"We must draw a line in the sand against this now. The federal government is to let markets work, not be the 'get out of jail free' card for irresponsibility and corruption. And, just as important, we must lay a marker down for future requests that we all know will be coming -- not from a commonwealth but from states like California and Illinois that are on the path to bankruptcy themselves."

"President Obama claimed credit at a Los Angeles fundraiser last week for 'the steady progress that happens when people who love this country decide to change it,' and reality is unlikely to darken his farewell tour. But for everyone else, note that the largest U.S. health insurer is quitting ObamaCare.

"On Tuesday UnitedHealth Group reported a terrific first quarter, with strong performance across nearly all business lines. There was one exception: The conglomerate's insurance exchange unit raised its projected Affordable Care Act losses for 2016 to $650 million from $525 million, after booking $475 million in red ink last year.

"CEO Stephen Hemsley said ObamaCare's instability, small market size and costly patient population 'continue to suggest we cannot broadly serve it on an effective and sustained basis.' He said UnitedHealth will withdraw to 'only a handful of states' in 2017."

"Bernie Sanders released his 2014 tax return this weekend, revealing that he and his wife took $60,208 in deductions from their taxable income. These deductions are all perfectly legal and permitted under the U.S. tax code, but they present a morally inconvenient, if delicious, irony: The Democratic socialist from Vermont, a man who rages against high earners paying a lower effective tax rate than blue-collar workers, saved himself thousands using many of the tricks that would be banned under his own tax plan.

"With all of his itemized deductions, Sanders's taxable income was significantly lower than it would have been if he had taken the standard deduction. The deductions left Sanders and his wife paying $27,653 in federal income taxes in 2014, on a joint income of $205,271 -- an effective federal tax rate of 13.5 percent. If that seems low to you, your instincts are right: According to the Tax Foundation, the average federal income-tax rate for a couple making $200,000 to $500,000 in 2014 was 15.2 percent. The 'millionaires and billionaires' that Sanders is so fond of berating paid, on average, just more than twice as much of their income (27.4 percent) in federal taxes as he did. ...

"What Sanders did, using every option and advantage available under a Byzantine tax code to minimize his tax payment, is a normal practice for many Americans. But it's also exactly what the targets of his anger do. You can argue about whether or not that's greed, but it's impossible to argue that it isn't hypocrisy. The paragon of liberal purity is not as pure as he'd like the world to believe."

"The attorney general of the U.S. Virgin Islands, Claude Earl Walker, has issued a subpoena to the Competitive Enterprise Institute, a libertarian-leaning think tank that has been critical of a great deal of global-warming scholarship. This is part of a coordinated campaign by Democratic attorneys general, including those in New York and California, to prosecute persons and institutions with nonconforming views on global warming, with special attention being given to Exxon and to groups that it may have supported financially. The subpoena against CEI is a pure fishing expedition, a search for anything that might be potentially embarrassing that can be used as part of the public-relations campaign rather than as part of a prosecution, the prosecution bit being tricky because there isn’t much of an argument that any laws have been broken. ...

"We should, while it is permitted, be as plain as possible about what is happening here: This is an act of obvious, gross, and indefensible political suppression, with two ends: One is riling up young, white, middle-income progressives before the 2016 election (in which California’s Democratic attorney general, Kamala Harris, is a Senate candidate), voters who care a great deal about global warming and not very much about freedom of speech; the second is financial, in that Exxon, the second most valuable firm on Earth by market capitalization, has a great deal of money, and may be bullied into a settlement that will fund a great deal of Democratic activism for years to come.

"This is banana-republic stuff."

Read entire article here.

"In its war for America, the left never rests, sometimes falters but rarely allows itself to fail. It works tirelessly to 'fundamentally transform the nation' and smashes anyone and anything that gets in its way.

"Consider the pitched battle it has waged against Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas over the past quarter-century. Instead of celebrating and honoring a black man who rose from grinding poverty in the segregated South to sit on the nation's highest court, the left sees an existential threat: a black pro-life, pro-gun conservative who has spent his life crushing leftist orthodoxy. He must, therefore, not simply be opposed, but destroyed, regardless of how long it takes.

"The left's latest attack is 'Confirmation,' a 'dramatization' of his tumultuous 1991 confirmation hearings, premiering April 16 on HBO. Key players in the real-life drama, including Sens. Al Simpson and John Danforth as well as a White House lawyer on Judge Thomas' team, Mark Paoletta, have called drafts of the script they had seen 'dishonest' and a 'seriously distorted' version of the actual events. Anita Hill, who accused Justice Thomas of sexual harassment, has re-emerged to refresh her egregious claims of victimhood. And Justice Thomas must endure yet another round of character assassination and ideological demonization."

"Every year, Citizens Against Government Waste combs through the minutiae of appropriations bills to find examples of what every taxpayer objects to: government waste. Every year, CAGW exposes that waste in its annual 'Congressional Pig Book.'

"The 2016 Congressional Pig Book shows 123 instances of earmarked, pork barrel spending in the federal FY 2016 budget. Combined, they cost taxpayers $5.1 billion. That's up from $4.2 billion last year. 'While the increase in cost over one year is disconcerting, the two-year rise of 88.9 percent over the $2.7 billion in FY 2014 is downright disturbing,' the group says.

"That $5.1 billion is less than one percent of the federal budget. Cutting waste alone won't put the budget on sustainable footing, but it certainly wouldn't hurt. That $5.1 billion is better off in taxpayers' hands. 'Earmarks create a few winners (appropriators, special interests and lobbyists) and a great many losers (taxpayers).'"

"The IRS says it has stopped targeting the tea party -- but three years later, the tax agency is still holding on to the sensitive information it pried from the conservative groups through invasive questions, and officials are even vowing to make the answers public.

"Groups caught up in the scandal say that is proof the targeting is continuing, and they want the IRS to expunge the information or, at the very least, to make sure it is never released.

"Obama administration officials insist they have stopped targeting but say the groups are at fault for following the misguided IRS requests for information. Now, the administration says, there is nothing the tax agency can do but make the information public as the law requires.

"On Thursday, a federal appeals court in Washington will be asked to referee the dispute, just one of the legal problems still plaguing the IRS after its 2013 admission that it inappropriately singled out conservative and tea party groups for intrusive scrutiny."

Read entire article here.

"Are Marines combat troops?

"In Barack Obama's world, the answer is apparently not -- not even when they are on the ground exchanging fire with the enemy. This is the fiction supported by Hillary Clinton and largely unchallenged by any of the three Republican candidates for president.

"A recent headline in the Marine Corps Times summed it up this way: 'Marines in Iraq technically not in combat but still getting some.'

"Welcome to Mr. Obama's hidden war."

"The Obama administration is doing its best to give the nation another mortgage meltdown.

"As Paul Sperry recently noted in The Post, Team Obama has pushed mortgage lenders to offer home loans to folks with shaky credit, setting up conditions for another housing-market collapse.

"Wasn't the last one bad enough? ...

"The Office of the Comptroller of the Currency recently warned that mortgage underwriting standards have slipped and now reflect 'broad trends similar to those experienced from 2005 through 2007, before the most recent financial crisis.'

"When the economy and housing prices turn south again, a lot of these loans will go bad, just as they did last time."

"After a recent surge in threatening behavior by Iran and reports that it may soon be given access to the U.S. financial system, the House Intelligence Committee opened an investigation into whether Obama officials misled Congress about the July 2015 nuclear deal with Iran (the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, or JCPOA). The 'historic' deal, they said, would help bring Iran into the 'community of nations' and lead to improved relations between Iran and the United States. ...

"The House Intelligence Committee's investigation will not kill the JCPOA or lead to new sanctions against Iran. Its report might condemn Obama officials for misleading Congress, but these officials are certain to ignore the report. Nevertheless, this is an important investigation: If it exposes the JCPOA as a fraudulent agreement that has only exacerbated Iran's destabilizing behavior, it will pave the way for a Republican president (if one is elected in November) to throw out the JCPOA entirely and begin the process of forging a better agreement with our European allies. The committee's investigation also may give Americans a better understanding of what kind of legacy President Obama really earned from the JCPOA and his nuclear diplomacy with Iran."