"So even the Environmental Protection Agency now concedes that fracking is safe, which won't surprise anyone familiar with the reality of unconventional oil and natural gas drilling in the U.S. But if no less than the EPA is saying this, then the political opposition doesn't have much of a case left.

"'We did not find evidence that these mechanisms have led to widespread, systemic impacts on drinking water resources in the United States,' the EPA observes in a 1,399-page report and multiple appendices. By mechanisms, the researchers mean the practice of injecting water and chemicals into shale at high pressure to extract oil or natural gas. ...

"EPA's conclusion really is remarkable. The agency has yearned for an excuse to take over fracking regulation from the states, which do the job well. So if there was so much as a sliver of evidence that fracking was dangerous, the EPA would have found it. Think of this as the Obama Administration's equivalent of the Bush Administration failing to find weapons of mass destruction in Iraq."

"Senior IRS officials set up a special internal committee after congressional investigators sent information requests to the IRS's two White House political appointees to investigate conservative and tea party non-profit applicants.

"Mary Howard, the IRS's director of privacy, governmental liaison and disclosure division, told the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform Wednesday she never saw any of the information requests because the requests were forwarded to the special committee. Howard is also the tax agency's chief Freedom of Information Act officer.

"'I think Lois Lerner was just the tip of the iceberg,' Howard said."

"As the June 30 deadline for the Iran nuclear deal approaches, President Obama is putting all his cards on the table -- by announcing he is keeping no cards in his hand.

"In an astonishing interview with Israel's Channel 2, the president declared that 'the best way to prevent Iran from having a nuclear weapon is a verifiable, tough, agreement.

"'A military solution will not fix it, even if the United States participates. It would temporarily slow down an Iranian nuclear program, but it would not eliminate it.'

"Why is this astonishing? Because Obama is publicly eliminating any American possibility that we will bomb Iran's nuclear sites even if the deal in which he has invested so much collapses."

"President Obama is less than stalwart in the fight against ISIS and doesn't seem overly concerned about Vladimir Putin's predation in Ukraine or China's aggression in the South China Sea.

"It is the fight against climate change, an allegedly dire threat to the nation's security, that brings out his inner Churchill.

"In remarks to the Coast Guard Academy commencement on May 20, Obama pledged his undying hostility to climate change and his determination to fight it on the beaches and in the fields. He called it 'one of the most severe threats' we face and 'an immediate risk to our national security.'...

"He hailed the Coast Guard for building more fuel-efficient cutters and the Marines for deploying with portable solar panels. It was one of the most insipid calls to arms ever made by an American commander in chief, and there is unlikely to be much competition until President Elizabeth Warren rallies the US Navy against income inequality."

"Denny Hastert -- the former House speaker now indicted for violating regulations on bank withdrawals that were originally meant to snare drug dealers -- as a man of integrity according to his former House colleagues.

"By the sketchy standards of Illinois politics, that might well have been true. But his fall from grace should prompt other questions about how a former high-school teacher who held elective office from 1981 to 2007 could leave Congress with a fortune estimated at $4 million to $17 million. When he entered Congress in 1987, he was worth at most $275,000. Hastert was the beneficiary of very lucky land deals while in Congress; and since leaving office, he has earned more than $2 million a year as a lobbyist. That helps explain how he could agree to pay $3.5 million to a former student to cover up an ancient sex-abuse scandal."

"He was the longest-serving Republican House speaker in U.S. history, and proud of how far he'd come from his days as a small-town high school teacher and wrestling coach.

"'Coach,' in fact, was a nickname that stuck.

"So news Thursday that Dennis Hastert faces a federal indictment was a shock to many. As House speaker from 1999 to 2007, the husky, gray-thatched Illinoisan was just two heartbeats away from the presidency. At 73, he has been in recent years working mostly behind the scenes as a Washington power broker. ...

"It also emerged that the Illinois House put on hold a proposal to spend $500,000 to put a statue in the state Capitol honoring Hastert. He declined the offer about a month ago, a spokesman for House Speaker Michael Madigan said."

"While retrenching abroad, the Obama Administration remains committed to expanding Washington's footprint at home. Behold the Environmental Protection Agency's rewrite Wednesday of the Clean Water Act that extends federal jurisdiction over tens of millions of acres of private land.

"The Clean Water Act limits the federal government to regulating the 'navigable waters of the United States' like the Colorado River or Lake Michigan. In 1986 the EPA expanded that definition to seize jurisdiction over tributaries and adjacent wetlands. Now it is extending federal control over just about any creek, pond, prairie pothole or muddy farm field that EPA says has a 'significant nexus' to a navigable waterway. ...

"Congress should try use its regulatory review powers to overturn the new rule, forcing Members to show whose side they'€™re on -- the average landowner's or the Washington water police."

"What is unique about American foreign policy today is not just that it is rudderless, but how quickly and completely the 70-year postwar order seems to have disintegrated -- and how little interest the American people take in the collapse, thanks to the administration's apparent redeeming message, which translates, 'It's their misfortune and none of our own.' ...

"Meanwhile, no one seems to much care that between 2009 and 2017, we will have borrowed 8 trillion more dollars. Yet for all that stimulus, the U.S. economy still has staggering labor non-participation rates, flat GDP growth, and stagnant household income. As long as zero interest rates continue, the rich make lots of money in the stock market, and the debt can grow by $500 billion a year and still be serviced. Financial sobriety is now defined as higher taxes bringing in record revenues to service half-trillion-dollar annual additions to an $18 trillion debt."

"'About a quarter of all non-elderly Americans with private insurance coverage do not have sufficient liquid assets to pay even a mid-range deductible, which at today's rates would be $1,200 for single coverage and $2,400 for family coverage,' the Wall Street Journal reported in March.

"So now, many of the same groups that agitated for Obamacare are agitating for new government spending or tighter controls on the insurance industry and businesses to 'solve' the problem. But perhaps the first question to ask is: How did those deductibles get so high in the first place?

"The answer is Obamacare. ...

"As the Associated Press noted, some Democrats see high deductibles and out-of-pocket costs as an issue they can exploit in 2016. But Republicans have a sharply effective response: Why should voters trust Democrats to solve a problem they made worse in the first place?"

"[I]n our effort to accommodate many Americans by making the last Monday in May, Memorial Day, we have lost sight of the significance of this day to our nation. Instead of using Memorial Day as a time to honor and reflect on the sacrifices made by Americans in combat, many Americans use the day as a celebration of the beginning of summer."