"Does the United States still stand as a beacon of hope to the oppressed around the world? Human-rights lawyer and Chinese folk hero Chen Guangcheng thought we did. That’s why he risked his life to get to the United States Embassy in Beijing. But it was there he was betrayed for a few trillion shekels of yuan.
 
"Human-rights activists around the world rejoiced when Chen -- blind since birth -- managed to escape house arrest and reach the perceived safety of the embassy. That relief turned to shock six days later, when the United States pressured Chen to leave, promising that they would stay with him in the hospital as he received treatment for injuries sustained during his escape.

"Yet, Chen told CNN that once he reached the hospital the U.S. officials disappeared. Remember: he’s blind. The U.S. Embassy staff left an injured blind man who is an enemy of the state in the custody of his totalitarian oppressors. ...

"If only this was just incompetence. It seems so much worse."

"While President Obama’s been busy on his globe-spanning 'OBL: I Got Him!' victory tour, the fragile U.S. recovery seems to have been crashing into the rocks.

"Wall Street economists spent yesterday taking a second and third look at their forecasts for tomorrow’s (now) much-dreaded April employment report — because job-tracker ADP said yesterday that companies hired a paltry 119,000 people last month. It was the smallest gain in seven months and way below the 177,000 that analysts were expecting.

"Even worse, new orders for factory goods in March showed their biggest decline since 2008, smack in the middle of the worst downturn since the Great Depression.

"Too bad Obama can’t plausibly take a victory lap for his stewardship of the economy other than to try and argue, 'I kept us out of a depression.'"

"Elizabeth Warren is the Harvard law professor running for Senate in Massachusetts as a Democratic populist-progressive champion. But don't call her 'Elizabeth Warren.' Call her 'Pinocchio-hontas,' 'Chief Full-of-Lies,' 'Running Joke' or 'Sacaja-whiner.' 

"Warren has claimed questionable Native American minority status for years to reap career 'diversity' benefits. Now, Cherokee leaders, campaign rival GOP Sen. Scott Brown and an army of Twitter detractors have called her out for gaming the racial-preference system. Live by identity politics, die by identity politics. 

"The Boston Herald reported last Friday that Harvard administrators 'prominently touted Warren's Native American background ... in an effort to bolster their diversity hiring record in the '90s as the school came under heavy fire for a faculty that was then predominantly white and male.' When asked for proof of her tribal heritage, Warren's campaign first denied that she had ever bragged about it. But from 1986 to 1995, Warren listed herself as a minority professor in a professional law school directory."

"Election Day 2012 will not be a presidential election. It will be a plebiscite. 

"Americans will not only be voting for a president (and a House and a third of the Senate). They will be participating in a plebiscite on the definition of America. 

"If Americans re-elect the Democrat, Barack Obama, they will have announced that America should be like Western European countries -- governed by left-wing values. Americans will have decided that America's value system -- 'Liberty,' 'In God We Trust,' 'E Pluribus Unum' -- should be replaced. 

"The election in November is therefore a plebiscite on the American Revolution. The usual description of presidential elections -- 'the most important in our lifetime' -- is true this time. In fact, it may be the most important election since the Civil War, and possibly since America's founding."

"If insanity is doing the same thing again and again but expecting a different outcome, then the federal government's strategy for keeping higher education affordable is crazier than Norman Bates. ...

"Directly or indirectly, government loans and grants have led to massive tuition inflation. That has been a boon for colleges and universities, where budgets, payrolls, and amenities have grown amazingly lavish. And it has been a boon for politicians, Republicans and Democrats alike, who are happy to exploit anxiety over tuition to win votes. 
 
"But for students and their families, let alone for taxpayers who don't go to college, it has been a disaster. The more government has done to make higher education affordable, the more unaffordable it has become. Doing more of the same won't yield a different outcome. By now, even Norman Bates would have figured that out."

"Washington Post‘s Rosalind S. Helderman tells her readers that Arizona’s anti-illegal immigration law, S.B. 1070, is 'deeply unpopular with Latino voters.'  Really? A very recent Quinnipiac poll found that 49% of Hispanics oppose the law, but 47% approve of it.  If thats 'deeply unpopular' I wouldn’t want to be President Obama."

"In 1972, a young aide named Patrick Buchanan suggested that Richard Nixon frame the presidential campaign as 'square America' vs. 'radical America.' The square won 49 states. 

"Pundits tend to describe Mitt Romney's vanilla disposition as a liability. The Washington Post recently asked, 'Why does Mitt Romney seem so stiff?' But there's a more practical question: How much does it matter? 

"Stiffs can become president, even in this television age. During the 1988 campaign, George H.W. Bush asked reporters, 'What’s wrong with being a boring kind of guy?' The answer came on Election Day. Americans backed the boring guy. ... 

"The GOP presumptive nominee, therefore, need not match Obama’s aplomb -- let alone Reagan’s stage presence. Many presidents could not. He does not need to talk about his iPod playlist or sink three-pointers to win. He may be the underdog. But six in 10 Americans say the nation is on the wrong track. Americans’ distrust of politicians is at historic levels. This public is crying for competence more than compassion."

"A new report finds that the number of Mexican immigrants in the United States has declined for the first time since the Great Depression. As the Supreme Court hears oral arguments today in Eric Holder’s lawsuit against Arizona, it’s worth considering what these findings might mean for immigration policy. ...

"Contrary to those who would declare victory on immigration and push it onto the back burner, the current respite is an opportunity to complete our immigration infrastructure. For example, although E-Verify is now widely used, it’s still not standard for all hiring. Legislation to require it for all hires is held up in Congress, and were it to pass it would face a legal jihad from the ACLU and its fellow-travelers that would last for years. Likewise, we still do not have a proper check-out system for foreign visitors, something that’s especially important because close to half the illegal population (especially non-Mexicans) entered legally and then never left. And, despite the howls from the Left (and from some on the right), any real immigration infrastructure requires systematic and routine cooperation among local, state, and federal governments, so that every illegal immigrant who encounters the authorities is identified and removed."

"Watching the slow-motion collapse of the EU, the American people should learn a vital lesson: You can't spend your way to prosperity, and the lavish promises of the never-ending welfare state can't be kept.  
 
"As in the EU, U.S. voters have a choice between more spending, bigger government and higher debt — the European socialist model — or growth, smaller government and fiscal restraint. 
 
"Let's hope they can tell the difference."

"The phrase 'stunning development' is used far too often in our politics, but here is an item that can be described in no other way: Nancy Pelosi and congressional Democrats, frustrated by the fact that the Bill of Rights interferes with their desire to muzzle their political opponents, have proposed to repeal the First Amendment. 

"That is precisely what the so-called People’s Rights Amendment would do. If this amendment were to be enacted, the cardinal rights protected by the First Amendment — free speech, freedom of the press, freedom of assembly, freedom to petition the government for redress of grievances — would be redefined and reduced to the point of unrecognizability. The amendment would hold that the rights protected by the Constitution are enjoyed only by individuals acting individually; individuals acting in collaboration with others would be stripped of those rights. ...

"One of the great dangers of such efforts to regulate political speech is that it puts incumbents in charge of setting the rules of the game under which their power and their position may be challenged. That is a recipe for abuse and corruption, and for smothering those critics who would draw attention to abuse and corruption."