"One would think, given so much practice, that the Obama White House would have been better prepared for last week’s wretched jobs report. 

"Instead, we witnessed the five stages of bad public relations. Delusion: It was a 'step in the right direction.' Dismissiveness: Don’t 'read too much into any one monthly report.' Grudging acceptance: 'It’s still tough out there.' Cliche: 'There are no quick fixes.' Self-pity: 'I suspect that most people ... would acknowledge that I’ve tried real hard.'  

"I suspect that most people ... would prefer an economic strategy that consists of something more than blame shifting and the systematic lowering of expectations."

"The only jobs plan that has any chance of passing the House and Senate before the election is a bill to cancel all tax increases in 2013. With White House support, this would fly through the House and Senate and eliminate one major antigrowth headwind, as even some Keynesian economists and the Congressional Budget Office are telling the President.

"The dilemma for the White House is that calling off next year's tax increase would undercut Mr. Obama's re-election theme of redistributing income. His liberal base has become so obsessed with the politics of envy that it is demanding higher taxes no matter the economic or political costs.

"The question for Senate Democrats is whether they want to jeopardize their personal futures, and their majority, by jumping off the same tax cliff. With the House poised to pass an extension of the tax rates for at least one year, Senate Democrats have to decide if they want to vote before Election Day to wallop an already weak economy with a giant tax increase."

“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness. That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, ...”

"Nearly lost in the frenzy of reaction to the Supreme Court’s salvaging of Obamacare last week, was the history-making vote in the U.S. House to hold Attorney General Eric Holder in contempt of Congress. 

"And that’s too bad, because the man has certainly earned this unique place in history. ... 

"There are a lot of things for which Holder should be held in contempt. Stonewalling Congress is simply the most obvious."

"Randy Barnett, the Georgetown law professor who was an intellectual spark plug for the legal arguments against Obamacare, is optimistic about the future. 'The fact that this decision was apparently political, rather than legal, completely undermines its legitimacy as a precedent,' he tells me. 'Its result can be reversed by the people in November, and its weak-tax-power holding reversed by any future Court without pause.'
 
"I won’t go that far, but I will hazard a guess that Chief Justice Roberts is more likely to see his opinion upholding Obamacare collapse, a legal sandcastle blasted and eroded by the shifting tides, than to see it endure as the solid edifice he hoped he had built."

"If there is a modicum of hope in Chief Justice John Roberts's inglorious one-man opinion Thursday, it is that Americans were reminded again that they cannot count on others to protect their liberty. Certainly judges aren't reliable. They can be turned by the pressure of the media and the whims of vanity. If Americans want to repeal ObamaCare, their only recourse is to demand it at the ballot box in November.  

"The Affordable Care Act is more unpopular now than when it passed, yet it will grind on toward implementation in a second Obama term. The President made that clear in his remarks Thursday, deploying the usual half-truths he used to jam the law through Congress. He continued to claim that no one will lose his current health insurance, though millions are sure to do so as they are dropped from business coverage and tossed into Medicaid or government exchanges. ...   

"It is now undeniable that Mr. Obama has imposed the largest tax increase in history on the middle class. ..."

"Whether ObamaCare was affirmed or overturned by the ladies and men in robes, nothing was going to change one unimpeachable fact: From day one, the Obama health-care legislation was swimming against the tides of history. It was a legislative monolith out of sync with an iPad world. In the era of the smartphone, ObamaCare was rotary-dial health reform. ... 

"The public sector of its nature will always be behind the curve. But does it have to be routinely out of it, as Washington is now? The American people await a national politician or political party whose public policies at least occupy the same universe that the electronic tablet represents -- real value that can be altered and upgraded to admit new realities.

"Over time, a health-care dinosaur like ObamaCare was likely to implode under its own weight. It was inevitable that some future Congress would be forced to allow the delivery of medicine to join the rest of us in the 21st century. With or without the Supreme Court's thoughts Thursday on the constitutionality of the Affordable Care Act, that day lies in the future."

"If Obamacare is tossed aside in whole or in part by the Supreme Court tomorrow, history will view the bill as one of the most remarkable blunders made by any president  -- both in terms of policy and politics. Even if it is upheld, Obama will have to carry it as an albatross into the fall campaign knowing that the majority of likely voters want it repealed, and they can accomplish that goal in only one way: removing him from office."

"Arizona bears the brunt of the country’s illegal immigration problem. Its citizens feel themselves under siege by large numbers of illegal immigrants who invade their property, strain their social services, and even place their lives in jeopardy. Federal officials have been unable to remedy the problem, and indeed have recently shown that they are simply unwilling to do so. 

"Arizona has moved to protect its sovereignty -- not in contradiction of federal law, but in complete compliance with it. The laws under challenge here do not extend or revise federal immigration restrictions, but merely enforce those restrictions more effectively. If securing its territory in this fashion is not within the power of Arizona, we should cease referring to it as a sovereign State. For these reasons, I dissent."

"As Barack Obama’s lead over Mitt Romney in the polls narrows, and his presumed fundraising advantage seems about to become a disadvantage, it’s alibi time for some of his backers.  

"His problem, they say, is that some voters don’t like him because he’s black. Or they don’t like his policies because they don’t like having a black president. 

"So, you see, if you don’t like Obamacare, it’s not because it threatens to take away your health insurance, or to deny coverage for some treatments. It’s because you don’t like black people. ... 

"There’s an obvious problem with the racism alibi: Barack Obama has run for president before, and he won. Voters in 2008 knew he was black. Most of them voted for him. He carried 28 states and won 365 electoral votes."