"The State of the Union address is coming, which means it's time for President Obama to propose new federal entitlements. His latest gift horse from taxpayers comes under the pretext of improving America's workforce: free community college. ...

"The new entitlement is best understood as an extension of the Administration's ideological project to add higher education to the list of entitlements that keep the federal government in charge of American life from cradle to grave. First Mr. Obama nationalized the student-loan market, adding $1 trillion in taxpayer liabilities. Then he made forgiving those loans easier. This year he plans to propose a new rating system for colleges that the feds will eventually use to determine which schools receive federal aid. ...

"And now the Administration is proposing to give inferior community colleges another competitive advantage with this new entitlement that bribes students with 'free' tuition. So: Punish private schools, subsidize often inferior public schools, snatch regulatory control from states, and add tens of billions in new taxpayer obligations: The ObamaCollege plan is everything we'€™ve come to expect from this White House."

"This was a different form of French resistance in Paris on this day, all of these people coming together and sending out pictures like this to the world about the world we still want this to be, instead of the one that terrorists want, and that means all terrorists, the world where we live in constant fear.

"And the United States of America should have been at the front of that line. And was not. ...

"Everybody knows how complicated this country's relationship with France has been, in war and in peace. Certainly there have been times when the leaders of France could have done better by us. We should have done better by them on Sunday. Only you couldn't find us."

"Were anyone wondering how Sen. Harry Reid intended to manage life in the minority, it took one day of the 114th Congress to get the answer: Exactly as he did in the majority. Republicans would be wise to understand what he's up to. ...

"[W]hile he isn'€™t officially running the Senate anymore, he'€™s still running on a Senate dysfunction agenda. New Majority Leader Mitch McConnell has vowed to restore the place to 'regular order,' though he recently got a taste of how hard that might prove. Mr. Reid this week again accused the former Republican minority of 'gratuitous obstruction and wanton filibustering,' and vowed such tactics would not 'be a hallmark of a Democratic minority.' He then proceeded to unleash all the obstruction and filibustering in Christendom to slow Mr. McConnell's first priority: authorization of the Keystone XL pipeline.

"Tuesday morning -- €”the first day of session -- assistant Democratic leader Sen. Dick Durbin took to the floor to formally object to the Senate Energy Committee even holding a hearing on the pipeline, despite Republicans having charitably arranged for even opponents of the project to testify. Having tanked that hearing, Mr. Reid's office turned around and publicly complained Mr. McConnell wasn'€™t sticking to his promise to hold a hearing and report the bill out of committee. This was doubly rich, coming from a former Senate leader who barely acknowledged committees existed."

"After the horrific massacre Wednesday at the French weekly satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo, perhaps the West will finally put away its legion of useless tropes trying to deny the relationship between violence and radical Islam.

"This was not an attack by a mentally deranged, lone-wolf gunman. This was not an 'un-Islamic' attack by a bunch of thugs -- the perpetrators could be heard shouting that they were avenging the Prophet Muhammad. Nor was it spontaneous. It was planned to inflict maximum damage, during a staff meeting, with automatic weapons and a getaway plan. It was designed to sow terror, and in that it has worked.

"The West is duly terrified. But it should not be surprised. ...

"There can only be one answer to this hideous act of jihad against the staff of Charlie Hebdo. It is the obligation of the Western media and Western leaders, religious and lay, to protect the most basic rights of freedom of expression, whether in satire on any other form. The West must not appease, it must not be silenced. We must send a united message to the terrorists: Your violence cannot destroy our soul."

"You can't fix a fundamentally broken law; you've got to replace it. That's why Congress can't save Obamacare with a few tweaks, despite what its defenders say. No quick fix can correct the main flaw: The law takes power away from patients and hands it to bureaucrats. ...

"But just because we can't fix Obamacare doesn't mean we can't start to get rid of its worst features. On Thursday, the House will take up a bill to define 'full time' as 40 hours per week, so more people can work full time.

"Ultimately, the law will collapse under its own weight. Until then, we have to start building a better health care system in its place. And we need to start with a new principle: Put the patient in the driver's seat. That's how we can build a healthy economy."

"They'€™re back -- new and, some hope, improved.

"Tuesday marks the official start of the 114th Congress, one that will be led entirely by Republicans for the first time in nearly a decade. The GOP now has a 54-46 advantage in the Senate and its biggest majority in the House since 1929. Buoyed and emboldened by big wins at the ballot box last year, Republicans are prepared to push top party priorities right out of the gate, from the Keystone pipeline to Obamacare, while also attempting to show American voters that they can effectively govern.

"This endeavor will require some craftsmanship from GOP leaders, especially Mitch McConnell. The new Senate majority leader will need to pick off a handful of Democratic votes to pass most legislation while also uniting Republican members, some of whom have ambitions beyond the upper chamber.

"House Speaker John Boehner also faces the continuing challenge of forging compromise within his own conference on certain contentious issues. A Democratic-led Senate is no longer standing in the way of House Republicans, and those GOP lawmakers hope to get more of their priorities to the president'€™s desk. But Republicans still don't have a filibuster-proof majority in the Senate, so the fine, and seemingly lost, art of legislating will be in play."

"The new Republican Congress should move full speed ahead to repeal and replace Obamacare. It would be unwise to wait for the Supreme Court to perform this service for the American people.

"With GOP command of Capitol Hill starting tomorrow, Republicans should use their hard-won mandate to obliterate Obama's medical Godzilla. A record 58 percent of registered voters want to junk Obamacare, according to a December 10 Fox News survey. As well they should. Among other recently revealed shortcomings - according to the Kaiser Family Foundation's Employer Health Benefits, 2014 Annual Survey ('Employee Cost Sharing' chapter) - the average deductible for individual plans has climbed from $826 in 2009 to $1,217 in 2014. This is an average annual increase of approximately 8.1 percent on Obama'€™s watch. Also, a Commonwealth Fund survey discovered that 40 percent of working-age adults have skipped medical treatments because they cost too much.

"So much for Obama's promise of 'quality, affordable health care.'"

"I hope that in this year to come, you make mistakes.

"Because if you are making mistakes, then you are making new things, trying new things, learning, living, pushing yourself, changing yourself, changing your world. You're doing things you've never done before, and more importantly, you're Doing Something.

"So that's my wish for you, and all of us, and my wish for myself. Make New Mistakes. Make glorious, amazing mistakes. Make mistakes nobody's ever made before. Don't freeze, don't stop, don't worry that it isn't good enough, or it isn't perfect, whatever it is: art, or love, or work or family or life.

"Whatever it is you're scared of doing, Do it.

"Make your mistakes, next year and forever."

"'I haven't used the veto pen very often since I've been in office,' Obama told NPR. 'Now, I suspect there are going to be some times where I've got to pull that pen out. And I'm going to defend gains that we've made in healthcare; I'm going to defend gains that we've made on the environment and clean air and clean water.'

"Indeed, the standard for overriding a presidential veto -- a two-thirds vote in House and Senate -- could become the only limit Obama observes in the next couple of years. For example, Obama takes executive action X. Republican lawmakers, along with some moderate Democrats, oppose X. They pass a bill repealing X with a 60-vote, filibuster-proof majority in the Senate. Obama vetoes the bill, preserving his executive action. At that point, opponents would have to muster 67 votes to override the veto. That's a very, very tough hill to climb. As long as Obama can get 34 Democrats to support him in the Senate, his executive action will stand."

"Dozens of members of Congress will be retiring next month, and some should be missed. But there is only one Tom Coburn, the Oklahoma senator the Christian Science Monitor has dubbed 'a rabble-rousing statesman.'

"Those two qualities together are rare in politicians, but they found a happy union in the 66-year-old obstetrician who is leaving the Senate early next month to battle prostate cancer. On the one hand, Coburn never retreated on his core values: He is staunchly pro-life, for traditional marriage, and resistant to all manner of fads from climate-change regulation to mindless intervention overseas. As the Senate'€™s 'Dr. No' from 2004 to today, he held up hundreds of special-interest boondoggles and end-runs around common sense. At the same time, he maintained a standard of honest dealing and integrity that many more in Congress should aspire to. ...

"Tom Coburn never forgot that members of Congress are spending the hard-earned money of the people back home. Even a lot of conservatives end up forgetting that. Here's hoping that back in the private sector, Tom Coburn keeps up the fight for his beliefs and that he remains a constant reminder to lawmakers and the White House of ethical standards to which all should aspire."