"I was impressed by the President’s analysis of this situation where we have no control over the global price of oil, we’re dependent on oil from unfriendlies and he says, as we heard, drilling for oil to relieve our dependency is not a solution, it’s not a plan; he said we’ve got to go into clean energy and he talked about something really revolutionary today:  algae.

"A 14 million-dollar grant for the development of algae.

"So it’s not oil – his solution – it’s algae.

"And because we know that the Secretary of Energy is a physicist who won the Nobel Prize, the President, knowing all this stuff, said that one of the reasons we that should be doing this is because we can grow algae here in the United States.

"Now, it happens, that algae will grow anywhere on earth.  I looked it up … I did research. It grows in oceans, in lakes, in ponds, in your swimming pool when the pool-man’s on vacation, in snow, in ice, on soil, in soil, on turtles, sloths, the bark of trees and rocks.

"Why are we drilling for oil?  We are the Saudi Arabia of rocks.  We have a mountain range called the Rockies.  And we are allowing ourselves to be dominated by these oil-producers. I think he’s on to something here that is truly revolutionary. 

"Why would you build a pipeline -- the Keystone Pipeline -- that would bring real oil from Canada to put in real refineries and put in real existing cars, when you could do algae?  I think he’s onto something and I think it shows the vision, the hope and change that he promised in 2008."

"Confronted with an energy shortage, Congress debates opening the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge for drilling. Senator Maria Cantwell (D-WA) argues that 'oil extracted from the wildlife refuge wouldn’t reach refineries for seven to ten years.' Senator Jeff Bingaman (D-NM) is more pessimistic, saying 'drilling in ANWR wouldn’t get us any oil for at least ten years.' Leading the successful filibuster of the provision, Senator John Kerry (D-MA) echoes Bingaman, saying, 'If we opened ANWR today it wouldn’t produce any oil for at least ten years.'

"This exchange happened in 2001, when President Bush proposed opening ANWR to drilling in his energy plan. But one need only change some of the details to update the story for today. ...

"Even if oil from ANWR wouldn’t hit the market for a decade, other benefits would accrue during that period. One of the stated reasons for the GOP’s inclusion of ANWR in this year’s highway bill is that the site’s leasing fees would help pay for infrastructure projects. To that end, the CBO predicts $2.5 billion of net federal revenue from ANWR over the next decade. Republicans argue that the figure will be even higher. The preparations for drilling would also create thousands of jobs, though estimates range wildly, from 65,000 to 770,000. Many of these jobs would have to be filled before drilling starts, in order to build the 75-mile pipeline spur required to transport the oil to port.

"In short, the argument that oil from ANWR won’t help for another decade shouldn’t turn anyone off of drilling. Prohibiting all oil drilling in ANWR has brought us nothing except endless arguments about drilling in ANWR."

"According to the Institute for Energy Research, there is enough natural gas in the U.S. to meet electricity demand for 575 years at current fuel demand, enough to fuel homes heated by natural gas for 857 years and more gas in the U.S. than there is in Russia, Iran, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and some place called Turkmenistan combined. Oil? The U.S. Energy Information Administration estimates that the United States could soon overtake Saudi Arabia and Russia to become the world's top oil producer. There are tens of billions of easily accessible barrels of offshore oil here at home -- and much more oil around the world. ...

"Yet in the end, high gas prices are part of the plan. This is what the administration wants."

"A year after the revolution, many Egyptians — already suffering under the weight of a wretched economy — see an undemocratic society where the military and Islamic ideologues are hoarding power while changing nothing. Though some are pleased that a form of law shaped by the Quran is coming to Egypt, others wonder whether they have swapped one corrupt and suppressing dictatorship for another."

"The only thing that is going to stop the Iranians is the fear of a military attack. The U.S. should be helping the Israelis deter Iran’s further nuclear advance by helping them to scare the Iranians into thinking that an attack is coming. Instead, the Obama administration is doing everything possible to telegraph to Iran that we’re terrified of a conflict and are doing everything to prevent it. That’s exactly the same as inviting the Iranians to continue their pursuit of nuclear weapons. If there is an explanation for this, other than incompetence, I would love to know it."

"In 2010, when all this lay hazily in the future, the sheer arrogance of Obamacare energized a popular resistance powerful enough to deliver an electoral shellacking to Obama. Yet two years later, as the consequences of that overreach materialize before our eyes, the issue is fading. This constitutes a huge failing of the opposition party whose responsibility it is to make the opposition argument.

"Every presidential challenger says that he will repeal Obamacare on Day One. Well, yes. But is any of them making the case for why?"

"'Contempt of Congress' is a pretty strong term, and one with tangible legal consequences, but how else to describe Attorney General Eric Holder’s continuing obstructionism in the burgeoning Fast and Furious scandal? ...   

"For months now, Holder has been dodging, obfuscating, withholding evidence and outright lying in his attempt to evade responsibility for the deadly program that has cost the lives of two federal agents and countless Mexican nationals. 

"Contempt of Congress? Contempt for the American people is more like it."

"The Justice Department, beating fierce competition from the CIA, the Department of Homeland Security and others, has won this year’s coveted Rosemary Award, named for President Nixon’s secretary Rose Mary Woods, who somehow erased 18 1/2 minutes of a crucial Watergate tape. 

"The seventh annual award, presented by the George Washington University-based National Security Archive, honors the agency that has done the very most in the last year to enhance government secrecy and keep the public in the dark."

"President Obama’s fourth budget promises a fourth straight year of trillion-dollar deficits, a fourth straight year of masking new spending with lame gimmickry, and a fourth straight year of asking Congress to yoke the American people with a historically massive tax hike. It is a budget with all the courage and resolve of an intentional walk, and just in time for spring training. 

"It is a budget that spends a staggering $47 trillion over ten years and capitulates to the inevitability of a national debt larger than the national economy, assuring that by 2022 our interest payments alone will reach $1 trillion a year. It is a budget that hikes income, estate, and other taxes by $1.9 trillion over ten years, and uses that revenue not to reduce the deficit or shore up our existing entitlement commitments but on a raft of new stimuli that are as substantively dubious as they are politically opportunistic. 

"It is a budget that claims $4 trillion in deficit reduction through a series of cheap tricks that don’t stand up to even the gentlest of scrutiny. ... "

"The bottom line is simple. When people get rich by providing goods and services in a competitive market, that’s capitalism. When they get rich because of subsidies, bailouts, preferences, and handouts provided by the ruling class, that’s Argentina. 

"I have no idea whether Buffett is corrupt, but I know he is benefiting from a corrupt system. So it’s understandable that people like me suspect that his endorsement of higher taxes is not because of a mistaken view of fiscal policy, but rather because he wants to do something nice for the politicians who rig the rules to give him more wealth."