"The White House had proposed, and [Treasury Secretary Timothy] Geithner was ready to defend, such a radical expansion of government power that even Barney Frank, the ultra-liberal congressman from Massachusetts, felt compelled to object that it went too far.

"When Barney Frank thinks that you are too liberal, you better check your medications."

"Sooner or later it is going to occur to Barack Obama that he is the president of the United States. As of yet, though, he does not act that way, appearing promiscuously on television and granting interviews like the presidential candidate he no longer is. The election has been held, but the campaign goes on and on. The candidate has yet to become commander in chief… 

"Obama lost credibility with his [health care reform legislation] deadline-that-never-was, and now he threatens to lose some more with his posturing toward Iran. He has gotten into a demeaning dialogue with Ahmadinejad, an accomplished liar. (The next day, the Iranian used a news conference to counter Obama and, days later, Iran tested some intermediate-range missiles.) Obama is our version of a Supreme Leader, not given to making idle threats, setting idle deadlines, reversing course on momentous issues, creating a TV crisis where none existed or, unbelievably, pitching Chicago for the 2016 Olympics. Obama's the president. Time he understood that."

“Despite his many words and television appearances, our elegant and eloquent president remains more an emblem of change than an agent of it. He's a man with an endless, worthy to-do list - health care, climate change, bank reform, global capital regulation, ... the Middle East, you name it - but, as yet, no boxes checked 'done.' This is a problem that style will not fix.”

"Mr. Obama may be the most puzzled of all. He went many thousands of miles out of his way to apologize for the sins of the evil country he's the president of, promising with servile humility to hector us to do better. For his efforts, he learns that the Iranians have not only not disbanded their nuclear-bomb factory, but have added another to enrich uranium, and dared Mr. Obama and the West to do anything about it. ‘We are going to respond to any military action in a crushing manner,’ boasts the chief of Iran's Revolutionary Guard Air Force, ‘and it doesn't make any difference which country or regime has launched the aggression.’ A teleprompter won't be much protection against an incoming nuclear missile."

"It is bad that the President, demonstrating what can only be described as intellectual density, has chosen instead to compare his public option to our system of state colleges and universities. This is particularly ironic given the fact that the cost of higher education has been skyrocketing for years and has in fact outpaced that of healthcare. Even more ironic is that according to the College Board's annual tuition survey, the rate of growth of the price of public 4 year colleges has been faster than at private 4 year colleges; a trend that has persisted for 3 decades."

"[I]t would be unrealistic to expect complete candor from any president about the costs and risks of extending health insurance to 30 million more Americans. If Obama can meet the truthfulness test applied by Huckleberry Finn to his creator Mark Twain -- 'There was things which he stretched, but mainly he told the truth' -- that would be good enough for me.

"But can he? Despite Obama's good intentions, I can't help thinking that the deviations from truth-telling identified by various critics go to the heart of his plan, compromise his credibility, and could accelerate health-cost inflation with ruinous consequences for the economy."

"Americans have taken the measure of Mr. Obama's health-care plan and, as his falling poll numbers attest, increasingly don't like it. His health-care initiative is not only losing public support on its own merits; it is diminishing Mr. Obama's credibility. Most amazing of all, the president's constant chattering runs the risk of making him boring and stale. His magic dissipates as he becomes less interesting.

"Mr. Obama doesn't need more TV time. He needs a new health-care plan ... one that most Americans see as something that will actually improve their health care. He needs his facts to align with reality."

"Tomorrow, President Obama will chair a special nuclear-disarmament meeting by the United Nations Security Council. The White House bills this as a historic first, but it is typical of Mr. Obama's emphasis on style over substance. He will appear before the body with the weakest foreign-policy record of any new U.S. president in recent memory. An around-the-world tour of international hot spots shows that for all the president's lofty rhetoric, he can point to precious few accomplishments."

"The mandate in question is the financial penalty that Democrats want to impose on healthy citizens who don't have health insurance. One of the main health care bills under consideration calls the proposal a 'tax.'

"As for the negative effect the tax would have on hard-working Americans, the president ought to consult himself. Last year, he said the same proposal would be punitive and unfair. In other words, Mr. Obama was against this tax before he was for it."

“It is clear that ACORN has fostered a culture of corruption. With investigations of ACORN now occurring in 20 states, it is time for the FBI to open up a full-scale investigation into possible criminal conduct by ACORN.”