"It’s on. As the White House grapples with a growing backlash over its Libya lies and lapses, President Obama’s apologists are gearing up for battle. Put on your hip waders. Grab those tar buckets. Get ready for Operation Smear Benghazi Whistleblowers. ... 

"If you thought Chicago-on-the-Potomac was dirty, you ain’t seen nothing yet. No stone will be left unturned in the effort to slime, sully, and squelch the Benghazi truth tellers. Mark my words: This is how Obama’s thugs roll."

"An exhaustive study by the Heritage Foundation has found that after amnesty, current unlawful immigrants would receive $9.4 trillion in government benefits and services and pay more than $3 trillion in taxes over their lifetimes. That leaves a net fiscal deficit (benefits minus taxes) of $6.3 trillion. That deficit would have to be financed by increasing the government debt or raising taxes on U.S. citizens.

"For centuries immigration has been vital to our nation’s health, and it will be essential to our future success. Yet immigrants should come to our nation lawfully and should not impose additional fiscal costs on our overburdened taxpayers. An efficient and merit-based system would help our economy and lessen the burden on taxpayers, strengthening our nation. ...

"In addition to costing taxpayers, amnesty is unfair to those who came to this country lawfully. More than 4 million people are waiting to come to the United States lawfully, but our dysfunctional bureaucracy makes it easier to break the law than to follow it."

"On the night of Sept. 11, as the Obama administration scrambled to respond to the Benghazi terror attacks, then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and a key aide effectively tried to cut the department's own counterterrorism bureau out of the chain of reporting and decision-making, according to a 'whistle-blower' witness from that bureau who will soon testify to the charge before Congress, Fox News has learned. 
 
"That witness is Mark I. Thompson, a former Marine and now the deputy coordinator for operations in the agency’s counterterrorism bureau. Sources tell Fox News Thompson will level the allegation against Clinton during testimony on Wednesday before the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, chaired by Rep. Darrell Issa, R-Calif."

"Next week, the House Oversight Committee, chaired by Rep. Darrell Issa (R-CA), will open new hearings on Benghazi — and they could be explosive. He promises to expose new information the administration 'has tried to suppress.' ... 

"The administration plainly wishes the whole subject would go away. The attack happened 'a long time ago,' President Obama’s spokesman, Jay Carney, said this week, complaining about being questioned on the matter. Earlier, Secretary of State John Kerry, testifying before Congress, whined, 'We got a lot more important things to move on to and get done.'

"But they won’t 'get done' — not until the administration finally comes clean about Benghazi."

"'We're eyeball to eyeball, and I think the other fellow just blinked,' Secretary of State Dean Rusk famously said during the Cuban missile crisis. Barack Obama has been doing a lot of blinking lately. On Syria especially. ...   

"Blinking at the evidence that Syria has crossed what he called a 'red line,' Obama may be hoping to avoid getting bogged down in a military quagmire there. But weakness is provocative, and appeasement can lead to a wider war."

"Yesterday, President Obama turned into Chip Diller. Who is Chip Diller? He is the college boy who keeps screaming, 'Remain calm! All is well!,' as the town of Faber collapses around him at the end of 'National Lampoon’s Animal House.' 

"With his own administration saying chemical weapons have been used in Syria, a Democratic senator saying ObamaCare has become a 'train wreck,' and others worrying that the failure to neutralize the Tsarnaev brothers before the Boston massacre indicates a systemic failure in the nation’s homeland defense, Obama spent an hour in a press conference yesterday morning Chip-Dillering America."

"Members of the Senate's bipartisan Gang of Eight stress that under their new immigration plan, currently illegal immigrants will have to wait more than a decade before achieving citizenship. Newly legalized immigrants will be given a provisional status and 'will have to stay in that status until at least 10 years elapse and (border security) triggers are met,'  Florida Republican Sen. Marco Rubio told Fox News on April 14. After that, Rubio said, they'll have to wait longer for a green card and, ultimately, citizenship. 

"Unless they don't. A little-noticed exception in the Gang of Eight bill provides a fast track for many -- possibly very many -- currently illegal immigrants. Under a special provision for immigrants who have labored at least part-time in agriculture, that fast track could mean permanent residency in the U.S., and then citizenship, in half the time Rubio said. And not just for the immigrants themselves -- their spouses and children, too."

"KABUL, Afghanistan — For more than a decade, wads of American dollars packed into suitcases, backpacks and, on occasion, plastic shopping bags have been dropped off every month or so at the offices of Afghanistan’s president — courtesy of the Central Intelligence Agency. 

"All told, tens of millions of dollars have flowed from the C.I.A. to the office of President Hamid Karzai, according to current and former advisers to the Afghan leader. ... 

"[T]here is little evidence that the payments bought the influence the C.I.A. sought. Instead, some American officials said, the cash has fueled corruption and empowered warlords, undermining Washington’s exit strategy from Afghanistan."

"Waiting until the border has already been secured before an immigration policy is decided upon would also allow time to discuss the pros and cons of various ways of enforcing whatever that policy might turn out to be. But many politicians much prefer to rush complex legislation through Congress before the public knows what is in it or what is at stake. 'We the people' are to be by-passed. ... 

"Ask yourself why people who have been living illegally in this country for years cannot wait a couple of more years until the border is secured before the question of their legal status can be studied and debated in Congress and among the public at large. ... 

"'Comprehensive' immigration reform serves the interests of politicians who like to be on both sides of a controversial issue, and it serves the interests of those foreigners who want to game the system in the United States, at the expense of the American people. But it does not serve the interests of American society."

"The Washington Post/ABC poll asked respondents to rate Bush’s performance for the first time since December 2008, when only 33 percent rated it positively and 66 percent rated it negatively. What the pollster found is that today 47 percent approve and 50 percent disapprove of Bush’s performance. That approval number is precisely the same as Barack Obama’s in the most recent Post/ABC poll. ... 

"The Post/ABC poll suggests that Americans have been developing a more well-rounded assessment of Bush’s stewardship, even as he has remained mostly silent in public. Some presidents’ reputations rise as they move into history. Harry Truman, reviled when he left office, was recognized later for getting the big decisions right despite some obvious mistakes. The same thing seems to be happening, more quickly, with George W. Bush."