"That was a close one.

"Police and federal agents were still searching last night for suspects in Saturday night's attempted car bombing in the heart of Times Square -- averted when an alert street vendor notified police.

"But whether the culprit was an agent of Islamist terrorism or domestic nihilism -- or a deranged lone wolf -- the events on West 45th Street were a frightening reminder that New York City remains smack in the crosshairs of a whole lot of people nursing murderous grudges."

"We are at a remarkable moment. We have an open, 2,000-mile border to our south, and the entity with the power to enforce the law and impose safety and order will not do it. Wall Street collapsed, taking Main Street's money with it, and the government can't really figure out what to do about it because the government itself was deeply implicated in the crash, and both political parties are full of people whose political careers have been made possible by Wall Street contributions. Meanwhile we pass huge laws, bills so comprehensive, omnibus and transformative that no one knows what's in them and no one — literally, no one — knows how exactly they will be executed or interpreted. Citizens search for new laws online, pore over them at night, and come away knowing no more than they did before they typed 'dot-gov.'

"It is not that no one's in control. Washington is full of people who insist they're in control and who go to great lengths to display their power. It's that no one takes responsibility and authority. Washington daily delivers to the people two stark and utterly conflicting messages: 'We control everything' and 'You're on your own.'

"All this contributes to a deep and growing alienation between the people of America and the government of America in Washington."

"Ready to show your papers? Mexico's National Catalog of Foreigners tracks all outside tourists and foreign nationals. A National Population Registry tracks and verifies the identity of every member of the population, who must carry a citizens' identity card. Visitors who do not possess proper documents and identification are subject to arrest as illegal aliens."

"The President says the Arizona law is 'misguided.' His attorney general says it's 'unfortunate.'  In San Francisco, they're talking about boycotting the state. Al Sharpton is on the way to lead marches and Linda Greenhouse, the esteemed legal affairs commentator of The New York Times, says she will boycott Arizona because, she says, it is now a police state where 'breathing while undocumented' is a crime...

"But it's already a federal crime to enter the U.S. illegally. The new law just makes it a state crime, too...

"In fact, once you actually read this law, it becomes clear the fuss over it has little to do with breathing in Arizona and a lot to do with hyperventilating in Washington."

"Arizona’s offense is to attempt to enforce the nation’s immigration laws, in the absence of any serious commitment to do so on the part of the federal government or our political class...

"Once millions of illegal aliens are in the country, there’s no neat way to get them back out. It’s much better to endeavor to stop them at the southern border, something Washington still refuses to do. During the last eruption of the national immigration debate, Congress passed a law mandating a fence along the border. The Bush administration bid it down to a high-tech 'virtual fence.' And the Obama administration has ceased constructing even that. If the federal government had been in charge of building the Great Wall, it wouldn’t have been great or a wall."

"The Obama Democrats' stealth strategy for increasing the size and scope of the federal government is well underway, despite huge voter backlash. Federal spending has been increased from a 30-year average of 21 percent of gross domestic product to 25 percent, and a bipartisan commission tasked with reducing the deficit may recommend tax increases.

"Presidential economic adviser Paul Volcker has already called for a value-added tax, a form of national sales tax, and presidential press secretary Robert Gibbs has declined to rule it out.

"The assumption in some quarters is that a tax increase is inevitable and that the public won't allow any significant decrease in public spending. But there's reason to question that assumption."

"Now the liberals run the government and they're using their power to implement their radical agenda. Mr. Obama and his party believe that the election of November 2008 entitled them to make permanent, 'transformational' changes to our society. In just 16 months they've added more than $2 trillion to the national debt, essentially nationalized the health-care system, the student-loan industry, and have their sights set on draconian cap-and-trade regulations on carbon emissions and amnesty for illegal aliens.

"Had President Obama campaigned on this agenda, he wouldn't have garnered 30% of the popular vote.

"Like the millions of citizens who've peacefully risen up and attended thousands of rallies in protest, I seek nothing more than the preservation of the social contract that undergirds our society. I do not hate the government, as the left does when it is not running it. I love this country. And because I do, I insist that the temporary inhabitants of high political office comply with the Constitution, honor our God-given unalienable rights, and respect our hard-earned private property. For this I am called seditious, among other things, by some of the very people who've condemned this society?"

"Climategate, Copenhagen, Snowmageddon in the nation’s capital, the EPA ruling that CO2 endangers us all, and Senate Republicans pushing for a global-warming tax. Has it been a great run-up to Earth Day, or what?

"Never has a public-policy agenda been pursued with so little regard for scientific fact or for public opinion...

"Yes, it has been quite a year. Climategate. The failure in Copenhagen. The EPA issuing an endangerment finding in which the core scientific fact turns out to have been cooked. The IPCC blow-up. And yet Lindsey Graham and President Obama are dead-set on cramming a new global-warming tax down our throats. How they figure to sell this policy in light of what has happened since November is anyone’s guess. Damn the data; full speed ahead!"

"I attended the Cincinnati Tax Day Tea Party rally as a speaker. But it was more interesting to be an observer.

"First, here's what I didn't see. I didn't see a single racist or bigoted sign or hear a single such comment. Nor did I see any evidence of 'homegrown fascism.' Though in fairness, such things are often in the eye of the beholder, now that dissent has gone from being the highest form of patriotism under George W. Bush to the most common form of racism under Barack Obama...

"Going by what I saw in Cincinnati, second to a profound desire to rein in government, the chief attitude driving the 39 percent of tea partiers who describe themselves as 'very conservative' isn't partisanship, racism or seizing the Sudetenland from Czechoslovakia. It's 'we won't be fooled again.' In the near term, that spells trouble for Obama and Democrats. In the long term, that lays down a serious gauntlet for Republicans."

"How did Democrats fall so fast, and take perceptions of government down with them? If the weak economy has hurt, so has what they’ve done and how they’ve done it. Their two signature initiatives -- the stimulus and health care -- constitute massive expansions of government, passed on partisan votes in a sloppy, heedless rush. If Congress doesn’t even know whether it eliminated its own health insurance in Obamacare -- it’s studying the matter closely -- how careful was it with yours?"