"Democrats leapt at the chance to use Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker to send a message to all the budget-cutting, union-busting conservatives across the land: If you mess with Big Labor, there’s a heavy price to pay. 

"But if you shoot at the king, you’d better not miss. 

"And with Walker suddenly looking as if he might survive the recall, it appears he’s only been grazed. 

"Now, instead of tacking Walker’s pelt to their door as a warning to any who would follow him, there’s a prospect the whole thing might backfire by elevating Walker into a tested-by-fire, conservative cult-hero and exposing the limits of the Democrats’ ability to exact revenge in the next statehouse where they’re wronged."

"Trying to figure out Valerie Jarrett’s mysterious hold on Barack and Michelle Obama is a favorite guessing game in the parlors and dining rooms of Washington. No other White House official in history has enjoyed such a unique relationship with both a president and a first lady, and yet the mainstream media have ignored Jarrett’s enormous influence over the shape and direction of the Obama administration. ...

"In the White House pecking order, Jarrett has more clout than the president’s chief of staff. During the savage internecine warfare between Jarrett and Obama’s first two chiefs of staff — Rahm Emanuel and Bill Daley — Obama sided most of the time with Jarrett, a classic limousine liberal who believes that Obama was elected president in order to engineer social change. Ultimately, Jarrett emasculated Emanuel and Daley and forced them from their jobs.
 
"She has also been responsible for much of the incompetence and amateurism that have been the hallmarks of Obama’s time in office. Indeed, Jarrett has been on the wrong side of practically every consequential issue to come across the president’s desk."

"This week Catholic bishops are heading to federal courts across the country to defend religious liberty. On Monday they filed 12 lawsuits on behalf of a diverse group of 43 Catholic entities that are challenging the Department of Health and Human Services' (HHS) sterilization, abortifacient and birth-control insurance mandate. ... 

"The main goal of the mandate is not, as HHS claimed, to protect women's health. It is rather a move to conscript religious organizations into a political agenda, forcing them to facilitate and fund services that violate their beliefs, within their own institutions.

"The media have implied all along that the dispute is mainly of concern to a Catholic minority with peculiar views about human sexuality. But religious leaders of all faiths have been quick to see that what is involved is a flagrant violation of religious freedom. That's why former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee, a Baptist minister, declared, 'We're all Catholics now.'"

"Over the past three years, Obama has pursued the goal of higher tax rates as relentlessly as Captain Ahab pursued the great white whale.
 
"Never mind that by some measures the United States, even with the 'Bush tax cuts,' already has the most progressive tax system in advanced economies. About 40 percent of federal income tax revenues come from the top 1 percent.
 
"And we know from experience that when top rates are increased above Bill Clinton's 39.6 percent, the intake is always less than projected. Since World War II, federal revenues have never risen much over 20 percent of gross domestic product, whether the top rate was 28 percent or 91 percent."

"'If time be of all things the most precious,' Benjamin Franklin said, 'wasting time must be the greatest prodigality.' But he had never heard of a status update. ... 

"Facebook is the world’s foremost purveyor of information you shouldn’t care about. Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg is to uselessness what Henry Ford was to the automobile. He has mastered it on an industrial scale and is riding it to a vast fortune. ... 

"Facebook has transformed oversharing from an annoying habit of the poorly socialized into the very stuff of daily interactions. No thought is too banal, no event too minor, no mood too passing, no photo too embarrassing to be posted on Facebook."

"It’s always dangerous to ascribe singular purpose to a collective entity like 'the media.' Of course, there are individual figures who, despite whatever personal biases they may have, are trying their best to be fair. But as a generalization, the mainstream media are so deep in the bunker for Obama, they could ride out a nuclear war without having their Jenga tower fall over. 

"... In football, they sometimes refer to the cheerleading and noise from the fans as the 'twelfth man' on the (normally eleven-man) team. The media are revving themselves up to be Obama’s twelfth man, and the time is coming for Romney to call them on it, with passion."

"Late last week JPMorgan Chase announced that it had lost some $2.3 billion, and possibly more, as a result of bad investment decisions made by its risk-hedging operation. ...

"The federal government borrows more than $2.3 billion every day. But that’s only the tip of the iceberg when it comes to government failure and stupidity. The federal government will spend $668 billion this year on 126 separate anti-poverty programs, but fail to reduce poverty. The federal government will spend another $67 billion on education, but fail to educate our children. Government job-training programs actually leave workers less prepared for employment than before they received the training. ...

"Where’s the accountability? Where’s the outrage? Who is being fired? The government drops $535 million on Solyndra (roughly a quarter of what JPMorgan Chase just lost), but Energy Secretary Steven Chu still has his job. The new health-care bill turns out to cost far more than advertised, adding hundreds of billions to the federal deficit, and HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius is hardly asked a tough question."

"The current issue of Newsweek has a photo of President Obama with a rainbow-colored halo superimposed over his head and the title 'The First Gay President.' 

"Nonsense. Obama is not the first gay president. He is the first female president. 

"Consider his activities on Monday: He sat down to tape a session with the ladies of ABC’s 'The View' — his fourth appearance on the talk show by women and for (mostly) women. He accepted an award from Barnard College and gave the commencement speech to graduates of the women’s school. Heck, he even appeared in public wearing a gown."

"Staggering under an avalanche of bad news regarding the economy, Obama’s presidential campaign took another hit over the weekend as the New York Post detailed divisions amongst Democrats and radicals, including charges that Obama tried to buy the silence of his controversial Chicago pastor Rev. Jeremiah Wright.  
 
"Author Edward Klein in his new book The Amateur writes that Obama offered his long-time radical preacher and pastor $150,000 in hush money for staying out of the spotlight during Obama’s 2008 run for president."

"[I]n the middle of the night of May 7-8, 2012, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu shocked his country by bringing the main opposition party, Kadima, into a national unity government. Shocking because just hours earlier, the Knesset was expediting a bill to call early elections in September. ... 

"Netanyahu forfeited September elections that would have given him four more years in power. He chose instead to form a national coalition that guarantees 18 months of stability — 18 months during which, if the world does not act to stop Iran, Israel will. 

"And it will not be the work of one man, one party or one ideological faction. As in 1967, it will be the work of a nation."