"With incumbents toppling and party establishments cracking, there is talk of November being a 'reform' election. Don't be fooled: There is political reform and there is Political Reform. Political reform with a small 'r' comes and goes on tiny politicians' feet. Big-R Reform changes the nation... 

"When the history of this Reform is written, the event that ignited it may be the Obama health-care plan. The year spent with that legislation caused something to snap in American politics.

"ObamaCare touched live cables buried beneath the political roadbed. Amid a deep recession, it was very expensive, and its cost required an array of new taxes and fees. Normally the trillion-dollar price tag might have rolled past a public numbed to spending numbers. This came right after the nearly trillion-dollar stimulus bill, itself a cats-and-dogs heave of taxpayer cash. The health-care celebration was followed by passage of a $3.8 trillion federal budget claiming nearly 25% of GDP."

"The more striking movement in public opinion over time has been the erosion of confidence in the country's big institutions, starting with but not limited to the government. Twenty years ago, 42% of Americans said they trusted the government to do what was right just about always or most of the time. By this month, in the Journal/NBC News poll, that number was down to 25%.

"A stunning 31% said they 'almost never' trust the government to do the right thing."

"President Obama and Democrats on Capitol Hill are publicly fretting about the dangers of spending and debt, which can mean only one thing: Another big spending 'stimulus' bill is in the works. And sure enough, the House plans to vote this week on $190 billion in new spending, $134 billion of which it won't even pretend to pay for."

"Several months ago, a group of logistics officers at the Industrial College of the Armed Forces developed a national security strategy as a class exercise. Their No. 1 recommendation for maintaining U.S. global leadership was 'restore fiscal responsibility.'

"That's a small illustration of what's becoming a consensus among national security experts inside and outside the Obama administration: To play an effective role in the world, the United States must rebuild its economic strength at home. After a decade of war and financial crisis, America has run up debts that pose a national security problem, not just an economic one."

"It suits Democrats to treat immigration as an issue of 'race' and discrimination, because it permits them to frighten Hispanic Americans and secure that important voting bloc. But it’s a fiction. We have an immigration problem because the U.S. is an incredibly desirable place to live and work. Immigrants continue to enrich our society, not least because they are often more appreciative of our institutions and liberties than are the native born. If it were feasible, millions of people worldwide would come here. And millions wait patiently, sometimes for decades, for the chance to do so. Democrats worry ostentatiously about the unfairness of asking people to prove their legal status. What about the unfairness of giving an advantage to line jumpers over those who abide by the law and wait their turn?"

"There are many theories for why very conservative Republicans seem to be doing so well lately, taking their party’s Senate nominations in Florida, Kentucky and Utah, and beating Democrats head-to-head in Massachusetts, New Jersey and Virginia. Some attribute this to a generalized anti-incumbent mood. Others say it reflects the tendency of parties in power to falter in midterm elections. Recently it has been fashionable to ascribe right-wing success to the Tea Party movement.

"But the most obvious explanation is the one that’s been conspicuously absent from the gusher of analysis. Republican success in 2010 can be boiled down to two words: Rush Limbaugh.

"Mr. Limbaugh has played an important role in elections going back to 1994, when he commanded the air war in the Republican Congressional victory. This time, however, he is more than simply the mouthpiece of the party. He is the brains and the spirit behind its resurgence."

"House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer, D-Md., recently announced that Congress will not pass a budget resolution this year. That hasn't happened since Congress adopted the landmark Budget Control and Impoundment Act of 1974, which among much else was supposed to streamline and rationalize the federal budgeting process. The 1974 bill requires an annual budget resolution agreed to by the budget committees of the Senate and the House as an outline of congressional spending priorities for the coming year. But it's not hard to figure out why there won't be such a resolution this year: Democrats want voters to know as little as possible before the November elections about their plans to continue spending, taxing and borrowing at historic levels."

"Mr. Blumenthal owes the people of Connecticut, and particularly its veterans, a thorough explanation for the very serious questions that have been raised over what appears to be a long history of dishonest statements.  If you can’t trust him to tell the truth about whether or not he served in Vietnam, you have wonder what exactly can you trust about Richard Blumenthal."

"If you want to watch someone squirm, take a look at the two-minute videotape of Attorney General Eric Holder dodging Republican representative Lamar Smith’s question of whether 'radical Islam' motivated the Times Square bomber.

"Holder, who last year called America 'a nation of cowards' for refusing to talk frankly about race, plainly didn’t want to say what is plain to everyone else, that Faisal Shahzad, back from five months in Waziristan, launched his terror attack because of his Islamist beliefs."

"Wouldn’t it be grand if the Obama administration cared more about policing our borders than about policing our refrigerators? How about fixing our deportation system instead of fixing our junk-food diets?

"First lady Michelle Obama argued this week that obesity is a 'national security' issue. But her husband allows far greater threats to go unabated. The FBI’s arrests of two Boston-area men tied to the Times Square bombing attempt — both held on immigration violations — underscore the continuing homeland-security lapses...

"There are currently more than 2 million illegal-alien visa overstayers in the country, along with an estimated 500,000 illegal-alien absconders who have ignored orders from immigration judges to leave the country. Voluntary departure policies — granting illegal aliens the privilege of deporting themselves on an honor system — have allowed countless lawbreakers to remain in the country. There are federal laws mandating up to 20 years in jail for those who re-enter the U.S. illegally after being deported, but the provisions are enforced sporadically."