"Democrats are deriding last night's House vote to repeal ObamaCare as 'symbolic,' and it was, but that is not the same as meaningless. The stunning political reality is that a new entitlement that was supposed to be a landmark of liberal governance has been repudiated by a majority of one chamber of Congress only 10 months after it passed. This sort of thing never happens... 

"The GOP does need to craft a reform alternative based on competition and market incentives that is more than a return to the status quo ante. And while 'repeal and replace' can't happen as long as Mr. Obama wields veto power, yesterday's vote sent an important signal to voters that ObamaCare can't be fixed at the margins when it is so destructive at its core. Next up: defunding the law's implementation and repealing some of its more pernicious parts."

"President Barack Obama penned a witty Wall Street Journal op-ed this week, titled 'Toward a 21st-Century Regulatory System.'

"In it, he extolled the virtues of a free market system. And to prove that his admiration of capitalism has nothing to do with naked political expediency, Obama signed an executive order that will 'root out regulations that conflict, that are not worth the cost, or that are just plain dumb'... 

"When Obama was in a place of political comfort, the free market was a place of unhinged self-interest, unfairness and misery. Nearly all of our troubles were portrayed as a case of regulatory neglect -- and nearly every dilemma was met accordingly. 

"Nothing's changed but the political conditions."

"People are awakening to the seminal fact of left-wing success: The only way the left can succeed in America is by libeling the right. Only 20 percent of Americans label themselves liberal, let alone left. How, then, do Leftists get elected? And why don't more Americans call themselves conservative when, in fact, so many share conservatives' values? 

"The answer to both questions is that through its dominance of the news media, entertainment media and educational institutions, the left has been able to successfully demonize the right for at least half a century."

"Americans talk too much and think too little, especially when it comes to the sins and sorrows of others. There is 'a time to keep silence and a time to speak,' Ecclesiastes teaches. When a tragedy like the one in Tucson strikes, most of us would do well to keep silence, and leave the speaking for those with the humanity and wisdom to say something meaningful." 

"Illinois this week earned the honor of becoming the first state in 2011 to sock it to taxpayers, passing a tax hike the size of Lake Michigan. Citizens cried out, legislators deflected, but the most interesting response came from neighboring Wisconsin, where newly elected GOP Gov. Scott Walker had three words for Illinois businesses: 'Escape to Wisconsin.' 

"Across the country, dozens of new governors are taking office, fine-tuning state-of-the-state addresses, polishing budgets. With each event we are seeing a growing national divide.

"On one side are wide swathes of the country that this past midterm elected reformers intent on slashing spending and reviving growth. On the other are the holdout pockets—Illinois, California, Massachusetts, Connecticut—drifting further into the abyss of tax and spend. The chasm has huge implications, not just for local and regional politics but for Washington."

"Vivid political rhetoric is always in season, and has been for all the years of our republic. And military metaphors are part of the language of our politics -- metaphors that no serious person takes literally. We should not let it be otherwise, even as we wish for the full recovery of Gabby Giffords and the others stricken and mourn those lost."

"The charge: The Tucson massacre is a consequence of the 'climate of hate' created by Sarah Palin, the Tea Party, Glenn Beck, Obamacare opponents and sundry other liberal betes noires. 

"The verdict: Rarely in American political discourse has there been a charge so reckless, so scurrilous and so unsupported by evidence."

"These accusations — that political actors contributed to the murder of 6 people, including a 9-year-old girl — are extremely grave. They were made despite the fact that there was, and is, no evidence that Loughner was part of these movements or a consumer of their literature. They were made despite the fact that the link between political rhetoric and actual violence is extremely murky. They were vicious charges made by people who claimed to be criticizing viciousness.

"Yet such is the state of things. We have a news media that is psychologically ill informed but politically inflamed, so it naturally leans toward political explanations. We have a news media with a strong distaste for Sarah Palin and the Tea Party movement, and this seemed like a golden opportunity to tarnish them. We have a segmented news media, so there is nobody in most newsrooms to stand apart from the prevailing assumptions. We have a news media market in which the rewards go to anybody who can stroke the audience’s pleasure buttons."

"I understand the desperation that Democrats must feel after taking a historic beating in the midterm elections and seeing the popularity of ObamaCare plummet while voters flee the party in droves. But those who purport to care about the health of our political community demonstrate precious little actual concern for America's political well-being when they seize on any pretext, however flimsy, to call their political opponents accomplices to murder.

"Where is the decency in that?"

"What originalism is to jurisprudence, constitutionalism is to governance: a call for restraint rooted in constitutional text. Constitutionalism as a political philosophy represents a reformed, self-regulating conservatism that bases its call for minimalist government — for reining in the willfulness of presidents and legislatures — in the words and meaning of the Constitution.

"Hence that highly symbolic moment on Thursday when the 112th House of Representatives opened with a reading of the Constitution. Remarkably, this had never been done before — perhaps because it had never been so needed. The reading reflected the feeling, expressed powerfully in the last election, that we had moved far, especially the past two years, from a government constitutionally limited by its enumerated powers to a government constrained only by its perception of social need."