"'I am not on the ballot this fall,' Obama proclaimed recently. 'But make no mistake: These policies are on the ballot. Every single one of them.'

"For swing-state Democrats, this is the worst of both worlds. Without Obama at the top of the ticket, they fear the president's most loyal supporters won'€™t turn out, while Republicans and independents will flock to the polls to register their opinion of an administration that has pursued a tepid foreign policy while aggressively insinuating itself into the lives of ordinary Americans.

"The polls show this dynamic. In every one of the nine tossup Senate races except Kansas, Republicans are more likely than Democrats to consider 2014 a referendum on Obama. At a recent Hoover Institution conference, Stanford political scientist Douglas Rivers put it this way: 'There is no overriding issue other than that Republicans don'€™t like Obama and Democrats are lukewarm about Obama.'"

"Obama has committed the U.S. to war on the Islamic State. To then allow within a month an allied enclave to be overrun -- and perhaps annihilated -- would be a major blow.

"Guerrilla war is a test of wills. Obama's actual objectives -- rollback in Iraq, containment in Syria -- are not unreasonable. But they require commitment and determination. In other words, will. You can't just make one speech declaring war, then disappear and go fundraising.

"The indecisiveness and ambivalence so devastatingly described by both of Obama's previous secretaries of defense, Leon Panetta and Bob Gates, are already beginning to characterize the Syria campaign.

"The Iraquis can see it. The Kurds can feel it. The jihadists are counting on it."

"As nearly two dozen Secret Service agents and members of the military were punished or fired following a 2012 prostitution scandal in Colombia, Obama administration officials repeatedly denied that anyone from the White House was involved.

"But new details drawn from government documents and interviews show that senior White House aides were given information at the time suggesting that a prostitute was an overnight guest in the hotel room of a presidential advance-team member -- yet that information was never thoroughly investigated or publicly acknowledged.

"The information that the Secret Service shared with the White House included hotel records and firsthand accounts -- the same types of evidence the agency and military relied on to determine who in their ranks was involved."

"Former President Jimmy Carter is criticizing President Barack Obama's Middle East policy, saying he has shifting policies and waited too long to take action against the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant.

"In an interviewed published Tuesday in the Fort Worth Star-Telegram, the 39th president said the Obama administration, by not acting sooner, allowed ISIL to build up its strength.

"'[W]e waited too long. We let the Islamic State build up its money, capability and strength and weapons while it was still in Syria,' he said, using an alternate name for the terrorist group. 'Then when [ISIL] moved into Iraq, the Sunni Muslims didn'€™t object to their being there and about a third of the territory in Iraq was abandoned.'"

"There is now no Border Patrol, at least as Americans have understood the agency whose job was enforcing federal immigration statutes. It died as an enforcement bureau sometime in 2013, not long after the reelection of Barack Obama, in a way that it could not have before the election. Instead, in Orwellian fashion, at a time of plague and terrorism abroad, it is now the Border-Crossing Enabling Service, whose chief task is facilitating the illegal entry of thousands from Latin America and Mexico, largely to further the political agenda of the Obama administration, contrary to the law, the will of Congress, and the wishes of the majority of the American people. Mention the phrase 'immigration law' or 'Border Patrol,' and Americans sigh that neither any longer exists. Yet such a perversion of the mission of a federal agency for political purposes has become thematic of this administration. Perhaps the end of border enforcement is emblemized best by Obama'€™s own uncle and late aunt, who in open defiance broke federal immigration law and did so with impunity, resided illegally in the United States, broke various state laws, and ended up either on public assistance or mired in the U.S. judicial system."

"Fox News may be demolishing its more liberal cable news rivals in the ratings but to Democrats it's still the bogeyman. That's why President Obama took the opportunity to criticize the network during a speech defending his economic record at Northwestern University today. But in doing so, the president not only demonstrated the weakness of his position but also why he doesn'€™t understand Fox'€™s appeal. ...

"The difference between Fox's coverage of ObamaCare and that of much of the mainstream media is not so much that the network portrays ObamaCare as a 'fanged threat to freedom' but that on MSNBC and CNN, not to mention the broadcast networks and the New York Times, critiques of the law or even discussions about its effectiveness, its impact on the economy, or on individual rights are often hard to find. Fox has become the dominant cable news network not so much because it is conservative as because it is the one place viewers know they can go to find alternative views to that of the liberal media establishment that has so often acted as the president's unpaid cheering section."

"The Democratic line is that the Republican House does nothing but block and oppose. In fact, it has passed hundreds of bills only to have them die upon reaching the desk of Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid. He has rendered the Senate inert by simply ensuring that any bill that might present a politically difficult vote for his Democratic colleagues never even comes to the floor.

"Winning control of the Senate would allow Republicans to pass a whole range of measures now being held up by Reid, often at the behest of the White House. Make it a major reform agenda. The centerpiece might be tax reform, both corporate and individual. It is needed, popular and doable. Then go for the low-hanging fruit enjoying wide bipartisan support, such as the Keystone XL pipeline and natural gas exports, most especially to Eastern Europe. One could then add border security, energy deregulation and health-care reform that repeals the more onerous Obamacare mandates.

"If the president signs any of it, good. If he vetoes, it will be clarifying. Who then will be the party of no? The vetoed legislation would become the framework for a 2016 GOP platform. Let the debate begin."

"Thousands of Americans will see their health plans cancelled before the November elections in a development that could boost critics of ObamaCare.

"The Morning Consult, a Washington-based policy publication, reported that nearly 50,000 people will lose their current health coverage in the coming weeks.

"The figure encompasses cancellations announced by insurance departments and providers in Kentucky, Alaska, Tennessee, New Mexico, North Carolina, Maine and Colorado."

"The United States military and intelligence community have learned a lot over the past decade of conflict. Our commander in chief, unfortunately, has not. Since the start of his administration, President Barack Obama has ignored his generals and the intelligence community. Over the past few weeks, he has half-heartedly pursued a strategy that destines us to fail in our mission, and over the past three days, he and his White House have lied to prove otherwise. To those who wear our nation’s uniform, or serve in her intelligence community, that’s insult — and injury."

"If Mr. Obama isn't thinking about cashiering a top adviser, he should start now. CIA Director John Brennan has presided over serial intelligence debacles — including the failure to anticipate the fall of Mosul — while National Intelligence Director James Clapper has had no credibility in Congress since he lied to a Senate committee. John Kerry's incompetent diplomacy in Jerusalem and Ramallah helped set the stage for the Gaza War. Susan Rice is toxic with Republicans on account of her public misrepresentations regarding Benghazi and Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl, and toxic with allies because of her penchant for foul-mouthed tirades. Hapless Chuck Hagel is busy downsizing the U.S. military while demanding that Europeans increase their military spending. 

"The dismissal of any of these people would send a useful signal to U.S. allies that the president has the nerve — and self-awareness — to make a change.