"We may not have a strong job market, but the numbers definitely have improved since the start of the year.  ... 

"But better numbers are not the same as impressive numbers. This is still the weakest economic recovery since the Great Depression. So while it’s good to have a bit of improvement, we should be dissatisfied until we at least get back on the long-run trendline for 3 percent average real growth.

"And what needs to happen to give us that kind of growth? The answer is simple: Free markets and small government."

"Those who expect to reap the blessings of freedom, must, like men, undergo the fatigue of supporting it."

"It’s hard to imagine a more apt summation of the lunatic state of the nation’s immigration debate than this week’s split screen. 

"In Washington, most respectable opinion lined up, yet again, to condemn Republicans for not passing an amnesty under the guise of defunct-for-now 'comprehensive immigration reform.' 

"Meanwhile, the crisis on the Southern border continued. A massive influx of people — largely driven by Central Americans, many of them children — drawn here in the expectation of lax immigration enforcement is overwhelming border officials and facilities. ... 

"The border crisis is of a piece with a broad unraveling of the president’s policy over the past year. His erstwhile spiritual mentor might have put it under the category of 'chickens coming home to roost.'"

"Great men (and women) can't change a nation, even if they are supremely ruthless and cynical. Not in a constitutional republic like ours. 

"It can only be accomplished when the people fall silent and give up their freedoms willingly.  ... 

"[W]hen a free people lose their capacity for outrage, they are susceptible to almost anything. ... 

"This is happening now, in the Internal Revenue Service scandal, in which one of the federal government's most feared agencies descended upon some conservative groups that were political enemies of President Barack Obama.  

"You know the story. You've heard it on radio and have seen it on TV and read some of it in the papers. And what I don't see is outrage. ... 

"But if the party in power can send out the IRS and club its opponents to the ground, and if we remain silent and numb, a lot more than political advantage is threatened.

"Ultimately, our liberty is too."

"The decision, and the left's predictably overwrought response to it, underscore a contradiction in the contemporary liberal worldview. 'Corporate power is too big,' fumed Sally Kohn on CNN this morning. 'The Supreme Court is doing the bidding of big business.'

"But Hobby Lobby brought this lawsuit in the name of conscience, not profit. And isn't it usually liberals who fault corporations for being insufficiently conscientious?"

"Americans are losing confidence in all three branches of government, as confidence in the Supreme Court and Congress has dropped to record lows and the White House has hit a six-year dip, according to a new poll. 

"In a Gallup poll released Monday, 30 percent of Americans expressed confidence in the Supreme Court, 7 percent in Congress and 29 percent in the presidency. 

"The numbers represent the lowest levels of confidence that Gallup has recorded for both the legislative and judicial branch since the poll question began being asked regularly in 1991. The executive branch experienced the largest decrease in confidence level, down 8 percentage points since 2013, compared to the 7-percentage-point drop for the Supreme Court and a 7-point dip for Congress."

"Three cheers for right-wing obstructionism. Can we have more, please, and louder? 

"This week's unanimous Supreme Court ruling on President Obama's illegal recess appointments is a double smackdown. First, it's a rebuke against arrogant White House power-grabbers who thought they could act with absolute impunity and interminable immunity. Second, the ruling is a reproach of all the establishment pushovers on Capitol Hill who put comity above constitutional principle. ... 

"Thanks to patriotic obstructionism, this should and will be far from the last rebuke. Continued accommodation of this control-freak president and his cronies is suicide. There are only two responsible replies to a Constitution-trampling, end-run executive unilaterally declaring, 'Yes, I can':

"1) 'No, you can't.'

"2) 'Hell no, you can't.'"

"The Democratic mantra for more than a year now has been that there’s no evidence that the targeting was directed by anyone higher than Lois Lerner. Now the mantra has an addendum — some of the material that potentially could indicate otherwise has gone missing. ... 

"Even if the original destruction of Lerner’s correspondence was an innocent coincidence, all of this reeks of bad faith and is itself scandalous. We aren’t talking about getting to the bottom of wrongdoing at the U.S. Board on Geographic Names or the Office of Small and Disadvantaged Business Utilization. This is the IRS, the most intrusive and demanding agency of the federal government that will destroy you unless you deal with it honestly and make your life an open book on its say-so. Yet it can’t straightforwardly cooperate with a investigation into misconduct that — once upon a time — outraged even the president of the United States."

"Are we seeing a full-scale Democratic Party meltdown? We might be. 

"The most recent polling shows the president at all-time lows. This matters because presidential approval has, in the past, been a key factor in the results of midterm elections. ... 

"The president is backing his party into a corner. The health-care rollout has cast a permanent shadow on the 2014 election."

"Testifying in front of the House Oversight Committee Monday night, IRS Commissioner John Koskinen was asked for details surrounding the alleged 'computer crash' and 'lost' emails belonging to former head of tax exempt organizations Lois Lerner and six other IRS officials. When asked who told him about the 'crash' in April, Koskinen says he doesn't remember who in his agency told him about the crash because 'it was the middle of filing season.'  

"'I do not recall who told me, no,' Koskinen said. 'I don't remember when I was told or by whom.'"