"As travellers nationwide are learning, the White House has decided to express its dislike of the sequester -- otherwise known as modestly smaller government -- by choosing to cut basic air traffic control services. ... 

"The White House claims the sequester applies to the budget category known as 'projects, programs and activities' and thus it lacks flexibility. Not so: This is a political pose to make the sequester more disruptive. Legally speaking, the sequester applies at a more general level known as 'accounts.' The air traffic account includes 15,000 controllers out of 31,000 employees. The White House could keep the controllers on duty simply by allocating more furlough days to these other non-essential workers. ...   

"All of this deserves to backfire, and it will if Republicans break from their circular immigration firing squads and explain what Mr. Obama is doing. For all of its rough edges, the sequester is proving to be educational. It is showing Americans how broken so much of government is, and it is revealing how our politicians refuse to distinguish between essential services and needless waste."

"[T]he legislation’s most critical amnesty comes right away, before even the pretense of beefed-up security. Illegal aliens will get their illegal status removed six months after the bill is passed upon payment of $500. The formerly illegal aliens will be allowed to remain in the country legally, under so-called 'probationary status,' for ten years (while those who wish to enter the country legally wait patiently in their home countries for permission to enter). This lawful presence is virtually everything that most would-be illegal aliens hope for, since few cross the border with any desire to become U.S. citizens."

"The Department of Health and Human Services has just handed out a $3.1 million PR contract to improve the public image of Obamacare. ... 

"Obama officials insist the ads won’t be political, but critics recall that just before the 2010 midterm election, HHS spent $3.2 million on 'educational' TV ads praising Obamacare. ... 

"At no point since its passage has Obamacare been viewed favorably by more than 45 percent of voters, and the latest Kaiser Family Health Foundation poll pegs its nationwide support at only 37 percent."

"Imagine what the media reaction would be if in the aftermath of yesterday’s Senate vote blocking new background checks, a leading official of the gun lobby had explained his side’s success by saying: 'Bribery isn’t what it once was. The government has no money. Once upon a time you would throw somebody a post office or a research facility in times like this. Frankly, there's not a lot of leverage.' Washington would be in full outrage mode, and there would be demands to find out who had made such an offensive claim.

"Of course, no such pro-gun official has said any such thing. ...
 
"If the pro-gun-control official cited in Politico is right, the current government sequester is working — Washington has less money for bribes. The spending spree that liberals (in both parties) have luxuriated in over the past decade has had a perverse side effect: People used to having their pockets lined turn a cold shoulder when the cash flow slows down."

"The president raged. The mayor of New York frothed. Joe Biden cried. But at the end of the day, common sense prevailed. The Senate killed the effort to unreasonably expand background checks for buyers of guns.
 
"The measure is not quite graveyard dead; it can be brought up again, but prospects for that are remote. The vote was a bone-jarring setback for the gun-control lobby, and a decisive victory for the National Rifle Association (NRA), which led the fight to protect the rights of all. It was most of all a resounding victory for the plain and simple language of the Second Amendment to the Constitution, 'A well regulated militia being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed.'"

"The Senate will vote Wednesday afternoon on what could be the biggest changes in U.S. gun laws in nearly 20 years. 
 
"Senators will take up the proposal from Sens. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.) and Pat Toomey (R-Pa.) to expand background checks on firearm purchases and close the so-called gun show loophole. The bipartisan plan is likely the strongest gun control bill that can pass this Congress, although it’s far weaker than the White House and many Democrats hoped for. ... 

"Voting on the Manchin-Toomey proposal is scheduled to begin at 4 p.m., and both opponents and supporters say the margin is razor thin at this point."

"Once again, innocent American citizens going about their business on American soil have been targeted for attack. On a Marathon Monday in spring, Boston joined the grim roll of American cities and sites bloodied by terror: New York, Washington, Oklahoma City, Shanksville, Ft. Hood and so on. And it’s not over, given that the numbers of dead and wounded continue to mount.  

"The question on every American mind yesterday was the obvious one: Who? 

"Looking back at how wrong speculation has proved before in attacks from the DC sniper to the Times Square bomber, it’s worth waiting for the facts to come in. Better to place our confidence in the men and women in our law-enforcement and intelligence agencies. So long as they are allowed to do their jobs, we have no doubt that they will find out the truth of these attacks."

"Some advocates of comprehensive immigration legislation view extended hearings and debate as a tactic intended to stir up opposition among people they regard as bigoted. 
 
"But it's not necessarily bigoted to oppose a bill that includes some element of forgiveness for those who have broken the law. It's a legitimate view that deserves a hearing and a chance to prevail. ... 

"Our current immigration laws have not been serving us well, and not in just one respect. 
 
"I understand the desire of politicians to push something through while the time seems opportune. But it's worth taking extra care with a law that could shape the nation for years to come."

"When it is finally unveiled next week, the immigration reform proposal crafted by the Senate's bipartisan Gang of Eight will be long -- possibly 1,500 pages -- and complex, and it will call for far-reaching changes in important areas of American life. One would think the leadership of the Senate might want to talk about it.
 
"Not so. Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Patrick Leahy, a longtime supporter of immigration reform, has vowed to push the bill through his committee 'with all deliberate speed.' ... The committee will hold just one more hearing on the bill, Leahy declared. ...

"The move to hurry the bill into law is a terrible development, given the public's lack of trust in the government's ability, and willingness, to handle the immigration issue. A number of recent polls show that majorities of Americans favor legalization and a path to citizenship for the estimated 11 million illegal immigrants already in this country. But they favor those outcomes only if the government secures the border and shuts off the flow of illegal immigration into the U.S. And they don't trust the government to do that."

"All the actual evidence -- mountains of it, in peer-reviewed studies by highly respected economists and criminologists and endlessly retested -- shows that limits on magazine capacity, background checks and assault weapons bans will accomplish nothing. Only one policy has been shown to dramatically reduce multiple public shootings: concealed-carry laws.  

"Unfortunately, there are no similar studies on the effect of involuntary commitment laws for the mentally deranged because no such laws exist anymore and therefore can't be tested. But we do know that the number of mass public shootings has ballooned since crazy people were thrown out of mental institutions in the 1970s.  

"For most of the 20th century, from 1900 to 1970, there was an average of four mass public shootings per decade. Throughout the '70s, as the loony bins were being emptied, the average number of mass shootings suddenly shot up to 13. In the 3.3 decades since 1980, after all the mental institutions had been turned into condos, mass shootings skyrocketed to 36 on average per decade.  

"Mass shootings don't correlate with gun ownership; they correlate with not locking up schizophrenics."