"Since the Obama recovery began in the second quarter of 2009, public and private projections of economic growth have consistently overestimated actual performance. Six years later, projections of prosperity being just around the corner have given way to a debate over whether the U.S. has fallen into 'secular stagnation,' a fancy phrase for the chronic low growth seen in much of Europe.

"This is just another in a long line of excuses. America'€™s historic ability to outperform Europe is well documented; we call it American exceptionalism. It has always been based on the fact that the U.S has had better, more market-driven economic policies and our economy therefore worked better. But, as the U.S. economy is Europeanized through higher taxes and greater regulatory burdens, American exceptionalism is fading away, taking economic growth with it. ...

"With better economic policies America was like the fabled farmer with the goose that laid golden eggs. He kept the pond clean and full, he erected a nice coop, threw out corn for the goose and every day the goose laid a golden egg. Mr. Obama has drained the pond, burned down the coop and let the dogs loose to chase the goose around the barnyard. Now that the goose has stopped laying golden eggs, the administration's apologists -- arguing that we are now in 'secular stagnation' -- add insult to injury by suggesting that something is wrong with the goose."

"'Clinton Cash: The Untold Story of How and Why Foreign Governments and Businesses Helped Make Bill and Hillary Rich,' by Peter Schweizer -- a 186-page investigation of donations made to the Clinton Foundation by foreign entities -- is proving the most anticipated and feared book of a presidential cycle still in its infancy.

"The book, a copy of which was obtained by The New York Times, asserts that foreign entities who made payments to the Clinton Foundation and to Mr. Clinton through high speaking fees received favors from Mrs. Clinton'€™s State Department in return.

"'We will see a pattern of financial transactions involving the Clintons that occurred contemporaneous with favorable U.S. policy decisions benefiting those providing the funds,' Mr. Schweizer writes."

"2016 is already shaping up as the most unusual open-seat presidential race in our time: one candidate fixed and foregone, the other yet to emerge from a wild race of a near-dozen contenders with none exceeding 20 €‰percent.

"So brace yourself for a glorious Republican punch-up, punctuated by endless meta-coverage of the Democrats' coronation march. After which, we shall decide the future of our country. Just the way the Founders drew it up."

"Democrats and Republicans in Congress are both claiming victory by cornering President Barack Obama to sign an Iran bill he didn't want.

"But the White House says that misses the point: The final legislation was narrowed enough that it's not going to stand in their way or do anything to upset the ongoing negotiations in Switzerland.

"And interviews with Democratic lawmakers suggest there's slim chance that they'd be willing to go any further to scuttle a nuclear deal.

"While Capitol Hill now has an avenue to block Obama from lifting legislative sanctions on Iran -- a precondition of any agreement to curb its ability to build a bomb -- now that they feel they've asserted constitutional prerogatives, Democratic senators are moving away from a confrontation."

"Most political pros agree that Clinton will need a huge turnout from the Obama coalition to win. The bad news is that, so far, the Obama coalition is like a non-transferable, single-purpose coupon that can only be used to get Obama elected president. Clinton advocates insist we don't know that yet, which is true. But all the evidence looks bad for Clinton. ...

"The Clinton campaign has hired many of Obama's consultants and gurus in the hopes that they can do for her what they allegedly did for him. They've even tried to replicate Obama's signature 'O' logo into an exciting 'H,' which mostly looks like a road sign pointing to the next exit for a hospital."

"Hillary will have many strengths -- an electoral map that tilts toward the Democrats, a Republican Party that is still suffering a hangover from the Bush years, prodigious fund-raising.

"But her planned road trip to the White House, even if she manages to get to her destination, will be more a grim forced march than a joyful excursion. Its motto might as well be: Oh, the fun we will pretend to have!"

"Although the Republicans will spend the next several months running against one another, none should lose sight of their likely general-election opponent and her message. Making the case for themselves should encompass making the case against Clinton and for conservative principles and policies that will appeal not only to Iowa, New Hampshire, and South Carolina Republicans next spring, but to most Americans come November 2016. ...

"No one is inevitable. Hillary Clinton has been hovering about the heights of American political power for nearly three decades, yet she has almost no substantive accomplishments to show for it, and her best plans for the next eight years are likely to be the repurposed policies of Democratic administrations past. She’s beatable, and the substantive work to prepare the ground for defeat should begin now."

"There's an emerging conventional wisdom that the 2016 presidential race, once predicted to be mostly about economic issues, will instead be dominated by foreign policy. ...

"The argument is that the rise of the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria, an ongoing crisis in Syria, the Iranian nuclear negotiations, Russian aggression, and other international issues have elevated foreign policy and national security to a higher position in the presidential debate than seemed likely, say, a year ago. At the same time, with the unemployment rate down to 5.5 percent and job creation improving, economic concerns that dominated the 2008 and 2012 presidential races won't be as critical in 2016.

"At least, that's the idea. And maybe it will happen. (I've written about it myself.) But some newly released figures from the Labor Department are a reminder that economic anxieties underlie everything else -- and the economy will likely remain the biggest factor in the next presidential race."

"The most explosive story in Washington, D.C., this week isn't about Iran but about Iraq. It's about how a runaway special prosecutor wrecked America's chances of defeating the insurgency in the early days of the Iraq war, and left the region - and American foreign policy in the Middle East - in a shambles ever since.

"These revelations come from veteran New York Times reporter Judith Miller's new book, 'The Story: A Reporter's Journey'. It tells how special prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald rigged the 2007 perjury trial of Vice President Dick Cheney's former chief of staff, Lewis 'Scooter' Libby, in the Valerie Plame case, and inadvertently condemned thousands of Americans to be killed and maimed needlessly in Iraq.

"The Plame case has been shrouded in a fog of media-generated myth for almost a decade. The myth maintains that Cheney and Libby deliberately set out to blow the cover of CIA employee Valerie Plame in retaliation for an explosive op-ed that her diplomat husband, Joseph Wilson, published in the New York Times in July 2003. In that op-ed, Wilson contradicted the Bush administration's assertion that Saddam Hussein had been trying to obtain yellowcake uranium in Niger in order to build an atomic bomb. The leak of Plame's identity to columnist Robert Novak - so goes the story - led special prosecutor Fitzgerald on a two-year investigation to find the culprit, culminating in the trial and conviction of Libby for perjury and obstruction of justice.

"We now know - and not just from Miller's book - that virtually every element of that story is false."

www.nationalreview.com/article/416681/runaway-prosecutor-who-almost-lost-iraq-arthur-l-herman

"A federal judge denied the federal government's request to lift a hold on President Obama's controversial immigration actions in an opinion released Tuesday night.

"Judge Andrew Hanen wrote that the government misled the court by revealing last month it had granted expanded work permit renewals to 100,000 illegal immigrants before the court blocked the administration from implementing its new policies.

"He added a new hearing in March only 'reinforced' his February decision to issue a 'stay' to block those new policies, meant to delay deportations for millions of undocumented immigrants and provide them with the opportunity to apply for work permits.

"'It is obvious that there is no pressing, emergent need for this program,' he wrote as part of the rationale for not allowing the administration to immediately implement its new policies."