"Barack Obama’s administration is unmoored from the institutions that have long kept the imperial tendencies of the American presidency in check. That is partly the fault of Congress, which has punted too many of its legislative responsibilities to the president’s army of faceless regulators, but it is in no small part the result of an intentional strategy on the part of the administration. He has spent the past five years methodically testing the limits of what he can get away with, like one of those crafty velociraptors testing the electric fence in Jurassic Park. Barack Obama is a Harvard Law graduate, and he knows that he cannot make recess appointments when Congress is not in recess. He knows that his HHS is promulgating regulations that conflict with federal statutes. He knows that he is not constitutionally empowered to pick and choose which laws will be enforced. This is a might-makes-right presidency, and if Barack Obama has been from time to time muddled and contradictory, he has been clear on the point that he has no intention of being limited by something so trivial as the law."

"My fellow Americans: Ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country."

"The Obama administration once gave us 'man-caused disasters' for acts of terrorism and 'workplace violence' for the Fort Hood shootings. Now it has trumped those past linguistic contortions by changing words to mask the Obamacare disaster. 

"The president and his advisors apparently knew long ago that millions of the insured would face cancellations or premium hikes once Obamacare would be fully implemented. Yet to get the 906-page bill passed, they had to convince the public of the very opposite scenario. So they repeated ironclad guarantees that no one would lose their coverage or doctors -- 'period!' 

"Now the administration explains the deception by going after both the ethics of the insurers and the intelligence of the previously insured. That task required language to be altered. The newly canceled health plans are suddenly rebranded by the administration as 'subpar.' Only in autumn 2013 is the supposedly unaware public told that, years ago, 'bad apple' insurance companies sold them 'substandard' plans."

"Just days before HealthCare.gov crashed on takeoff, Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev), who has often suggested that the president's opponents are bigots, railed on the Senate floor: 'Obamacare has been the law for four years. Why don't they get a life and talk about something else?' 

"'We are going to accept nothing that relates to Obamacare,' he added. 'Let them find something else to be weird about.'  

"In recent polls, 58 percent of Americans have a negative view of the health-care law, 54 percent disapprove of Obama and 50 percent think he isn't honest or trustworthy. Are they all racists and weirdos?"

"Seven score and 10 years ago, Abraham Lincoln delivered his sacred speech on the meaning of free government. Edward Everett, a former secretary of state and the principal speaker for the consecration of the Gettysburg cemetery, instantly recognized the power of the president's 272 words. ... 

"Barack Obama is not scheduled to be present at Gettysburg on Tuesday to commemorate the 150th anniversary of the address. Maybe he figured that the world would little note, nor long remember, what he said there. Maybe he thought the comparisons with the original were bound to be invidious, and rightly so.

"If that's the case, it would be the beginning of wisdom for this presidency. Better late than never. ... 

"[T]he president's no-show at Gettysburg suggests he might be trying to follow Old Abe's counsel in a fruitful way: 'Better to remain silent and be thought a fool,' the Great Emancipator is reported to have said, 'than to speak and to remove all doubt.'"

"The Obama administration has repeatedly said that the health-insurance-plan cancellations receiving so much attention in the news in recent days will affect only the 5 percent of Americans who purchase insurance on the individual market. The Department of Justice, however, in a brief filed in federal court last month, conceded that the number may be much higher. According to the administration’s numbers, nearly 80 million additional Americans, 'a majority' of those on employer-sponsored health plans, may also be out of luck. 

"'It is projected that more group health plans will transition to the requirements under the regulations as time goes on,' DOJ lawyers wrote in response to court challenge to the law’s requirement that insurance plans provide coverage of contraception. 'Defendants have estimated that a majority of group health plans will have lost their grandfather status by the end 2013.'"

"The White House's Thursday play will not end cancellation notices. Fixing Healthcare.gov simply gives more Americans access to the budget-busting premiums and limited networks within the exchange. Grandfathering, to the extent it happens, only pushes those premiums higher. So does a delay in the individual mandate. Further exemptions, say to taxes, strip money Democrats are banking on. Extending enrollment periods does nothing but provide Americans more time to contemplate their miserable choices. 

"Grandfathering current and canceled plans only adds to the confusion. And the White House's decision to do this administratively reopens questions over the legality (and illegality) of the White House's many ObamaCare actions. This doesn't restore credibility; it further undermines it.  

"A Democratic aide this week told The Hill that the party was concerned about 'being dragged into this nonstop cycle' of bad news. It is way too late for that, especially if the GOP continues to stay out of the way and let this be about Democratic liabilities and divisions. The only real 'fix' for this law—and for Democratic political pain—is to scrap it."

"Americans told President Obama in 2012, 'If you like your popularity, you can keep it.' 

"We lied. 

"Well, at least we didn't tell him the whole truth. What we meant to say was that Obama could keep the support of a majority of Americans unless he broke our trust. Throughout his first term, even as his job-approval rating cycled up and down, one thing remained constant: Polls showed that most Americans trusted Obama. 

"As they say in Washington, that is no longer operable. 

"A new Quinnipiac University poll shows for the first time that a majority of Americans (52 percent) don't think the president is honest and trustworthy."

"Somehow the president continues to insist that he really was telling the truth when he promised that you could keep your plan — dozens of times — and is just as shocked as anyone else to find out that you can’t. This, despite the fact that his aides debated, both publicly and privately, about whether or not he should say something so demonstrably untrue. When you start lying about your lies, there really is a problem."

"President Barack Obama's signature accomplishment is teetering. The Obamacare website is a national punch line. Millions of Americans, repeatedly reassured by Obama that they could keep their doctors and health plans, are discovering that they can't. Their insurance policies are being canceled. The price of new coverage is substantially higher. The new coverage may force them to choose new doctors. And the law says they have to buy insurance or pay a fine. ... 

"The odds against a fundamental restructuring of the law are steep, given the deep distrust Republicans and Democrats have for each other. But that's what will be needed. A bold reboot, a Manhattan Project for health care reform that starts fresh with some basic principles. 

"An essential first step: Accept that government doesn't know what's best for everyone. That people can decide what coverage they need and can afford. A strong marketplace offers choices for every wallet. Obamacare's rules curtail those choices."