"... A vast 89 percent in New Jersey and 85 percent in Virginia said they were worried about the direction of the nation's economy in the next year; 56 percent and 53 percent, respectively, said they were 'very' worried about it.

"Voters who expressed the highest levels of economic discontent heavily favored the Republican candidates in both states – underscoring the challenge Obama and his party may face in 2010 if economic attitudes don't improve. The analogy is to 1994, when nearly six in 10 voters said the economy was in bad shape, and they favored the out-of-power Republicans by 26 points, helping the GOP to a 52-seat gain and control of Congress for the first time in 42 years."

"We are incessantly being told that the cost of medical care is 'too high' -- either absolutely or as a growing percentage of our incomes. But nothing that is being proposed by the government is likely to lower those costs, and much that is being proposed is almost certain to increase the costs...

"There are some ways in which the real costs of medical care can be reduced but the people who are leading the charge for a government takeover of medical care are not the least bit interested in actually reducing those costs, as distinguished from shifting the costs around or just refusing to pay them."

"Speaker Nancy Pelosi has reportedly told fellow Democrats that she's prepared to lose seats in 2010 if that's what it takes to pass ObamaCare, and little wonder. The health bill she unwrapped last Thursday, which President Obama hailed as a 'critical milestone,' may well be the worst piece of post-New Deal legislation ever introduced. In a rational political world, this 1,990-page runaway train would have been derailed months ago.

"With spending and debt already at record peacetime levels, the bill creates a new and probably unrepealable middle-class entitlement that is designed to expand over time. Taxes will need to rise precipitously, even as ObamaCare so dramatically expands government control of health care that eventually all medicine will be rationed via politics.

"Yet at this point, Democrats have dumped any pretense of genuine bipartisan "reform" and moved into the realm of pure power politics as they race against the unpopularity of their own agenda. The goal is to ram through whatever income-redistribution scheme they can claim to be "universal coverage." The result will be destructive on every level—for the health-care system, for the country's fiscal condition, and ultimately for American freedom and prosperity."

"The King James version of the Bible runs more than 600 pages and is crammed with celestial regulations. Newton's Principia Mathematica distilled many of the rules of physics in a mere 974 pages. Neither have anything on Nancy Pelosi's new fiendishly entertaining health-care opus, which tops 1,900 pages. So curl up by a fire with a fifth of whiskey and just dive in.

"But drink quickly. In the new world, your insurance choices will be tethered to decisions made by people with Orwellian titles ('1984' was only 268 pages!) like the 'Health Choices Commissioner' or 'Inspector General for the Health Choices Administration.'

"You will, of course, need to be plastered to buy Pelosi's fantastical proposition that 450,000 words of new regulations, rules, mandates, penalties, price controls, taxes and bureaucracy will have the transformative power to 'provide affordable, quality health care for all Americans and reduce the growth in health care spending . ...'"

"Ten years ago, we effectively had no broadband marketplace. Dial-up Internet was common, but not ubiquitous. Consumers had a choice of service providers, but they were typically confined to walled gardens of preselected or preferred content. The broadband revolution led us out of that desert. Instead of dog-paddling, we could surf the net, choosing between broadband service offered by traditional phone and cable companies and, now, wireless companies as well.

"Compare that to the last decade of success at government dominated companies like Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, GM or Chrysler.

"Yet despite an overwhelming record of innovation, and customer satisfaction, Washington wants to replace the judgment of consumers with that of politicians and bureaucrats. ...

"Is it reasonable to believe committees of suits in Washington — with hearings and markup meetings and regulatory comment periods — can keep up with the competitive pressures of the Internet economy?

"To ask the question is to answer it. There is a time and place for federal economic regulation, but the middle of a recession is not the time, and the Internet is certainly not the place."

"America is a great nation. It enjoys unprecedented wealth. Its people are among the freest in the world. And, with the world's most powerful armed forces, the United States is largely the master of its own destiny.

"Yet there is an insidious threat to America's continued greatness. It gets scarce attention because its effects are not immediate, but that threat is real. It is the threat of crushing government debt...

"What difference does this make for U.S. security? The more we have to pay to service the rising debt and pay out for entitlements, the less there is for defense.

"Unless we reverse course, this means that - in our children's lifetime - the U.S. military might be unable to protect a sea lane vital to trade and military supply lines. We might be unable to suppress an enemy regime that launches a terrorist attack against us. And absent the great American economic engine, we might lack the resources to stay on the cutting edge of technology, leaving our soldiers vulnerable to being matched or even trumped on the battlefield by better-equipped foes."

"There have been a lot of bad days recently for what’s come to be known as the Mainstream Media – or MSM – but Monday was one of the worst. New circulation figures showed that big city papers had lost as much as a quarter of their circulation in the last six months. And new TV ratings showed that CNN, the cable network that prides itself on news coverage down the middle, finished dead last in prime-time against more partisan rivals like Fox News and MSNBC."

"As promised, Barack Obama is bringing change to America. He's making it more Republican. It's not that more people are actually becoming Republicans or calling themselves Republicans -- the number of voters who formally identify with the party is at its lowest point in years. But we appear to be in the early stages of a shift in which political independents, people who not too long ago were sick of Republicans, are now leaning toward GOP positions on some key issues."

"The promise of the public plan is a mirage. Its political brilliance is to use free-market rhetoric (more 'choice' and 'competition') to expand government power. But why would a plan tied to Medicare control health spending, when Medicare hasn't? From 1970 to 2007, Medicare spending per beneficiary rose 9.2 percent annually compared to the 10.4 percent of private insurers -- and the small difference partly reflects cost shifting. Congress periodically improves Medicare benefits, and there's a limit to how much squeezing reimbursement rates can check costs. Doctors and hospitals already complain that low payments limit services or discourage physicians from taking Medicare patients."

"While government can and should debate and criticize opposition voices, the current White House goes beyond that. It wants to delegitimize any significant dissent. The objective is no secret. White House aides openly told Politico that they're engaged in a deliberate campaign to marginalize and ostracize recalcitrants, from Fox to health insurers to the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. There's nothing illegal about such search-and-destroy tactics. Nor unconstitutional. But our politics are defined not just by limits of legality or constitutionality. We have norms, Madisonian norms."