"In Chicago politics, there's an old term for the publicly subsidized pay-offs and positions meted out to the corruptocrats' friends and special interests: boodle.

"In the age of Obama, Hope and Change is all about the boodle. So it was with the stimulus. And the massive national service expansion. And the health care bill. And the financial reform bill. And the blossoming job-trading scandals engulfing the White House.

"There's always been an ageless, interdependent relationship between Windy City politicos and 'goo-goos' (the cynical Chicago term for good government reformers). Chicago-style 'reform' has always entailed the redistribution of wealth and power under the guise of public service. And it has inevitably led to more corruption."

"Nothing is going to help Obama unless and until the engineers come up with a method for shutting down this gusher of pollution. He clearly couldn't prevent it, and he was slow in signaling its severity. But he owns it now and until it is over, the man who aspired to be the next John Kennedy or maybe Franklin Roosevelt will have to hope he doesn't end up as Jimmy Carter."

"Every week brings fresh bad news about Obamacare. Many companies are considering dropping their health coverage as a result of the incentives the law creates. Small businesses are reporting that the law’s tax credits are encouraging them not to make new hires. Most people with preexisting conditions, who were supposed to be the chief beneficiaries of the law, will be left out from its high-risk pools: There are 4 million of them, but enough funding for only 200,000. The Department of Health and Human Services is already behind schedule in implementing the law. And the director of the Congressional Budget Office, appointed by Democrats, denies that the law will reduce the pressure of health spending on the budget.

"Republicans ought to be seizing on each revelation to press the case for repealing Obamacare. It is, after all, the worst law the Democrats have enacted on Obama’s watch; and it is also the GOP’s best issue in this year’s elections. Instead Republicans have largely allowed the Democrats to switch the subject from their unpopular health-care legislation to financial regulation, oil spills, and immigration. They have been reacting to the news instead of trying to make it."

"The effort to destroy the Jewish state has many fronts. One front is in Iran, where the maniacal regime that has repeatedly promised to 'wipe Israel off the map' marches inexorably toward a nuclear bomb. Another is in Gaza, from which Hamas has lobbed 10,000 missiles into Israeli cities. Yet another front, the most insidious, is comprised of the propaganda arm of the Palestinian movement. And this front thrives for only one reason — the complicity of the world press and the so-called 'international community.'

"It was the propaganda arm that staged the 'Freedom Flotilla.' But there have been many previous productions:  The propaganda arm was responsible for the photo-shopped images of damage to Lebanon during the 2006 war, the staged 'death' of twelve-year-old Muhammad al-Durrah, the 'massacre' at Jenin, and the 'war crimes' in Gaza...

"Today, in the wake of the confrontation between Israeli soldiers and the provocateurs aboard the Gaza flotilla, the remarkably incurious world press is providing exactly the sort of headlines on which the organizers knew they could count."

"We should guard their graves with sacred vigilance. All that the consecrated wealth and taste of the nation can add to their adornment and security is but a fitting tribute to the memory of her slain defenders. Let no wanton foot tread rudely on such hallowed grounds. Let pleasant paths invite the coming and going of reverent visitors and fond mourners. Let no vandalism of avarice or neglect, no ravages of time testify to the present or to the coming generations that we have forgotten as a people the cost of a free and undivided republic."

"The American people have spent at least two years worrying that high government spending would, in the end, undo the republic. They saw the dollars gushing night and day, and worried that while everything looked the same on the surface, our position was eroding. They have worried about a border that is in some places functionally and of course illegally open, that it too is gushing night and day with problems that states, cities and towns there cannot solve. 

"And now we have a videotape metaphor for all the public's fears: that clip we see every day, on every news show, of the well gushing black oil into the Gulf of Mexico and toward our shore. You actually don't get deadlier as a metaphor for the moment than that, the monster that lives deep beneath the sea."

"With incumbents toppling and party establishments cracking, there is talk of November being a 'reform' election. Don't be fooled: There is political reform and there is Political Reform. Political reform with a small 'r' comes and goes on tiny politicians' feet. Big-R Reform changes the nation... 

"When the history of this Reform is written, the event that ignited it may be the Obama health-care plan. The year spent with that legislation caused something to snap in American politics.

"ObamaCare touched live cables buried beneath the political roadbed. Amid a deep recession, it was very expensive, and its cost required an array of new taxes and fees. Normally the trillion-dollar price tag might have rolled past a public numbed to spending numbers. This came right after the nearly trillion-dollar stimulus bill, itself a cats-and-dogs heave of taxpayer cash. The health-care celebration was followed by passage of a $3.8 trillion federal budget claiming nearly 25% of GDP."

"The more striking movement in public opinion over time has been the erosion of confidence in the country's big institutions, starting with but not limited to the government. Twenty years ago, 42% of Americans said they trusted the government to do what was right just about always or most of the time. By this month, in the Journal/NBC News poll, that number was down to 25%.

"A stunning 31% said they 'almost never' trust the government to do the right thing."

"President Obama and Democrats on Capitol Hill are publicly fretting about the dangers of spending and debt, which can mean only one thing: Another big spending 'stimulus' bill is in the works. And sure enough, the House plans to vote this week on $190 billion in new spending, $134 billion of which it won't even pretend to pay for."

"Several months ago, a group of logistics officers at the Industrial College of the Armed Forces developed a national security strategy as a class exercise. Their No. 1 recommendation for maintaining U.S. global leadership was 'restore fiscal responsibility.'

"That's a small illustration of what's becoming a consensus among national security experts inside and outside the Obama administration: To play an effective role in the world, the United States must rebuild its economic strength at home. After a decade of war and financial crisis, America has run up debts that pose a national security problem, not just an economic one."