"The political class seems to be scandalized that Paul Ryan had the cheek Tuesday to propose another reform budget. Doesn't the House Budget Chairman understand that the 2012 election settled every political question in President Obama's favor? 

"Er, no. The federal fisc is still a shambles — despite the tax increase on millionaires and billionaires that Mr. Obama said would solve everything and despite the modest sequester spending cuts he says are too painful to abide. Thus Mr. Ryan's proposal for fiscal 2014 is still an important document, even if it has no chance of becoming law this year, because it reaches for that elusive thing in Washington — realistic solutions to the country's problems."

"Bootleggers can stand down: Manhattan Supreme Court Justice Milton Tingling took the fizz out of Mayor Bloomberg’s prohibition on sweetened beverages in containers larger than 16 ounces yesterday — just hours before the ban was to kick in. 

"And here we had visions of a new black market, served by canvas-covered convoys crossing the Mexican border smuggling caseloads of two-liter Coke. Or perhaps the terror group Hezbollah would capitalize on it, possibly via Indian reservations, as it’s been accused of doing with high-taxed smokes.

"OK, maybe a black market for large sodas might not have been necessary in New York. That’s because, as Tingling noted, the ban itself created enough loopholes to defeat its own purpose. Which is partly why he struck it down."

"If there’s one issue that Democrats worry could become sticky in 2014 races, it’s gun control. While party strategists believe that the president’s forceful advocacy of immigration reform and gay marriage tracks with shifts in public opinion, opposition to new restrictions on guns is palpable in many conservative pockets of the country. 

"'In some of those conservative to moderate districts, the gun debate is a real challenge for Democratic candidates,' said Andrew Myers, a Democratic pollster who advises many candidates in conservative states. 

"More broadly, some Democrats worry that Obama’s liberal tack will have the effect of reinvigorating Republican voters at a time when the GOP is still trying to lift itself off the mat from the disastrous 2012 election."

"In all the noise caused by the Obama administration's direct assault on the right of every person to keep and bear arms, the essence of the issue has been drowned out. The president and his big-government colleagues want you to believe that only the government can keep you free and safe, so to them, the essence of this debate is about obedience to law. 

"To those who have killed innocents among us, obedience to law is the last of their thoughts. And to those who believe that the Constitution means what it says, the essence of this debate is not about the law; it is about personal liberty in a free society. It is the exercise of this particular personal liberty -- the freedom to defend yourself when the police cannot or will not and the freedom to use weapons to repel tyrants if they take over the government -- that the big-government crowd fears the most."

"Data released by the Commerce Department last week showed that personal income fell 3.6% in January, the biggest decline in 20 years. The drop was even bigger when taxes and inflation are taken into account. Real personal disposable income fell by 4%, the biggest monthly drop in half a century. ... 

"What this means is that the U.S. economy is not merely recovering from the recession more slowly than one might like, but is actually getting worse for many Americans. Despite three-and-a-half years of uninterrupted growth in real GDP and a decline of more than two percentage points in the unemployment rate since 2009, the standard of living is falling for as much as half the population, particularly if you look beyond monthly numbers to longer-term trends."

"Despite President Obama’s promise that his plan would not add 'one dime' to the deficit, the Government Accountability Office announced last week that it would more likely add 62,000,000,000,000 dimes (or $6.2 trillion) over 75 years.

"Obama also promised that 'if you like your health-care plan, you can keep your health-care plan.' Estimates for how many Americans will lose their existing plans vary. The CBO says 5 million to 20 million. The consulting firm McKinsey & Co. says about 30 percent of employers will push workers onto the public system.
 
"Even the AFL-CIO and the Teamsters have started to freak out over the gold-plated benefits many of their members will lose, thanks to the guy they helped reelect."

"President Obama gave his second-term global warming agenda a lot more definition Monday with a new Environmental Protection Agency chief to replace Lisa Jackson. Picking Gina McCarthy, one of her top lieutenants and the architect of some of the agency's most destructive carbon rules, is a sign he intends to make good on his vow of 'executive actions' if Congress doesn't pass cap and tax.

"Over the last four years running the EPA's air office, Ms. McCarthy has been a notably willful regulator, even for this Administration. Her promotion is another way of saying that Mr. Obama has given up getting Congress to agree to his anticarbon agenda, especially given the number of Senate Democrats from coal or oil states. The real climate fight now is over the shape of forthcoming rules that could be released as early as this summer, and a brutal under-the-table lobbying campaign is now underway. ... 

"Lately Mr. Obama has been going around saying that the problem is that he's a President, not an 'emperor' or 'dictator,' but on carbon regulation this is a distinction without much difference. Ms. McCarthy has been integral in abusing laws that were written decades ago in order to achieve climate goals that Congress has rejected, all with little or no political debate. Someone should ask her about her antidemocratic politics at her confirmation hearings."

"Demagoguery about preschool and corporate jets is not going to convince Republicans that Obama can be a reliable negotiating partner.
 
"Instead, it reinforces the evidence that he never will be. This is the president who, in his grand-bargain negotiations with Speaker John Boehner, agreed on $800 billion in more revenue — and then, in a phone call, told Boehner he wanted $1.2 trillion instead.
 
"And it’s the president who first proposed the sequester, then promised it would never happen, and then denounced it when it seemed clear it would.
 
"We need serious changes in public policy, as Obama’s Simpson-Bowles Commission recommended. But this president doesn’t seem much interested in that kind of governing."

"Rep. Maxine Waters of California, a 22-year House veteran and ranking Democrat on the Financial Services Committee, this week warned of 'over 170 million jobs that could be lost.' That's actually more jobs than America has, and it's little comfort to say, 'But she's a famous idiot,' because Washington is actually full of famous idiots who are making serious decisions about how the sequester cuts are to be applied."

"Whatever one thinks about the merits of cutting $85 billion out of an almost $3.6 trillion budget, the effort to portray the cuts as ushering in days of tribulation, distress and anguish, of trouble and ruin, of darkness and gloom is – how to put this? – insane. ... 

"[W]hat makes this particular episode somewhat different than past ones is that Mr. Obama has supplemented his demagoguery with a touch of cruelty. That is, he has made it clear that he wants to inflict as much harm as possible on Americans in order to make the cuts live up to the hype. The president’s greatest fear is that the sequester cuts will kick in and life will go on. So he’s threatening to pass over wasteful programs in order to target more essential ones. ... 

"It is really quite remarkable, this concoction of willful deceptions, hyperbole, demagoguery, mismanagement, and deliberate harm. And to think that a long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away, Barack Obama promised to put an end to cynicism. Instead he has added massively to it. The harm he is doing to our political culture is very nearly incalculable."