"Over the coming days Europe will once again pass through terrorism's stages of grief: despair over innocent lives cut short; anger towards the young men and women (some of them citizens) who kill in the name of jihad; questions about the grip of the police and intelligence services; and eventually, as news bulletins and headlines subside, a weary resignation.

"Yet even now, immediately after the attack, two lessons are clear. One is that, despite being at the top of the most-wanted list for years, ISIS remains resourceful enough to mount synchronized bombings in the heart of Europe. The other, which flows from this, is that big cities in Europe and America will have to get used to a long campaign of terror in which all are targets. ...

"Many will dread the struggle ahead and regret the never-ending contest between security and liberty. But as long as jihadists threaten the West, there is no escaping the need to act. Welcome to the new normal."

"It is neither a surprise nor a mistake that the latest major Islamic terrorist attack to befall Europe targeted Brussels, the heart of European multiculturalism. Decades of willful blindness to the problem of ideological fanaticism left the capital of the European Union neglectful of serious threats to its security, and, on Tuesday, terrorists exploited that: Following the detonation of explosives at Brussels's Zaventem Airport and a major Metro station during the morning rush hour, at least 31 people are dead and another 180 injured. The Islamic State has claimed credit for the attack. ...

"The current administration, Hillary Clinton, and their allies on the left are determined to maintain that the Islamic State and the other off-brand varieties of Islamic terrorism will wither away if we only close Guantanamo or provide better employment opportunities in Raqqa. But this is war, and sooner or later, that will require a serious strategy, carried out by leaders serious about keeping America safe. Ideally, they will opt to formulate and execute that strategy before the Islamic State crops up at JFK and Grand Central Terminal."

"If Cuba were a repressive, small-minded military dictatorship of the right, Obama'€™s visit and accommodationist attitude wouldn't be considered so broad-minded. But a patina of revolutionary romance, embodied by that image of Che looking down on President Obama, still hangs over Cuba. It makes its human-rights abuses, theft and lies an after-thought, or even excusable, for the American left.

"After the Cuban Missile Crisis, Che said that in the event of a US attack, 'if the missiles had remained, we would have used them all and directed them against the very heart of the United States, including New York, in our defense against aggression.' It would have been beyond his imagining that so many decades later, with the revolutionary regime cash-strapped and decrepit, the imperialist Goliath would come bearing gifts, and asking for nothing substantial in return, except a line in Obama'€™s Wikipedia entry."

"FBI chief James Comey and his investigators are increasingly certain presidential nominee Hillary Clinton violated laws in handling classified government information through her private e-mail server, career agents say.

"Some expect him to push for charges, but he faces a formidable obstacle: the political types in the Obama White House who view a Clinton presidency as a third Obama term.

"With that, agents have been spreading the word, largely through associates in the private sector, that their boss is getting stonewalled, despite uncovering compelling evidence Clinton broke the law."

"It should be no surprise that when we bequeath monarchical powers to nine -- or eight -- lawyers, the battle for succession to one of the nine thrones will be ugly. Indeed, it's surprising it's not uglier. We spend billions of dollars trying to pick a president of the United States, and in many respects the Supreme Court is now more powerful than the presidency. It's certainly far, far, far less democratic. We appoint justices for life and many of their decisions cannot be overturned by the Congress, or the people, short of a constitutional convention.

"The left, which pays a lot of lip-service to the 'people power' and democratic action, has given us these black-robed kings and queens. They shouldn't be surprised when the game of thrones gets ugly. It's their game."

"Conservatives should not accept an extreme left-wing judicial activist. They should not accept an extreme right-wing judicial activist, if there were such a thing. They should not accept a moderate judicial activist, for the same reason that they would not shoot themselves in the foot with a firearm of moderate caliber. Litmus tests may be in bad odor with our self-proclaimed sophisticates, but here one is very much in order: The law is the law is the law, and it isn't anything else. Those who believe otherwise do not belong on the Supreme Court any more than moderate phrenologists belong on medical-school faculties or moderate foxes should be assigned guard duty at the henhouse.

"If the best that can be said of Garland is that he would do only moderate violence to the Constitution, then that is a complete and whole case against confirming him, or even considering his confirmation."

"What a difference a week makes.

"Last Tuesday, Bernie Sanders's stunning victory in the Michigan primary upended the Democratic establishment's expectations and placed Hillary Clinton's inevitable ascendancy on hold.

"But the established order reasserted itself on Tuesday night -- this time, probably for good. Clinton laid a goose egg on Sanders, winning five out of five contests across a diverse swath of America and permanently putting to rest her rival's contention that she's a 'regional candidate' who struggles outside the South. Though the Sanders campaign shows no signs of quitting the race anytime soon, the Vermont senator's empty-handed finish seems to augur the beginning of the end for his 'political revolution.'"

"It's not often that life gives you a second chance (or a third, or a fourth). But that's exactly what Congress did today for President Obama when the House passed a resolution applying the word 'genocide' to ISIS's atrocities against Christians in the Middle East. The decision presents President Obama with a picture-perfect opportunity to do something bold, decisive, and morally right in foreign policy, and to help restore his tarnished legacy. This opportunity is probably his last. ...

"For more than seven years, President Obama's foreign policy has been a toxic blend of strong language and weak action. (Remember the 'red line' in Syria? Neither does Assad.) The foreign policy of the Obama administration tends toward talking a big game and then conveniently forgetting to show up. That would be a lot harder to pull off if he called the genocide of Christians by ISIS what it is. So naturally he's avoiding it, like the Clinton administration before him. ...

"Congress has spoken. Obviously, President Obama feels that he is under no obligation to consider Congress's opinion on pretty much anything, but this time he should think long and hard and not ignore it. If his secretary of state, John Kerry, agrees to designate ISIS's atrocities genocide, that could force the administration to act with the European Union to take military action against ISIS soon. President Obama may want to avoid that policy, but his failure to confront the genocide and name it would be the nail in the coffin of his foreign-policy legacy. If the 20th century taught us anything, it's that ignoring genocide doesn't make it go away. If we won't call it what it is, our children will do it for us, and we'll have to answer the difficult question of why we wouldn't do it ourselves."

"If the border were to be closed, if immigration laws were enforced, if there were some reduction in legal immigration, if entry were to be meritocratic, if we reverted to the melting-pot ideal of assimilation, if we cut -studies courses and jettisoned therapy and ideology for hard science, math, and English language, in just two decades one's particular ancestry would become irrelevant ... In other words, things would work out fine.

"But that is certainly not the wish of the present culture or the direction that this rather sick society is headed."

"The White House has reportedly narrowed its list of potential Supreme Court nominees down to five people, and four of them have donated to Barack Obama's political campaigns.

"The five federal judges who will be interviewed by the White House for the nomination are federal judges Sri Srinivasan (who has donated $4,250 to Obama), Jane Kelly ($1,500 to Obama), Paul Watford ($1,000 to Obama), Ketanji Brown Jackson ($450 to Obama), and Merrick Garland, who has not donated to Obama."