"Gallup's 2010 Confidence in Institutions poll finds Congress ranking dead last out of the 16 institutions rated this year. Eleven percent of Americans say they have a great deal or quite a lot of confidence in Congress, down from 17% in 2009 and a percentage point lower than the previous low for Congress, recorded in 2008 ...

"The military continues its long-standing run as the highest-rated U.S. institution. Small business and the police occupy second and third places, respectively. These three top-tier institutions all earn high confidence from a majority of Americans, something no other institution achieves this year."

"Cap-and-trade looms as a calamity. The billions Obama has spent on wind and solar subsidies seem to be yet another boondoggle. Fine — but exactly how are we going to transition to new fuels without going broke? Will the Republicans explain why oil, natural gas, clean coal, and nuclear, hydroelectric, wind, and solar power are all necessary, and state the rough percentage of our energy profile that each should make up? Can they retool 'Drill, baby, drill' for the post-BP age?"

"According to records obtained by The Daily Caller, at several points during the 2008 presidential campaign a group of liberal journalists took radical steps to protect their favored candidate. Employees of news organizations including Time, Politico, the Huffington Post, the Baltimore Sun, the Guardian, Salon and the New Republic participated in outpourings of anger over how Obama had been treated in the media, and in some cases plotted to fix the damage.

"In one instance, Spencer Ackerman of the Washington Independent urged his colleagues to deflect attention from Obama’s relationship with [Reverend Jeremiah] Wright by changing the subject. Pick one of Obama’s conservative critics, Ackerman wrote, 'Fred Barnes, Karl Rove, who cares — and call them racists.'"

"America is struggling with a sputtering economy and high unemployment — but times are booming for Washington’s governing class. 

"The massive expansion of government under President Barack Obama has basically guaranteed a robust job market for policy professionals, regulators and contractors for years to come. The housing market, boosted by the large number of high-income earners in the area, many working in politics and government, is easily outpacing the markets in most of the country. And there are few signs of economic distress in hotels, restaurants or stores in the D.C. metro area. 

"As a result, there is a yawning gap between the American people and D.C.’s powerful when it comes to their economic reality — and their economic perceptions."

"In the political marketplace, there’s now a run on Obama shares. The Left is disappointed with the president. Independents are abandoning him in droves. And the Right is already dancing on his political grave, salivating about November, when, his own press secretary admitted Sunday, Democrats might lose the House.

"I have a warning for Republicans: Don’t underestimate Barack Obama...

"Obama is down, but it’s very early in the play. Like Reagan, he came here to do things. And he’s done much in his first 500 days. What he has left to do, he knows, must await his next 500 days — those that come after reelection.

"So 2012 is the real prize. Obama sees far, farther than even his own partisans. Republicans underestimate him at their peril."

"In just 18 months, Holder has proven to be the most political attorney general since Richard Nixon’s first attorney general, John Mitchell. And like the hyperpartisan Mitchell, Holder will continue to embarrass the nation until he steps down. Given his partisan temperament and his checkered record in both the Clinton and Obama administrations, his departure is not a matter of if — only when."

"The NAACP resolution calls on its chapters across the country to 'repudiate the racism of the Tea Parties' and stand against the movement’s attempt to 'push our country back to the pre–civil rights era.' Yet, it’s the NAACP that lobbied the Obama White House to dismiss voter-intimidation charges against the thugs of the New Black Panther Party, according to Justice Department whistleblower J. Christian Adams. It’s the NAACP that opposes the 21st-century school-choice movement to free poor minority students from rotten government schools, as black parents in Washington, D.C., have suffered firsthand. It’s the NAACP that elevates 'diversity' above academic rigor as its primary education goal. And it’s the NAACP that backs retrograde, race-based set-asides and classifications that encourage cronyism of color championed by their water-carriers at the Congressional Black Caucus."

"Public confidence in President Obama has hit a new low, according to the latest Washington Post-ABC News poll. Four months before midterm elections that will define the second half of his term, nearly six in 10 voters say they lack faith in the president to make the right decisions for the country, and a clear majority once again disapproves of how he is dealing with the economy."

"'It is a little odd getting lectures on sobriety from folks that spent like drunken sailors,' President Barack Obama said of Republicans Thursday while campaigning for Senate candidate Robin Carnahan (D-MO).

"An interesting choice of words for a president whose current budget is expected to add an astounding $10 trillion to the national debt in the next decade, according to the Congressional Budget Office."

"Barack Obama faces about the same problem that confronted Bill Clinton in 1994 when he lost control of Congress. In both cases, the Democratic presidents had alienated moderate and conservative voters and found themselves increasingly isolated with a political base of liberals and minorities. In each instance, the president worried that off-year election turnout among their base would be attenuated both because it always is in non-presidential years and because their policy failings had reduced the enthusiasm they found among their base voters. And both men found themselves forced to escalate their rhetoric and move their ideological positions to the left in order to try to drum up the kind of turnout they needed to keep power in Congress.

"Clinton failed and Obama will too."