"If the health care bill pending in Washington becomes law, no American citizen will be allowed the freedom to live, no matter how briefly, without health insurance. The purpose of the mandate is to collectivize everyone's health. Your body is no longer to be your own. It will belong to everyone. Your good health will be used to improve the health of others.

"Our bodies are gradually becoming socialized. The choices we make about how to live, what to eat and drink and what pleasures we enjoy are increasingly to be guided by the hand of the state.

"Underlying all of this legislating is the theory that society must collectively dictate individual behavior for the purpose of making society collectively healthier. Individual will must be stamped out and replaced with the will of the state."

"Over the course of the last year, President Obama has taken his eye off the ball and allowed America's counterterrorism systems to erode. [White House Homeland Security Advisor] Brennan and [Homeland Security Secretary] Napolitano both said they were surprised to learn from the review released today that al-Qaeda in Yemen was operational.  Napolitano went on to say she hadn't realized previously that al-Qaeda might use an individual to attack us.  Yet, in the past year, we’ve had three attacks on America from individuals with Yemeni connections — from the terrorist at the recruiting station in Little Rock to the terrorist at Ford Hood and now the Christmas Day bomber. [I]t is inexplicable that our nation's top counterterrorism officials would be surprised by a method of attack we've repeatedly seen before."

"A year ago this month, the air over American liberalism was thick with champagne corks. Barack Obama, the newly elected president, was poised to be inaugurated, and he in turn would inaugurate the long-prophesized new progressive era. A year later, the champagne corks are hardly flying, and if this is to be morning in America for American liberalism, it seems to have come with a pretty nasty hangover."

"Meet the Beltway bloodsuckers. They convene in the dead of night, when most ordinary mortals have left work and let their guard down or are lying asleep in bed. Pale-faced and insatiable, the nocturnal thieves do their nefarious business in backrooms and secret chambers. Their primary victims? Taxpayers, the free market and deliberative democracy.

"Democratic leaders have been promising the most ethical, transparent, open and engaged administration for years. Instead, they have delivered a bleak and creepy legislative environment that could double as a 'Twilight' movie set."

"Two men have been charged by law enforcement authorities with committing criminal acts on Christmas Day 2009. The first, Joseph T. Knox, 43, of 6092 North Main St. in Sandy Creek, N.Y., was charged with attempted first-degree felony robbery of the China One restaurant, located next door to his residence. New York State Police said Knox brandished a knife during the bungled robbery. Bail was set at $10,000, and, if convicted, Knox could face up to 25 years in prison.

"The second, Nigerian national Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, 23, of no known permanent address, was charged with attempting to blow up Northwest Airlines Flight 253 bound for Detroit from Amsterdam. If convicted, Abdulmutallab could face up to 20 years in prison and a $250,000 fine."

"It's a (literally) bloody disgrace that our ragtag enemies innovate faster and more effectively than our armed forces and the legion of overpaid contractors behind them. They ask themselves, 'What works?' We ask ourselves what the lawyers will say.

"The crucial difference? Our enemies believe in victory, even if we don't."

"Any government can through laxity let someone slip through the cracks. But a government that refuses to admit that we are at war, indeed, refuses even to name the enemy -- jihadist is a word banished from the Obama lexicon -- turns laxity into a governing philosophy."

"An alien from the planet 'Not Politically Correct' would have surveyed the situation after 9/11 and said: 'You are at war with an enemy without uniforms, without morals, without a country and without a leader -- but the one advantage you have is they all look alike. ... What? ... What did I say?'

"The only advantage we have in a war with stateless terrorists was ruled out of order ab initio by political correctness."

"As I’ve watched the events of the last few days it is clear once again that President Obama is trying to pretend we are not at war. He seems to think if he has a low key response to an attempt to blow up an airliner and kill hundreds of people, we won’t be at war. He seems to think if he gives terrorists the rights of Americans, lets them lawyer up and reads them their Miranda rights, we won’t be at war. He seems to think if we bring the mastermind of 9/11 to New York, give him a lawyer and trial in civilian court, we won’t be at war.

"He seems to think if he closes Guantanamo and releases the hard-core al Qaeda trained terrorists still there, we won’t be at war. He seems to think if he gets rid of the words, ‘war on terror,’ we won’t be at war. But we are at war and when President Obama pretends we aren’t, it makes us less safe. Why doesn’t he want to admit we’re at war? It doesn’t fit with the view of the world he brought with him to the Oval Office. It doesn’t fit with what seems to be the goal of his presidency – social transformation -- the restructuring of American society. President Obama’s first object and his highest responsibility must be to defend us against an enemy that knows we are at war."

"For its part, the Obama administration should frankly acknowledge that the 'war on terror' wasn't a Bush-Cheney construct to scare and manipulate the American public. Speaking from Hawaii, Obama sounded stalwart yesterday, but it took him 72 hours to address the incident. The administration's body language says it would prefer to keep counterterrorism on a back-burner while it engages in the more important work of nationalizing health care and fighting global warming."