"'Stop messing with Texas!' That was the message Gov. Rick Perry bellowed on election night as he celebrated his victory over Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison in the Republican primary for governor. In his reference to Texas' anti-littering slogan, Perry was making a point applicable to national as well as Texas politics and addressed to Democratic politicians as well as Republicans.

"His point was that the big-government policies of the Obama administration and Democratic congressional leaders are resented and fiercely opposed not just because of their dire fiscal effects but also as an intrusion on voters' independence and ability to make decisions for themselves."

"The more we come to rely on government, the fewer freedoms we will enjoy. Government will start dictating what we can own, eat and drive, how much of our money they will let us keep, how we run our businesses, how many -- if any -- guns we can own, and what we may and may not say. Oh, wait! They are already doing that.

"To preserve freedom we must fight for it. Bondage comes when we refuse to fight and are satisfied with the king's largesse. That foul odor coming from Washington is the frog in the kettle coming to a boil."

"Health-care reform is now about the November election.  It's about gamesmanship.  And though the parties differ in fundamental ways that really do matter, a growing majority of Americans no longer care who's up or down, who wins or loses.  A pox on everyone's house, they say... 

Regardless of whether health-care reform passes in the coming weeks or months, the debate has forced Americans to organize their thoughts.  Come November, climate change is going to have a whole new meaning."

"Today's global warming hysteria is the hoax of the 21st century. H.L. Mencken had it right: 'The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed -- and hence clamorous to be led to safety -- by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary.'"

"Last month, we were told that Obama would switch his focus from health care to jobs. But Democrats have spent February and seem about to spend March focusing on health care. It's hard to see how they can navigate the legislative process successfully -- and even harder to see how they turn around public opinion. Summit flop indeed."

"Seven hours and thousands of words later, Obama made it clear that unless Republicans made significant and unexpected compromises, Democrats would press ahead on something akin to the $950 billion, 10-year health care plan he outlined Monday — presumably by using a parliamentary maneuver that would bypass a Republican filibuster in the Senate."

"Pundits of both parties now fault Obama’s style of governance. Public protests express disapproval over out-of-control federal spending and borrowing, and the idea of state-run health care.  

"So fairly or not, it seems like a panicked President Obama is abruptly scrambling to do what he should have done over a year ago. 

"But the problem is that a now jaded public believes that Obama is changing both course and tone not because he wants to for the country, but because he is forced to for his own survival. 

"In other words, the 'hope and change' of last year’s messiah has devolved into this year’s 'whatever it takes' of a cynic."

"President Obama's health care plan is beginning to seem like Grigori Rasputin, the evil, crazy pre-revolutionary Russian monk who was poisoned and lived, was shot in the back and lived, was shot twice more and lived, was beaten up and lived, and was finally tied up and tossed in an icy river, where he lived long enough to try to get loose.

"This health plan has so far endured expert analyses telling us it could be economically ruinous without fixing much of what ails us. It has hung on during one of the most extraordinary outbursts of dissidence by ordinary citizens in recent history. 

"It has refused to die even when independents told pollsters they had had it with this wackiness, and even now, after three anti-statist elections and a slight but significant change in the Senate's balance of power, it is still being vigorously pushed."

"Two weeks ago, President Obama challenged Republican congressional leaders to join him in a nationally televised summit to discuss their respective proposals for health care reform. Republicans publicly wondered if Obama's proposal represented a refreshing new attempt by the chief executive to display genuine bipartisanship and whether they should trust him to come to the summit with a truly open mind. We now know the answer to both questions is a resounding 'No.' 

"Yesterday, Obama unveiled a 'new' health care proposal. It costs an eye-popping $950 billion (that's the White House's rosy estimate), and represents nothing more than a warmed-over version of the 2,500-plus-page Obamacare proposals passed last year by the Senate and House. Like its predecessors, this newest version features government price fixing of the rates health insurance companies can charge. It includes a sweetheart deal to protect unions' expensive health care plans from taxation imposed on nonunion health plans. And worst of all, it still forces all Americans to fork over a hefty chunk of their income for a government-approved health insurance product, under penalty of heavy fines or imprisonment."

"On February 19, Attorney General Eric Holder took part in the time-honored Washington tradition of dumping undesired news on Friday afternoons or evenings. After weeks of leaks, the Justice Department officially exonerated Bush-era lawyers John Yoo and Jay Bybee, the authors of the original legal opinions on the lawfulness of the CIA interrogation program, which are known pejoratively as the 'torture memos' to critics.

"This is bad news for Holder and certain other Obama appointees at Justice — it undermines the story they’ve been telling for years that the lawyers who found the CIA program lawful were sadistic criminals committed to torturing poor souls such as Khalid Sheik Muhammad — but it is a vindication of an important principle that, prior to the Holder reign, had been adhered to across administrations: honestly held legal and policy opinions are not cause for prosecution or professional discipline."