Whenever the president or his aides and allies have gilded, massaged, stretched, twisted, shaved or mugged the truth, most in the mainstream media have covered for them. In consequence, Team Obama's departures from the truth have grown more frequent; the distance between what they say and the facts has gotten ever further.  There seemed to be no limit to the dissimulation, deceit and dishonesty the news media would overlook... So they put out an ad - the now-infamous "Romney killed my wife" ad - charging Mitt Romney with the cancer death of the wife of a steelworker. There must have been shock in Team Obama when many of their friends in journalism sharply criticized them for it.  Even Time Magazine called it "despicable."

The kids are screwed.  The unemployment rate among Americans aged 18-29 is 50 percent higher than the national average. More than 43 percent of recent college graduates who have jobs do work which does not require a college education. If the Obama administration policies which keep unemployment high are reversed, for most of us the recession will end.  But the kids will still be screwed, because they don't know what they need to know to survive in the global economy. The key is STEM education -- Science, Technology, Engineering, Mathematics.  The US used to be the world's leader.  Today, we're one of just 3 of the 34 countries in the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development where the kids know no more about these subjects than their parents did. The kids don't know much of anything else, either.  They've taken Sam Cooke's 1959 hit, Don't know much about history, don't know much about geography, to heart.

Syrian dictator Bashar Assad fled Damascus last week after three senior officials were killed by a suicide bomber.  He's is holed up in the coastal city of Latakia. Whether Mr. Assad is driven from power depends mostly on what he's willing to do to keep it. Syria will use weapons of mass destruction if attacked by foreigners, the foreign ministry has declared.  Satellite photos indicate the regime has been removing chemical munitions from storage sites, reports the Israeli newspaper Haaretz. The regime would never use these weapons against its own people, claims a foreign ministry spokesman.  But a former official told the BBC Mr. Assad wouldn't hesitate to use WMD against the rebels. Then there's this question:  What happens to Syria's WMD if Mr. Assad is ousted?

"Brian, you've been investigating the background of Jim Holmes here," George Stephanopoulos, anchor of ABC's Good Morning America program, said to reporter Brian Ross a few hours after the Aurora shotting. "You've found something that might be significant." "There is a Jim Holmes of Aurora, Colorado on the Colorado Tea Party site as well," Mr. Ross responded.  "Talking about him joining the Tea Party last year." The James Holmes of Aurora who police arrested is a 25-year-old white man.  The James Holmes of Aurora who is a Tea Party member is a 52-year-old Hispanic. To illustrate how vile this is, the internet humorist David Burge (Iowahawk) tweeted the arrest records of various felons named "Brian Ross."  "Correction: in previous tweets I mistakenly identified ABC News' Brian Ross with a series of arrestees," Iowahawk concluded.  "I apologize to the arrestees."

Our first president was so revered for his integrity that most believed Parson Weems when he said that even as a child, George Washington could not tell a lie. Can our current president tell the truth?  It's a legitimate question.  Amb. Fred Eckert filled a 188-page book with "untrue, duplicitous, arrogant and delusional" things Barack Hussein Obama has said.  We could call him the Anti-George Washington. Joel Wade is fond of advising us that you get good at what you practice.  But evidently not always, for constant practice has not made Mr. Obama a good liar.  A good liar tells plausible lies, and lies only when the truth could do him substantial harm. President Obama tells preposterous lies.  He lies when the truth wouldn't hurt.  He lies so often and so obviously about so many things it is doubtful lying for him is merely a tactic.  It's an integral part of his character -- or lack of it.

It's crumpled, tattered and smudged from overuse, but it's the only card Democrats and liberal journalists have left to play, so expect them to play the race card even more. The economy sucks, and they hate his health care plan.  But that isn't why Americans have soured on President Barack Hussein Obama, says the executive director of the Congressional Black Caucus.  Opposition is racially motivated, Angela Rye declared.  Her evidence?  Crossroads GPS, the Karl Rove SuperPAC, used the word "cool" in an ad.  I promise this is true, I didn't make it up. "Persistent racial animosity" undergirds opposition to the president, agreed New York Magazine columnist John Heilemann, who felt no need to produce evidence of any kind to back up that accusation. The facts say otherwise, but expect the Dems to keep playing the race card all the way to November.  We should encourage them to, for the more they do, the more it becomes a joke.

It's Friday the 13th, a date that fills many with dread. There's a cool word for our fear of it - friggatriskaidekaphobia.  Friday the 13th has been considered a bad luck day for thousands of years, because it combines two ancient superstitions: *13 is an unlucky number.  In numerology, 12 is the number of completeness.  13 transgresses it.  The Code of Hammurabi (1700 BC) skips the number 13, presumably because of its unluckiness.  There were 13 Apostles with Matthias replacing Judas who caused Jesus' Crucifixion, which, you'll recall, took place on a Friday... *which is named after a Norse goddess (Frigg or Freya), who early Christians associated with witchcraft.  It is allegedly she who set the size of a witches' coven at 13.  Friday was execution day in ancient Rome. The friggatriskaidekaphobists among you may regard it as an ill omen that I'm filling in for Jack Wheeler on the HFR this week, while he skulks around the Iranian border in  Nagorno-Karabagh.  For Zero and the Obamunists, every day this week was Friday the 13th.

The troop surge in Iraq brought victory.  The troop surge in Afghanistan hasn't.  After a decade of fighting, "what do we have to show for our efforts?" asks former Navy SEAL Leif Babin.  "A government, under President Hamid Karzai, that is corrupt, largely incompetent, and of questionable loyalty; inept Afghan security forces that regularly turn their weapons on their American and NATO advisers; and a resurgent Taliban poised to regain control of the country after U.S. forces withdraw." Policies peculiar to the Obama administration have made the situation in Afghanistan much worse.  But it was President George W. Bush who installed Hamid Karzai, and began "nation building" in what, arguably, is the most primitive society on earth. It's a unique American folly -- going back at least to Vietnam -- to spend so much effort on winning the hearts and minds of the people, when we would be better served by killing the enemy.

Conservatives are a lot like Charlie Brown.  We keep believing Lucy when she promises to hold the football.  This is partly why we lose so often, even though, according to Gallup's annual poll, we outnumber liberals roughly 2 to 1. The formula UCLA Prof. Tim Groseclose developed for measuring the "political quotient" of the news indicates media bias gives Democrats an 8 percentage point advantage in most elections. Conservatives rail against media bias.  But we keep falling for it.  Then we exacerbate the problems our gullibility causes by rushing to harsh judgments of our allies.  Here's an example of how I fell for it recently myself.

As Benjamin Franklin was leaving Independence Hall at the close of the constitutional convention, a woman approached him.  "Well, Doctor, what have we got?" she asked.  "A republic, or a monarchy?" "A republic," Franklin replied.  "If you can keep it." And how do we keep it?  With the Constitution, Abraham Lincoln said, for it "is the only safeguard of our liberties." But an insufficient safeguard, if our leaders ignore it.  Emperor Barack I treats the public treasury as his piggy bank; enforces only the laws he likes and ignore the ones he doesn't; and asserts the power, without oversight from Congress or the Courts, to kill American citizens suspected of terrorism.  His attorney general dodges lawful subpoenas, protects and promotes vote fraud. The Supreme Court's ruling on Obamacare is a vivid reminder that we cannot rely upon others to protect our liberty.

Since President Lyndon Johnson initiated it in 1965, we've spent $19.8 trillion (in inflation adjusted dollars) on the War on Poverty, nearly three times as much as on all of America's wars combined, Robert Rector of the Heritage Foundation told the House Budget Committee in March. Mammoth as it's been, spending for means-tested programs is dwarfed by spending for "entitlements."  Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid account now for 58 percent of the federal budget.  If they keep rising at the present rate, spending on entitlements and interest on the national debt will exceed tax revenues by 2025, the Congressional Budget Office estimated last year. The economy will collapse before we get there.  The only way to prevent this collapse -- and to actually help the actually poor -- is to stop the spending on the unpoor.

If this is the Arab Spring, why is it snowing so hard? His election would spread democracy and respect for the United States throughout the Middle East, President Barack Hussein Obama believed. "I have come here to seek a new beginning between the United States and Moslems around the world, one based upon mutual interest and mutual respect," the president said in his much ballyhooed speech in Cairo in 2009. It hasn't worked out that way.  Here's why...

If you've nothing to say, it's not a good idea to spend 54 minutes saying it. After listening to President Barack Obama's much ballyhooed speech on the economy in Cleveland June 14, Peggy Noonan wrote: "Politicians give 54-minute speeches when they don't know what they're trying to say." Though few others demonstrate it at such length, it's not just the president who has run out of substantive things to say.  For all but a handful of liberals, invective has replaced argument.  Columbia Law School Professor Jerome Michael explained why years ago: "If the facts are on your side, pound the facts," Prof. Michael advised his students.  "If the law is on your side, pound the law.  If neither the facts nor the law are on your side, pound the table." There's another, darker reason why liberals rely so much upon name calling.

The clearest indication yet he thinks of himself more as the Emperor Barack I than as the president of a constitutional republic came last week (6/15) when Mr. Obama declared he would no longer enforce immigration law for illegals under age 30. The president does not have the right to decide which laws he'll enforce and which he'll ignore, Mr. Obama acknowledged when he spoke at a Univision forum in March of last year. "The notion that I can just suspend deportations through executive order, that's just not the case," Mr. Obama said then.  "There are laws on the books that Congress has passed... The executive branch's job is to enforce and implement those laws." But desperate people do desperate things.  Mr. Obama's imperial decree came a day after his much ballyhooed speech on the economy bombed, two weeks after Republican Gov. Scott Walker won a smashing victory in the recall election in Wisconsin. By arrogating to himself a power the Constitution gave to Congress, Mr. Obama hopes to accomplish three things:

There must be something really, really bad in the documents his attorney general is trying to conceal from Congress.  If not, President Barack Hussein Obama has lost his mind. With the honorable exceptions of Sharyl Atkisson of CBS and Richard Serrano of the Los Angeles Times, the major media have ignored for more than a year one of the biggest scandals in American history.  Now that the president has claimed executive privilege, they can ignore it no longer. Since there's been so little reporting of it, most Americans are learning of the scandal for the first time.  Here's a recap: The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) let more than 2,000 deadly weapons -- including .50 caliber Barrett sniper rifles -- "walk" across the border to Mexican drug cartels in an operation known by the code name "Fast and Furious."  Another code name for the operation was "Gunwalker." Its purpose, Justice said, was to trace the guns from the straw buyers to cartel bigwigs, so they could be arrested.  This wasn't true, three ATF whistleblowers told the House Oversight Committee last July, because no effort was made to trace the guns once they crossed the border, and Mexican authorities hadn't been informed of the operation.

When President Barack Hussein Obama said "the private sector is doing fine," perhaps it's because he thinks the private sector consists chiefly of the crony capitalist fat cats he sees at his megabuck fundraisers.  People who shell out $40,000 per plate -- as did those who attended the dinner at actor George Clooney's home in Los Angeles last month -- obviously are doing "fine." Let's call them the crony sector, not the private sector. "In the first 12 days of June, Obama has attended 21 fundraising events," ABC News reported Tuesday (6/12).  "He has now attended 163 re-election fundraisers for his campaign and the Democrat Party."  That's more than the last four presidents put together (three of whom served two full terms).

If after 17 months of turmoil during which you spent upwards of $50 million, and have only the taste of wormwood and gall, you should be more careful about the fights you pick. The news media downplayed the blow labor unions and Democrats suffered Tuesday (6/05).  "Walker survives recall in Wisconsin," read the headlines in most newspapers, the Chryons on the cable news channels.  Yeah.  And Reagan edged Mondale, Nixon nipped McGovern, LBJ slipped by Goldwater.  The Dems fought dirty.  A caller to a Washington D.C. radio station Tuesday said he was on his way from Michigan in a union-organized four bus caravan to vote in Wisconsin.  In tiny Norway, just north of the Illinois line, a "heavy turnout" customarily is about 300,  resident John  Barrett told a Milwaukee radio station.   By midmorning Tuesday, 1,794 had voted. They still lost.  And they are still doomed.

No problem is so severe that our government can't make it worse. The subprime mortgage crisis plunged our economy into a deep recession, and nearly destroyed our financial system.  The federal government responded by: *Doing absolutely nothing about the Federal National Mortgage Association  (Fannie Mae) and the Federal Home Loan Mortgage Corporation (Freddie Mac), the "government-sponsored entities" whose reckless policies and mammoth bankruptcies triggered the crisis. *Bailing out the big investment banks whose reckless behavior worsened vastly the crisis brought on by Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. *Punishing community banks that had absolutely nothing to do with the crisis. Government has done next to nothing to prevent the next financial crisis, much to make sure it will be worse.

President Barack Hussein Obama is racing down the trail blazed by Sen. George McGovern, who in 1972 was buried by the largest popular vote landslide in American history. (President Lyndon Johnson in 1964 won a slightly higher percentage of the popular vote than Richard Nixon did in 1972 -- 61.1 to 60.7 -- but LBJ's margin over Sen. Barry Goldwater was smaller, because fewer voted for minor party candidates that year.) Sen. McGovern was too far to the left, swing voters thought, and not very competent -- an image reinforced by the shambles his supporters made of the Democrat national convention. Swing voters are forming the same opinion about President Obama, who sometimes seems as if he's deliberately trying to dismantle the coalition that elected him in 2008.  Here's how he's doing it:

In a Gallup poll May 23, more disapproved of Vice President Joe Biden (45 percent) than approved (42 percent.)  In 12 swing states, Slow Joe was underwater 40-52, intensifying speculation President Barack Hussein Obama may dump him for Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.

While the president has an embarrassment for a running mate, Mitt Romney has an embarrassment of riches from which to choose.  He can’t go wrong if he picks from among Governors Mitch Daniels (Ind), Bobby Jindal (La), Chris Christie (NJ), Bob McDonnell (Va) and Scott Walker (Wis), or Sens. Rob Portman (Ohio), Marco Rubio (Florida), and House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan.

But even if Slow Joe continues to commit a gaffe a week, I doubt he’d hurt Mr. Obama much, because people vote on the basis of what they think of the presidential candidates.  So its unlikely any of the aforementioned Republicans would gain for Mr. Romney many votes he wouldn’t otherwise have had.

There’s one guy who could matter more, thinks former National Security Council staffer Paul Miller.  When Gallup last polled on him in April, 2011, Americans rated Gen. David Petraeus favorably, 61 percent to 7 percent.  That poll may have been what prompted President Obama to make Gen. Petraeus CIA Director.

On Tuesday (5/22), the Los Angeles Times published a 1,300 word story on Ann Romney's fondness for horseback riding, emphasizing how expensive is the sport of dressage.   Ms. Romney spent nearly $1,000 on a designer blouse, ABC News reported May 2. As a high school student in 1965, Mitt Romney played a nasty prank, the Washington Post reported in a 5,400 word story May 16.  The story isn't accurate, said the sisters of the target of the prank, who died in 2004. For the "mainstream" media, nothing is too insignificant to report -- if they think it reflects poorly on Mr. Romney.  But if it reflects poorly on President Barack Obama, no story is so big it can't be downplayed, dismissed or ignored. How dangerous to democracy is such blatant, undisguised bias?

You should be careful what you wish for.  What may be the most important gubernatorial election ever will take place in Wisconsin June 5.  The labor unions who forced it must now regret having done so. Forty four states face budget shortfalls in the 2012 fiscal year (which for 46 states began last July 1).  Wisconsin was the 6th most troubled, according to a 2009 analysis. For decades, spending by state governments has risen faster than the income of taxpayers.  Pay and benefits for government workers is, after Medicaid, the biggest reason why. The average compensation per hour worked of state and local government workers is 45 percent higher than the average for workers in the private sector, according to a Cato Institute analysis of data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics.  This is because of a cozy arrangement between Democrats and public employee unions.  Politicians get votes and campaign contributions from the unions, then pay off the unions from the public treasury.  This game may be soon over.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin "Bibi" Netanyahu has engineered a remarkable political success.  It could mean war before the leaves turn color. For Americans and for Sunni Arab Moslems, Iran's pursuit of nuclear weapons is a very dangerous, very urgent problem. For Israelis, it means the gas chambers are warmed up and the Gestapo is pounding on the door.  The mullahs have made it clear what they intend to do with nukes once they get them. Barack Hussein Obama's inaction indicates he won't do anything meaningful to keep the Iranians from getting the bomb.  So Israel must. 

It was the teachings of Jesus Christ which caused him to support gay marriage, The First Gay President told ABC's Robin Roberts last Wednesday (5/9). The president's decision was forced by Vice President Joe Biden's endorsement of gay marriage the preceding Sunday, White House aides told journalists.  Rarely is Mr. Biden confused with Jesus Christ. "My religious faith dictates marriage is between a man and a woman," Mr. Obama had said when he ran for the U.S. Senate in 2004. Mr. Obama's "evolution" is a charade, wrote David Plotz in Slate.  As a candidate for the state senate in 1996, he signed a statement that said: "I favor legalizing same sex marriages, and would fight efforts to prohibit such marriages," Mr. Plotz noted.

The chairman of the House Oversight Committee wants to find out who knew what when about the Gunwalker/Fast & Furious scandal, and if it had a purpose other than the one we've been told.  But the Justice Department is stonewalling his requests -- and two subpoenas -- for documents.  In more than a year, Justice has supplied only a handful of documents in just 10 of the 22 categories requested. So Rep. Darrell Issa, R-CA, is preparing to cite Attorney General Eric Holder for contempt of Congress. Never has a contempt citation been more justified.

Schadenfreude (taking pleasure from the misfortune of others) is a sinful pleasure, which all but the saints among us indulge in from time to time. These days conservatives have ample reasons for indulgence. Let's begin with Fauxcohantas, Elizabeth "Cheekbones" Warren, appointed to the faculty of Harvard Law School despite less than sterling academic credentials because she claimed Cherokee blood flows through her veins. Then we'll move on to compare John "Purple Heart" Kerry of 2004 to Barack "Gutsy Call" Obama in 2012.

Barack Hussein Obama has campaigned on the taxpayers' dime far more often than any predecessor.  Of the 60 domestic trips he's taken since filing for re-election, 26 have included fund-raisers, noted Mark Knoller of CBS. "How much longer do we have to pretend these POTUS events aren't campaign events?" tweeted Mike O'Brien of MSNBC last month after the president made a blatantly political speech at the University of North Carolina. Mr. Obama outdid himself when he flew to Afghanistan Tuesday (5/01) to pat himself on the back for having ordered the hit on Osama bin Laden on that date a year ago. "The tide has turned," thanks to his efforts, he bragged.  Yes, the tide may indeed be turning -- against him.

For senior citizens -- and then for Democrats -- it could be the nastiest "October surprise" ever. Obamacare guts the popular Medicare Advantage program.  Democrats didn't want those enrolled in it to find out until the election was safely past, so they postponed until 2013 implementation of this provision. But when the 2,700 page bill was thrown together, there were oversights.  Under federal "open enrollment" guidelines, seniors must pick their Medicare coverage program for next year before the end of this year. Open enrollment begins Oct. 15, so seniors will learn what's in store for them three weeks before the election. Oops.  The Dems are desperate to extricate themselves from a trap of their own making -- but the more they try to escape, the more they may become enmeshed.

Last Sunday (4/22) was Earth Day.  If it passed without your notice, don't feel bad.  Most other Americans ignored it, too.  "Thousands" had been expected for the heavily hyped Earth Day rally in Washington, D.C., but only about 40 attended, a fact which Washington Post reporter Tara Bahrampour did her utmost to conceal. It was a far cry from the first Earth Day, in 1970, when, according to news reports, about 20 million Americans took part in Earth Day rallies.  The percentage of Americans who worry "a great deal" about environmental problems has declined substantially since 2000, according to Gallup's annual Environment poll. This is partly because times are tough.  People who worry where their next meal is coming from tend not to worry much about polar bears or the rainforest.  But it's due mostly to the collapse of hysteria about anthropogenic (man made) global warming.

On Feb. 25, 1964, Cassius Clay shocked the boxing world by defeating heavyweight champion Sonny Liston (9 days later, he would announce he was a Black Moslem to be known as Muhammad Ali).  Clay used his superior quickness to evade Liston's ponderous punches, and counterpunched so effectively that Liston didn't answer the bell for the 7th round. The opening rounds of the general election campaign have resembled the Clay-Liston fight.  Mitt Romney has counterpunched so effectively Democrats were lying bleeding on the canvas before they knew what hit them. Twice in as many weeks, the Romney team turned Democrat attacks against them.  I expect this to happen again and again. The president's numbers will improve if the economy does, but it is getting weaker.  So Democrats double down on personal attacks.  Their strategy is doomed.  Here are four reasons why:

At the Summit of the Americas in Cartagena, Colombia on Monday (4/16), Barack Hussein Obama called for dialogue between Britain and Argentina over "the Maldives or the Falklands, whatever your preferred term." The Maldives are islands in the Indian Ocean.  The islands in the South Atlantic over which Britain and Argentina fought a war in 1982 are called the Malvinas by the Argentines. "Barack Obama made an uncharacteristic error, more akin to those of his predecessor George W Bush, by referring to the Falkland Islands as the Maldives," said the London Telegraph.  This was wrong on both counts. The error was by no means uncharacteristic of Mr. Obama.  Here are a few more examples of his foot-in-mouth disease:

Who is Hilary Rosen?  Prominent Democrats pretend they don't know.  "I know three, personally, women named Hilary Rosen," said White House Press Secretary Jay Carney. When Ms. Rosen declared on CNN last Wednesday (4/11) that Mitt Romney's wife, Ann, "has never actually worked a day in her life," she was doing what Democrats customarily do -- turning every issue into a personal attack on Republicans.  Her sudden unperson status illustrates the enormous potential for blowback. "Counterpunching is the art of making him miss, then making him pay," is how boxing trainers define it. "A good counterpuncher will hit without being hit. But just as importantly, he can make the opponent so scared to throw a punch that his offense dissolves away, leaving him gun-shy and helpless." Republicans have enjoyed watching Democrats run like scalded dogs from Hilary Rosen.  More heartening for them is how quickly and effectively the Romney campaign responded.

George Zimmerman was indicted yesterday (4/11) for second degree murder for shooting black teenager Trayvon Martin. Our legal system has a presumption of innocence.  But the news media already have found Mr. Zimmerman guilty of a hate crime.  Can an impartial jury be impaneled?   The producer who edited a 911 tape to make it seem Mr. Zimmerman pursued Mr. Martin because he was black made an "innocent mistake," NBC said.   What Mr. Zimmerman said was:  "This guy looks like he's up to no good, or on drugs or something.  It's raining and he's just walking around, looking about."  Then the 911 dispatcher asked: "OK, is this guy, is he white, black or Hispanic?"   "He looks black," Mr. Zimmerman responded.   You can't edit that to: "This guy looks like he's up to no good... he looks black," without intending to deceive.

Mitt Romney is boring.  That's partly why he's had trouble nailing down the Republican nomination for president.  But it's likely to be an advantage in the general election. In his private life, Gov. Romney is an Eagle Scout. That's a welcome change from what we've become accustomed to from politicians, but is neither colorful nor exciting.  And though Mr. Romney isn't a bad speaker, his campaign rhetoric is neither motivating nor inspiring.  He qualifies too carefully what he says, and leans overmuch on clichés.  When he ran for office in Massachusetts, Mr. Romney, understandably, took positions to the left of most Republicans, so many think him a squish.  He's shifted some views dramatically since, causing others to see him as a flip flopper. So he's had trouble closing the deal against deeply flawed, dramatically underfunded opponents. But once this dispiriting primary season ends, what have been liabilities for Mr. Romney will morph into assets.  Here's why.

The economy's been growing at a rate less than half the average for the recoveries following the 9 previous postwar recessions.  Accompanying the worst recovery ever is the longest period of sustained high unemployment since the Great Depression, the Congressional Budget Office noted. Real average hour earnings fell 1.1 percent between February of last year and this February, said the Bureau of Labor Statistics.   Americans are being squeezed more than the BLS data indicate.  The Consumer Price Index rose just 2.9 percent last year, but it doesn't include gasoline or food.  The American Institute for Economic Research compiles an "Everyday Price Index," which includes only stuff the typical consumer buys at least once a month.  The EPI rose 7.2 percent last year.   High unemployment, slow growth and soaring gasoline prices are the product chiefly of government policies.  They can be ameliorated, swiftly and substantially, if those policies are changed.  But it's too late to vote our way out of our biggest economic problem.

Something rare happened this week.  The story to which the news media devoted the most attention actually was the most important story.  Supreme Court Justices signaled during oral arguments they're likely to throw out Obamacare root and branch.  Liberals are stunned. When neighborhood watch volunteer George Zimmerman shot black teenager Trayvon Martin Feb. 26, it was murder, motivated by racism, liberals concluded without benefit of evidence.  Now evidence is emerging, and an open and shut case is being cluttered up with facts. Zimmerman's mother is Peruvian, which makes him as Hispanic as Barack Obama is black.  He's a registered Democrat.  This has no bearing whatsoever on Zimmerman's guilt or innocence, but it complicates the liberal narrative that somehow white Republicans are to blame for the shooting, and casts doubt on the wisdom of the president's decision to interject himself in the case. The liberal boycott of the Rush Limbaugh program has fizzled, the Washington Post acknowledged this week.  Rush's ratings are up 10 to 60 percent, and advertisers are beating down his door.  The big loser is George Soros-funded Media Matters, which put its reputation for intimidating advertisers on the line, and failed. Democrats are panicking about the political implications of Zero telling Russian President Dmitry Medvedev he would show more "flexibility" on missile defense after the election.  The clumsy lie Obama told trying to explain away the comment may compound the damage. Paul Ryan's budget passed the House.  Zero's budget got zero votes.

The presidency of Richard Nixon was destroyed, and that of Bill Clinton nearly ruined, by scandals that erupted over lies they told.  But no president ever before has lied as frequently, as flagrantly, or as foolishly as has Barack Obama. Mr. Obama was in Cushing, Oklahoma last Thursday (3/22) to pretend he was for the Keystone XL pipeline he blocked in January, and to feign support for domestic production of oil and natural gas, which his administration hinders and hampers in every way it can. Posing in front of stacks of pipe, Mr. Obama said: "Today, I'm directing my administration to cut through the red tape, break through the bureaucratic hurdles and make this project a priority." How does he expect people to believe this?  Does this guy have some psychological compulsion to lie?

Passage of his health care law is his proudest achievement, Rep. Carolyn Maloney, D-NY, said she was told by President Barack Hussein Obama, Jr.. But when the second anniversary of Obamacare rolled around last Friday (3/23), the White House hoped you wouldn't notice.  Why? Because we've learned everything Democrats said about it is false.  Here's a quick compendium of Obamalies and Obamadeceit on Obamacare.

Jack Wheeler is still in Africa, so I'll be subbing for him this week and next.  We'll begin this HFR with unadulterated good news.  The Supreme Court smacked down the EPA Wednesday for regulatory overreach. The mission in Afghanistan is on track, Marine Gen. John Allen, the NATO commander in Afghanistan, told the House Armed Services Committee Tuesday. If Gen. Allen really believed that, he'd be delusional. The fat lady was warming up after Mitt Romney's big win in Illinois Tuesday.  Then Romney's own campaign manager revived fears Mitt is a duplicitous squish. GOP prospects hinge heavily on how the middle class responds to Paul Ryan's budget.  He proposes to spend $3.5 trillion less than Obama over the next decade.  Democrats already are running Mediscare ads, but some conservatives think Ryan doesn't cut enough. Wednesday was the second anniversary of the passage of Obamacare.  Zero hopes you didn't notice. Journalists don't check out Zero's birth certificate because they're afraid it might be forged, an editor told columnist Diana West.