"It suits Democrats to treat immigration as an issue of 'race' and discrimination, because it permits them to frighten Hispanic Americans and secure that important voting bloc. But it’s a fiction. We have an immigration problem because the U.S. is an incredibly desirable place to live and work. Immigrants continue to enrich our society, not least because they are often more appreciative of our institutions and liberties than are the native born. If it were feasible, millions of people worldwide would come here. And millions wait patiently, sometimes for decades, for the chance to do so. Democrats worry ostentatiously about the unfairness of asking people to prove their legal status. What about the unfairness of giving an advantage to line jumpers over those who abide by the law and wait their turn?"

"There are many theories for why very conservative Republicans seem to be doing so well lately, taking their party’s Senate nominations in Florida, Kentucky and Utah, and beating Democrats head-to-head in Massachusetts, New Jersey and Virginia. Some attribute this to a generalized anti-incumbent mood. Others say it reflects the tendency of parties in power to falter in midterm elections. Recently it has been fashionable to ascribe right-wing success to the Tea Party movement.

"But the most obvious explanation is the one that’s been conspicuously absent from the gusher of analysis. Republican success in 2010 can be boiled down to two words: Rush Limbaugh.

"Mr. Limbaugh has played an important role in elections going back to 1994, when he commanded the air war in the Republican Congressional victory. This time, however, he is more than simply the mouthpiece of the party. He is the brains and the spirit behind its resurgence."

"House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer, D-Md., recently announced that Congress will not pass a budget resolution this year. That hasn't happened since Congress adopted the landmark Budget Control and Impoundment Act of 1974, which among much else was supposed to streamline and rationalize the federal budgeting process. The 1974 bill requires an annual budget resolution agreed to by the budget committees of the Senate and the House as an outline of congressional spending priorities for the coming year. But it's not hard to figure out why there won't be such a resolution this year: Democrats want voters to know as little as possible before the November elections about their plans to continue spending, taxing and borrowing at historic levels."

"Mr. Blumenthal owes the people of Connecticut, and particularly its veterans, a thorough explanation for the very serious questions that have been raised over what appears to be a long history of dishonest statements.  If you can’t trust him to tell the truth about whether or not he served in Vietnam, you have wonder what exactly can you trust about Richard Blumenthal."

"If you want to watch someone squirm, take a look at the two-minute videotape of Attorney General Eric Holder dodging Republican representative Lamar Smith’s question of whether 'radical Islam' motivated the Times Square bomber.

"Holder, who last year called America 'a nation of cowards' for refusing to talk frankly about race, plainly didn’t want to say what is plain to everyone else, that Faisal Shahzad, back from five months in Waziristan, launched his terror attack because of his Islamist beliefs."

"Wouldn’t it be grand if the Obama administration cared more about policing our borders than about policing our refrigerators? How about fixing our deportation system instead of fixing our junk-food diets?

"First lady Michelle Obama argued this week that obesity is a 'national security' issue. But her husband allows far greater threats to go unabated. The FBI’s arrests of two Boston-area men tied to the Times Square bombing attempt — both held on immigration violations — underscore the continuing homeland-security lapses...

"There are currently more than 2 million illegal-alien visa overstayers in the country, along with an estimated 500,000 illegal-alien absconders who have ignored orders from immigration judges to leave the country. Voluntary departure policies — granting illegal aliens the privilege of deporting themselves on an honor system — have allowed countless lawbreakers to remain in the country. There are federal laws mandating up to 20 years in jail for those who re-enter the U.S. illegally after being deported, but the provisions are enforced sporadically."

"In the face of financial ruin of the nation, it was unconscionable to pass a new health entitlement that almost all Americans know will add trillions to the debt. Next year, as Mr. Obama almost certainly will call for a new value-added tax to do the 'responsible thing' to reduce the deficits he and Congress have created, it will be equally unconscionable to support such a tax. The only solution to the debt and deficit that will not kill economic growth is to cut spending, not raise taxes. We cannot afford to elect Republicans or Democrats who would be 'responsible,' and raise taxes."

"Never mind Rep. Alan Mollohan's (D-WV) primary defeat Tuesday. Avert your gaze from Sen. Bob Bennett's (R-Utah) loss last Saturday. The biggest and most consequential elections don't take place until next week, May 18, a date that ranks as the most important of the election calendar so far.

"Just four states — Arkansas, Kentucky, Oregon and Pennsylvania — will go to the polls that day, but the ballot will be packed with marquee elections that will provide the broadest and most detailed data to date about the toxicity of the political environment and the intensity of anti-establishment fury."

"She's more likely than not to win confirmation to the Supreme Court. Thus, the really big question about Elena Kagan is blunter: How and when does the United States as a whole get out from under the sway of an alien enterprise such as her university, Harvard?

"That the Kagan nomination positions one more Harvard graduate to tighten the Harvard-Yale vise on the court no more than reintroduces the consideration that Harvard isn't notably fond of the American Main Street. Out of Harvard, on a nonstop basis, pour some of America's worst ideas, such as that government has all the answers, old moralities have to go, and racism and sexism infest America -- though not Harvard, you better believe it! -- from top to bottom."

"What we're seeing in Greece is the death spiral of the welfare state. This isn't Greece's problem alone, and that's why its crisis has rattled global stock markets and threatens economic recovery. Virtually every advanced nation, including the United States, faces the same prospect. Aging populations have been promised huge health and retirement benefits, which countries haven't fully covered with taxes. The reckoning has arrived in Greece, but it awaits most wealthy societies.

"Americans dislike the term 'welfare state' and substitute the bland word 'entitlements.' The vocabulary doesn't alter the reality. Countries cannot overspend and overborrow forever. By delaying hard decisions about spending and taxes, governments maneuver themselves into a cul de sac..."