"The former head of the Defense Intelligence Agency slammed the Obama administration on Monday as 'well intentioned' but paralyzed and playing defense in its the fight against Islamic militancy.

"Recently retired Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn called for the U.S. to lead the charge in a sweeping, decades-long campaign against the Islamic State Group, al-Qaeda and its ilk -- a fight like the one against the former Soviet Union against a new enemy he said is  'committed to the destruction of freedom and the American way of life.'

"'There is no substitute, none, for American power,' the general said, to occasional cheers and ultimately a standing ovation from a crowd of special operators and intelligence officers at a Washington industry conference."

"When Netanyahu travels to the United States in March, he will not have the privilege of meeting with either President Barack Obama or Vice President Joe Biden. They will have their revenge against Netanyahu by completely yielding to him control of the national stage. That ought to show him."

"This week, Iranian-backed Houthi rebels seized control of the Yemeni government, heretofore pro-American. In September, they overran Sanaa, the capital. On Tuesday, they seized the presidential palace. On Thursday, they forced the president to resign.

"The Houthi have local religious grievances, being Shiites in a majority Sunni land. But they are also agents of Shiite Iran, which arms, trains, and advises them. Their slogan - 'God is great. Death to America. Death to Israel' - could have been written in Persian.

"Why should we care about the coup? First, because we depend on Yemen's government to support our drone war against another local menace, al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP). It's not clear if we can even maintain our embassy in Yemen, let alone conduct operations against AQAP. And second, because growing Iranian hegemony is a mortal threat to our allies and interests in the entire Middle East."

"Seven months after federal officials fired CGI Federal for its botched work on Obamacare website Healthcare.gov, the IRS awarded the same company a $4.5 million IT contract for its new Obamacare tax program.

"CGI is a $10.5 billion Montreal-based company that has forever been etched into the public's mind as the company behind the bungled Obamacare main website....

"The IRS did not reply to numerous inquiries to the agency about the CGI contract."

"Perhaps the most striking thing about the 2015 State of the Union address was not the president at the podium but the audience in the seats. The joint session of Congress listening to President Obama Tuesday night included 83 fewer Democrats than the group that heard Obama's first address in 2009 -- 69 fewer Democrats in the House and 14 fewer in the Senate. The scene in the House Chamber was a graphic reminder of the terrible toll the Obama years have taken on Capitol Hill Democrats.

"Not that the president would ever acknowledge that. Indeed, in more than an hour of speaking, Obama never once acknowledged that there was a big election in November and that the leadership of the Senate has changed. Obama's silence on that political reality stood in stark contrast to George W. Bush's 2007 State of the Union address, in which he graciously and at some length acknowledged the Democrats' victory in the 2006 midterms. Bush said it was an honor to address Nancy Pelosi as 'Madam Speaker.' He spoke of the pride Pelosi's late father would have felt to see his daughter lead the House. 'I congratulate the new Democrat majority,' Bush said. 'Congress has changed, but not our responsibilities.'

"If one cannot imagine Obama saying such a thing --€” well, he didn't."

"The annual State of the Union pageant is a hideous, dispiriting, ugly, monotonous, un-American, un-republican, anti-democratic, dreary, backward, monarchical, retch-inducing, depressing, shameful, crypto-imperial display of official self-aggrandizement and piteous toadying, a black Mass during which every unholy order of teacup totalitarian and cringing courtier gathers under the towering dome of a faux-Roman temple to listen to a speech with no content given by a man with no content, to rise and to be seated as is called for by the order of worship -- it is a wonder they have not started genuflecting -- with one wretched representative of their number squirreled away in some well-upholstered Washington hidey-hole in order to preserve the illusion that those gathered constitute a special class of humanity without whom we could not live."

"You know, you just know, that after the president goes out there and announces he wants to make community college free for all Americans - as though anything government does is 'free' - or is unilaterally and unconstitutionally legalizing millions of undocumented immigrants, he comes back to the offices, pulls out the presidential BlackBerry, and gleefully follows along as the Right goes completely ape over these wild policy decisions.

"Imagine his delight after it 'leaked' that he will propose raising taxes on the wealthy by $320 billion over the next 10 years, including increases to the capital gains and inheritance taxes.

"This, of course, has no chance of passing. But then Tuesday night'€™s State of the Union address could be the first one in history deliberately designed solely to generate a Pavlovian rage response in members of the opposing party."

"I stand with the Santa Barbara News-Press. How about you?

"The newspaper is under fire for refusing to kowtow to left-wing word police and militant propagandists who demand unfettered illegal immigration. Last week, in the wake of angry protests against the publication, vandals threw paint bombs and spray-painted graffiti on its offices.

"So, what exactly is the News-Press' unforgivable crime? Calling illegal aliens 'illegals' in a headline for a story about illegal aliens descending on California DMVs. A new law went into effect last Friday allowing illegal aliens to obtain driver's licenses without proof of lawful residence. The article featured interviews with ecstatic illegal aliens, including one who has been in the country illegally for '22 years.'"

"Not since the multiplication of the loaves and fishes near the Sea of Galilee has there been creativity as miraculous as that of the Keystone XL pipeline. It has not yet been built but already is perhaps the most constructive infrastructure project since the Interstate Highway System. It has accomplished an astonishing trifecta:

"It has made mincemeat of Barack Obama's pose of thoughtfulness. It has demonstrated that he lacks even a rudimentary understanding of the most basic economic realities. It has dramatized environmentalism's descent into infantilism.

"Obama entered the presidency trailing clouds of intellectual self-regard. His carefully cultivated persona was of a uniquely thoughtful, judicious, deliberative, evidence-driven man comfortable with complexity. The protracted consideration of Keystone supposedly displayed these virtues. Now, however, it is clear that his mind has always been as closed as an unshucked oyster."

"Republicans have now won two Obamacare elections, the first in 2010 and the second in 2014. (In 2012, their presidential nominee chose not to engage on the issue.) In the lead-up to their latest victory, Republicans ran far more ads against Obamacare than either party ran for or against anything else. Voters responded by giving the GOP 9 more Senate seats and 13 more House seats. The one candidate who ran on a genuine alternative to Obamacare, Ed Gillespie in Virginia, almost pulled off the upset of the night. Predicted by polls to lose by nearly ten percentage points, he lost by less than one.

"One would think such resounding results would have given Republicans renewed confidence in pursuing repeal and reinvigorated interest in uniting behind a conservative alternative to pave the way to that repeal. One would expect the election to have reaffirmed the party's long-held position that the 'comprehensive,' 2,700-page overhaul of American medicine shouldn'€™t be 'tweaked,' 'fixed,' or 'repaired,' but comprehensively repealed. That is, after all, what rank-and-file Republicans and a great many independents surely had in mind when they cast their ballots for GOP candidates.

"Unfortunately, the early signs suggest that House and Senate Republican leaders think voters sent them to Washington to make Obamacare better -- on the margins, in ways that appeal to corporate interests. At a time when neither political party is doing a very good job of standing with everyday Americans, Republicans appear to be listening to the lobbyists of K Street rather than the voters on Main Street."