"[Senate Majority Leader Harry] Reid moved Tuesday night to start debate over a gun control package that is a wish list for gun control advocates. Reid filed a cloture motion that sets up a Thursday vote to end a GOP filibuster of the motion to proceed to that gun bill. In order to gather 60 votes, Reid and other senior Democrats believe they can hold on to their own nervous members from red states, while picking up 10 or so Republicans. ... 

"Reid said that if the bill doesn’t get 60 votes to move to the floor, he would then move to hold votes on individual bills for several gun proposals, including the assault weapons ban, background checks and limits on high-capacity magazines."

"The grocer’s daughter from Grantham became freedom’s Iron Lady at a time when too many were soft and equivocating. She is sadly gone now, but her intrepid will, her time-tested ideals, her unfailing trust in what is right and just, and her legacy, as solid as iron, will live on forever."

"If grade-schoolers were more worldly wise, a decent playground insult these days could be: 'He's slower than the Obama recovery.' Or maybe, 'Your mamma's uglier than the last jobs report.' ...   

"The labor participation rate is 63.3 percent, the lowest it has been since 1979. The year after that was the year the nation rejected Jimmy Carter in a landslide for a President named Reagan, who offered a way out of the malaise. Yet today we accept high unemployment and snail's-pace growth in part because Reagan's party continues to be outmaneuvered by a President constitutionally incapable of governing, but born to campaign. 

"This is not the Bush economy. It is, as Obama said it would be by now, the Obama economy. And it is a dreadful one. Under him, it is likely to remain that way for years to come."

"Securing the border would be the most popular element of any immigration reform deal, according to a new poll. 
 
"Eight-in-ten Americans support hiked-up border security and 72 percent support more Visas for high-skilled immigrants, the ABC News/Washington Post poll on Wednesday found. Fifty-seven percent support a pathway to citizenship for illegal immigrants, a number in line with other recent polling on the subject."

"Regardless of their respective positions on immigration reform, legislators on both the dovish and hawkish sides of the debate should agree on one fundamental principle: The Nancy Pelosi approach to lawmaking — pass the bill to find out what’s in it — is no way to go about repairing our defective immigration system. ... 

"'But we’ve been debating these issues for decades,' the argument goes. True enough. But we have not been debating the specific legislation under consideration for decades, years, weeks, days, hours, minutes, or milliseconds: As of this writing, the text of the bill has not even been finalized, much less made public, and still less been subject to rigorous debate.

"The distinction is important. Senator Sessions and others are not calling for delay for the sake of delay. They are asking for time to examine thoroughly the specifics of the legislation. The price of failing to do that can be very high: See, for example, the Affordable Care Act, which already has evolved into an incomprehensible mass of regulations with an ever-growing price tag, or New York governor Andrew Cuomo’s rushed-through gun-control legislation, which the governor himself already has conceded is unworkable. Immigration reform is too important to go about willy-nilly; there are key questions of national interest at stake, not to mention the futures of millions of immigrants."

"Obama has left a long trail of broken hearts, reneging on commitments to major groups – political, national, and social – that thought they might count on him. The great challenge of Obama’s second term isn’t one particular program or another. It’s merely getting people to trust him. ... 

"Just the week before [the President's trip to Israel], Republicans were barraged with a furious series of phone calls, visits, and White House invitations from a president who had ignored them for much of his first term and savaged them each time campaign season came around. Suddenly, the husband who’d been out club hopping and golfing with the boys was home for dinner and eager to help take care of the kids. 

"Obama wants Republicans to believe he’s serious about a deal on the budget, and that he won’t suddenly slap another $400 billion in taxes down on the table like he did last time House Speaker John Boehner thought he had an agreement. 

"Republicans had better read the fine print, and remember that while tax increases happen today, spending cuts are for later and are always renegotiable."

"It is opening day for America's favorite pastime that ushers in summer, fun and freedom. It feels great, but more and more it's a nostalgia that's not all together true anymore. All-American items fifty years ago may indeed have been these:   Baseball, Hotdogs, Apple Pie.

"But nowadays there's no doubt these things are more popular:  Football, Hamburgers, Fudge. ... 

"The things we enjoy are being changed for our safety, so soon football players may all have to run upright with the use of helmets in tackling and blocking prohibited. And the way things are going, we could one day see hamburgers and fudge replaced by tofu and wheatgrass shakes. ..."

"Easy money from the federal government is hard to resist. After all, it's 'free.' A key section of Obamacare makes states the offer they can't refuse: Expand eligibility for Medicaid on an unrealistic scale, and Uncle Sam will hand over a big, fat check. A number of Republican governors have succumbed to this temptation, including Chris Christie in New Jersey, Rick Scott in Florida and Rick Snyder in Michigan. This is a dangerous bargain for us all. ... 

"States are foolish to fall for the administration's promise to pick up the tab for 90 percent of the expansion. With all the lavish promises it has been presenting, the U.S. government can't make good on all its future obligations. ... 

"Inevitably, state taxpayers will be stuck with the bill. ... 

"Governors would better serve their constituents by advocating block grants, rather than sticking their successors with a bloated bureaucracy that will push everyone over that fiscal cliff."

"Not even the most ardent defenders of Obamacare -- aka the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act -- claim anymore that the law will lower health coverage costs for Americans. How, then, will it achieve universal coverage, its central goal? 
 
"The short answer is, it won't. ... 

"The Iraq War cost $1 trillion and produced a quagmire abroad. Obamacare will cost $1 trillion and will create a quagmire at home. Americans need an exit strategy."

"[...] Mr. Obama has become a minor actor on Capitol Hill. On a growing array of issues, members of both parties have come to understand that progress is more likely with the president on the sideline. ... 

"There has been no movement in Congress on the president's carbon tax. During Saturday's budget debate, 79 senators supported repeal of ObamaCare's tax on medical devices and 62 senators backed construction of the Keystone XL pipeline (alas, both nonbinding votes). On issue after issue, Mr. Obama is being routinely ignored or rebuffed.  

"No president is ever irrelevant, but less than 10 weeks into his second term Mr. Obama's power is waning. Even members of his own party view him as an obstacle to getting things done."