.S. economy over the next two years — which just happen to be the two years of the run-up to the next presidential election.  This is a defeat?"

"The tax deal is certainly better for the economy than political gridlock over extending the tax cuts. How much better is uncertain. 

"But the Democratic base seems more interested in expanding government than in stimulating the economy. They are bellowing with rage not so much at Obama but at the reality that he is grudgingly acknowledging. They had their time, and now it's gone."

"In accepting the deal to cut payroll and business taxes and extend all of the Bush-era tax rates through 2012, Mr. Obama has implicitly admitted that his economic strategy has flopped. He is acknowledging that tax rates matter to growth, that treating business like robber barons has hurt investment and hiring, and that tax cuts are superior to spending as stimulus. It took 9.8% unemployment and a loss of 63 House seats for this education to sink in, but the country will benefit."