Very Best Wishes for a Most Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year Filled with Seasonal Cheer!

"After President Obama was re-elected on Nov. 6, Americans faced a reality on Nov. 7: Taxes are going up. The only question facing conservatives now is how much of that tax hike they can prevent while also preserving as much of the hard-fought spending cuts they won in 2011. ... 

"Obama's top priority is to raise taxes as high as he possibly can. A $1.3 trillion tax hike was his latest offer. But undoing the $1.2 trillion spending cut in the debt-limit deal is also important to him. His latest offer not only rescinds the scheduled spending cut, but it also calls for $80 billion in new stimulus spending. Obama did also offer to cut Social Security by $120 billion over 10 years and make $800 billion more in other unspecified spending cuts, but he has flat out refused to entertain any serious entitlement reform proposals."

"WASHINGTON — An independent panel charged with investigating the deadly Sept. 11 attack in Libya that killed a U.S. ambassador and three other Americans has concluded that systematic management and leadership failures at the State Department led to 'grossly' inadequate security at the mission in Benghazi. 

'"Systematic failures and leadership and management deficiencies at senior levels within two bureaus of the State Department resulted in a Special Mission security posture that was inadequate for Benghazi and grossly inadequate to deal with the attack that took place,' the panel said."

"If we are going to have a rush to action, it shouldn’t be on guns. It should be on mental illness. It doesn’t make for high political drama or emotional cable chatter, but getting treatment for more of the most seriously mentally ill might actually prevent future shootings. Even if it doesn’t, it would improve the lives of sick and vulnerable people. ... 

"When they are treated, the seriously mentally ill aren’t more violent than the general population. If untreated, though, they are. The evidence is in our ongoing roll call of horrors perpetrated by the deranged. We don’t know yet if Adam Lanza was mentally ill, or if a better system would have helped him. We do know that somewhere out there a young man is about to get very sick. He could become the next Jared Loughner or James Holmes — unless someone gets him treatment."

"It is easy, and in moments of despair such as Friday quite understandable, to scream 'more' to gun control, 'more' to the morass of airport-style security that is spreading its way across our institutions, 'more' to the diagnosis and institutionalization of the mentally ill. But it is much harder to write the laws that would have guaranteed Adam Lanza could never find a gun, or enter a school by force, or go without what diagnosis, treatment, and supervision he might have needed. And hardest of all to write them in such a way that the republic we’d be left with would still look like America in the ways we value most. ... 

"On Friday, the president promised 'meaningful action to prevent more tragedies like this, regardless of the politics.' We doubt that something like this is possible, in a way consistent with the principle and the fact of the Second Amendment. If the possibility of terrors like Newtown are a reminder of why we need politics, their reality is a reminder that politics can do only so much."

"Over the 20th century, progressives erected a system and culture where the government in Washington is the agency of first and last resort for all of our problems. When government is expected to say yes to everything, electing the Party of No makes as much sense as hiring a priest to run a brothel. 

"So what is the answer? ... 

"My own view is that conservatives should recommit themselves to federalism and states’ rights. The party of Lincoln should protect core civil rights, but beyond that, states and localities should be given as much freedom as they can handle. If California wants to become Sweden with better weather, let it. If Texas wants to become Singapore on the Rio Grande, great, go for it. And the same principle goes for cities and towns within those states."

"In 1900, government spending at all three levels -- local, state and federal -- amounted to about 10 percent of national income. Government spending today amounts to 40 percent -- or 50 percent, if one places a dollar value on the unfunded mandates imposed on states and businesses by Washington. The voters re-elected a President who increased the national debt faster and by a greater amount than any previous administration. And there are simply not enough rich folks to pay for it.
 
"Obama, on Nov. 6, won the political argument to continue to expand government. But the election did nothing to change 'the math.' Memo to the middle class: Get ready, you're next."

"Right-to-work laws do not ban unions. They merely ensure that workers can no longer be coerced to pay them. They also create workplace conditions under which even union members are no longer a captive audience, forced to bow to whatever decisions the union leadership makes.
 
"And that's what the union leaders fear most."

"It is unclear what exactly the outcome will be when Obamacare’s avalanche of regulations lands upon the health-care industry. We believe that the consequences are likely to be unpleasant and unpopular, and that those state leaders who enable them are likely to pay a high political price for doing so. If imposing heavy new taxes and cumbrous new regulations upon their states’ residents is not enough, political self-interest alone should counsel state leaders against putting their imprimatur upon the exchanges. 

"Oklahoma is suing to secure its sovereignty against Obamacare’s intrusions, and 14 states have passed laws (and in some cases constitutional amendments) forbidding state workers to enable the administration in implementing the mandate. The states are under no legal or constitutional obligation to establish the exchanges, and if enough of them refuse to do so, then Washington will have no choice but to revisit the deeply unpopular law, providing the country with an opportunity to excise some of Obamacare’s most obnoxious elements. And though full repeal remains an unlikely possibility with Democrats controlling the Senate and the White House, the worst aspects of the law can be delayed or stopped altogether until such a time as pulling up Obamacare by the roots becomes a real political possibility. Obamacare is a threat to American health care, to be sure, but it is also a threat to the character of American government — injuries to which are not easily healed."

"If any Republicans thought that President Obama would respond with magnanimity in victory, they now know better. He is determined to rout them on taxes, give as a little as possible on spending, and blame them for any economic damage in the bargain. The question for the GOP is how to minimize the harm to the economy, as well as to their chances of a political and policy comeback in 2014 and beyond. ...

"Mr. Obama wants to give the appearance of a looming fiscal crisis because it serves his political interest in spooking Republicans to give him everything he wants. He's pressing so hard for tax rate increases not because they will bring in much revenue but because he wants GOP tax cover for Democrats in 2014 and to get Republicans to concede that tax rates must rise. Once he pockets that, he'll be back by more. 

"Republicans need not play along, and they and the country will suffer if they do. Above all, they need to start negotiating as a team with Mr. Obama and stop making premature concessions for the TV cameras that only make the White House less likely to meet them half way."