"Late last week saw the first leaks of the administration's draft regulations for implementing the ObamaCare law -- and everything is playing out just as the critics warned.

"The 3,000-odd pages of legislation left most of the really important (and controversial) policy decisions to the regulations that government agencies were told to issue once the bill passed. Now that those regs are starting to take shape, it's clear that the Obama team is using its new power to exert tight control over the payment and delivery of all formerly 'private' health insurance.

"Critics warned that the Obama bill meant a federal takeover of health care, with Washington bureaucrats making core decisions about medical care. With ObamaCare taking shape, that's exactly what consumers are getting. Saying 'we told you so' is no consolation to those who took the president at his word."

"Any day now, after thorough interagency review, the Standing Committee for Posterior Selection will have given provisional approval for a working list of asses for POTUS to kick with an OSHA-approved shoe. Alas, final environmental-impact statements are pending. But once that hurdle is cleared, the president will focus like a laser on ass-kicking."

"Private-sector job creation almost stopped in May. The 41,000 jobs created were dwarfed by the 411,000 temporary and low-wage government jobs needed to administer the census. Last year's stimulus having failed to hold unemployment below 8 percent as predicted, Barack Obama might advocate another stimulus -- amending Article I, Section 2 of the Constitution, which mandates a census every 10 years. If it were every year, he could take credit for creating 564,000 -- the current number of census takers -- permanent jobs.

"May's 41,000 jobs were one-fifth of the April number and substantially fewer than half the number needed to keep pace with the normal growth of the labor force. This is evidence against the theory that a growing government can be counted on to produce prosperity because a government dollar spent has a reliable multiplier effect as it ripples through the economy from which the government took the dollar."

"Oh, those 'mama grizzlies, they rise up.' So says Sarah Palin, rightfully, and it bears repeating after two high-flying lady Republicans she championed swept to victory on Tuesday. In South Carolina, Nikki Haley outdistanced three rivals in the GOP gubernatorial primary (falling just short of a majority, but she is heavily favored to win the runoff on June 22), while in California, Carly Fiorina held off four Republicans in a crowded Senate primary. Their wins are Palin’s, too.

"Haley and Fiorina are examples of what Palin last month called an 'emerging, conservative, feminist identity' in the GOP. In other words, the rise of Palinistas: smart, pro-life conservative women who succeed with style — and a dash of controversy. The latter they address with a smile, and, Thatcher-like, with a quick quip or a swift kick."

"Robust job growth requires boldness and risk-taking in the private sector. What we have now is boldness and risk-taking in the public sector. It is loading as much debt onto the balance sheet as possible, and creating the predicate for more regulation, spending and taxes. We have active government and hesitant entrepreneurs. 

"Late in the Great Depression, Franklin Roosevelt's treasury secretary, Henry Morgenthau, told Congress, 'We are spending more than we have ever spent before, and it does not work.' Democrats have made Morgenthau's plaint their governing ethic. In so doing, they are demonstrating their political and intellectual bankruptcy even faster than they are bankrupting the country."

"If the time-honored tradition of the political meeting is not quite dead, it seems to be teetering closer to extinction. Of the 255 Democrats who make up the majority in the House, only a handful held town-hall-style forums as legislators spent last week at home in their districts.

"It was no scheduling accident.

"With images of overheated, finger-waving crowds still seared into their minds from the discontent of last August, many Democrats heeded the advice of party leaders and tried to avoid unscripted question-and-answer sessions. The recommendations were clear: hold events in controlled settings — a bank or credit union, for example — or tour local businesses or participate in community service projects.

"And to reach thousands of constituents at a time, without the worry of being snared in an angry confrontation with voters, more lawmakers are also taking part in a fast-growing trend: the telephone town meeting, where chances are remote that a testy exchange will wind up on YouTube."

"In Chicago politics, there's an old term for the publicly subsidized pay-offs and positions meted out to the corruptocrats' friends and special interests: boodle.

"In the age of Obama, Hope and Change is all about the boodle. So it was with the stimulus. And the massive national service expansion. And the health care bill. And the financial reform bill. And the blossoming job-trading scandals engulfing the White House.

"There's always been an ageless, interdependent relationship between Windy City politicos and 'goo-goos' (the cynical Chicago term for good government reformers). Chicago-style 'reform' has always entailed the redistribution of wealth and power under the guise of public service. And it has inevitably led to more corruption."

"Nothing is going to help Obama unless and until the engineers come up with a method for shutting down this gusher of pollution. He clearly couldn't prevent it, and he was slow in signaling its severity. But he owns it now and until it is over, the man who aspired to be the next John Kennedy or maybe Franklin Roosevelt will have to hope he doesn't end up as Jimmy Carter."

"Every week brings fresh bad news about Obamacare. Many companies are considering dropping their health coverage as a result of the incentives the law creates. Small businesses are reporting that the law’s tax credits are encouraging them not to make new hires. Most people with preexisting conditions, who were supposed to be the chief beneficiaries of the law, will be left out from its high-risk pools: There are 4 million of them, but enough funding for only 200,000. The Department of Health and Human Services is already behind schedule in implementing the law. And the director of the Congressional Budget Office, appointed by Democrats, denies that the law will reduce the pressure of health spending on the budget.

"Republicans ought to be seizing on each revelation to press the case for repealing Obamacare. It is, after all, the worst law the Democrats have enacted on Obama’s watch; and it is also the GOP’s best issue in this year’s elections. Instead Republicans have largely allowed the Democrats to switch the subject from their unpopular health-care legislation to financial regulation, oil spills, and immigration. They have been reacting to the news instead of trying to make it."

"The effort to destroy the Jewish state has many fronts. One front is in Iran, where the maniacal regime that has repeatedly promised to 'wipe Israel off the map' marches inexorably toward a nuclear bomb. Another is in Gaza, from which Hamas has lobbed 10,000 missiles into Israeli cities. Yet another front, the most insidious, is comprised of the propaganda arm of the Palestinian movement. And this front thrives for only one reason — the complicity of the world press and the so-called 'international community.'

"It was the propaganda arm that staged the 'Freedom Flotilla.' But there have been many previous productions:  The propaganda arm was responsible for the photo-shopped images of damage to Lebanon during the 2006 war, the staged 'death' of twelve-year-old Muhammad al-Durrah, the 'massacre' at Jenin, and the 'war crimes' in Gaza...

"Today, in the wake of the confrontation between Israeli soldiers and the provocateurs aboard the Gaza flotilla, the remarkably incurious world press is providing exactly the sort of headlines on which the organizers knew they could count."