"Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. on Tuesday entered the turbulent political waters of voting rights, signaling that the Justice Department would be aggressive in reviewing new voting laws that civil rights advocates say will dampen minority participation in next year’s elections.   

"Declaring in a speech that protecting ballot access for all eligible voters 'must be viewed not only as a legal issue but as a moral imperative,' Mr. Holder urged Americans to 'call on our political parties to resist the temptation to suppress certain votes in the hope of attaining electoral success and, instead, achieve success by appealing to more voters.' 

"The speech by Mr. Holder could inflame a smoldering partisan dispute over race and ballot access as the 2012 campaign cycle intensifies. It comes as the Justice Department’s civil rights division is scrutinizing a series of new state voting laws that were enacted — largely by Republican officials — in the name of fighting fraud. 

"Mr. Holder spoke here at the presidential library of Lyndon B. Johnson, who signed the Voting Rights Act in 1965. The act enables the civil rights division to object to election laws and practices on the grounds that they would disproportionately deter minority groups from voting — even if there is no evidence of discriminatory intent — and to go to court to block states from putting the laws in place."

"The headline reads like something from The Onion: 'U.S. Navy Paying $15 a Gallon for Green Fuel.' But it’s real enough. 

"It seems that, fresh from its success with Solyndra, the Obama administration is slated to spend $12 million to buy a biofuel/gasoline blend that runs $15 a gallon to power a portion of the Navy’s fleet in a demonstration project."

"DES MOINES - Saturday night's Republican presidential debate was billed as a showdown between front-runners Newt Gingrich and Mitt Romney, but each of the six candidates who took the stage at Drake University embraced the spotlight at various points and reminded a national television audience that the race for the Republican nomination remains deeply unsettled with just over three weeks to go before voting begins."

"Holder and Blago go way back. Holder himself suffered selective amnesia about the relationship during his confirmation hearing. He somehow 'forgot' to mention that Blagojevich had appointed him to probe corruption in Illinois casino licensing decisions. State officials had objected to Blago's crony appointment of fundraiser Christopher Kelly to the state Gaming Board. Kelly's business partner was now-convicted felon and shakedown artist Tony Rezko, Obama's former bagman and real-estate fixer. 

"Holder pocketed $300,000 from Blago to 'investigate' and -- surprise, surprise -- concluded that no corruption existed. They stood shoulder to shoulder at a 2004 news conference to make the announcement. But Holder failed to disclose it on his Senate Judiciary Committee questionnaire, which he signed five days after Blagojevich's arrest in December 2008 for putting Obama's U.S. Senate seat up for sale."

"What the Democratic base would get out of an Obama re-election is political power, which counts for something. It lets you tell other people what to do. But nothing in that Kansas speech, especially the wealth taxes, will produce real growth in the dry economy America has had for three years. Strong growth is the only solution to the Osawatomie catalog of horrors. If he wins, five years from now, the president's base will be about where it and nearly everyone else is today, trying to stay afloat in Barack Obama's still waters."

“I believe that I interpret the will of the Congress and of the people when I assert that we will not only defend ourselves to the uttermost, but will make it very certain that this form of treachery shall never again endanger us. 

"Hostilities exist. There is no blinking at the fact that our people, our territory, and our interests are in grave danger. 

"With confidence in our armed forces, with the unbounding determination of our people, we will gain the inevitable triumph -- so help us God.”

"The Trump debate is a sideshow, and those who would be the Republican nominee for the presidency of the United States are, one and all, better than it. The nominating process must be about which candidate can lead the country back to fiscal and economic reality, not about which candidate can best truckle with a reality-TV star."

"It was all a lie. The angry denials, the high dudgeon, the how-dare-you accuse-us bleating emanating from Eric Holder’s Justice Department these last nine months. 

"Operation Fast and Furious — the 'botched' gun-tracking program run by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives — did, in fact, deliberately allow some 2,000 high-powered weapons to be sold to Mexican drug cartel agents and then waltzed across the border and into the Mexican drug wars — just as Sen. Chuck Grassley and Rep. Darrell Issa, who are leading the congressional investigations, have charged all along. 

"That’s the conclusion we can draw from Friday night’s nearly 1,400-page document dump, which gives us a glimpse into the inner workings of the Justice Department as it struggled earlier this year to come up with an explanation for the deadly mess — and 'misled' Congress."

"It’s Iowa minus one month, and barring yet another resurrection, or something of similar improbability, it’s Mitt Romney versus Newt Gingrich. ...  

 "My own view is that Republicans would have been better served by the candidacies of Mitch Daniels, Paul Ryan, or Chris Christie. Unfortunately, none is running. You play the hand you’re dealt. This is a weak Republican field with two significantly flawed frontrunners contesting an immensely important election. If Obama wins, he will take the country to a place from which it will not be able to return (which is precisely his own objective for a second term). 

"Every conservative has thus to ask himself two questions: Who is more likely to prevent that second term? And who, if elected, is less likely to unpleasantly surprise?"

"The Fed signals that it intends to hitch our national wagon to Europe just as Europe is going over the edge, and the Dow jumps 4 percent. Maybe I’m missing something. 

"All that Bernanke & Co. did yesterday was to lower the dollar-financing cost for banks in Europe, where inter-bank lending is locking up — for good reason. But Europe’s problem is not its banks and their access to dollars. Europe’s banks are in trouble because European government bonds are in trouble, and European government bonds are in trouble because European governments are in trouble. European governments are in trouble because they spend too much money. The Fed can’t change that, and hasn’t tried. 

"The question is: What is the Fed thinking? Is it looking out for the United States, or is it looking out for the banks?"