The Foundation

“The principle of the Constitution is that of a separation of legislative, Executive and Judiciary functions, except in cases specified. If this principle be not expressed in direct terms, it is clearly the spirit of the Constitution, and it ought to be so commented and acted on by every friend of free government.” –Thomas Jefferson

The Demo-gogues

Belly Laugh of the Week: “Now, I’ve heard rumors that a few of you have some concerns about the new health care law. So let me be the first to say that anything can be improved. If you have ideas about how to improve this law by making care better or more affordable, I am eager to work with you. We can start right now by correcting a flaw in the legislation that has placed an unnecessary bookkeeping burden on small businesses. … As we speak, this law is making prescription drugs cheaper for seniors and giving uninsured students a chance to stay on their parents’ coverage. So instead of re-fighting the battles of the last two years, let’s fix what needs fixing and move forward.” –Barack Obama in his State of the Union address

“So tonight, I am proposing that starting this year, we freeze annual domestic spending for the next five years. This would reduce the deficit by more than $400 billion over the next decade, and will bring discretionary spending to the lowest share of our economy since Dwight Eisenhower was president. This freeze will require painful cuts. Already, we have frozen the salaries of hardworking federal employees for the next two years. I’ve proposed cuts to things I care deeply about, like community action programs. … I recognize that some in this Chamber have already proposed deeper cuts, and I’m willing to eliminate whatever we can honestly afford to do without. But let’s make sure that we’re not doing it on the backs of our most vulnerable citizens.” –Barack Obama

The BIG Lie: “We may have differences in policy, but we all believe in the rights enshrined in our Constitution.” –Barack Obama

Revisionist history: “Don’t start the serious spending cuts, the deficit reduction, until we’re clearly out of the recession in 2013. We learned in history … that after the Great Depression, when they started hitting the deficit brakes too soon, they went into a double-dip recession and higher unemployment.” –Sen. Dick Durbin (D-IL)

Can’t we all just get along? “I think part of the reason why the American people have lost some of our characteristic confidence in recent years is not just the terrible recession, but the fact that, when they turned to their government in Washington, what they saw is people having partisan mud fights, not thinking about what they could do for them, the American people.” –Sen. Joe Lieberman (I-CT)

Editorial Exegesis

“We’re glad to see House Republicans pushing the Spending Reduction Act of 2011, which would trim $2.5 trillion from the budget over the next decade. It’s a nice start, but not nearly enough. It’s great to see so many undeserving, wasteful programs finally face the ax. But that’s just what the Republicans’ new plan to return the U.S. to fiscal responsibility would do. … The GOP bill would lower spending on ‘non-defense, non-homeland security and non-veterans programs’ to 2008 levels. That includes Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the bankrupt mortgage giants, which would no longer be under government control. The federal work force would be cut 15% through attrition, another major saving. All good, we say. But let’s do the math. In the last two years alone, we’ve put up deficits of $2.7 trillion. In perspective, the proposed $2.5 trillion in cuts over a decade come to $250 billion a year. Our deficit will average $1.33 trillion a year for the next 10 years – $13.3 trillion, total, according to the Congressional Budget Office. So even with the GOP’s cuts, we’ll still have $1 trillion a year in deficits. Even with all this cutting, we come up well short. … The GOP has done yeoman’s work, taking a first whack at bringing our budget back into balance. But without entitlement reform, spending will continue to soar – and we’ll watch our debts surge from about $14 trillion today to $23 trillion or more in just 10 years. Cuts won’t come easy, but they have to be made. The GOP plan is a decent down payment, but more cutting remains to be done.” –Investor’s Business Daily

Insight

“One who deceives will always find those who allow themselves to be deceived.” –Italian philosopher Niccolo Machiavelli (1469-1527)

“Ain’t it funny how many hundreds of thousands of soldiers we can recruit with nerve. But we just can’t find one politician in a million with backbone.” –American humorist Will Rogers (1879-1935)

Upright

“The president would like the public to think that Obamacare is mainly about new insurance rules, which is why he now calls it ‘health-insurance reform.’ But, of course, that’s not really an accurate description of Obamacare. It’s a massively expensive government takeover of American health care. It will spend trillions, raise taxes and premiums, and lead to inferior-quality care. … Based on what he said last night, the president would seem to be willing to jettison just about everything else in Obamacare – the entitlement expansions, the exchanges, the Medicare cuts, the taxes, the new long-term-care insurance program – so long as new insurance rules to remove lifetime caps and allow 26-year-olds to stay on their parents’ plan are retained. Perhaps Republicans should take him up on it.” –former Associate Director at the White House Office of Management and Budget James C. Capretta

“When Democrats accuse Republicans of hateful speech, you might notice that they never supply specific examples. On the other hand, Steny Hoyer (D-MD) made this generalization about millions of Tea Party members: ‘My presumption is that they have unhappy families.’ My presumption is that Mr. Hoyer is very presumptuous. But if millions of decent, patriotic Americans are unhappy, perhaps it’s because louts like Hoyer are doing everything they can to destroy the country.” –columnist Burt Prelutsky

“President Barack Obama penned a witty Wall Street Journal op-ed [last] week, titled ‘Toward a 21st-Century Regulatory System.’ In it, he extolled the virtues of a free market system. And to prove that his admiration of capitalism has nothing to do with naked political expediency, Obama signed an executive order that will ‘root out regulations that conflict, that are not worth the cost, or that are just plain dumb’… When Obama was in a place of political comfort, the free market was a place of unhinged self-interest, unfairness and misery. Nearly all of our troubles were portrayed as a case of regulatory neglect – and nearly every dilemma was met accordingly. Nothing’s changed but the political conditions.” –columnist David Harsanyi

“Few things rile me more than demands that pro-lifers – especially those motivated by their faith – keep out of politics. Quite the contrary, many did just that, quietly going to church and reading their Bibles, until one day they awoke to learn the Supreme Court had passed Roe v. Wade … and the hellacious assault was on. They entered pro-life activism reluctantly, as a reaction to what was thrust upon their culture and country. The last thing they wanted was to get involved in politics. The Death Culture came to them.” –author and columnist Paul Kengor

Dezinformatsia

Gun control: “If the president follows Republican and Democratic tradition tomorrow night and says not a word about gun and ammunition control, if he does not use this moment of his increasing popularity, if he does not believe he has the communication skills to convey the necessity to control the capacity of automatic weapons, then I, for one, will become disappointed in him for the first time. And he will become part of the problem.” –MSBNC’s Lawrence O'Donnell

Not a serious question: “Isn’t there some political risk here, though, for the president getting too cozy with the business community, given the fact that there are a lot of people in this country who are still very, very, angry at the CEOs and at Wall Street for helping create this mess in the first place?” –ABC’s Dan Harris

Contrast, not comparison: “If I didn’t know better and had my eyes closed I might have thought that was President Reagan talking. It sounded very much like a speech that a Republican would make. Are Democrats really going to be serious about this, Senator Schumer? And how is the Left in your party going to take this idea of this new focus on cutting spending?” –CBS’s Bob Schieffer on Barack Obama’s “preview” for his SOTU speech

Blaming warming for everything: “If this winter seems especially brutal, scientists say you’re right. ABC News contacted 10 climate scientists to ask their take, if an extreme winter like the one we’re having is the way of the future. The consensus? Global warming is playing a role by shifting weather patterns in unpredictable ways. Many say the forecast for the future calls for record-breaking precipitation and extreme temperatures year round. And that means winters with more snow.” –ABC’s Linsey Davis

Newspulper Headlines:

So Much for Civility: “Obama Speech Could Provoke Fight on Deficit” –Reuters

We Blame Global Warming: “The End Is a Little Closer for Venus” –FoxSports.com

Separate but Equal: “Huffington Post to Add African-American Section” –Associated Press

It Was in Repute?: “Camel Racing Thrown Into Disrepute” –Daily Telegraph (London)

Everything Seemingly Is Spinning Out of Control: “Congress: Getting Back to Normal” –FoxNews.com

Bottom Stories of the Day: “Michelle Obama Going on Oprah Winfrey Show Thurs.” –Associated Press

(Thanks to The Wall Street Journal’s James Taranto)

Village Idiots

What a tool: “I think the best way to understand the health reform package is that it is not a recipe for everything that’s to be done but is, in fact, a toolbox.” –Dr. Atul Gawande, Harvard School of Public Health

Keen sense of the obvious: “You’d be hard pressed to find another time when a leader of China said they needed to do something about improving human rights.” –White House spokesman Robert Gibbs

That’s racist: “These [Tea Party] voters … are older … [and] they’re all white. … For them, change is for the worse. After all, there’s an African-American in the White House. That’s sort of beyond their cultural experience. The American population is darkening. That’s also beyond their experience. … And you know, I don’t have any data on this, but I am absolutely sure that sex is very important in what is happening to older people.” –Frances Fox Piven practicing her “civility” re the Tea Party

Gun grabbers: “We cannot wait any longer. We cannot turn our backs on this national calamity any longer. … With our country still mourning the victims of Tucson, we believe it is an opportunity for our president to make a strong pledge to fix our gun laws.” –New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg, who views every gun crisis as “an opportunity” to take away guns

Short Cuts

“Of the wealthiest zip codes in the U.S., 19 out of 20 vote Democratic. How much longer can the Dems continue the lie of representing the interests of the common man? What they represent is the interest of those who can take advantage of government in the most selfish manner.” –columnist Bruce Bialosky

“Minnesota wrestling coach Jacob Volkmann was suspended by his school after he won a UFC match and challenged President Obama to a fight. He thinks Obama is a socialist. The coach was put on salaried leave, so in Obama’s honor he will be paid for doing nothing.” –comedian Argus Hamilton

“If you like the efficiency of the Post Office, the competence of FEMA and the compassion of the IRS, you will love the nationalized health care bill.” –Rep. Ted Poe (R-TX)

“Even though President Hu was only in Chicago for two days, by the Rahm Emanuel standard, he was able to establish residency and can now run for mayor of Chicago.” –Jay Leno

“Guns don’t kill people, metaphors do. It’s true. Words have consequences. I tested it: Used a sports analogy just yesterday and a pick-up game of hoops broke out. This is liberal-think. Silly, isn’t it? Yes, words can have consequences. Except for when they don’t.” –columnist Matt Barber