Description: WASHINGTON -- I first heard it two, perhaps two and a half years ago. A sage sitting in his New York City office pronounced it. Said the sage to me: "This is going to be the dirtiest presidential campaign in history." I would pass on my prescient friend's name, but he is a gentleman of high profile. It would be best if he were to continue his life unmolested by the Living Saint in the White House, whom a benighted majority of Americanos deposited there in 2009. Now, roughly six months from Election Day, I fear my friend was right. Financial donors to Mitt Romney have suffered unflattering attention from the press, from boycotters to labor thugs to stink bomb throwers. It is only a matter of time before the government begins harassing them with its vast array of federal agencies. Mitt Romney himself has suffered from the media and from assorted psychopaths. Yet, in time, what goes around comes around, as the phrase has it. President Barack Obama will get similar treatment, though not from the government. He controls the government, and thus far only a sole Marine has objected to him. He is Sgt. Gary Stein, and needless to say, he got the old heave ho.

Description: Is it panic time at Obama headquarters in Chicago? You might get that impression from watching events -- and the polls -- over the past few weeks. In matchups against Mitt Romney, the president is leading by only 47 to 45 percent in the realclearpolitics.com average of recent polls. A CBS/New York Times panelback poll, in which interviewers call back respondents to a previous survey, showed Romney leading 46 to 43 percent -- and leading among women. That's despite the Democrats' charge that Republicans are waging a "war on women" by opposing requirements that all health insurance policies provide free contraceptives. Evidently that's not the only issue on the minds of American women. Or consider the clumsiness of Obama's announcement a week ago that after "evolving" he is now in favor of same-sex marriage. This was clearly not rolled out according to some long-term plan. On Sunday, May 6, Joe Biden told "Meet the Press" that he was "absolutely comfortable" with same-sex marriage. On Monday, press secretary Jay Carney was so battered with questions about the issue that he cancelled the daily press briefing for Tuesday. Then, at a hastily arranged interview with ABC News on Wednesday, Obama announced his switch. As a supporter of same-sex marriage, I am glad that Obama took the step that Dick Cheney took several years ago. Like many Americans, he changed his mind at some point and supported a policy that almost no one backed a quarter-century ago. Recent polls report that about half of Americans now back same-sex marriage. True, voters in North Carolina on Tuesday voted to ban same-sex marriage by a 61 to 39 percent margin. But only a few years ago, any political pro would have been astonished to see the issue get 39 percent support in a state where 44 percent of voters are white evangelical Protestants.

Description: President Obama's affirmation of gay marriage threatens to undermine the near-monolithic black support Obama enjoyed in 2008. Several members of the black clergy now say they intend to sit out the presidential election. One poll from last November found black opposition to gay marriage at 58 percent, higher than the rest of the country, which is about evenly split. The real question is this: What took black church leaders so long to reconsider their near blind support for the Democratic Party? The historical strength of black churches has been that of a moral and spiritual refuge in a once-hostile country of legalized slavery and Jim Crow. This explains why so many civil rights leaders came out of the church. The moral cause was just and clear: Equal rights mean equal rights -- for everyone. But equal rights and equal results are two very different things. The modern civil rights movement lost its way by failing to appreciate the difference. To achieve "equal results," the Democratic Party, among other things, demands redistribution of wealth, a government response to the "gap" between the rich and poor, higher minimum wages and higher taxes on the so-called rich. The Democratic Party opposes education vouchers, despite polls showing that black and Hispanic inner-city parents want them. The Democratic Party is the party of race-based preferences and also opposes privatization of Social Security.

Description: It has been reported that the Obama campaign this year, as in 2008, has disabled or chosen not to use AVS in screening contributions made by credit card. That doesn't sound very important. But it's evidence of a modus operandi that strikes me as thuggish. AVS stands for Address Verification System. It's the software that checks whether the name of the cardholder matches his or her address. If a campaign doesn't use AVS, it can wind up accepting contributions from phony names or accepting contributions from foreigners, both of which are illegal. The 2008 Obama campaign pocketed money from "John Galt, 1957 Ayn Rand Lane, Galts Gulch CO 99999" and $174,000 from a woman in Missouri who told reporters she had given nothing and had never been billed. Presumably she would have noticed an extra charge of $174,000. The Obama campaign is evidently happy to pocket the money. After all, this is the president who, according to political scientist Brendan Doherty, has appeared at more fundraisers in three and a half years than his six predecessors did in 35 years. Obama has been to at least two fundraisers just in my apartment building. I often see police and Secret Service blocking traffic for a block around Washington's posh Jefferson Hotel at 16th and M Streets. Obama talks a good game on transparency and openness, but he's ready to flout the law by avoiding AVS and to break his high-minded campaign promises.

Description: Last week, Barack Obama delivered speeches at universities in Chapel Hill, N.C., Iowa City, Iowa, and Boulder, Colo. The trip was, press secretary Jay Carney assured us, official government business, not political campaigning. It's part of a pattern. Neil Munro of the Daily Caller has counted 130 appearances by the president, vice president, their spouses, White House officials, and Cabinet secretaries at colleges and universities since spring 2011. Obviously, the Obama campaign strategists are worried that he cannot duplicate his 66 to 32 percent margin among young voters back in 2008. Recent surveys of young people show inconsistent results. Gallup's tracking shows Obama leading Mitt Romney 64 to 29 percent, and a Harvard Institute of Politics poll shows him leading Romney 43 to 26 percent among those who said they had an opinion. But a March survey of 18- to 24 year olds by the Public Religion Research Institute showed Obama ahead of "a Republican" by only 48 to 41 percent. Only 52 percent had favorable opinions of Obama, and 43 percent had unfavorable opinions. Where the surveys seem to be in accord is that young voters are less engaged, less likely to vote and less enthusiastic about Obama than in the days when he was proclaiming, "We are the change we are seeking."

Description: One of President Obama's radical eco-bureaucrats has apologized for confirming an indelible truth: This White House treats politically incorrect private industries as public enemies who deserve regulatory death sentences. Environmental Protection Agency administrator Al Armendariz, an avowed greenie on leave from Southern Methodist University, gave a little-noticed speech in 2010 outlining his sadistic philosophy. "I was in a meeting once, and I gave an analogy to my staff about my philosophy of enforcement, and I think it was probably a little crude and maybe not appropriate for the meeting, but I'll go ahead and tell you what I said," he began. In a video obtained and released by Sen. James Inhofe, R-Okla., Armendariz then shared his bloody analogy: "It was kind of like how the Romans used to conquer little villages in the Mediterranean. They'd go into a little Turkish town somewhere, they'd find the first five guys they saw, and they would crucify them. And then you know that town was really easy to manage for the next few years. ... So, that's our general philosophy." Echoing President Obama's "punch back twice as hard" treatment of his political enemies, Armendariz explained to his underlings that "you hit them as hard as you can, and you make examples out of them, and there is a deterrent effect there. And, companies that are smart see that, they don't want to play that game, and they decide at that point that it's time to clean up." In other words: Suck up, fly left, or face prosecution. The goal isn't a cleaner environment. The goal is political incitement of fear.

Description: Every day, we get a new kick in the gut from the Obama administration. Most recently, Environmental Protection Agency Region 6 Administrator Al Armendariz was caught on video articulating his view of the agency's role in enforcing its regulations. Aremendariz said: "It was kind of like how the Romans used to, you know, conquer villages in the Mediterranean. They'd go into a little Turkish town somewhere; they'd find the first five guys they saw, and they'd crucify them. Then, you know, that town was really easy to manage for the next few years. ... It's a deterrent factor." This man should be fired -- yesterday. White House press secretary Jay Carney risibly says Aremendariz wasn't articulating the attitude of the administration. Sadly, that's precisely what he was articulating. Indeed, we've seen this attitude by the administration in countless examples, from Obama's handling of the Obamacare legislation and restructuring of the GM loans to the administration's New Black Panther voter intimidation case to Solyndra to Fast and Furious to -- oh, never mind; I have to keep this to less than 20,000 words. None of this should surprise us. Obama is the quintessential liberal, and his administration's recurring abuses are simply the logical extension of liberal hubris born of a self-righteous certainty of the superiority of leftist ideas. This inevitably leads to dictatorial usurpations and lawlessness from the liberal ruling class. These liberals are sure not only that their ideas and policies are more effective but also that they are morally imperative -- and that conservative ideas and policies are not just ineffective but also woefully immoral.

Description: Every new datum on economic stagnation -- such as Thursday's Labor Department announcement that unemployment claims remain at a three-month high -- increases the temptation to compare the 2012 presidential race to 1980's. Both years feature a Democratic incumbent, elected on a surge of high hopes, who must face the voters after four years of disappointment. In both cases, the economy is a drag on the president. In both cases, the incumbent has attempted to demonize his opposition in order to avoid running on his record. In both cases, the challenger was regarded, at first, as easy to defeat. It's seductive to believe that 2012 will turn out the way 1980 did, with voters concluding that the challenger was not the ogre the president warned of, seeing him instead as the more presidential of the two. It may happen. But the Romney campaign and those who wish it well have to grapple with the fact that the country has changed in the past 32 years in ways that don't advantage Republicans.

Description: The illegal immigration problem is going away. That's the conclusion I draw from the latest report of the Pew Hispanic Center on Mexican immigration to the United States. Pew's demographers have carefully combed through statistics compiled by the U.S. Census Bureau, the Department of Homeland Security and the Mexican government, and have come up with estimates of the flow of migrants from and back to Mexico. Their work seems to be as close to definitive as possible. They conclude that from 2005 to 2010 some 1.39 million people came from Mexico to the United States and 1.37 million went from the U.S. to Mexico. "The largest wave of immigration in history from a single country to the United States," they write, "has come to a standstill." The turning point seems to have come with the collapse of housing prices and the onset of recession in 2007. Annual immigration from Mexico dropped from peaks of 770,000 in 2000 and 670,000 in 2004 to 140,000 in 2010.

Description: A well-regarded Republican strategist at a private gathering recently warned, "And just wait until they play that Mormon card." By "they," he meant the Obama campaign and its complicit media cheerleaders. Lawrence O'Donnell, only days later, gave his viewers a historical tutorial on the Mormon religion, darkly suggesting that we all should be afraid, very afraid. The Democratic governor of Montana, Brian Schweitzer, called Mitt Romney's grandfather a "polygamist." This is actually good news for the Romney campaign. By making Romney's Mormonism an issue, the Obama campaign has, as trial lawyers like to say, "reopened" the issue of religion. The Romney campaign can therefore revisit the Rev. Jeremiah Wright and Obama's close relationship to him. True, Obama apparently severed ties to Wright, but Obama did so only after the very salvation of his first presidential campaign depended upon it. Wright, Obama's pastor for some 20 years, was described by Obama as his "spiritual advisor." Wright married the Obamas, baptized their children and blessed their home. One of Wright's friends is the anti-Semitic advocate of racial separatism, Minister Louis Farrakhan. "Trumpet Magazine," published by Wright's daughter and formerly promoted on the church's website, once honored Farrakhan in a cover story as a man who "truly epitomized greatness." In the article, Wright lauded Farrakhan as "one of the 20th and 21st century giants of the African-American religious experience."

Description: If Mitt Romney is to have any chance of beating President Barack Obama in November, he must win a larger share of the Hispanic vote than current polls suggest he will. And he won't unless he solves his immigration problem. It's a problem of his own making. He decided that beating up on illegal immigrants would boost his popularity among those suspicious that he was really a moderate Republican. In doing so, he injected an issue into the campaign that had largely fizzled -- and for good reason. Illegal immigration is down to historical lows -- primarily because the U.S. economy continues to be sluggish, so fewer people want to come here. Romney has plenty of advisers trying to figure out how best to soften his negative image among Hispanic voters. We can expect to see him wolfing down tacos and mumbling a few phrases in Spanish in the days ahead. But neither tactic will do anything but make him look foolish. What he should do is rid his campaign of the likes of Kris Kobach -- the zealot behind several state anti-illegal immigrant laws being challenged in the courts right now. The Romney campaign already has started to back away from its association with Kobach, but that's just the first step. The next thing he needs to do is to speak honestly and openly to the American people about the true state of immigration to the U.S. -- legal and illegal.

Description: "Where are all the moderate Muslims?" It's a question often posed by Americans who watch with disgust as the Council on American-Islamic Relations and other apologists for radical Islam hog all of the attention. CAIR, which was named as an unindicted co-conspirator in the terror financing Holy Land Foundation case, and which regularly denounces any effort to combat radical Islam as anti-Muslim prejudice, is routinely described in the press as a Muslim "civil rights" group. Moderate American Muslims exist though. And it's not that hard to find them. Just see who CAIR and the Muslim Public Affairs Council are denouncing. This week, they are after Dr. M. Zuhdi Jasser, founder and president of the American Islamic Forum for Democracy. Sen. Mitch McConnell has appointed Jasser to serve on the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom, and this has sent the most prominent Muslim American organizations to the barricades. A dishonest character assassination campaign has been launched against Jasser, urging Muslims to protest the appointment. CAIR spokesman Ibrahim Hooper told The Blaze that Jasser "has long been viewed by American Muslims and the colleagues in the civil liberties community as a mere sock puppet for Islam haters and an enabler of Islamophobia." That gives you the flavor of CAIR's level of discourse.

Description: Some 20 million Americans in primaries and caucuses will take part in selecting the Republican presidential nominee. One person will choose the vice presidential nominee. This has long struck me as absurd: One person choosing someone who, as a result, might become president for as long as 10 years. But just about everyone in politics says it's the only proper way. Over the last 25 years, presidential nominees of both parties have engaged in conscientious consultation and have mostly made pretty good choices. No more picks at five o'clock in the morning to meet a convention deadline. For even longer, every vice president has done constructive work of governance. Voters have come to expect a VP nominee who can contribute substance more than one who can balance a ticket. Ticket-balancing suggestions have come in to Mitt Romney. He should endorse a fiery cultural conservative, some Republicans say, although he's not likely to name the undisciplined Rick Santorum. He needs to name a Latino, say others. But the most obvious choice, the eloquent Sen. Marco Rubio, has reiterated his unwillingness to run. So has New Mexico Gov. Susana Martinez.

Description: Calling America's criminal justice system "racist" is not confined to "civil rights leaders" like the Revs. Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton. Then-Sen. Barack Obama, during the 2008 presidential campaign, said it, too. Blacks and whites, said Obama, "are arrested at very different rates, are convicted at very different rates (and) receive very different sentences ... for the same crime." When the man who became president of the United States says this -- the No. 1 law enforcement officer -- it must, therefore, be true. Let's examine five major assumptions behind this assertion.

Description: How much will Obamacare -- call it the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act if you like -- cost over the next 10 years? More than you've been led to believe, reports Charles Blahous of George Mason University's Mercatus Center. To be specific, he projects it will add $1,160 billion to net federal spending over the next 10 years and at least $340 billion to federal budget deficits in that time. Blahous was appointed by Barack Obama as one of two public trustees of the Social Security and Medicare programs. He worked on these issues in George W. Bush's administration and submitted his Mercatus paper for anonymous peer review. Why does he say Obamacare will increase spending when the Obama administration, citing Congressional Budget Office numbers, promised it will save money? One reason is that the CBO said Obamacare's "Class Act" provisions would save money, since the government would collect premiums immediately but not pay off policyholders until later.

Description: The president is barnstorming around the nation hoping to enrage voters at the injustice that the wealthy pay fewer taxes than the middle class. "Now that's wrong," Obama objected, "That's not fair." It also isn't true. According to the National Taxpayers Union, in 2009, the top 1 percent of earners paid 36.7 percent of income taxes. The top 5 percent paid 58.6 percent. And the top 10 percent paid more than 70 percent. Social Security and Medicare taxes fall more evenly on all income groups (except the poor) but are lower. Further, Obama had the opportunity to repeal the Bush tax cuts he claims to find so odious when his party controlled both houses of Congress, but he chose to extend them instead. This is political demagoguery of a high order, attempting to achieve re-election by whipping up class envy and finding "kulaks" to scapegoat. While it isn't true that the rich are not paying their fair share, it is true that you are subsidizing Warren Buffett's Medicare. This is but one of the many injustices and inefficiencies of our current health care system that will only worsen if Obamacare is not repealed or overturned by the Supreme Court. The one and only thing that Democrats and Republicans agree on regarding health care in the United States is that costs are too high and rising at an unsustainable rate, though Democrats engage in denial on the subject of Medicare's solvency. Yet with the very next breath, Democrats nearly always argue that the pre-Obamacare health system was a "free-market" system that failed.

Description: Though everyone is talking about Democratic strategist and Obama confidant Hilary Rosen's insolent remarks about Ann Romney, I want to discuss them, too, because they reveal her leftist mindset. Rosen didn't misspeak; she spoke deliberately and with passion. And when given a chance to retract or soften her remarks, she doubled down -- at least initially. Her comments came in a segment on CNN with Anderson Cooper. Cooper pointed out that in the current economy, "women are seeing jobs come back much more slowly than men are," and he asked Rosen, essentially, whether there was anything wrong with the Romney campaign's highlighting that fact and "reaching out to women on an issue that they care about, on the economy." "Guess what?" asked Rosen. "His wife has actually never worked a day in her life. She's never really dealt with the kinds of economic issues that a majority of the women in this country are facing in terms of how do we feed our kids, how do we send them to school and why we worry about their future."

Description: Not since Hillary Clinton's infamous remark during the 1992 presidential campaign -- "I suppose I could have stayed home and baked cookies and had teas" -- has a prominent Democratic woman so insulted full-time homemakers. Speaking on CNN Wednesday, Democratic strategist Hilary Rosen said that Ann Romney has "never worked a day in her life" and, therefore, can't understand the struggles of most women. Rather than apologize for sticking her thumb in the eyes of millions of American homemakers, Rosen doubled down when critics responded. "This isn't about whether Ann Romney or I or other women of some means can afford to make a choice to stay home and raise kids," she said. Talk about a "war on women"; this sounds like a war on work-at-home moms. In Rosen's view, they're either lazy or privileged. Nothing about Rosen's comments surprises me. I know her slightly -- we are both frequent panelists on PBS' all-female public affairs program, "To the Contrary" -- and she's a perfectly nice woman. But she's also a hard-core feminist -- and that's the problem.

Description: Now that Rick Santorum has "suspended" his campaign, we can stop pretending and can say what has been clear for weeks: Mitt Romney will be the Republican nominee for president. The general election campaign has begun. In some quarters, it is assumed that Barack Obama will be re-elected without too much difficulty. There are reports that staffers at Obama's Chicago headquarters consider Romney's candidacy a joke.

Description: I don't know any polite way of putting this -- but he's lying," said professor John Ellis, president of the National Association of Scholars' California division. Ellis was reacting to a critic's characterization of the NAS's damning report, "A Crisis of Competence: The Corrupting Effect of Political Activism in the University of California." California taxpayers spend $2.8 billion to educate the more than 230,000 students at the 10 campuses that comprise the UC system.

Description: Apparently, many liberals were disappointed in the administration?s performance before the Supreme Court. They felt that the government?s lawyer, Solicitor General Donald Verrilli, did not respond effectively to the challenges of some of the conservative justices. The editor of Commentary, John Podhoretz, offered an explanation on his magazine?s blog. ?American liberals,? he wrote, ?know their own language, but they don?t know the language of their ideological and partisan opposite numbers. ... Conservatives speak liberal, but for liberals in the United States, conservatism might as well be Esperanto.?

Description: In his excellent daily Web news summary, "The Transom," Ben Domenech says that President Obama's speech at the Portland Museum of Art on Saturday "is likely to be Obama's campaign speech from here on out." He's probably correct, so let's take a look, with an eye to whether it's likely to work. Obama's template is nothing new. He first repeats his claim as to the catastrophic conditions he inherited from President Bush. "It's hard to remember sometimes how perilous things were when I was sworn in." So Obama took immediate action "to save the auto industry, to get the banks lending again" and to make sure state and local governments didn't lay off teachers and first responders. Indeed, he moved so fast that "people didn't fully appreciate the scope and magnitude of what got done in those first six months, that first year."

Description: When he was first sworn in as Attorney General, Eric Holder made one of the more obtuse comments in political history. When it comes to issues of race, Holder declared, we are "a nation of cowards ... we, as average Americans, simply do not talk enough with each other about race." Really? It seems to me that we talk endlessly, and usually unproductively, about race. We love nothing better in America than a good racial angle. The Trayvon Martin case pushes all the buttons. Black provocateurs such as Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton get to strut their stuff. The liberal media get to distort and cheerlead for one side. Conservatives get to indulge their disdain for the race hustlers, and everyone's blood pressure rises. We are now engaged in another fruitless shouting match about whether young black men are being hunted on the streets of America and whether "stand your ground" laws are dangerous. But as the estimable Ann Coulter has pointed out, Florida's "stand your ground" law was irrelevant to the Martin case. Whichever version of events that night you believe: A) that Zimmerman followed and shot Martin in cold blood; or B) that Zimmerman shot Martin in the midst of a fight; the law, which does not require a person who fears for his life to retreat before using deadly force, is not implicated.

Description: A long-standing legal charade was played out again recently, when Federal Express paid $3 million to settle an employment discrimination case brought by the U.S. Department of Labor. Federal Express was accused of both racial discrimination and sex discrimination. FedEx denied it. Why then did they pay the $3 million? Because it can cost a lot more than $3 million to fight a discrimination case. Years ago, the Sears department store chain spent $20 million fighting a sex discrimination charge that took 15 years to make its way through the legal labyrinth. In the end, Sears won -- if spending $20 million and getting nothing in return can be called winning.

Description: Because of the nation's and Supreme Court's war over Obamacare this past week, I'm deferring until next week Part 2 of my article last week, "Not All Presidential Orders Are Created Equal," to address this raging debate. (END ITAL) Though I have concern that every American citizen has affordable health care, too, I have grave concerns about the opinion that the federal government holds the true solution. History shows that whenever government oversees personal welfare (such as with Medicare, Medicaid, welfare and Social Security), the program is inept, broken, intrusive, impersonalized, oppressive or often bankrupt.

Description: Public misunderstanding, ignorance and possibly contempt for liberty play into the hands of people who want to control our lives. Responses to my recent column "Compliant Americans" brought this home to me. In it, I argued that the anti-tobacco movement became the template and inspiration for other forms of government intrusion, such as bans on restaurants serving foie gras, McDonald's giving Happy Meals with toys, and confiscating a child's home-prepared lunch because it didn't meet Department of Agriculture guidelines. A few responses read like this: "Smoking is different because that actually affects other people. We should be living by the notion that you should be able to do whatever you want as long as you don't hurt other people. Smoking hurts other people." If we banned or restricted all activities that affect, harm or have the possibility of harming other people, it wouldn't be a very nice life. Let's look at what can affect or harm other people. Non-obese people are harmed by obesity, as they have to pay more for health care, through either higher taxes or higher insurance premiums. That harm could be reduced by a national version of a measure introduced in the Mississippi Legislature in 2008 by state Rep. W.T. Mayhall that in part read, "An act to prohibit certain food establishments from serving food to any person who is obese, based on criteria prescribed by the state Department of Health." The measure would have revoked licenses of food establishments that violated the provisions of the act. Fortunately, the measure never passed, but there's always a next time.

Description: "I don't worry about the Constitution," said Rep. Phil Hare, Democrat of Illinois, at a town hall meeting where voters questioned his support of the legislation that became Obamacare. You can find the clip on youtube.com, where it has 462,084 hits. That was before the 2010 election, in which Hare, running for a third term in a district designed by Democrats to elect a Democrat, was defeated 53 to 43 percent by Bobby Schilling, proprietor of a pizza parlor in East Moline. A lot of politicians are worrying about the Constitution these days. Liberal commentators were shocked this past week when in three days of oral argument in the lawsuits challenging Obamacare, five Supreme Court justices -- a majority -- asked questions strongly suggesting they think the legislation is unconstitutional. And so the Constitution -- and the limits it places on Congress' powers -- is once again part of our politics. And will continue to be, whichever way the Court rules.

Description: Just as Rahm Emmanuel didn't want to let a good crisis go to waste, the national press doesn't want to let a good victim go to waste. The death of Trayvon Martin is a terrible thing, but the usual suspects are hijacking his death to create a morality play. Whenever this happens, and it happens with some frequency in American life, truth is corrupted. About 153 young black men are killed every week in America -- 94 percent of them at the hands of other young black males. Only one of those who were murdered on Feb. 26 has dominated national news coverage -- because his killer was not black. There is an etiquette to discussing ethnicity that goes straight out the window if the press decides to create a racial villain. Normally, if a person is of mixed ancestry, as George Zimmerman is, he gets the benefit of the doubt on being a minority. A person with mixed ancestry, such as Cameron Diaz or Bill Richardson, would never be called "half white." But Zimmerman became, in the phrase adopted by The New York Times, a "white Hispanic."

Description: You can't even casually surf the Internet on any given day without numerous reminders of just how radical President Obama is -- and this is during an election year, when it should be in his political interest to mask his radicalism. Minding my own business, I happened on an article by Jacob Laksin on FrontPageMag.com, titled "Obama's Pick for World Bank Hates Capitalism." I'd heard a bit about this before but hadn't yet studied it. I'm so used to Obama's extremism that such revelations hardly move me, much less surprise me. I know where he stands; I just wish everyone else did. Obama has nominated Dartmouth College President Jim Yong Kim to head the World Bank. In 2000, Kim edited a collection of studies under the title "Dying for Growth: Global Inequality and the Health of the Poor." The "book's radical central premise," writes Laksin, is that "capitalism and economic growth (are) bad for the poor across the world." Kim co-wrote the introduction, which includes the claim that the book shows "that the quest for growth in GDP and corporate profits has in fact worsened the lives of millions of women and men." It says that even in those instances in which free trade and free markets have led to economic growth, they've done so without benefiting "those living in 'dire poverty,' one-fourth of the world's population." Can't you just hear Obama himself in those words?

Description: It may be months before we know what actually happened the night Trayvon Martin was shot in Sanford, Fla. on February 26. But many seem to have already decided that this was a brutal case of racial profiling and vigilante justice, emblematic of lingering racism in America. Martin's parents, who understandably want justice for their son, have been joined by a plethora of activists, politicians, commentators and celebrities in demanding that the shooter, George Zimmerman, be arrested and tried for murder. The Justice Department has gotten in on the act as well, investigating whether the shooting constituted a hate crime based on a an inaudible comment by Zimmerman on his 911 call that some have alleged was a racial slur. But turning this tragic incident into a symbol of racism is wrong and reeks of opportunism on the part of racial showmen like Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson. Most homicides in the U.S. involve a victim and a perpetrator who are of the same race. But cross-racial homicides are more common among strangers, as in the Martin shooting. According to the most recent data available from the Justice Department, blacks have a homicide victim rate that is six times higher than whites, but their rate for committing homicide is seven times higher than whites.

Description: While President Obama was busy lambasting Big Oil tax breaks on Thursday, yet another one of his environmental welfare recipients (the very kind he wants to redistribute oil subsidies to) was teetering on the edge of bankruptcy. Who needs to win the Mega Millions lottery? Start a pie-in-the-sky eco-boondoggle, and a half-billion-dollar jackpot ripe for squandering is all yours! The Solyndra of the week is A123 Systems, an electric vehicle battery company based in Massachusetts. The firm also has battery plants in Michigan, where former Democratic Gov. Jennifer Granholm once heralded A123 as a federal stimulus "success story." Former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi visited the company headquarters and hailed it as a "great example of how Recovery Act funding is helping American companies." In addition to nearly $300 million in Obama Recovery Act funds, Granholm kicked in another $135 million in tax credits and subsidies to bribe the company to keep jobs in her state. How's the return on government investment? This green dud will have taxpayers seeing red. A123's official company motto is "Power. Safety. Life." But the firm's reality is "Out of power. Endangering safety. Clinging to life."

Description: "I actually did vote for the $87 billion before I voted against it." So said John Kerry, in Huntington, W.V., on Tuesday, March 16, 2004, two weeks after he had clinched the Democratic presidential nomination by carrying every state but Vermont in the Super Tuesday primaries. Kerry was responding to an ad run by George W. Bush's campaign criticizing his 2003 vote against an $87 billion supplemental appropriation for the Iraq war. Two days later, the Bush campaign ran an edited version of the ad with the "actually did vote" footage added. Kerry had a defensible position. He did actually vote for a Democratic version of the supplemental that included a provision raising tax rates on high earners. He voted against the Republican version without the tax increase, knowing it would pass. The troops would not go unfunded. But those 14 words were repeated again and again by the Bush campaign in the next eight months. Kerry was labeled a flip-flopper, and delegates at the Republican National Convention brandished flip-flops for the TV cameras one night.

Description: "Blacks are under attack," said the Rev. Jesse Jackson, irresponsibly turning the Florida shooting death of an unarmed black teenager, Trayvon Martin, at the hands of Hispanic neighborhood watch volunteer George Zimmerman into a barometer of black-white "race-relations." President Barack Obama, three years past his inauguration as American's first black president, weighed in, too. As when he accused the Cambridge police of "acting stupidly," Obama injected race, but this time a little less directly: "If I had a son, he'd look like Trayvon." The implication, of course, is that race undoubtedly played a role in the death of Trayvon Martin. A special prosecutor as well as a Florida grand jury will examine the case, re-interview all the witnesses and go over all the evidence. Zimmerman may well be charged with murder, and a racially motivated one at that. Or the prosecutor may find the evidence insufficient to convince a jury that Zimmerman did not act in self-defense.

Description: Progress can often be defined as the stuff that happens while humanity is preoccupied with everything that is going wrong. On the surface, the first decade of the 21st century looks like an ugly parade of terrorism, war and economic convulsion. But in one important sense it stands as possibly the greatest decade in human history. And that's no accident. Among the most vicious enemies of human welfare is poverty. In a world plagued with limited resources, bad governments and unsound economic policies, it often appears to be an inescapable scourge. Most people paid no attention in 2000 when the United Nations proclaimed the goal of halving the number of earth's inhabitants living in extreme poverty by 2015, compared to 1990. But way ahead of schedule, the target has already been hit. For the first time since it began tracking, says a new World Bank report, "the data indicate a decline in both the poverty rate and the number of poor in all six regions of the developing world."

Description: On Monday, U.S. Solicitor General Donald Verrilli told the Supreme Court the "shared responsibility payment" required of Americans who fail to obtain government-approved medical coverage is not a tax. On Tuesday, he said it is. In the first instance, Verrilli was urging the Court to address the constitutionality of the individual health insurance mandate in spite of an 1867 law that ordinarily bars legal challenges to taxes that have not been collected yet. On the following day, he was arguing that, even if the mandate cannot be justified as a regulation of interstate commerce, it is a legitimate exercise of Congress's tax power.

Description: Outside the beltway, polling indicates a massacre of Senate Democrats is in the offing in the 2012 elections. Currently, Rasmussen's polls have Republicans leading Democrats for eight Senate seats now held by Democrats. Bill Nelson is six behind Connie Mack in Florida; Claire McCaskill is 10 behind Sarah Steelman in Missouri; John Tester is three behind Denny Rehberg in Montana; Sherrod Brown is four behind Josh Mandel in Ohio. And for open seats, George Allen is three up on Tim Kaine in Virginia; Jon Bruning is 20 ahead of Bob Kerrey in Nebraska; Tommy Thompson is 15 ahead in Wisconsin; and either Rick Berg or Duane Sand will undoubtedly win in North Dakota. And the races in New Mexico and Michigan show the Republican candidate less than four behind. (The GOP might lose Massachusetts and Maine, but a massive wipeout of Democrats is coming.) Why? Obviously, the shift in party identification has a lot to do with it. While Washington insiders are chortling about Obama's likely re-election, those who are paying attention know that there has been an eight-point party identification shift from Democrat to Republican, two points of which took place after the 2010 elections. Not only is this shift going to doom Obama's chances, but it will also engulf Democratic candidates up and down the line.

Description: Now is the time for all good tea partiers to come to the aid of Wisconsin. Fiscally conservative leaders in the Badger State are under coordinated siege from Big Labor, the White House, the liberal media and the judiciary. The yearlong campaign of union thuggery, family harassment and intimidation of Republican donors and businesses is about to escalate even further. This is the price the Right pays for doing the right thing. The most visible target is Gov. Scott Walker, who faces recall on June 5 over his tough package of state budget and public employee union reforms. Three state GOP legislators -- Senate Majority Leader Scott Fitzgerald, Sen. Van Wanggaard and Sen. Terry Moulton -- also face recall. A fourth target, staunch union reformer and Second Amendment advocate Sen. Pam Galloway, announced she was stepping down last week -- leaving the legislature deadlocked and Democratic strategists salivating.

Description: It is not often that I agree with Geraldo Rivera, but recently he said something very practical and potentially life-saving, when he urged black and Hispanic parents not to let their children go around wearing hoodies. There is no point in dressing like a hoodlum when you are not a hoodlum, even though that has become a fashion for some minority youths, including the teenager who was shot and killed in a confrontation in Florida. I don't know the whole story of that tragedy, any more than those who are making loud noises in the media do, but that is something that we have trials for.

Description: If there has ever been a case that could vindicate the Supreme Court as a guardian of liberty or incriminate it as freedom's thief, it is the court's present consideration of the Affordable Care Act. At the founding of the republic, the Anti-Federalist opponents of the Constitution warned that to grant the power to declare laws unconstitutional to an unelected and life-tenured Supreme Court could subvert the democratic republic and threaten our liberties.

Description: Right now, there isn't enough known about the circumstances surrounding the fatal shooting of 17-year-old Trayvon Martin, a black, by George Zimmerman, a 28-year-old part-Hispanic, during his neighborhood watch tour in an Orlando, Fla., suburb. If evidence emerges that Zimmerman's actions were not justified, he should be prosecuted and punished; however, there's a larger issue that few people understand or have the courage to acknowledge, namely that black and young has become synonymous with crime and, hence, suspicion. To make that connection does not make one a racist. Let's look at it. Twelve years ago, a black Washington, D.C., commissioner warned cabbies, most of whom were black, against picking up dangerous-looking passengers. She described "dangerous-looking" as a "young black guy ... with shirttail hanging down longer than his coat, baggy pants, unlaced tennis shoes." She also warned cabbies to stay away from low-income black neighborhoods. Did that make the D.C. commissioner a racist?

Description: When I see Priscilla Buckley, who died over the weekend at age 90, in my mind's eye, she is roaring with laughter. That's how you would find her much of the time during her 43 years as managing editor of National Review. She so reveled in a good story or a bon mot. Her chin would tilt up, and her sunbeam grin would turn her blue eyes into little half moons of mirth. It was particularly true when brother Bill was around. The two spent a lifetime chortling over the lighter side of life. And when you were around them, the world seemed altogether brighter. Bill Buckley was the founder, owner, editor, and guiding spirit of National Review. But Priscilla, his sister, set the daily tone at the offices on East 35th Street in Manhattan. Her rule was benevolent and irenic, thank God, because magazines of opinion are known for eccentric and prickly characters, and NR was no exception. But while writers would be late with their copy or fail to show up for meetings or squabble with their editors, everyone seemed mentally to tuck his shirt in when Priscilla was around. She was so gracious, professional and discerning that people wanted to be better in her presence. (They didn't always succeed.)

Description: In his typical duck-'n'-dodge fashion, President Barack Obama spewed his 115th executive order upon the American public on a late Friday afternoon, March 16. Cloaked in one of Obama's candy-coated, grandiloquent titles, the "National Defense Resources Preparedness" executive order set the blogosphere ablaze this past week. Canada Free Press ran an article titled "Obama Executive Order: Peacetime Martial Law!" An Examiner.com article similarly declared that the order would "nationalize everything" and "allow for a civilian draft." And the Drudge Report ran a story headlined "Martial Law? Obama issues Executive Order: the National Defense Resources Preparedness."

Description: In his front-page-of-the-business-section "Economic Scene" column in The New York Times last week, Eduardo Porter wrote, "The United States does less than other rich countries to transfer income from the affluent to the less fortunate." Think about that sentence for a moment. It ends oddly. Logic dictates that it should have said, "transfer income from the affluent to the (SET ITAL) less affluent," (END ITAL) not the (SET ITAL) less fortunate. (END ITAL) But for Porter, as for the left generally, those who are not affluent are not merely "less affluent," they are "less fortunate."

Description: As you may have heard, Senate Democrats haven't bothered to present a budget in more than 1,000 days and counting -- which, unlike many pundits, I don't find particularly upsetting, considering we've been free of a new Democratic budget for 1,000-plus days and counting. This week, though, Rep. Paul Ryan, R-Wis., offered up the House's budget outline, which -- whether misguided, genius, flawed or whatever you might think of it -- is a pretty earnest reflection of the concerns of about half the country. The primitive half. So the White House -- where rational, enlightened grown-ups are represented -- responded like so:

Description: Pond scum stinks. And so do the Obama administration's enormous, taxpayer-funded "investments" in politically connected biofuel companies. While the president embarks on a green rehabilitation tour this week to quell growing public outrage about big green boondoggles, the White House continues to cultivate a cozy algae racket. Obama's promotion of algae as a fuel source at a campaign speech in Miami last month caught the nation's attention. But algae companies have been banking on administration support from Day One. In December 2008, when the White House announced the nomination of Energy Secretary Steven Chu, the CEO of Florida-based biofuels startup Algenol, Paul Woods, exulted to Time magazine: "You see this smile on my face? It's not going away. Everyone is really excited by this."

Description: One of the things that turned up, during a long-overdue cleanup of my office, was an old yellowed copy of the New York Times dated July 24, 1992. One of the front-page headlines said: "White-Black Disparity in Income Narrowed in 80's, Census Shows." The 1980s? Wasn't that the years of the Reagan administration, the "decade of greed," the era of "neglect" of the poor and minorities, if not "covert racism"? More recently, during the administration of America's first black president, a 2011 report from the Pew Research Center has the headline, "Wealth Gaps Rise to Record Highs Between Whites, Blacks and Hispanics." were; look at Hayes!

Description: Speaking to students at a Maryland community college, President Obama indulged one of the left's favorite vanities -- the claim to represent "the future." His topic was energy. The president warned against Republicans who want "an energy strategy for the last century that traps us in the past." He compared today's Republicans who are less enthusiastic than he about government subsidies for "wind, solar and biofuels," to the "flat earth society" and to President Rutherford B. Hayes, who supposedly disdained the telephone. The president had those students chuckling and grinning and feeling smugly superior to benighted Republicans who are so stuck in the past. They always were; look at Hayes!

Description: If you read through the Washington Monthly's list of Obama's top 50 accomplishments, you'll quickly understand why my brother, Rush, properly wanted him to fail. When Rush said he wanted Obama to fail, everyone knew he was talking about his policies, and for those few who pretended otherwise, he explained it a thousand times: He wanted his policies to fail because his policies are disastrous for America.

Description: The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, the NAACP, has gone to the United Nations -- specifically the U.N. Human Rights Council -- for, in the words of USA Today, "help battling what the organization views as forces attempting to push back voting rights." Those "forces" are laws being passed by various states that require a photo ID for voting.

Description: President Obama said, "The package we've put together" will "start bending the cost curve on health care" and "cut the deficit by a trillion dollars." Even a sympathetic Congressional Budget Office has finally put the nail in the coffin of that howler. At the time Obama made the claim, we all knew it was specious, and study after study came out showing just how fraudulent it was. There was the double counting on Medicare, the "Doc Fix" scam and a host of others. When Rep. Paul Ryan asked the CBO to rescore Obamacare with more accurate assumptions, it didn't quite make the grade -- by hundreds of billions of dollars, which, of course, are but rounding errors for the federal spending virtuoso in the White House. Many of us knew at the time that Obama's drive for socialized medicine had nothing to do with reducing spending -- the last thing that is ever on his mind. We knew that it wasn't about increasing access to care -- because socialized medicine schemes always ultimately reduce people's access to quality care. Looked at in a light most favorable to Obama's intentions, it was but another utopian scheme to put everyone on a level playing field. Looked at honestly and realistically, it was a Trojan horse to expand government control over our private lives that would result in less, worse and more expensive care. No one who has watched Obama and the titanic leftist juggernaut he has unleashed on our beloved America thought he was promoting Obamacare to bend the health care curve down. If that had been the case, he wouldn't have had to go to such lengths to make it appear as though this budget buster was actually a plan for cost containment. Indeed, we knew he would go to any lengths to pass this bill, even if it ended up costing two or three times more than he falsely projected. And what do you know? Just a few years later, as this legislative Frankenstein awaits the verdict of the Supreme Court, the CBO released a report this week admitting it will cost about twice as much as Obama twisted its arm into calculating a few years ago.

Description: The best advocates are often converts. So it is with Arthur C. Brooks, president of the American Enterprise Institute. Brooks has an important forthcoming book, "The Road to Freedom," which I'll discuss in a minute, but it's worth pausing over the unusual career of Brooks himself because it says much about happiness, free enterprise and the unique American spirit that Brooks has spent the last decade attempting to save. The son of two liberal college professors, Brooks writes that when he was growing up in Seattle, "No one in my world voted for Ronald Reagan. I had no friends or family who worked in business. I believed what most everybody in my world assumed to be true: that capitalism was a bit of a sham to benefit rich people, and the best way to get a better, fairer country was to raise taxes, increase government services, and redistribute more income." Brooks became a professional musician, playing the French horn with the Annapolis Brass Quintet and with the Barcelona City Orchestra. He also taught music. But a musical career didn't fulfill him. "I (had) what some considered the best job possible, yet was unhappy. ... My friends in the orchestra thrived on what they were doing. ... They spent their vacations at classical music conventions and heatedly discussed the most esoteric details of the lacquer on their instruments..." Like most Americans, Brooks wanted more from his career than a paycheck. He wanted to derive a deeper satisfaction. Because he had skipped college to "go pro," he began taking courses at night, eventually pocketing bachelor's, master's and doctorate degrees in social science.

Description: This has got to be the bazooka of all Joe Biden blowhardisms. The nation's vice campaigner in chief went on the attack against Republicans this week, clad in full populist armor. "These guys don't have a sense of the average folks out there," said The Everyman. "They don't know what it means to be middle class." But who was his audience? Nope, not blue-collar workers in Allentown, Pa. Biden was speaking to an exclusive club of $10,000-per-couple campaign donors gathered at the home of the Senate's $200 million man, Democratic Mass. Sen. John Kerry, in Georgetown, D.C. That's smack dab in the middle of Beltway America, where they like a twist of cognitive dissonance with their aperitifs. The White House is once again drawing on the fantastical myth of middle-class Joe to portray Republicans as out-of-touch elitists. A Washington Post headline described Biden "digging back into his roots to move Obama forward." But the administration's leading populist poster child is a wretched symbol of entrenched Washington power. And his fables are getting oldy-moldy. At another campaign event in Ohio, Regular Joe rolled up his sleeves and pumped out the common-man colloquialisms. "It's good to have a dad in the automobile business, man," he said. Yeah, man. Preach it, man. Oh, hey, weren't you the man who savaged average-guy Joe "the Plumber" Wurzelbacher in Ohio four years ago by lying about his income and mocking his American dream to own a small business? Man.

Description: In the two weeks before this month's Super Tuesday primaries, The Wall Street Journal reports, "outside political action committees supporting the Republican presidential hopefuls spent three times as much as the candidates themselves." Rep. David Price, D-N.C., says the "undue influence" of these so-called super PACs, which can collect and spend as much as they want as long as they do not coordinate with candidates, "strikes at the heart of our democracy."

Description: Obama's entire claim that the economy is reviving is based on phony numbers and rigged statistics. Nothing is more misleading than the recent administration claim that the economy added over 200,000 jobs during each of the past three months and that unemployment is stable at 8.3 percent. Dr. John Hussman of the Hussman Fund says that the claims of job gains are based entirely on weighted figures. "Total non-farm employment in the U.S., before seasonal adjustments, fell by 2,689,000 jobs in January." Then the spin doctors at the Bureau of Labor Statistics went to work. Hussman explains: "because its typical for the economy to lose a large number of jobs after the holidays, largely in retail trade, construction and manufacturing, the BLS estimated that the 'normal' seasonal decline in employment should have been 2,932,000 jobs in January. The difference between the two numbers ... was 243,000 jobs, which was reported as an increase in employment."

Description: CNN's Soledad O'Brien isn't used to criticism. In the world of media elites, she's a beloved figure and an award-winning news anchor. But last week, she revealed her true, decidedly non-neutral colors. And she's not happy about the hoi polloi questioning her hallowed journalistic objectivity. On Thursday, O'Brien interviewed Joel Pollak, editor-in-chief of the late Andrew Breitbart's online empire. Breitbart's BigGovernment.com released a 1991 video of Barack Obama (then a 30-year-old law student) at a Harvard rally embracing radical racialist Derrick Bell and his push for more aggressive race-based hiring at Harvard. Bell is a proponent of critical race theory (CRT), which posits that America remains a hopelessly racist country dominated by Jews and white supremacists.

Description: After 25 years of lecturing on happiness, writing a book on the subject ("Happiness Is a Serious Problem") and devoting an hour of my radio show every week for the last 13 years to happiness, here are some conclusions about who is happy. (SET ITAL) People who control themselves. (END ITAL) Happiness is dependent on self-discipline. We are the biggest obstacles to our own happiness. It is much easier to do battle with society and with others than to fight our own nature. (SET ITAL) People who are given little and earn what they have. (END ITAL) That is why lottery winners are rarely happier than those who have far less money -- they didn't earn their newfound wealth. And they are often less happy after their win than they were before it.

Description: Last month, at a Raeford, N.C., elementary school, a teacher confiscated the lunch of a 5-year-old girl because it didn't meet U.S. Department of Agriculture guidelines and therefore was deemed nonnutritious. She replaced it with school cafeteria chicken nuggets. The girl's home-prepared lunch was nutritious; it consisted of a turkey and cheese sandwich, potato chips, a banana and apple juice. But whether her lunch was nutritious or not is not the issue. The issue is governmental usurpation of parental authority. In a number of states, pregnant teenage girls may be given abortions without the notification or the permission of parents. The issue is neither abortion nor whether a pregnant teenager should have an abortion. The issue is this: What gives the government the authority to usurp parental authority?

Description: There have been many frauds of historic proportions -- for example, the financial pyramid scheme for which Charles Ponzi was sent to prison in the 1920s, and for which Franklin D. Roosevelt was praised in the 1930s, when he called it Social Security. In our own times, Bernie Madoff's hoax has made headlines. But the biggest hoax of the past two generations is still going strong -- namely, the hoax that statistical differences in outcomes for different groups are due to the way other people treat those groups.

Description: President Barack Obama's energy plan involves radically increasing gas prices to the European rate of about $10 a gallon. And he's well on his way, as gas prices have more than doubled since he took office in January 2009, when gasoline was only $1.79 per gallon. And he's scheming to double prices again in his second term, with you footing the bill. It's no secret that we're being gouged at the pumps. The reason for soaring gas prices? According to Obama, it's not because of anything he has done -- not his devaluing the dollar via his disastrous economic decisions, his closing federal lands for oil production opened by his predecessor, his passing cap-and-trade legislation in the middle of the worst economy since the Great Depression or his refusing to stand strong against the regime in Iran, which controls 20 percent of the world's oil supply via the Strait of Hormuz.

Description: Dear President Obama, As a certifiable member of the female sex, I want to thank you for preventing the Republican Party from conducting a "war on women." Some cynics might say that you were worried about women's declining support for Democrats. While 56 percent of women voted Democrat in 2008, only 48 percent did so in 2010. And while the percentage of women with a favorable view of your leadership has been climbing back up recently (women seem more willing than men to give you credit for improving economic numbers), you need a really lopsided proportion of the women's vote to compensate for your weakness among men. A February Quinnipiac poll, for example, found that white men disapproved of the way you are handling your job by a two to one margin.

Description: Kicking the can down the road. That's been the Obama administration's response on issues from Iran's nuclear weapons program to America's entitlement systems. Start with Iran. In a statement in the Oval Office before his meeting with President Obama on Monday, Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu noted that Obama had "reiterated yesterday" the principle that "when it comes to Israel's security, Israel has the right, the sovereign right, to make its own decisions." That evening, speaking to the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, Netanyahu said: "Israel has waited patiently for the international community to resolve this issue. We've waited for diplomacy to work. We've waited for sanctions to work. None of us can afford to wait much longer. "As Prime Minister of Israel, I will never let my people live in the shadow of annihilation." In response to Netanyahu and in his own speech to AIPAC, Obama declared that the United States would not allow Iran to obtain a nuclear weapon. He explicitly ruled out a policy of "containment." But there clearly is a difference between the two leaders. Obama has been talking about preventing Iran from getting a nuclear weapon. Netanyahu has been talking about preventing Iran from getting a nuclear weapons capability. I draw the conclusion that Netanyahu will very soon order an Israeli attack on Iran's nuclear weapons facilities. Meanwhile, Obama is kicking the can down the road, announcing Tuesday that the United States will participate in further negotiations with Iran.

Description: "A firestorm of outrage from women after a crude tirade from Rush Limbaugh," said NBC anchor Brian Williams. This was followed by a reporter who said: "In 2012, the personal is political. What began as a debate over religious freedom has devolved into what some call a 'war on women.'" The "outrage" over Rush Limbaugh's "misogyny" provides the latest examples of the liberal vs. conservative double standard and the selective indignation of the left. Limbaugh criticized the congressional appearance of Sandra Fluke, a Georgetown law student who supported requiring even religiously affiliated institutions to provide "free" contraceptives. "So, Ms. Fluke, and the rest of you femi-Nazis," Limbaugh said, "here's the deal: If we are going to pay for your contraceptives and, thus, pay for you to have sex, we want something for it. And I'll tell you what it is. We want you to post the videos online so we can all watch." Limbaugh also called her a woman who admits she gets "paid" for sex -- something that, according to Limbaugh, makes her a "slut" and a "prostitute." He apologized, but reportedly has lost sponsors. Fluke refused to accept his apology. "I don't think that a statement like this issued, saying that his choice of words was not the best, changes anything," Fluke said. "And especially when that statement is issued when he's under significant pressure from his sponsors who have begun to pull their support." The "firestorm" over Limbaugh's "sexism" would be convincing -- were it not for its selective nature. Where's the outrage when the misogyny comes from the left?

Description: This column is being written on Super Tuesday. We -- as of yet -- do not know the outcome of the 10-state matchup, but let's assume that Mitt Romney wins the bulk of the caucuses and primaries. Give Newt Gingrich Georgia. Give Rick Santorum Oklahoma and Tennessee. Assume they split Ohio. Since it's proportional representation, it doesn't really matter -- in delegates -- who narrowly wins. Then give Romney Massachusetts, Virginia, Vermont, North Dakota, Idaho and Alaska. He already won Washington state on Saturday. If the final lineup is slightly different, it's not that important. So as of Wednesday morning, when this column will appear, 34 percent of the delegates will have been allocated. In some states, the caucuses have been held but the delegates themselves not yet chosen, but we know how much each candidate will win. At this point, Romney has close to half of the delegates. Santorum and Gingrich should have about 22 percent each, and Ron Paul should have about 9 percent.

Description: On his radio show last Friday, Rush Limbaugh complained that Democrats try to "impugn and discredit the people who disagree with them." That was two days after Limbaugh called Georgetown law student Sandra Fluke a "slut" and a "prostitute" because she disagreed with him about the Obama administration's regulation requiring employers to provide health care plans that cover contraception. By Saturday, facing criticism from fellow Republicans and desertions by advertisers, Limbaugh was apologizing to Fluke for his "insulting word choices," implausibly claiming he "did not mean a personal attack." Whatever his intentions, Limbaugh's sexist tirade reinforced a narrative that depicts resistance to the contraceptive mandate as part of "a systematic war against women," as Sen. Barbara Mikulski, D-Md., put it last week. But that narrative remains false, no matter how many stupid jokes Rush Limbaugh makes.

Description: I'm sorry Rush Limbaugh called 30-year-old Georgetown law student Sandra Fluke a "slut." She's really just another professional femme-a-gogue helping to manufacture a false narrative about the GOP "war on women." I'm sorry the civility police now have an opening to demonize the entire right based on one radio comment -- because it's the progressive left in this country that has viciously and systematically slimed female conservatives for their beliefs. We have the well-worn battle scars to prove it. And no, we don't need coddling phone calls from the pandering president of the United States to convince us to stand up and fight.

Description: The U.S. Census Bureau reports that 2011 manufacturing output grew by 11 percent, to nearly $5 trillion. Were our manufacturing sector considered a nation with its own gross domestic product, it would be the world's fourth-richest economy. Manufacturing productivity has doubled since 1987, and manufacturing output has risen by one-half. However, over the past two decades, manufacturing employment has fallen about 25 percent. For some people, that means our manufacturing sector is sick. By that criterion, our agriculture sector shares that "sickness," only worse and for a longer duration. In 1790, 90 percent of Americans did agricultural work. Agriculture is now in "shambles" because only 2 percent of Americans have farm jobs. In 1970, the telecommunications industry employed 421,000 well-paid switchboard operators. Today "disaster" has hit the telecommunications industry, because there are fewer than 20,000 operators. That's a 95 percent job loss. The spectacular advances that have raised productivity in the telecommunications industry have made it possible for fewer operators to handle tens of billions of calls at a tiny fraction of the 1970 cost.

Description: There are undoubtedly many people who are alive today because of James Q. Wilson, who died last week. He was not a doctor or medical scientist, nor was he a fireman or coast guardsman who rescued people from immediate dangers. James Q. Wilson was a scholar who studied crime. He saved lives because his penetrating analyses of crime, and the effect of the criminal law, debunked the theories of other intellectuals, which had led judges and legislators to ease up on criminals -- leading in turn to skyrocketing rates of crime, including murder.

Description: Since Jan. 1, the price of gas has soared 45 cents a gallon -- the highest on record for this time of year. AAA reported this past week that the national average of unleaded gasoline climbed from Feb. 28's $3.71 per gallon to March 2's $3.73 per gallon and then up again to $3.76 per gallon over the weekend -- the 25th straight increase in the past month. According to The Associated Press, the nationwide price of gas is expected to reach $4.25 by the end of April. But in many cities across the nation, people don't have to wait for April showers to bring May's misfortunes.

Description: The Obama administration issues an edict regarding birth control that is 1) blatantly unconstitutional, 2) economically absurd, and 3) completely unmatched to any national need. What are they talking about? The "Republican war on women." Democrats are geniuses at muddying the waters and twisting the debate in a direction they find congenial. They've been at this a very long time. Recall that in the late 1980s and early 1990s, we found ourselves ensnared in a discussion of so-called "censorship." The National Endowment for the Arts (a luxury no deeply indebted nation should indulge) had provided grants to two particularly obnoxious exhibits. One was a photograph by Andres Serrano called "Piss Christ" that depicted a crucifix submerged in a jar of the artist's urine. The other was a series of homoerotic photographs by Robert Mapplethorpe, featuring, to cite just one example, a man's anus being penetrated by a bullwhip.

Description: If you'll indulge me, I need to express this beyond my Twitter posts: I am proud of my brother, Rush, for his multiple sincere apologies to Sandra Fluke. I am not even slightly surprised that so many on the left refuse to accept his apology. I think this entire incident is instructive. Rush is heartsick over the direction this country is going and that we arrived at a place where many people don't even bat an eye over the alarming development that our government is mandating insurance coverage -- and forcing employers to pay for it even when they object on moral grounds.

Description: Here in Sydney, Australia, where I've been lecturing for a week, I may have had one Australian-born waitress or waiter and one Australian-born taxi driver. As is my wont, I ask all of them where they were born and, whenever possible, have some discussion about their native country. I say "whenever possible" because, unlike in the United States --where taxi drivers, whether foreign- or American-born, are known for being talkative -- that has not been my experience in Sydney, where apparently the influence of the famous British reserve is still very much in evidence. I ask where the driver was born, he responds, and the discussion is pretty much ended.

Description: They're baaaaaaack. Barack Obama's election-year goon squad kicked into high gear this week by kicking the president's fiercest opponents in the teeth and targeting their pocketbooks. Returning to bully business as usual, the Obama campaign launched a brazen salvo against two prominent conservative critics and their legions of private citizen donors. Let's be clear (to use Obama's favorite phrase): This is not just the politics of personal destruction. It's a vendetta of campaign finance destruction. Under the guise of "disclosure," Team Obama is exploiting the power of high government office to intimidate lawful, peaceful contributors who support limited-government causes. In a scathing fundraising e-mail appeal, Obama campaign manager Jim Messina name-checked wealthy free-market philanthropists Charles and David Koch -- along with a growing movement of grassroots conservatives who have freely, voluntarily and legally given money to the Koch-founded nonprofit activist group Americans for Prosperity and its sister foundation. As a speaker at several AFP events over the past three years, I've met thousands of like-minded, hardworking Americans who support their work at the local, state and federal levels.

Description: The theme for this year's primary season was set back in May 2011. Recall that the Republican-dominated House of Representatives had just done something that cynics said would not and could not be done. They voted for a budget -- the Ryan budget -- that actually began to tackle the problem of limitless entitlement spending. The cliche about entitlements (the "third rail") had been largely true. Neither Republicans nor Democrats had shown the courage to tell middle-class voters that Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security would have to change. But on April 15, all but four Republicans (and zero Democrats) voted for a budget that would block grant Medicaid to the states and gradually transform Medicare from the whale-shark entitlement that threatens to swallow all other federal spending into a premium support program. Naturally, the Republicans got no credit for this principled vote from the usual suspects (the press, the liberal commentators, the professors). But you'd think fellow Republicans and conservatives would offer at least a clap on the back. Nope. Just a few weeks later, former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich, appearing on MSNBC's "Meet the Press," labeled the Ryan budget "too radical" and "right-wing social engineering," which Gingrich explained that he opposed as much as "left-wing social engineering." As Rep. Paul Ryan said at the time, "With allies like that, who needs the left?"

Description: Now hear this: No Republicans on the national political scene, including Rick Santorum, threaten our religious liberty. Many Democrats, including President Obama and Senate Democrats, do. And they've struck again with the Senate's defeat of the Blunt amendment. President Obama, who seems to spend as much time community organizing as he does attending to his executive duties, doubtlessly conspired with his crack opposition research trolls and the liberal media to shoehorn the contraception issue into the 2012 presidential campaign. What do I mean about Obama's spending time community organizing? Well, he is using the office of the presidency to intimidate the Koch brothers into disclosing their donors' names. He and his minions falsely, with malice aforethought, accused the U.S. Chamber of Commerce of receiving foreign contributions, with no evidence, and when challenged to substantiate it, they taunted that it was up to the chamber and its defenders to prove a negative. Obama's Justice Department has taxpayer-funded employees posing as ordinary American citizens and posting pro-Obama agenda comments on various websites. His Justice Department attacks Republicans genuinely attempting to monitor actual voter fraud and protects his friends who engage in real-life voter intimidation. I could go on.

Description: I have long been puzzled by the enthusiasm with which many young liberal bloggers cheer on proposals to raise tax rates on high earners. I can understand why they might favor them, but not why they seem to invest so much psychic energy in the issue. Some of this may just be team ball: You cheer when your side puts up numbers on the scoreboard. So Democratic cheerleaders are rah-rahing what they insist on calling repeal of the Bush tax cuts (which have been in effect now longer than the Clinton tax increases they rolled back). But the liberal bloggers cannot be entirely ignorant of the knowledge that we have a pretty progressive income tax already. In 2009, the top 1 percent of earners reported 17 percent of adjusted gross income and paid 37 percent of total income tax revenues. By some measures, the American tax system, including the payroll tax and state and local taxes, is more progressive -- in the sense of extracting disproportionate shares of revenue from high earners -- than most European tax regimes, which rely heaving on value-added taxes. Plus, as liberal economist Lane Kenworthy points out, you don't get much income redistribution from higher tax rates. You get more from transfer payments. But, as House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan has documented, federal transfers are getting less progressive. Social Security and Medicare increasingly transfer money from young low earners to old people with relatively high incomes and considerable accumulated wealth.

Description: Afghans are rioting, American soldiers are regularly murdered by their allies, the Taliban are hanging in, and civilian casualties in Afghanistan set a record last year. But a Pentagon spokesman assures us that "the fundamentals of our strategy remain sound." He had to tell us because we wouldn't know it otherwise. In almost every respect, our venture in Afghanistan looks like a dismal, irredeemable failure. Year after year, we've been told that things are getting better. But lately, it's hard to take that claim seriously. When Afghans erupted in rage over the careless burning of Korans at Bagram Airbase, the upheaval was not just about Muslim holy books. It was also about the grossly dysfunctional relationship between us and them -- a product of the huge cultural gulf, our outsized ambitions and the irritant of our presence. Afghanistan is a medieval country that we can barely begin to understand. Yet we presume that with all our money, technology, weaponry and wisdom, we can mold it like soft clay.

Description: Many people are looking to the many primary elections on March 6th -- "Super Tuesday" -- to clarify where this year's Republican nomination campaign is headed. It may clarify far more than that, including the future of this nation and of Western civilization. If a clear winner with a commanding lead emerges, the question then becomes whether that candidate is someone who is likely to defeat Barack Obama. If not, then the fate of America -- and of Western nations, including Israel -- will be left in the hands of a man with a lifelong hostility to Western values and Western interests. President Obama is such a genial man that many people, across the ideological space, cannot see him as a danger. For every hundred people who can see his geniality, probably only a handful see the grave danger his warped policies and ruthless tactics pose to a whole way of life that has given generation after generation of Americans unprecedented freedom and prosperity. The election next November will not be just another election, and the stakes add up to far more than the sum of the individual issues. Moreover, if reelected and facing no future election, whatever political constraints may have limited how far Obama would push his radical agenda will be gone.

Description: The day Tyler Clementi discovered that his roommate at Rutgers University had used a webcam to spy on him as he kissed another man, he described the incident to a friend during an instant-message chat. "It could be interpreted as a hate crime," the friend suggested, according to a recent New Yorker article by Ian Parker. Clementi's reply: "hahaha a hate crime lol." That risible possibility has become a reality because Clementi, an 18-year-old freshman, jumped off the George Washington Bridge two days later for reasons that remain unclear. The New Jersey trial of Clementi's roommate, Dharun Ravi, illustrates the dangers posed by hate crime statutes, which enhance the penalties for existing offenses based on bigoted motives and therefore punish people for their opinions.

Description: I hate to quote the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, but the chickens have come home to roost for President Barack Obama as higher oil and gasoline prices swamp his re-election bid. Count the chickens: Obama has refused to impose tough sanctions on Iran until two months ago, increasing the likelihood of an Israeli attack. Already speculation that such a strike might be in the offing is driving up oil prices.

Description: The White House fairy tale about the Happily Ever After Auto Bailout is missing a crucial, bloody page. While President Obama bragged about "standing by American workers" at a rowdy United Auto Workers meeting Tuesday, he failed to acknowledge how the Chicago-style deal threw tens of thousands of nonunion autoworkers under the bus. In a campaign pep rally/sermon billed as a "policy speech," Obama nearly broke his arm patting himself on the back for placing his "bets" (read: our money) on the $85 billion federal auto industry rescue. "Three years later," he crowed, "that bet is paying off for America." Big Labor brass cheered Obama's citation of GM's "highest profits in its 100-year history" as the room filled with militant UAW chants of "union made."

Description: False choices. Populist bromides. A lecture on values. President Barack Obama treated us to some of his greatest hits this week. Speaking before the United Auto Workers union in Washington, Obama, champion of the working man, challenged auto bailout "naysayers" to "come around" and admit that "standing by American workers was the right thing to do," as bailouts "saved" the auto industry. (You have to wonder whether downtrodden citizens appreciate just how close they came to having to roller-skate to work.)

Description: Rick Santorum's speech at the Detroit Economic Club stirred a bit of controversy when he said: "I'm not about equality of result when it comes to income inequality. There is income inequality in America. There always has been, and hopefully -- and I do say that -- there always will be." That kind of statement, though having merit, should not be made to people who have little or no understanding. Let's look at inequality. Kay S. Hymowitz's article "Why the Gender Gap Won't Go Away. Ever," in City Journal (Summer 2011), shows that female doctors earn only 64 percent of the income that male doctors earn. What should be done about that? It turns out that only 16 percent of surgeons are women but 50 percent of pediatricians are women. Even though surgeons have many more years of education and training than do pediatricians, should Congress equalize their salaries or make pediatricians become surgeons?

Description: When New York churches no longer can meet in public school settings, a federal court orders a Rhode Island public school to remove a prayer banner that has been posted for more than five decades (and it complies), the federal government mandates that Catholic institutions cover abortion-inducing drugs, contraceptives and sterilization (at no cost to the patient), the U.S. Air Force removes "God" from the motto of the Air Force Rapid Capabilities Office, atheists continue to contest "under God" in our Pledge of Allegiance, town councils can't pray to start their meetings, evangelical pillars like Franklin Graham are subdued by gotcha gangs in the mainstream media, and cultural icons like Denver Broncos quarterback Tim Tebow can't even bow in silent prayer without criticism, you can be assured that religious liberty is under assault by secular progressives across America. And leading the national charge is none other than our president, Barack Obama. Though America's Founding Fathers opposed the reign of kings or priests, they actually advocated the role of religion in society and civic service, including intermingling their own Christian faith in political convictions and choices. And I believe they would want us to vote in a president who is committed to the same.

Description: Secretary of State Hillary Clinton issued a firm statement to the Syrian elite this week, urging them to overthrow the regime of Bashar al-Assad. "The longer you support the regime's campaign of violence against your brothers and sisters, the more it will stain your honor," she advised. Only now? Only after thousands of men, women and children have been murdered, tens of thousands wounded, and countless homes destroyed by artillery shells has the Obama team finally shed its illusions about the Syrian regime?

Description: The First Amendment to the United States Constitution contains two clauses addressing religious liberty: "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof." It's a shame that in their modern misguided zeal to read the first clause as mandating a complete separation of church and state, liberals do great damage to the second clause and defeat the overarching purpose of both: ensuring religious liberty.

Description: The only good news for the Republicans coming out of the seemingly endless presidential candidate "debates" is that some Republican leaders are now belatedly thinking about how they can avoid a repetition of this debacle in future elections. What could they possibly have been thinking about, in the first place, when they agreed to a format based on short sound bites for dealing with major complex issues, and with media journalists -- 90 percent of them Democrats -- picking the topics?

Description: President Obama fought back against rising oil and retail gas prices in a speech in Florida on Thursday. But it was a curious speech. He started out by mocking Republicans, stating that GOP candidates are licking their chops as gasoline prices rocket up. He said, "They are already dusting off their three-point plans for $2 gas. I'll save you the suspense: Step one is drill, step two is drill, and step three is keep drilling." Very clever. It's kind of what Newt Gingrich said in this week's Arizona debate. But here's the curious part. Obama said, "If we're going to take control of our energy future, if we're going to avoid these gas-price spikes down the line, then we need a sustained all-of-the-above strategy that develops every available source of American energy -- oil, gas, wind, solar, nuclear, biofuels and more."

Description: Have we become so hypersensitive that a phrase in use for half a millennia must now be banished from the English lexicon? I'm speaking, of course, of the furor created last week when ESPN's mobile site ran a story headlined "A Chink in the Armor." The idiom is commonly used to describe the vulnerability in an otherwise impenetrable defense. Its etymology goes back to the Middle Ages, when knights in battle wore suits of armor that covered their bodies head to foot. Opponents looked for small openings -- chinks -- through which they might thrust their swords or other weapons.

Description: Wish I had a nickel for every conservative who confidently predicted that the Arizona debate would, of course, feature obnoxious questions about birth control and the devil aimed at Rick Santorum. As it turned out, CNN's John King did not ask "gotcha" questions and for the most part, conducted a fair and informative debate. The exception, and this may not have been King's fault, was CNN's absurd reality-show-style introductions of the candidates: "Newt Gingrich, the determined challenger," "Mitt Romney, the long-distance runner." Hmm. How about "CNN, the desperate, ratings-starved network"? Memo to file: John King isn't one of the bad guys. He's pretty straight. Maybe FoxNews should offer him a job? Consider all of the reasonable people Fox has attracted from other networks: Brit Hume from ABC, Jim Angle from NPR, Chris Wallace from ABC, John Roberts from CNN, Doug McKelway from ABC. Truth is, there are still some nonliberals even in the unlikeliest places, such as the major networks.

Description: So we should all be grateful that President Obama is just now coming out for a corporate tax rate cut? But does anyone really believe he's had a supply-side epiphany? That this is an election year surely wouldn't have anything to do with his apparent change of heart, would it? He's been president for more than three years, and Republicans have been clamoring all that time for a reduction in the world's second-highest corporate tax rate. So don't you think that if Obama truly favored this, it would have happened long ago? But there's something more cynical about Obama's new proposal. It wouldn't operate as advertised. As we get closer to the 2012 general election campaign, Obama wants to be positioned to compete with the eventual nominee on this issue. Newt would cut the current 35 percent rate to 12.5 percent. Romney would reduce it to 25 percent. And Santorum would reduce it to 17.5 percent for all corporations except domestic manufacturers, which would be exempted from the tax. Obama calls for a modest reduction, to 28 percent, which would still be reason to cheer coming from him, but it's not quite that simple. Underneath the smoke and to the side of the mirrors, we find it's just another ploy to empower Obama to pick the winners and losers.

Description: If you like how the Obama administration's multibillion-dollar "investments" in bankrupt solar companies have turned out, you'll love the latest federal loan program to nowhere. It's the Obamacare loyalty rewards program for progressives. To appease liberal Democrats pushing for the so-called "public option" (the full frontal government takeover of our health care system), the White House settled for the creation of a $6 billion network of nonprofit "CO-OPs" that will "compete" with private insurers. It's socialized medicine through the side door. House Republicans sliced about $2 billion from the slush fund in last spring's budget deal and proclaimed the program dead. Hardly. On Wednesday, the White House trumpeted the release of nearly $700 million in taxpayer-funded low-interest loans for seven CO-OPs in eight states. Administered by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, the fund will pour more money into CO-OP plans nationwide throughout the next year. In 2014, according to Washington bureaucrats, the plans will be offered on the federally approved and federally monitored state health exchange "marketplace." Some marketplace. Given how Team Obama has dispensed special Obamacare waivers to scores of campaign donors, it's a sure bet the CO-OP/exchange mechanism will be brazenly rigged against non-subsidized, for-profit insurers. And against taxpayers. Obama health officials assure us that there will be an "early warning system" in place before loan recipients get into financial trouble. But we know from the half-billion-dollar Solyndra scam that when this administration sees red flags, it's full speed ahead.

Description: Gas prices are spiking. That's great news, right? We have to wean ourselves off the stuff. At least that's what we've been hearing for years. Oil is dirty. We import it from nations that hate our guts (like Canada!). And moreover, we're running out. Oil is "finite." Finite much in the way water is finite. So why aren't Democrats making the case that the spike in prices is a good thing? Isn't this basically our energy policy these days? How we "win the future"? If high energy prices were to damage President Barack Obama's re-election prospects, it would be ironic, considering the left has been telling us to set aside our "dependency" -- or, as our most recent Republican president put it, "addiction" -- for a long time.

Description: Rick Santorum is right. Pushing back against Democrats' attempts to frame him as a religious menace, the GOP presidential candidate forcefully turned the tables on the White House: "When it comes to the management of the Earth, they are the anti-science ones." Scrutiny of the White House anti-science brigade couldn't come at a better time (which is why Santorum's detractors prefer to froth at the mouth about comments he made four years ago on the existence of Satan). It's not just big-ticket scandals like the stimulus-subsidized Solyndra bankruptcy or the Keystone pipeline debacle bedeviling America. In every corner of the Obama administration, the radical green machinery is hard at work -- destroying jobs, shredding truth and sacrificing our economic well-being at the altar of environmentalism.

Description: What would the race for president look like should Rick Santorum win the Republican nomination? His candidacy would do a lot to put social issues into play. While he would rev up the base of social conservatives who might be left cold by a Mitt Romney candidacy, President Barack Obama would welcome the distraction from his economic record. He would likely try to bring into the dialogue fringe issues such as contraception, back-alley abortions, stem cell research and others. His insistence on the inclusion of birth control in health insurance policies issued by Catholic institutions is a foretaste of his probable tactics against Santorum, should he win the Republican nomination.

Description: A month ago, the Obama administration said religious organizations will have to pay for health insurance policies that cover contraception and sterilization, even if they consider those practices immoral. Two weeks ago, responding to widespread complaints that its edict violated freedom of conscience, the administration unveiled a "new policy," under which religious organizations will have to pay for health insurance policies that cover contraception and sterilization, even if they consider those practices immoral.

Description: Decrying "a decade of deficits" on Monday, President Obama declared that "my budget lays out a path for how we can pay down these debts." It is hard to see how that can be true, since his plan would add $6.7 trillion to the national debt during the next decade. Obama thus begins his fourth year in office the way he began his first, preaching prudence while practicing profligacy. Back then, you may recall, he promised to cut the deficit, at that point estimated to be $1.3 trillion, "at least in half by the end of his first term," as a spokesman for the Office of Management and Budget put it in February 2009.

Description: The tea party isn't dead. It's just looking down ballot. While fiscal conservatives remain split over the GOP presidential candidates, grassroots activists are coalescing around a stellar slate of limited-government candidates looking to reinforce and reenergize the right in Washington. And in the spirit of the modern-day tea party movement, no entrenched incumbent -- Democrat or Republican -- is safe.

Description: It's always curious to watch the champions of "choice" decide what choices to champion and what choices to dismiss for the common good. If you believe that the Obama administration's decision to force Catholic institutions to pay for and offer (directly or indirectly) products the church finds morally objectionable is an assault on religious freedom and free speech, you probably also realize the importance of consumer choice. After all, when government dictates what people buy and sell, it dictates much more.

Description: New Jersey Governor Chris Christie addressed the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) last week. In the few words reported by the Weekly Standard magazine, he said just about everything one needs to know about Israel; about America and Israel; and about American political leadership: "America should stand by its friends and its democratic allies, even, and sometimes especially, when it's unpopular to do so."

Description: Leaving aside the blatant assault on religious liberty that the Obama administration's contraceptive mandate represents (a number of commentators have ably elucidated the assault on free exercise), the edict ought to offend all sensible Americans for its sheer economic and moral fatuousness. In this case, "moral" refers to moral hazard, i.e., unintentionally encouraging bad behavior. But first, consider the economic argument the administration has advanced for forcing insurance companies to offer free contraceptives and abortifacients to all women.

Description: President Obama is nothing if not an incorrigible spendaholic, as his new budget reconfirms in spades. While the nation drowns in debt, Obama wants to buy new expensive Tinkertoys to indulge his utopian fantasies. Legend has it that prior to embarking on his mission to conquer the known world, Alexander the Great, who had not yet established his greatness, visited the oracle at Delphi seeking a good omen. The oracle was actually a priestess who sat on a stool in the crypt of Apollo's Temple above a fissure in the earth that emitted vapors and put her into a trance, wherein she would channel messages from Apollo.

Description: Although Barack Obama is the first black President of the United States, he is by no means unique, except for his complexion. He follows in the footsteps of other presidents with a similar vision, the vision at the heart of the Progressive movement that flourished a hundred years ago. Many of the trends, problems and disasters of our time are a legacy of that era. We can only imagine how many future generations will be paying the price -- and not just in money -- for the bright ideas and clever rhetoric of our current administration.

Description: In 2008 -- when my wife, Gena, and I were on the campaign trail backing former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee for president -- former Sen. Rick Santorum of Pennsylvania was fighting to get former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney elected. (Go to http://bit.ly/zEIaPw to hear how Santorum passionately endorsed and elevated Mitt in his bid for the Oval Office.) Just three years ago, in his interview with radio host and conservative commentator Laura Ingraham, Santorum also emphatically told millions of listening Americans, "If you're a conservative ... if you're a Republican ... there is only one place to go right now, and that's Mitt Romney."

Description: The Philadelphia Inquirer's big story Feb. 4 was about how a budget crunch at the Philadelphia School District had caused the district to lay off 91 school police officers. Over the years, there's been no discussion of what has happened to our youth that makes a school police force necessary in the first place. The Inquirer's series "Assault on Learning" (March 2011) reported that in the 2010 school year, "690 teachers were assaulted; in the last five years, 4,000 were." The newspaper reported that in Philadelphia's 268 schools, "on an average day 25 students, teachers, or other staff members were beaten, robbed, sexually assaulted, or victims of other violent crimes. That doesn't even include thousands more who are extorted, threatened, or bullied in a school year." I graduated from Philadelphia's Benjamin Franklin High School in 1954. Franklin's students were from the poorest North Philadelphia neighborhoods -- such as the Richard Allen housing project, where I lived -- but there were no policemen patrolling the hallways. There were occasional after-school fights -- rumbles, we called them -- but within the school, there was order. Students didn't use foul language to teachers, much less assault them.

Description: If you aren't creeped out by the No Birth Control Left Behind rhetoric of the White House and Planned Parenthood, you aren't listening closely enough. The anesthetic of progressive benevolence always dulls the senses. Wake up. When a bunch of wealthy white women and elite Washington bureaucrats defend the trampling of religious liberties in the name of "increased access" to "reproductive services" for "poor" women, the ghost of Margaret Sanger is cackling. As she wrote in her autobiography, Sanger founded Planned Parenthood in 1916 "to stop the multiplication of the unfit." This, she boasted, would be "the most important and greatest step towards race betterment." While she oversaw the mass murder of black babies, Sanger cynically recruited minority activists to front her death racket. She conspired with eugenics financier and businessman Clarence Gamble to "hire three or four colored ministers, preferably with social-service backgrounds, and with engaging personalities" to sell their genocidal policies as community health and welfare services. Outright murder wouldn't sell. But wrapping it under the egalitarian cloak of "women's health" -- and adorning it with the moral authority of black churches -- would. Sanger and Gamble called their deadly campaign "The Negro Project."

Description: As God's instrument, Moses parted the Red Sea. Well, it appears President Obama has a different idea. With a wave of his hand, he's going to reunite our bitterly divided political waters on the hottest of hot-button issues. Don't get me wrong; Obama's conscious effort to divide Americans on the basis of race, ethnicity, religion and wealth for political purposes is alive and thriving. That's a separate phenomenon. What I'm talking about here is his apparent conviction that by sheer force of his presence, his charisma, his aura and his gift for supernatural nuance, he can utter magical words on any bitterly controversial matter and instantly reconcile opposing factions, even on matters that do not lend themselves to neat solutions. This exaggerated sense of self-worth, not just his visceral liberal inclination toward appeasement, is what leads him to believe he can negotiate with terrorists and persuade them to renounce their jihad against America upon witnessing his world apology tour, his outreach to Muslims in Cairo, his witch hunt against CIA interrogators, and his shoutouts to the Muslim Brotherhood. (Don't tell him, but polls show he's even less popular than President George W. Bush was in the Muslim world.) His stunning absence of any awareness of his own limitations (Socrates' wisdom yardstick) is obviously what convinced him he could deliver a speech at the University of Notre Dame that would induce a bilateral epiphany in which both sides of the abortion debate would finally realize that until he had deconstructed the issue so elegantly, they had been looking through the abortion glass darkly. Henceforth, they would see clearly and bask in the glow of harmonic convergence where pro-life advocates would appreciate the bizarre concept of a mother's sacred reproductive rights and the pro-aborts would come to understand, er, never mind. Only one side in these arguments needs to show movement -- the side that opposes Obama's beliefs.

Description: Conventional wisdom suggests that the current refusal of the GOP base to accept Mitt Romney as the de facto presidential nominee will doom the party to failure in the fall. The thought is that too many debates, too much sniping among the candidates, and an overall enthusiasm deficit will leave the nominee -- and the odds still favor Romney -- mortally wounded. But this election was never going to be decided so much by voters affirmatively choosing the Republican candidate as by whether they were going to reject Barack Obama. Second-term elections are always a referendum on the incumbent, not the challenger. And when Americans have chosen to turn out a sitting president, it has rarely been because the challenger was so much more appealing. The qualities of the challenger aren't irrelevant; they're just not as decisive as the perceived success or failure of the incumbent. In 1980, Americans chose to give Jimmy Carter the boot. Inflation and interest rates had gone through the roof on his watch, and unemployment had risen. The Soviet Union had invaded Afghanistan, and its surrogates had made inroads in the United States' own backyard. Carter made Americans feel bad about themselves, so they voted him out of office. Many Americans didn't know all that much about Ronald Reagan, and the media tried to make him out to be a reckless cowboy, but voters knew they didn't want more of Carter. The same could be said of George H.W. Bush. Voters liked him enough when he pushed Saddam Hussein out of Kuwait in the hundred-hour war, but by the time re-election rolled around, things had changed. Bill Clinton was a small-time governor from a southern state but became the Democrats' nominee largely because better-known candidates with bigger reputations hadn't bothered to run. But he won because voters were tired of Bush.

Description: Newt Gingrich knows the lingo. He makes conservative audiences roar with approval when he compares the efficiency of FedEx and MasterCard to the post office and Immigration and Customs Enforcement. He never loses an opportunity to attack the press for its moral preening. Conservatives adore this table turning. Nothing makes them angrier than to be derided as heartless by people who define virtue by their willingness to give away other people's money. Rick Perry quickly lost his own conservative luster when he used the word "heartless" about his Republican rivals. Want to see how conservatives behave? Rent and watch "The Blind Side." The family that adopted Michael Oher, a homeless black teenager, was conservative and Christian. Think that's an anomaly? Glance at the families of Republican office seekers. John and Cindy McCain adopted a sickly child from Pakistan. Jon and Mary Kaye Huntsman have two adopted daughters, one from China and one from India. Michele and Marcus Bachmann have five biological children and fostered 23 teenagers -- many with eating disorders and other challenges. Wander into any church or synagogue on the weekend and you will find more of a "rainbow coalition" than at a New York Times editorial conference. Self-described conservatives, as Arthur C. Brooks demonstrated so cogently in his book "Who Really Cares," donate more to charity than do self-identified liberals. Perhaps that's because conservatives are wealthier? No. Liberals on average earn 6 percent more than conservatives. Yet conservatives donate about 30 percent more. Conservatives also volunteer more of their time -- and their blood. Brooks writes: "If liberals and moderates gave blood at the same rate as conservatives, the blood supply of the United States would jump about 45 percent." Of the 25 states that had higher than average charitable giving, 24 went for George W. Bush over John Kerry in 2004.

Description: The Republican presidential candidates, except for Ron Paul, haven't been paying much attention to young voters in the primaries and caucuses so far. But any Republican nominee -- which is to say probably Mitt Romney, or maybe Newt Gingrich or Rick Santorum -- had better be paying attention to them in the summer and fall. The reason three of the four Republicans haven't paid much attention to young voters is that the under-30 folks have been turning out in the Republican contests in miniscule numbers. According to entrance and exit polls, voters under 30 accounted for 15 percent of participants in Iowa, 12 percent in New Hampshire, 9 percent in South Carolina, 6 percent in Florida and 8 percent in Nevada. By way of comparison, voters that age were 18 percent of the electorate in November 2008. And, in that election, they voted 66 percent to 32 percent for Barack Obama over John McCain. Voters above that age favored Obama by only 50 percent to 49 percent. McCain would have won if the voting age were 35. In this year's Republican contests, the big winner among young voters has been Ron Paul. His libertarian message -- on monetary policy, marijuana policy and foreign policy -- has brought out the under-30 voters, though many and perhaps most don't identify themselves as Republicans at all.

Description: "Which of our Hispanic leaders would you consider to serve in your Cabinet?" A woman attending the last Republican debate in Florida asked this of the four Republican rivals. Oh, for crying out loud! Ethnic-based Cabinet appointees? Do we still need to go out and "seek" people of a certain color or religion to show "fairness and inclusion"? What about considering the best people possible -- isn't that the only appropriate answer to that question? But Republicans go all Democrat, all too often, in front of black and brown audiences. They say things to show how empathic they are, rather than promote their principles as beneficial to all, regardless of race or gender or ethnicity. Look at the way former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney, former House Speaker Newt Gingrich and former Pennsylvania Sen. Rick Santorum answered this Cabinet question. Obviously anticipating such a query, they spat out practically every Hispanic name they could think of short of the Frito Bandito. Only one, libertarian Rep. Ron Paul, R-Texas, said the right thing. Paul simply said he wanted someone who understands fiscal and monetary policy -- "Hispanic or otherwise." And Paul won't be the nominee.

Description: On Super Bowl Sunday, America was treated to the most expensive political commercial in history -- brought to you by Chrysler -- called "It's Halftime in America." In a series of vapid non sequiturs, Clint Eastwood's gravelly voice pinned the promise of a city -- no, a nation -- to government dependency, claiming that "the people of Detroit" lost almost everything but because "we" pulled together and the "Motor City is fighting again" -- punching, roaring, imbued with American grit -- we survived.

Description: The White House didn't blow a dog whistle for deep-pocketed liberal donors on Monday. No, the administration whipped out a supersized vuvuzela. Blaring message: Let loose the campaign finance-bundling hounds of super PAC war! President Obama's campaign manager, Jim Messina, who served as White House deputy chief of staff for operations before assuming 2012 re-election duties, announced the super PAC super-flip-flop in a mass e-mail to supporters and a blog post published on the left-wing Huffington Post website. In a related conference call to major campaign finance bundlers, Messina encouraged these high-dollar donors to start funding Priorities USA Action. That's the Democratic super PAC founded by former White House staffers Bill Burton and Sean Sweeney.

Description: Let's think about the kind of mess that we're in. Federal 2010 Medicare and Medicaid expenditures totaled $800 billion. The projected annual growth of both programs is about 7 percent. Social Security expenditures are more than $700 billion a year. According to the 2009 Social Security and Medicare trustees reports, by 2030, 49 percent of federal revenues will go for Social Security and Medicare payments. The unfunded liability of both programs is already $106 trillion. But not to worry. The Congressional Budget Office estimates that it's possible to sustain today's level of federal spending and even achieve a balanced budget. All that Congress would have to do is raise the lowest income tax bracket of 10 percent to 25 percent and the middle tax bracket of 25 percent to 66 percent and raise the 35 percent tax bracket to 92 percent. That's a static vision that assumes that people will have no response and they'll work just as hard and send more money to Washington. If Congress did legislate such tax increases, it would be the economic equivalent of committing national hara-kiri.

Description: Governor Mitt Romney's statement about not worrying about the poor has been treated as a gaffe in much of the media, and those in the Republican establishment who have been rushing toward endorsing his coronation as the GOP's nominee for president -- with 90 percent of the delegates still not yet chosen -- have been trying to sweep his statement under the rug. But Romney's statement about not worrying about the poor -- because they "have a very ample safety net" -- was followed by a statement that was not just a slip of the tongue, and should be a defining moment in telling us about this man's qualifications as a conservative and, more important, as a potential President of the United States.

Description: Planned Parenthood would appear to have won this latest skirmish in the abortion wars. The Susan G. Komen for the Cure foundation having first decided to withdraw future grants to the world's largest abortion provider, quickly retreated under a barrage of accusations, complaints and threats. No fewer than 26 Democratic senators signed a letter to Komen saying, in part that, "It would be tragic if any woman --let alone thousands of women -- lost access to these potentially life-saving screenings because of a politically motivated attack. We earnestly hope that you will put women's health before partisan politics and reconsider this decision . . ."

Description: President Obama told NBC's Matt Lauer in an interview Sunday, "I deserve a second term." Well, let's see. He had the courage to tell the Supreme Court off for daring to defy him in its campaign finance law ruling. And he did it during his State of the Union speech, when they weren't in a position to object, showing just what a marvelous tactician he is. He was not about to be stymied by an obstructionist Republican House that didn't buy into his Euro-fashionable idea that we're all going to die from catastrophic man-made global warming. So when those knuckleheads wouldn't pass cap and trade, his Environmental Protection Agency lawlessly imposed its own emission standards. He showed those Republicans.

Description: Horror of horrors! Lego has introduced a new line of gender-specific toys aimed at girls. I might not even have become aware of the controversy had it not been a topic of discussion on the all-female PBS talk show "To the Contrary," on which I frequently appear. That we are still debating the pros and cons of allowing boys and girls to prefer different play choices says a great deal about the failure of the feminist movement. Lego, which markets plastic building blocks for everything from "Star Wars" fighting vehicles to Egyptian pyramids, has now introduced a line aimed at young girls. The new toys include Butterfly Beauty Shop, Stephanie's Outdoor Bakery, and Olivia's House, all featuring recognizable girl figures with long hair and feminine outlines, unlike the squat, sexless figures that characterize many of the company's other building sets. More importantly, these toys depict girls engaging in traditionally female activities and roles: getting their hair done, baking, caring for children. The company says that it has introduced the new line because of customer demand. Little girls (or their mothers) apparently aren't lining up to buy Lego's Fangpyre Wrecking Balls or Pirates of the Caribbean. But feminist critics say that the real motive is to reinforce gender stereotypes and limit little girls' aspirations. In fact, it's the feminists who want to limit women's choices. Their message to girls and young women is: If you're not exactly like men, you don't believe in equal rights.

Description: Obama's latest homeowner mortgage relief plan is perfect for him: It both is consistent with his ideology -- duh -- and allows him to buy more votes with someone else's money, all the while pretending there is in fact such a thing as a free lunch. The painfully superficial liberal approach to poverty gets old, as does its corollary tenet that conservatives who reject liberals' failed ideas lack compassion. Indeed, Obama seemed to devote half the words in his prayer breakfast speech to proving that Scripture compels liberal policies. Obama's latest proof that he cares more than we do is his proposal to "give every responsible homeowner in America a chance to save about $3,000 a year on their mortgage by refinancing at historically low rates. No more red tape. No more runaround from the banks." This has all the elements. He frames the program as applying only to (SET ITAL) responsible (END ITAL) mortgagors; he personally gets credit for handing out this money from his legendary "stash"; government, not the market, dictates what the interest rate will be; government will wave its magic wand forbidding "red tape" and bureaucratic obstacles; and banks, one of his favorite targets, are demonized and lined up to be punished. But haven't we had enough of this man's top-down manipulation of the market in the guise of helping people? Is he ever to be held accountable for similar failed programs he's already tried? How about that $75 billion mortgage relief plan he implemented in 2009? You know, the one he said would "give millions of families resigned to financial ruin a chance to rebuild"? The one he said would save 7 million to 9 million mortgages.

Description: In 1992, Arkansas Gov. Bill Clinton built his campaign for the White House on doing more for the "forgotten middle class." Calling it the "new covenant" (Democrats since Roosevelt have tried to work the words "new" or "deal" into their campaign slogans), Clinton promised to focus on the people he called "the backbone of the country, the ones who do the work and pay the taxes and send their children off to war." Sound familiar? Here is Mitt Romney, the morning after the Florida primary: "I'm in this race because I care about Americans. I'm not concerned about the very poor. We have a safety net there. If it needs repair, I'll fix it. I'm not concerned about the very rich; they're doing just fine. I'm concerned about the very heart of ... America, the 90 percent, 95 percent of Americans who right now are struggling." The usual firestorm erupted -- with liberals and conservatives alike pouncing on evidence of Romney's "tin ear." NPR anticipated (eagerly?) that Romney's words would show up in Democratic attack ads. And an exasperated Jonah Goldberg wondered in National Review Online whether Romney actually knows how to play this game: " . . . The concern is, after nearly a decade of running for president, if he can't get this stuff down now he never will."

Description: Forgive Republican candidate Mitt Romney for his alleged failure to adequately explain why he paid "only" 14 percent of his income in taxes. The honest answer -- "Well, because my accountants couldn't figure out how to get them any lower" -- does not work in this or very many other election years. Romney seemed flat-footed because, like most business people, he seeks to minimize costs and expenses. This includes taxes. A normal wealthy-and-proud-of-it guy would have said: "Let me get this straight, pal. I'm not supposed to take every legal advantage provided me by the tax laws to reduce my taxes?" For what it's worth, about 15 percent of Romney's last two years of income went to charity -- substantially higher than the percentage given by the Obamas or Joe Biden's $380 (not a typo) of his quarter-million dollar income in 2006.

Description: Mitt Romney's sudden surge in Florida reflects a basic fear voters have of nominating former Speaker Newt Gingrich. Despite his obvious brilliance, creative ideas and stimulating turns of phrase, they worry that he will come across as too strident to voters and will cost the Republican Party the presidency. Women, in particular, worry that his personal baggage may impair his ability to defeat Barack Obama in November. Instead, both genders are coming to feel that it is better not to take a chance and to vote for Mitt Romney, the more electable of the two.

Description: In his State of the Union address last week, President Obama used billionaire investor Warren Buffett's secretary, Debbie Bosanek, as a prop to illustrate the unfairness of our tax system. "Right now," he said as Bosanek sat near first lady Michelle Obama, "Warren Buffett pays a lower tax rate than his secretary." Commentators spent the next week speculating about what Obama meant. Was he referring to marginal rates or effective rates? On taxable income or adjusted gross income? Was he talking about federal income taxes or payroll taxes, as well? If the latter, was he counting the so-called employer's share or just the employee's share? What about state income taxes?

Description: President Obama and his radical feminist enforcers have had it in for Catholic medical providers from the get-go. It's about time all people of faith fought back against this unprecedented encroachment on religious liberty. First, they came for the Catholics. Who's next? This weekend, Catholic bishops informed parishioners of the recent White House edict forcing religious hospitals, schools, charities and other health and social service providers to provide "free" abortifacient pills, sterilizations and contraception on demand in their insurance plans -- even if it violates their moral consciences and the teachings of their churches.

Description: Once the presidential nomination process is settled -- and Lord knows that day can't come fast enough -- Republicans will get back to doing what they do best, getting on Barack Obama's case. Incredibly, though, they'll have to do it without one of their most potent arguments. The Republican candidate, after all, can't effectively attack what he supports. Today both leading contenders for the nomination have defended the idea of government's forcing all consumers to buy something in the interest of the common good. An individual mandate is about health insurance today, but really no one has offered any good reason Washington couldn't force us to buy a government-sanctioned iPad or rubber ducky tomorrow.

Description: The Muslim world is threatened by religious fanaticism. The Western world is threatened by secular fanaticism. Both seek to dominate society and to use state power to do so. Both seek to eliminate the Other -- for Islamic fanatics, that means non-Muslim religions and secularism; for secular fanatics, it means Christianity and virtually any public invoking of God. The Islamists impose Sharia law; the American Civil Liberties Union and the left generally impose secular law. The Taliban wiped out public vestiges of Buddhism in Afghanistan; the ACLU and its allies seek to wipe out public vestiges of Christianity in America -- as it did, for example, in Los Angeles County, when it successfully pressured the County Board of Supervisors to remove the tiny cross from the county seal. A city and county founded by Catholics -- hence the name "The Angels" -- was forced to stop commemorating its founders because they were religious.

Description: The advice columns of newspapers are good windows into the conscience of a culture. There you will find a field guide to what is considered socially acceptable and unacceptable. One of the advice columnists for the Washington Post, Carolyn Hax, is consistently sensible and solid in her suggestions. Straightening out busybodies, drug abusers, interfering in-laws and ungrateful children with equal aplomb, she's usually a pleasant read with the morning coffee. But not always. A recent response to a letter from "Grandmother-to-be" provides an example of the collapse of social wisdom on the subject of marriage and childbearing. "My 26-year-old son's girlfriend -- of four months -- is pregnant," wrote grandma. "I have very mixed emotions about this, mainly because he just met her, and I do not know her. They work and live across the country. I am disappointed in their behavior. How do I tell my friends the news? I am embarrassed."

Description: California has a huge state debt and Washington has a huge national debt. But that does not discourage either Governor Jerry Brown or President Barack Obama from wanting to launch a very costly high-speed rail system. Most of us might be a little skittish about spending money if we were teetering on the brink of bankruptcy. But the beauty of politics is that it is all other people's money, including among those other people generations yet unborn.

Description: In the intense heat of the present, it is easy to forget even the relatively recent past, but it seems to me that this GOP primary season is more acrimonious than the past few, probably because the stakes are so high. When I've noted that this is the most important presidential election of our lifetimes, a few excitability-resistant conservative friends have said, "They have been saying that about every election for more than a generation." My response to that is:

Description: I think the mainstream media and Washington elite think the majority of voters just fell off the turnip truck. But the South Carolina primary and other current voting trends show otherwise. The MSM are working double time to get us to forget about the unprecedented results of the South Carolina primary, but they are a sign of what could be in Florida, Nevada and beyond. They are also proof that American citizens will not be outwitted by the political shenanigans of the powers that be. Let me give you a few examples.

Description: There's been a heap of criticism placed upon President Barack Obama's domestic policies that have promoted government intrusion and prolonged our fiscal crisis and his foreign policies that have emboldened our enemies. Any criticism of Obama pales in comparison with what might be said about the American people who voted him in to the nation's highest office. Obama's presidency represents the first time in our history that a person could have been elected to that office who had long-standing close associations with people who hate our nation. I'm speaking of the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, Obama's pastor for 20 years, who preached that blacks should sing not "God Bless America," but "God damn America." Then there's William Ayers, now professor of education at the University of Illinois at Chicago but formerly a member of the Weather Underground, an anti-U.S. group that bombed the Pentagon, U.S. Capitol and other government buildings. Although Ayers was never convicted of any crime, he told a New York Times reporter, in the wake of the September 2001 terrorist attack, "I don't regret setting bombs. ... I feel we didn't do enough." Obama has served on a foundation board, appeared on panels, and even held campaign events in Ayers' home, joined by Ayers' former-fugitive wife, Bernardine Dohrn. Bill Ayers' close association with Obama is reflected by his admission that he helped write Obama's memoirs, "Dreams from My Father."

Description: We got mixed signals from a turbulent political week. Barack Obama seems to be enjoying an uptick in polls -- up toward, but not quite at, 50 percent approval. It's a reminder that he can expect to benefit from Americans' desire to think well of their presidents and from the reluctance of many voters to be seen as rejecting the first black president. But his weakness was apparent in his State of the Union address: issues. He devoted a mere 44 words to the health care law passed in March 2010. This is the strongest evidence possible that his signal legislative achievement is a millstone around the neck of his campaign. Similarly, we heard little in the hour-plus speech about infrastructure. The words "shovel-ready projects" and "high-speed rail" appeared nowhere -- significant omissions from a president who (as a mischievous Republican ad shows) sprinkles the same phrases in one State of the Union after another. And there was a third omission, not perhaps as obvious but, in the long run, possibly more glaring -- the omission of any serious public policy initiatives to quicken the pace of economic growth and address the long-term entitlement problems that Obama has occasionally noted. Yes, he did call for higher taxes on high earners. But the man who can call on experts at the Treasury Department to draft legislation gave no indication that he has any feasible draft for his "Buffett rule," which would presumably require a second alternative minimum tax for very high earners.

Description: So, it turns out that the cool cat billed as "No Drama Obama" by his sycophants is actually quite the drama queen. While the White House publicly pretends to ignore conservative detractors of his administration, Chief Touchy-Touchy seems to be personally consumed by our critiques. Yes, mine included. On Wednesday, the president had himself a mini-"Toddlers and Tiaras"-style meltdown with Arizona GOP Gov. Jan Brewer after landing in Phoenix for a post-State of the Union dog-and-pony show. As Brewer told pool reporters on the scene, Obama took umbrage at Brewer's recent memoir. She minced no words on the cover: "Scorpions for Breakfast: My Fight Against Special Interests, Liberal Media, and Cynical Politicos to Secure America's Border." And she minced no words describing her impressions of Obama as they sparred over her state's tough immigration enforcement law, which is now the subject of a Justice Department witch-hunt. Brewer called Obama "patronizing" and "condescending." I'd say she was excruciatingly polite. According to Brewer, "He was a little disturbed about my book. ... I said to him that I have all the respect in the world for the office of the president. The book is what the book is. I asked him if he read the book. He said he read (an) excerpt." In the shadow of Air Force One, Obama complained that Brewer hadn't "treated him cordially" and then stalked off while she was responding mid-sentence. Photogs captured the fracas on film. The civility police gasped at Brewer's "disrespectful" finger-pointing. On cue, one progressive commentator insinuated the gesture was a "racist" jab tantamount to lynching..

Description: One thing was missed in Newt Gingrich's victory in the South Carolina primary: Conservatives embraced a pro-amnesty candidate without batting an eyelash. This should come as a wake-up call to those who've been pushing a hard-line anti-illegal immigrant position in the Republican Party. Granted, Gingrich didn't spend a lot of time discussing his position, which favors amnesty for those illegal immigrants who have been here for a long time, have deep family and community ties, and have paid taxes and avoided breaking other laws. But that's the point. He didn't have to spend a lot of time defending his position because so few conservatives cared. Now Gingrich seems poised to win another Southern primary: Florida. The latest polls show him within a few percentage points of beating Mitt Romney again (and at least one poll shows him up by 5 points). Whether or not a Gingrich win is a good thing for Republican prospects in the fall, it could help lay the groundwork for future Republican victories by defusing an issue that is guaranteed to alienate the fastest-growing segment of the voting population. Like other voters, most Hispanics care a lot more about jobs than they do about immigration. Still, they are turned off by candidates who portray illegal immigrants as criminal invaders who want a handout from U.S. taxpayers. Republicans have damaged their ability to woo an important constituency by insisting on a punitive approach to illegal immigration. In this election alone, it could cost Republicans key states critical to winning the presidency: Florida, Colorado, Nevada and New Mexico.

Description: Only a president long shielded from criticism and accountability could make the kind of State of the Union speech President Obama did Tuesday night. It's hard to know where to begin, given his repetition of tired ideas from his previous SOTUs, his taking credit for successful policies he resisted and omitting failed ones he promoted, his numerous misrepresentations on issues big and small, and his glaring refusal to address the main issues that threaten the nation. Let me touch on just a few highlights in this brief space. Excessive spending is the primary threat to our nation's and Americans' financial future, yet Obama glossed over it and distorted his record. He said, "We've already agreed to more than $2 trillion in cuts and savings. But we need to do more." But everyone knows he's had to be dragged kicking and screaming to the cutting table. His unrelenting passion is spending. Even The Washington Post said, "Obama does not mention that Republicans forced him to accept $2 trillion in budget cuts during the debt-ceiling impasse." Obama said, "I'm prepared to make more reforms that rein in the long-term costs of Medicare and Medicaid and strengthen Social Security, so long as those programs remain a guarantee of security for seniors." Well, that's mighty magnanimous of him, but why is he so grudging about it? As president, he should be singularly focused on entitlement reform. Yet he has obstructed and demagogued such reforms. His condition that the "programs remain a guarantee of security for seniors" is completely dishonest, because Paul Ryan's plan did just that and he rejected it while ridiculing and demonizing Ryan.

Description: It's as predictable as vultures at a carcass. When a wealthy Republican is running for office, the press will make his wealth a handicap. Recall that when George H. W. Bush was running in 1988, he was derided as a "preppy." George W. Bush was the undeserving scion of the ruling class. We were told never mind that he had succeeded in business on his own. Though John McCain had been a fixture on the national stage since 1980, no one had paid much attention to his wealth until he was the Republican nominee, at which point his many houses suddenly became a matter of profound national importance. Democrats, of course, are permitted to be rich without fear of undue scrutiny. John F. Kennedy was wealthier than Mitt Romney, or would have been had he lived to collect his inheritance. Lyndon B. Johnson was born poor and died very rich. He didn't earn his money in the private sector. He used political influence to first purchase and then maintain monopolistic radio licenses in his wife's name. There wasn't much fuss about John Kerry's great wealth in 2004. Kerry didn't earn his fortune either but secured it through two advantageous marriages. Teresa Heinz Kerry is rumored to be in the billionaires' club. Good for her. Though, she didn't earn it either, but rather married the heir of the ketchup fortune. John Kerry was an advocate of raising taxes on the rich, but he, like Warren Buffett, declined to contribute more than required to Uncle Sam. In fact, he was caught mooring his yacht in Rhode Island so as to avoid Massachusetts' taxes. Oh, and before he married Teresa Heinz, there were a number of years when Sen. Kerry donated nothing at all to charity.

Description: The Republican re-embrace of former Speaker Newt Gingrich says a lot about whom he sees as his opponent -- and it isn't just President Barack Obama. It's the media. If not for major media's embrace, Obama would still be sitting in the Senate, perhaps mulling another run for the presidency. A UCLA economist-political scientist recently tried to measure how the liberal media bias influences the way people vote. He concluded that this bias gives the Democrat candidate 8 to 10 percentage points. Republicans understand this. So does Gingrich -- on a very deep level. He knows the media dislike him above and beyond their anti-conservative Republican disdain. That he is testy, no-nonsense, whip smart and knowledgeable makes him formidable. That he engineered the 1994 GOP takeover of the House and pushed former President Bill Clinton into governing in the center makes him effective. The good news for the media is that Gingrich is a Southern white male Christian Republican. He belongs to a group for which no advocacy organization exists to play the race/sex/religion card when Gingrich gets called -- on-air by cable hosts and pundits -- "racist," "disgusting" and a "pig." Gingrich bites back. Hard. Thus, he addresses the question of his messy personal life while hitting the CNN moderator for bringing this up as the first question. Gingrich knows he lacks the Reaganesque "aw, shucks" persona. Reagan used his sunny disposition to counter the media's attempt to portray him as a dangerous nutcase whose finger should never go near the nuclear button -- not unlike how many try to portray Gingrich.

Description: The Republican candidates' circular firing squad now seems to be using machine guns. Whoever the eventual "last man standing" turns out to be, he may not be standing very tall or very steadily on his feet -- and he may be a pushover for Barack Obama in the general election, thanks to fellow Republicans. Whether you are a Democrat, a Republican or an independent, this is a very serious and historically crucial time for the United States of America. What Mitt Romney did or did not do when he was with Bain Capital, or what Newt Gingrich did or did not say to his ex-wife, are things that should be left for the tabloids. With the economy still faltering and Iran on its way to getting nuclear bombs, surely we can get serious about the issues facing this nation. Or can we? Mitt Romney's boasts about what he did at Bain Capital are as irrelevant as Newt Gingrich's demagogic attacks on Romney's role there. Romney is not running to become head of Bain Capital. While Gingrich backed away from his demagoguery about Bain Capital, Romney is continuing to press ahead with his charges that Gingrich was a lobbyist for Freddie Mac. As someone who has been a consultant, but never a lobbyist, I know the difference. As a consultant, I have offered advice to people in government and in private organizations, both businesses and non-profit organizations. But I have never gone to a government official to urge that official to make a decision favorable to those who were paying me, or to those for whom I did free consulting.

Description: You know politicians are serious when they move from campaigning to governing. Something like that may be happening on the Republican campaign trail -- but, unfortunately, not at the Obama White House. Campaigning clearly carried the day for Newt Gingrich in South Carolina, where he beat Mitt Romney by a 40 percent to 28 percent margin. It's generally agreed that Gingrich clinched the race when he reacted angrily to questions by Fox News's Juan Williams and CNN's John King. Both times Gingrich got standing ovations. But not for how he'd govern. His platform can be summed up in a bumper sticker a Washington lawyer printed to buck up George H.W. Bush's hapless 1992 campaign: "Annoy the media -- vote for Bush." It was fun but didn't win many votes. South Carolina Republicans got a charge out of imagining how Gingrich would rebuke Barack Obama in the Lincoln-Douglas debates he's been proposing. Except of course Obama would never agree to that format. In the Monday debate at Tampa, Fla., Romney came back hard at Gingrich, saying that he had been ousted as speaker by his own party and that he had to resign "in disgrace." Gingrich complained afterward about the ban on applause and said he might not show up for later debates with a similar ban (although it is imposed in the fall debates). What's important here is that Romney went after Gingrich for the way he governed. Gingrich cites, with a little exaggeration, significant things he achieved as speaker -- welfare reform, holding spending down, tax cuts.

Description: "If you win this case," Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer told Deputy Solicitor General Michael Dreeben during oral argument in U.S. v. Jones last fall, "there is nothing to prevent the police or the government from monitoring 24 hours a day the public movement of every citizen of the United States." That prospect, Breyer said, "sounds like '1984.'" Fortunately, the government did not win the case. But the court's unanimous decision, announced on Monday, may not delay Breyer's '1984' scenario for long. Unless the court moves more boldly to restrain government use of new surveillance technologies, the Framers' notion of a private sphere protected from "unreasonable searches and seizures" will become increasingly quaint.

Description: Had enough of fat cat Barack Obama, his jet-setting wife and his multi-millionaire Chicago consigliere/real-estate mogul Valerie Jarrett attacking the "rich"? Well, brace yourselves. You'll be hearing much more from the White House about the "wealthy few" who aren't paying their "fair share" as Obama's re-election campaign doubles down on class-war demagoguery. As usual, there's always a set of immunity charms for the privileged friends and family of the ruling class. When it comes to all the Green Robber Barons who've reaped an obscenely unfair share of billions of tax dollars from the Obama administration, the envy trumpeteers will be quieter than a nest of mute church mice.

Description: Everybody was expecting a quick knockout in the GOP nominating contest this year. After a year of debating, it appeared that Mitt Romney would sweep the table after winning New Hampshire and seeming to win Iowa. Now, people are looking to see if Newt Gingrich can K.O. Romney, winning Florida after his stunning upset in South Carolina. But, as in a boxing bout where everyone is looking for a big punch and a quick end, this fight may frustrate everyone and go the distance. Not to a brokered convention. That won't happen. The winner-take-all rules the Republican National Committee imposed on primaries and caucuses held after April 1 militate against that outcome. But it will be a see-saw primary battle with one candidate the seeming winner only to watch his rival come storming back.

Description: As an American, a Republican, and a fiscal and social conservative -- and though I have endorsed no Republican candidate -- there is one thing that would disturb me greatly if Mitt Romney were not the Republican nominee: if Romney's Mormon faith were a factor in his defeat. Many evangelical leaders have said that if Romney is the Republican presidential candidate, they would not vote for him in the general election. What is implied -- and sometimes explicitly stated -- is that his Mormonism prevents them from voting for him in the primaries. Most evangelicals label Mormonism a cult, and many accuse Mormons of being dishonest for calling themselves Christians.

Description: Larry Sand's article "No Wonder Johnny (Still) Can't Read" -- written for The John William Pope Center for Higher Education Policy, based in Raleigh, N.C. -- blames schools of education for the decline in America's education. Education professors drum into students that they should not "drill and kill" or be the "sage on the stage" but instead be the "guide on the side" who "facilitates student discovery." This kind of harebrained thinking, coupled with multicultural nonsense, explains today's education. During his teacher education, Sand says, "teachers-to-be were forced to learn about this ethnic group, that impoverished group, this sexually anomalous group, that under-represented group, etc. -- all under the rubric of 'Culturally Responsive Education.'" Education majors are woefully lacking in academic skills. Here are some sample test questions for you to answer. Question 1: Which of the following is equal to a quarter-million? a) 40,000, b) 250,000, c) 2,500,000, d) 1/4,000,000 or e) 4/1,000,000. Question 2: Martin Luther King Jr. (insert the correct choice) for the poor of all races. a) spoke out passionately, b) spoke out passionate, c) did spoke out passionately, d) has spoke out passionately or e) had spoken out passionate. Question 3: What would you do if your student sprained an ankle? a) Put a Band-Aid on it, b) Ice it or c) Rinse it with water.

Description: Just days before the South Carolina primary, polls showed Mitt Romney leading Newt Gingrich. Then came the debates and the question about Gingrich's private life, which brought a devastating response from the former Speaker of the House -- and a standing ovation from the audience. Apparently the television audience felt the same way, judging by the huge turnaround in the support for Gingrich. The stunning victory in South Carolina brought Newt's candidacy back to life.

Description: So the message South Carolina voters sent was -- "Anything goes so long as you attack the media." Whatever you think about Mitt Romney's shortcomings as a candidate -- and I agree with Mark Steyn, who said of his stump speech, "The finely calibrated inoffensiveness is kind of offensive" -- embracing Gingrich is like bashing yourself in the face to relieve the pain in your foot. Certainly it's possible that the voters have done all of us a favor. If Gingrich's success there scares Romney into becoming a better candidate, then it may work out well in the general election.

Description: Republican internecine squabbles this primary season seem to turn on the vying candidates' respective electability against incumbent Barack Obama. But if even uber-liberal New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd has finally awakened to President Obama's arrogance, what does it say about (SET ITAL) his (END ITAL) electability? It's understandable that a lib would take so long to turn on the messiah, having invested so much in his presidency. But I wonder whether these people ever realize how late they are to the party and how utterly devoid of profundity their belated epiphanies are.

Description: Well, isn't this rich? And I do mean rich. President Obama, man of the people, will deliver his presidential nomination acceptance speech at the Bank of America Stadium in Charlotte, N.C. -- so that Democratic Party fundraisers can reward big donors with skyboxes and other lavish perks. As usual, the White House and its allies are trying to camouflage naked partisan money-grubbing in populist garb.

Description: Winning Our Future, a "super PAC" that supports Newt Gingrich's bid for the Republican presidential nomination, is spending more than $1.2 million on ads in South Carolina, which holds its primary on Saturday. That fact requires some explanation. First, why would anyone want Newt Gingrich to be president? Second, what is a super PAC? While the former question remains a mystery, the answer to the latter reveals how the vain crusade to curb the influence of money on elections has made talking about politics needlessly cumbersome and complicated.

Description: Have you heard about these terrifying super PACs? According to cable news anchors -- and other trustworthy sources -- they're like political super-bugs, resistant to free will. Needless to say, the principled and high-minded political debates we've grown accustomed to are now over. Our unsullied national conversation is about to be defiled by a carpet-bombing of television ads and radio spots. And clearly, there is no better way to corrode "democracy" than allowing defenseless voters more exposure to free speech.

Description: The imposter who wallowed in negative ads; attacked capitalism at Bain Capital; and hemmed and hawed when asked about his role at Freddie Mac is gone. The real Newt Gingrich has returned! The former speaker was in his glory during Monday night's GOP debate in South Carolina. Inspired and egged on by a conservative crowd and appealing to a national TV audience, he put red meat before the voters. Rick Santorum, by contrast, served only white-meat chicken. It was a GOP debate, so nobody served pork.