"Whether to approve the disastrous nuclear deal with Iran is the most important question to face Congress in years -- yet the president wants to stop the Senate from even debating it.

"He's pushing Democrats to use the filibuster rule to stop the question from making it to the Senate floor -- and Minority Leader Harry Reid's rallying the votes to do it. ...

"It's time for Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell to go nuclear: To do just what Reid threatened when he ran the Senate, and change the rules for the filibuster. ...

"Obama and Reid are resorting to low politics on an issue vital to the nation. Republicans have a duty to finally answer hardball with hardball."

"A federal judge in North Dakota acted late Thursday to block the Obama administration's controversial water pollution rule, hours before it was due to take effect.

"Judge Ralph Erickson of the District Court for the District of North Dakota found that the 13 states suing to block the rule met the conditions necessary for a preliminary injunction, including that they would likely be harmed if courts didn't act and that they are likely to succeed when their underlying lawsuit against the rule is decided.

"The decision is a major roadblock for the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and the Army Corps of Engineers, who were planning Friday to begin enforcing the Waters of the United States rule, expanding federal jurisdiction over small waterways like streams and wetlands.

"But the Obama administration says it will largely enforce the regulation as planned, arguing that the Thursday decision only applies to the 13 states that requested the injunction."

"President Barack Obama's almost certain to get the Iran nuclear deal through Congress -- but whether he gets there by filibuster or sustained veto could make all the difference.

"A Democratic filibuster in the Senate would be a clear victory for the president, allowing Obama to say that for all the political noise there wasn't enough actual opposition to the nuclear agreement with the Islamic republic to even get to a final vote.

"Having to save the deal with a veto (just the fifth of his presidency) and relying on liberals in the House and Senate to sustain it would be much more trouble: a procedural pull across the finish line that sows more doubts in a public already skeptical of the deal, leaves international partners worried about America's long-term commitment and adds weeks of added time and tangles.

"The White House very much prefers option A."

"Move over, Carlos Danger, there's a new alias in town: Toby Miles, an electronic front for Lois Lerner.

"Lerner famously took the Fifth rather than testify about how the Internal Revenue Service came to target right-leaning advocacy nonprofits in the run-up to the 2012 election. ...

"Mind you, it's been two-plus years since the scandal broke, yet the agency that promised to clean up its act is only now revealing this fresh evidence. ...

"The capper: One Lerner acquaintance says 'Toby Miles' is the name of Lerner's dog.

"Nothing quite says truth and transparency like doing Uncle Sam's work under your dog's name."

"Washington (CNN) -- Vice President Joe Biden received President Barack Obama's 'blessing' to make a 2016 bid for the White House, according to a senior Democrat.

"But that's if Biden chooses to run -- the decision is his. While he doesn't need the President's permission, of course, a potential presidential candidacy was among the topics of their lunch Monday at the White House. The President made clear he would not stand in his way or counsel him against a run, the senior Democrat said."

"[A]s the likely Democratic standard-bearer and former cabinet officer in the Obama administration, it is a stretch to assume the Justice Department will do a vigorous and impartial investigation into the email controversy and be entirely forthcoming with the results.

"For the sake of everyone's credibility, a special prosecutor should be appointed with the tools to quickly answer the questions before the presidential primaries begin.

"That's not a lot of time. The urgency of getting to the bottom of this argues for the tools a special prosecutor can bring to a probe."

"A few months ago I wrote that the 2016 presidential primary looked to come down to Bloody versus Boring. The Republican race would be bloody -- more than a dozen candidates scrapping for attention, trying to gain traction, pounding each other. The Democrats would be boring, the long glide of the queen.

"Our late-summer report? Different. So far it's Exciting (24 million people watched the Republican debate! Donald Trump set fire to the joint!) versus, I don't know, Ominous -- a big, dark, soggy cloud threatening at any moment to burst. Hillary Clinton's campaign is not boring, but it's leading a considerable portion of the nation toward suicidal ideation. Do we have to go back there? Do we have to do this again? Will a Clinton candidacy ever be anything but scandal after scandal?"

"The bigger that government gets, the more employees who are hired, and the more unaccountable power that accrues to bureaucracies, the more government takes on a life of its own. Public grandees resemble Hollywood's out-of-control androids or Frankenstein monsters that turn on their creators -- in these cases, us, the taxpayers. ...

"Big government has become the new Terminator, at war with those who created it, who fund it -- and who must obey it."

"Hillary seems rattled, so rattled that she invokes Benghazi to deflect attention from the email scandal. 'Here is what I won't do,' she said at a rally at 'a wing ding' at Storm Lake, Iowa, 'I won't play politics with national security or dishonor the memory of those who we lost.'

"The irony, which she may not appreciate, is that it was the Benghazi investigators who stumbled on to the lady's private server and the emails. Tall oaks from little acorns grow."

"The Internal Revenue Service announced in May that hackers had gotten into its system, and it estimated then that 114,000 taxpayers' accounts had been compromised. But a thorough review of activity on the IRS site throughout the 2015 tax-filing season revealed that the intrusion affected nearly three times that many accounts, the agency said Monday.

"In its investigation, the IRS found about 220,000 additional instances where intruders were able to clear a verification system meant to keep sensitive tax information safe, as well as about 170,000 failed attempts to get around the verification system. ...

"The hackers filed $50 million in fraudulent tax refunds, the IRS said in May."