"Kay Bailey Hutchison. Tom DeLay. Rick Perry. 

"Any list of the most powerful politicians to hail from the Lone Star State over the past 50 years would certainly include the three names listed above. Certainly, they are three of the most powerful Republicans to hail from Texas in modern times. Yet former Sen. Hutchison, former House Majority Leader DeLay, and Gov. (seemingly for all of time) Perry also share another thing in common. As of late Friday night, all three have been indicted by grand juries in Travis County, Texas, on so-called 'public integrity' charges. ... 

"The weakness of the case against Perry may be the least of the worries for Perry's critics (fair-minded and otherwise). Do not underestimate the political consequences of this indictment: Perry may not be a rocket scientist, but he is among the most effective political actors in the country -- just ask Hutchison how easy it is to beat him. 

"By attempting to put him in prison, liberals have made the governor a martyr. He can now bid for the White House as a brave hero fighting the Left."

"No president can anticipate all the twists and turns the world will take during his tenure in office. But this president has been proven dreadfully wrong. Between rounds of golf and political fundraisers -- first things first -- he has been forced to realize that America cannot withdraw from troublesome parts of the world without terrible consequences."

"This far into the human story, only the historically uninstructed are startled by what they think are new permutations of evil. ... 

"The Islamic State uses crucifixions to express piety and decapitations to encourage cooperation. These are some of the 'folks' — to adopt the locution Barack Obama frequently uses to express his all-encompassing diffidence — Obama was referring to when talking to the New York Times’ Thomas Friedman. 'That’s exactly right,' Obama said when Friedman suggested that Obama believes all Middle East factions must agree to a politics of 'no victor, no vanquish.' It will be interesting watching Obama try to convince the crucifiers and the crucified to split their differences."

"A few weeks ago, it was quite revealing -- but not surprising -- to hear Treasury Secretary Jacob Lew imply that corporate America should willingly pay the highest corporate-tax rates in the world as part of its 'patriotic' duty. This kind of discourse demonstrates a profound misunderstanding of capitalism, which is an important component of American exceptionalism. 

"In our system, people do not go into business, in many cases risking everything they have and more, in order to support the government. They obviously take those kinds of risks to make money. Instead of chastising American businesses for making financially prudent overseas investments, a wise and understanding government would be creating a domestic environment that is conducive to investment, innovation and growth, reducing the appeal of foreign explorations. A fair tax structure and a reduction in unnecessary regulations would go a long way toward establishing this environment."

"Billions of tax dollars are being lost every day to waste, fraud and corruption in the federal government, but President Obama’s administration is blocking inspectors general — the officials who are most likely to find and expose such wrongdoing — from doing their jobs. That’s the disturbing message given to Congress and the American people this week from a majority of the federal government’s 78 IGs. The blocking occurs when agency lawyers deny the authority of IGs to gain access to relevant documents and officials. ... 

"It is impossible to know exactly how much the federal bureaucracy loses every year to waste, fraud and corruption. Credible estimates put the total at more than $200 billion, but in a $3.5 trillion budget it could easily far exceed that amount. Every time an IG is barred from gaining access to vital documents or officials, it encourages even more wrongdoing. Congress must get tough with people in the executive branch who obstruct IGs from doing their jobs. And when it’s the attorney general doing the obstructing, it’s time to bring back independent prosecutors."

"It’s one thing for Democrats running in red parts of the country to sound like Republicans on the campaign trail. It’s another when Democrats running in purple or even blue territory try to do so. 

"Yet that’s what’s happening in race after race this season. 

"Faced with a treacherous political environment, many Democrats are trotting out campaign ads that call for balanced budgets, tax cuts and other more traditionally GOP positions. Some of them are running in congressional districts that just two years ago broke sharply for President Barack Obama. ... 

"Whether the Democrats running in those districts can survive what party strategists acknowledge is a deteriorating national political environment will largely hinge on how well they can appeal to more conservative voters."

"President Obama is impatient. Congress won’t act on immigration, he says, and therefore he will. The White House is coy as to exactly what the president will do. But the leaks point to an executive order essentially legalizing an enormous new class of illegal immigrants, perhaps up to 5 million people. ... 

"There’s an awful irony here. Barack Obama entered our national consciousness with an electrifying 2004 speech calling for healing the nation’s divisions and transcending narrow identities of race, region, religion, politics, and ideology. Four years later, that promise made him president. Yet today he is prepared to inflict on the nation a destructive, divisive, calculated violation of the constitutional order and national comity — for the narrowest partisan advantage.

"For this president in particular, who offered a politics of transcendence, this would constitute a betrayal of the highest order."

"The president’s constant complaints about everyone else in Washington playing politics while he high-mindedly devotes himself to substance have all the maturity of Holden Caulfield’s plaints about 'phonies.' Please, grow up. 

"Ever since he lost the House in 2010 and could no longer operate on the basis of sheer brute force, the president has relied almost entirely on tactical cleverness. It has been impressive on its own terms, whether it involves the invention of the 'war on women' in 2012 or the double-dog dare to Republicans to impeach him now. 

"But this is basically all he’s got. After 2010, Obama had two options if he wanted to revivify his presidency: either work with the opposition, which would have required making truly painful compromises, or crush it. He couldn’t bring himself to do the former and didn’t have the power to do the latter, so all he can do now is wield his 'pen and phone' — and whine."

"Two words sum up the mood of the nation: Fed up. 

"Six in 10 Americans are dissatisfied with the state of the U.S. economy, more than 70 percent believe the country is headed in the wrong direction, and nearly 80 percent are down on the country’s political system, according to the latest NBC News / Wall Street Journal poll. 

"The frustration carries over to the nation’s political leaders, with President Barack Obama’s overall approval rating hitting a new low at 40 percent, and a mere 14 percent of the public giving Congress a thumbs up."

"The total federal debt of the U.S. government has now increased more than $7 trillion during the slightly more than five and a half years Barack Obama has been president. 

"That is more than the debt increased under all U.S. presidents from George Washington through Bill Clinton combined, and it is more debt than was accumulated in the first 227 years of this nation's existence -- from 1776 through 2003."