"For the clueless and cynical diehards who deny global warming, it's getting awfully cold out there," Washington Post columnist Eugene Robinson wrote Oct. 24. It is indeed.  Here in Pennsylvania we had last month the earliest snowfall anyone can remember.  This winter will be cold and stormy, the Farmers Almanac predicts. But that's not what Mr. Robinson meant.  "Despite denials for political agendas, global warming at the hands of man is beyond doubt after a former skeptic's study," said the subhed over his column in the Memphis Commercial Appeal. Mr. Robinson was referring to the Berkeley Earth Surface Temperature Project, which examined temperature measurements from 1800 to 2010 from 39,000 ground stations around the world.  It's instructing to see how a warmist fraudster distorts it.

The big "news" this week are the charges of sexual misconduct against Herman Cain. As of midday Thursday, ABC, NBC and CBS had referred to them in 50 news broadcasts. This was rather more than the number of broadcasts in which ABC, NBC and CBS reported on the sexual misconduct of former Sen. John Edwards, D-NC, when he was running for president, which was zero. A House panel voted Thursday to subpoena internal White House documents on Solyndra. The AP reported Wednesday that just days before the firm collapsed, the administration contemplated bailing Solyndra out. And just a few months before the company filed for bankruptcy, Solyndra's top executives awarded themselves big bonuses. The executives were all big contributors to Democrats. MF Global filed for bankruptcy Monday. Showing the same financial acumen he did as governor of New Jersey, Democrat Jon Corzine bet $6 billion on bonds issued by the PIIGs in Europe, on the assumption the EU would bail out the bondholders at the rate of 100 cents on the dollar. Oops. Some $700 million of investors' money is missing. The SEC, CFTC and the FBI are investigating. Mr. Corzine has hired a criminal attorney. The odds he will be Barack Hussein Obama's next Treasury secretary have dropped a bit. The very left wing Nation magazine recently provided a sympathetic portrait of an OWS protester who took out $35,000 in student loans to get a masters degree in puppetry - and now wonders why he can't get a job. Herman Cain and Newt Gingrich are going to do something wonderful tomorrow nite.

The biggest consumer ripoff in America today -- and the next economic bubble to burst -- is higher education.

Tuition and fees at colleges and universities rose 439 percent between 1982 and 2007.  Median family income rose just 147 percent during that period.

Median household income has fallen 6.7 percent since June, 2009. The cost of attending the average public university rose 5.4 percent this year. Student loan debt recently passed $1 trillion.  It’s now more than credit card debt.  The average graduate of a four year college owes $27,000.

College students don’t get much for their money. Nearly half learn next to nothing in their first two years; a third learn almost nothing in four, according to a report authored principally by Prof. Richard Arum of New York University.

“Students who say that college has not prepared them for the real world are largely right,” said Ann Neal, president of the American Council of Trustees and Alumni.  “The fundamental problem here is not debt, but a broken educational system that no longer insists on excellence.”

If you look at President Barack Hussein Obama's job approval numbers and the "right track/wrong track" numbers, it's hard to see how he can win. But if you look at the GOP candidates running against him, it's hard to see how Mr. Obama can lose. The Seven Dwarves break down like this: There is former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney; five vying to be "Not Romney;" and Rep. Ron Paul, who inhabits a universe all his own. (There are eight candidates, if you count former Utah Gov. Jon Huntsman.  I don't, since he seems to be running in the wrong party.) The irony is we must choose from this mediocre (at best) field at a time when the Republican bench is filled with intelligent, articulate, principled conservatives who've displayed courage and initiative in office.  But none of them got off the bench and answered the call.

The one indisputable benefit for Americans in the death last Thursday of Libyan dictator Muammar Qaddafi/Gaddafy/Khadafy is that we'll fret no longer over the spelling of his name. Pundits left and right hailed the dictator's death as a triumph of President Barack Hussein Obama's policy of "leading from the rear" on Libya. Not everybody was fooled.  Mr. Obama conducts foreign policy with his political interests more in mind than our national interests, Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-SC, charged Sunday (10/23). Those political interests were foremost in the minds of many liberals.

Two of the most popular demands of the Occupy Wall Street protesters are for "free college education," and "debt forgiveness" for  student loans. College students are not among those whom Marxist revolutionary Frantz Fanon (1925-1961) called the "Wretched of the Earth."  These protesters demonstrate their "youthful idealism" by demanding free stuff for themselves. The collegians do have a beef.  Many are discovering that despite their very expensive educations, they are essentially unemployable.  (The unemployment rate among 2010 college grads is slightly higher than the national unemployment rate is now.) Perhaps this is because their very expensive educations taught them so little about the economic system they are protesting against.  New York Magazine discovered, when it polled 50 protesters in Zuccotti Park, that most have no clue what the rich pay in taxes, how the federal government spends its money, or what the SEC is supposed to do.

A man half the country hadn't heard of a month ago is the leading Republican candidate for president, according to three opinion polls last week. Businessman Herman Cain led former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney, 27 percent to 23 percent in an NBC/Wall Street Journal poll published last Thursday (10/13).  Mr. Cain led Mr. Romney, 30-22, in a PPP survey that same day.  A Rasmussen poll showed Mr. Cain and Mr. Romney tied at 29 percent. This is remarkable, because only 51 percent of respondents in a Gallup poll Sept. 27 recognized Mr. Cain's name.  If these numbers hold, we'll witness something extraordinary in the history of politics. Are we seeing the emergence of the Black Reagan?

Ugly and pathetic.  That's what you get when you combine envy with desperation, and wrap them in hypocrisy. Democrats envy and fear the Tea Party, a grassroots movement that arose spontaneously after CNBC Editor Rick Santelli's epic rant on the floor of the Chicago Mercantile Exchange Feb. 19, 2009.  The Occupy Wall Street movement "has spread to more than 250 American cities, more than a thousand countries," enthused ABC anchor Diane Sawyer.  That's remarkable, since there are only 195 countries on Planet Earth (196 if you count Kosovo). Ms. Sawyer's accuracy is rivaled by those journalists who compare OWS protests to the Tea Party. Tea Partiers cleaned up after themselves.  Garbage is strewn wherever OWS protesters march. The OWS encampment in Zuccotti Park, reports the New York Post, smells "like an open sewer -- with people urinating and defecating in public." ABC News reported Monday (10/10) that "Democrats Seek to Own ‘Occupy Wall Street' Movement." How appropriate.  The party of Nancy Pelosi, Harry Reid, and Barack Hussein Obama does indeed smell like an open sewer.

I've never resented the successful for enjoying the fruits of their labors.  Democrats do.  The top one percent of earners pay nearly 40 percent of the federal income tax.  The top one tenth of one percent pays about 20 percent. But "the rich" still don't pay their "fair share," Democrats say.  They're "greedy" if they don't want to pay more.  "At a certain point, you've made enough money," President Barack Hussein Obama says. The truly greedy, it seems to me, are those who think they've a right to live well at the expense of others.

It's time for Congress to impeach Attorney General Eric Holder. Congress may remove from office "all civil officers of the United States" if they are convicted of "Treason, Bribery, or other high Crimes and Misdemeanors," the Constitution says (Art. II, Sec. 4). Only the House of Representatives can impeach, which is comparable to indictment.  The official is then tried by the Senate, where a two-thirds vote is required for conviction. The Constitution doesn't say what constitutes "high Crimes and Misdemeanors," but perjury surely is among them.  So is obstruction of justice.  A clear case can be made that Mr.Holder is guilty of both.

The worst nightmare for Democrats is that Barack Hussein Obama will run for re-election.  If he's at the top of the ticket, Democrats will be drubbed worse than they were in 2010, indicated a survey Sept. 22 by Democrat pollster Stanley Greenberg. The worst nightmare for Republicans is that he won't.  Hillary Clinton is the most popular political figure in America, according to a Bloomberg poll Sept. 16. Democrats could have more sleepless nights, Republicans fewer restless ones if Herman Cain wins the Republican nomination. The race should narrow to a candidate favored by the GOP establishment, and a conservative "outsider," most analysts think.  Mr. Romney has locked up the establishment slot.  Ms. Bachmann and Mr. Perry auditioned for the role of "outsider," but have been found wanting.  Is it Herman Cain's turn now? Perhaps - but note that Ms. Bachmann is over because of her intemperate attack ("government needles into 12 year old girls") on Mr. Perry.  Two days ago (10/02), Mr. Cain suffered what is being called his "Bachmann moment."

Even Democrats tune out Barack Hussein Obama now. With independents, Mr. Obama is more deeply underwater than the Titanic.  So it isn’t surprising he lost to “generic Republican” by 4 percentage points in an NBC poll in August; by 5 in a Rasmussen poll in September.

Alas for the GOP, “generic Republican” isn’t running.  Neither are those whom conservative pundits think best qualified to lead the nation.  Weekly Standard Editor Bill Kristol did all but send flowers and candy to Indiana Gov. Mitch Daniels; then to Wisconsin’s Rep. Paul Ryan, and finally to New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie -- only to have all three spurn his advances.

Mr. Cain has a more impressive resume than all but a handful of professional politicians.  Like his IQ, it dwarfs that of Mr. Obama’s. Let's take a look at him.

The Justice Department spent $16 each for muffins for refreshments at one conference.  At another, hors d'oeuvres that cost $7.32 per serving were served, DOJ's Inspector General reported Sept. 20.  Our "public servants" do indeed live well at our expense.  But what, you wonder, do $16 muffins have to do with government subsidies for "green" technologies? DOJ's extravagance cost taxpayers perhaps $100,000.  Subsidies for green companies are $16 muffins on steroids.  They cost taxpayers tens of billions of dollars. There are differences.  Though Justice grotesquely overpaid, they did get muffins.  All taxpayers likely will receive from green subsidies is more debt. And while the $16 muffins can be attributed to the careless and self indulgence that, alas, often occurs when bureaucrats spend our money, there emanates from the green subsidies a stench of corruption from the Obama White House.

More scandals swirl about Barack Hussein Obama than any president before him.  Each one seems worse than Watergate.  Taken together, they dwarf the scandal that caused Richard Nixon to resign the presidency. *After receiving a $535 million guaranteed loan from the Obama administration, Solyndra, a manufacturer of solar panels, filed for bankruptcy this month.  In apparent violation of federal law, private investors were given priority over taxpayers for claims on Solyndra's assets. Solyndra is owned by Tulsa billionaire George Kaiser, a major fund-raiser for Mr. Obama.  He and Solyndra executives made 20 visits to the White House before the loan was made. While Solyndra wasn't actually lethal to anyone, LightSquared could get people killed, and Gunwalker already has.

After GOP victories in special elections for the U.S. House in New York and Nevada, liberals were on the verge of panic.  Then Dominic Pileggi really freaked them out. On the very day of these victories (9/13), Mr. Pileggi, the majority leader of the Pennsylvania senate, announced he'll introduce a bill to allocate Pennsylvania's electoral votes by congressional district.  The winner statewide would get the two electoral votes for the state's U.S. senators.  (The GOP gained majorities in both the state senate and state house, plus the governorship in 2010.) Mr. Obama carried Pennsylvania by 10.31 percent points in 2008, garnering all 21 electoral votes.  If the Pileggi proposal had been in force, he'd have gotten only 11. "In a close national race, an obnoxious scheme like this can alter the entire presidential election, all because Republicans are afraid to fight on a level playing field," wrote liberal Steve Benen in the Washington Monthly.  "It's just a cynical ploy to arbitrarily favor the Republican party," wrote liberal Kevin Drum in Mother Jones.  Yes, they are freaking out.

You may have heard of Bill McKibben.  When I googled "McKibben," I got more than 7 million hits. Mr. McKibben is "probably the nation's leading environmentalist," Boston Globe reporter Anis Shivani wrote last year.  So when Bill McKibben wrote that Hurricane Irene "has a middle name, and it's Global Warming," his article drew a lot of attention from journalists.  Warming increases the number and violence of hurricanes and tornadoes, Mr. McKibben wrote in the Daily Beast (owner of Newsweek)  the day before the storm struck the Eastern seaboard. This is hooey.  Worldwide, accumulated cyclone activity (what we call hurricanes scientists call tropical cyclones) is near historic lows, Florida State University climatologist Ryan Maue said in August.  It is turning out that all the "science" of warmists is also hooey.

Unions are all that protect America from "barbarians," Vice President Joe Biden said at a Labor Day rally in Cincinnati.  But the only barbarian in evidence that day was Teamsters' President Jimmy Hoffa, who threatened to "take out" Tea Party critics of President Barack Obama's spending. Mr. Hoffa was a warmup speaker for the president at the Labor Day rally in Detroit. Though he rarely misses an opportunity to lecture others on civility, Mr. Obama had no comment on Mr. Hoffa's remarkable incivility.  And though the president didn't join Mr. Hoffa in threatening violence, he did imply his critics are unpatriotic. A crowd Detroit police estimated at 13,000 responded warmly to Mr. Obama.  But when Candidate Obama spoke there in 2008, more than 30,000 came to hear him.  Looks like Obama and the unions are going down in flames together.

In a few years -- sigh -- I'll be eligible for Social Security.  But Social Security could be broke before I receive any benefits. The Social Security Trust Fund will be in the red by 2014, and by 2036 will be unable to pay all the benefits promised, Social Security's trustees said in their annual report. It's worse than that, because there is no money in the Social Security Trust Fund.  The $2.6 trillion collected in payroll taxes since 1937 long since has been spent. What there is in the Social Security Trust Fund are IOUs from the Treasury department, IOUs Treasury can't possibly make good, because federal spending vastly exceeds all other tax revenues.  The Social Security Trust Fund is an accounting fiction. This means that if Social Security isn't put on a sound financial footing pronto, benefits will have to be cut a lot sooner than 2036. How did we get into this mess?  And how do we get out of it?

"We plan to declare war on Rick Perry and do all in our power to crush him," the editor of a major newspaper told GOP consultant Mark McKinnon. I doubt he was surprised.  This is what the "mainstream" media did to Sarah Palin in 2008, and what likely is in store for anyone Republicans nominate. But liberals will go after the Texas governor with special venom.  "It's almost as if Perry's political persona was constructed by bundling together all the fears and phantoms in the left-wing anxiety closet." he said.  Some East Coast Republicans share these concerns.

We've known since 9/11 that some Moslems want to kill us.  It would seem prudent to find out who they are, and how many of them there are.  These are people who politicize Islam into Islamism, a radical ideology akin to Communism and Nazism.  That's why they're called Islamists. It may be even more important to learn which Moslems share our values and oppose the Islamists, and how many of them there are. But the Obama administration and most in the news media are remarkably incurious.  In July, the American Islamic Leadership Coalition issued a policy statement which said U.S. counterterror strategy is too soft on Islamists.  The administration and the "mainstream" media ignored it. Perhaps liberals ignored that statement because they assume the Islamist Council on American-Islamic Relations  (CAIR) speaks for America's Moslems.  Turns out CAIR speaks for almost no American Moslems at all.

Texas Gov. Rick Perry has been a presidential candidate for barely two weeks, but already polls indicate he's even with President Barack Hussein Obama.  So the administration trotted out Education Secretary Arne Duncan to knock him down a peg. Texas schools have "really struggled" under Gov. Perry, Mr. Duncan told Bloomberg's Al Hunt Aug. 18.  "Far too few of their high school graduates are actually prepared to go on to college... I feel really badly for the children there." It's cheesy for a Cabinet officer to be so political.  But that's not why Mr. Obama shouldn't have used the former Chicago superintendent of schools as his attack dog. According to the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP), 4th and 8th graders in Texas score substantially better in reading and math than do their counterparts in Chicago.  The high school graduation rate in Texas (73 percent) is much better than Chicago's (56 percent).

There were few jobs in ancient Greece more fraught with peril than that of messenger, because if a king was unhappy with the content of a message, he often took out his displeasure on the person who carried it. The custom of killing the messenger was so widespread that in his play Antigone, Sophocles (496-406 BC) used it as a metaphor for lashing out at the innocent.  After Shakespeare used it twice (in Henry IV and Antony and Cleopatra), the metaphor became entrenched in the English language. It's been ages since a ruler actually killed a messenger, but Democrats seem to want to revive the practice.  There's nothing else left for them to do.

Former Vice President Al Gore went on a profanity-laced tirade at the Aspen Institute Aug. 4 against the rising number of Americans who are skeptical about man-made global warming. Mr. Gore's alarmist predictions have proved false.  Polar ice caps are larger.  The polar bear population is increasing.  The wildlife biologist upon whom Mr. Gore relied for his claim the polar bear is endangered, Charles Monnett, is suspected of fraud.  The rise in sea levels -- which has been going on since the end of the last ice age -- is slowing down. Mr. Gore can respond only with curses, and ever more hysterical predictions of imminent doom.  His credibility is in tatters.  In the public mind, he's gone from Nobel Prize winner to Chicken Little. Anthropogenic (man-made) global warming is a "contrived phony mess that is falling apart of its own weight," says Texas Gov. Rick Perry.  It's the most harmful hoax in history, because President Barack Obama bases job-killing policies on it.

When it's clear you've made a mistake, it's usually wise to admit it.  The unwillingness of Democrats to do this could cost them dearly in the next election. Democrats have made a lot of mistakes in the last few years, none bigger than Obamacare. Democrats knew Obamacare was unpopular.  That's why they passed it on a sneaky parliamentary maneuver in the dead of night.  But Democrats assumed Americans would like Obamacare better once they learned more about it. Democrats assumed wrong.  Opposition to Obamacare has hardened.  Respondents in a Rasmussen poll Aug. 8 favored repeal, 54 percent to 40 percent. A plurality has favored repeal every month since Obamacare passed. No wonder.  Every promise President Obama made about his health care plan has proved to be false.

The passage of Gov. Scott Walker's budget repair bill in Wisconsin was like Stalingrad for public employee unions, I wrote in Unions on the Ropes (April, 2011). Stalingrad was the Nazis' first major defeat (the five month-long battle ended in early February 1943, with two million casualties on both sides).  But it was still possible for Germany to win the war.  Hitler thought he could regain the initiative with a carefully planned offensive to pinch off a bulge in the Russian lines at Kursk (between Stalingrad on the Volga and Moscow in western Russia). But the Nazis were defeated. They lost the cream of their panzers, which they could not replace.  After Kursk (July-August 1943), it was impossible for Germany to win. On Tuesday (8/09) in Wisconsin, public employee unions suffered their Kursk.

Ever hear of a 1956 movie titled The Man Who Never Was?  It's a true story, based on the 1953 book of the same title written by the man who conducted it, British military intelligence officer Ewen Montagu.  He got the idea for what was named Operation Mincemeat from his colleague Ian Fleming.  (Their secretary, Patricia Bennett, was the model for Miss Moneypenny, and their boss, Admiral John Henry Godfrey, the model for M in Fleming's subsequent James Bond novels.) Montagu secured the corpse of a Welshman, Glyndwr Michael, from a London coroner, dressed him as a fictitious Acting Major William Martin of the Royal Marines, and had him dropped off the coast of Spain chained to a briefcase containing phony plans for an invasion of Greece and Sardinia - assuming, correctly, that the documents would be turned over to German intelligence.  The Germans didn't realize until two weeks after the invasion of Sicily began that neither Greece nor Sardinia was the real target. In America today, The Man Who Never Was is the brilliant, politically moderate reformer with a "first class temperament" journalists told us about in 2008.  The petulant, partisan ideologue we saw during the debt ceiling negotiations bears little resemblance to that guy.

A cynical American businessman, traveling abroad, was asked by perplexed foreigners to explain how our political system works. "In America we have a Stupid Party (the Republicans) and an Evil Party (the Democrats)," the businessman explained.  "Usually, they are at each other's throats.  But every now and then they get together in a bipartisan fashion and pass something that's both stupid and evil." A lot of people on both ends of the political spectrum feel that way about the last minute compromise on a bill to raise the ceiling on the national debt. For conservatives, there isn't much in the deal to love, while liberals were apoplectic.  The hysterical reaction of so many liberals highlights a paradox for conservatives.

The tsunami is just offshore.  The national debt is approaching 100 percent of GDP.  Unfunded liabilities in entitlement programs exceed $100 trillion.  The U.S. is near a "tipping point" where the interest we must pay on our debt exceeds our rate of economic growth, warns the Bank of International Settlements. But our political "leaders" are still sunning themselves on the beach.  For Democrats, posturing for the next election is more important than solving our fiscal problems.  The primary goals of President Barack Obama and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid in the debt ceiling negotiations were to hold reductions in spending to an absolute minimum, and to postpone another debate on raising the debt ceiling until after the 2012 elections.  They have succeeded. So it's business as usual in Washington D.C.  But beyond the beltway, people are worried, and they're getting angry.  A Pew poll published July 22 indicates two demographics that have been heavily Democratic for decades -- whites with incomes under $30,000 and people under age 30 -- now lean Republican.  Apparently they prefer having jobs to class warfare.  We may be on the verge of the biggest paradigm shift in our politics since the Great Depression.

The kingdom of Phyrgia in what is now western Turkey was leaderless, and wracked by civil unrest.  The elders consulted an oracle, who told them their next king would come riding in a wagon.  As the elders were discussing the prophecy, a peasant rode into town in an oxcart.  They made the bewildered man, named Gordius, king.  In gratitude, he dedicated his oxcart to the god Zeus, tying it with an intricate knot to a pole in front of the temple. There the oxcart remained for many years, and another legend arose.  Whoever could loosen the Gordian Knot would rule all of Asia.  Thousands tried, none succeeded. Then, in 333 B.C., along came Alexander the Great.  According to yet another legend, instead of trying to untie the knot like all before him, he simply drew his sword and cut it apart.  (Aristobulus, a contemporary, said Alexander actually loosed the famous oxcart by pulling the pin out of the pole to which the yoke was tied.) Whatever.  Alexander went on to conquer Asia, and ever since the Gordian Knot has been a metaphor for how to solve the apparently unsolvable.  So why isn't it being applied to our seemingly intractable economic problems today?

Cisco, Lockheed Martin and Borders announced a combined 23,000 in job cuts last week, prompting Yahoo Finance to declare "the mass layoff  is making a comeback." Job losses since January, 2008 are now the greatest since the Great Depression, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Billionaire casino magnate Steve Wynn, a Democrat who's been a major financial supporter of Vice President Joe Biden and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, thinks he knows why. "This administration has been the greatest wet blanket to business, progress, and job creation in my lifetime," Mr. Wynn said in a conference call with investors.  "The business community in this country is frightened to death of the weird political philosophy of the president of the United States.  And until he's gone, everybody's going to be sitting on their thumbs." Welcome to the Wet Blanket Presidency.

When Moody's, the bond rating agency, threatened to downgrade the credit worthiness of the U.S. government if the ceiling on the national debt isn't raised by Aug. 2, the threat was reported on the evening news on CBS and NBC, and on the front pages of many newspapers. But journalists paid little attention when Moody's and Standard & Poor's said they would downgrade U.S. bonds if federal spending isn't cut by $4 trillion over the next ten years. If our credit rating is downgraded, the Treasury department will have to pay a higher rate of interest to sell its bonds, ballooning the deficit.  Americans will have to pay more for home and auto loans, since the interest rates on them is tied to what Treasury pays. Raising the debt ceiling would permit Treasury to borrow more money, thus avoiding default in the short term.  But borrowing more makes the risk of default greater in the long run.  And the long run isn't very far off.  Actually, it's breathing down our necks.

Republicans in Minnesota mostly have won a budget showdown with Democrat Gov. Mark Dayton. Last Thursday (7/14), Gov. Dayton blinked.  He'll accept essentially the budget the legislature passed in May, the governor said in a letter to GOP leaders. "Republicans have won a pitched battle with a Democrat governor on spending and taxes in a liberal state," said Minnesota blogger Scott Johnson (Power Line).  "If Republicans can make it here, they can make it anywhere." Maybe not.  President Barack Hussein Obama has gained the upper hand over Republicans in Congress in their showdown over raising the ceiling on the national debt.  A conservative senator National Review Editor Rich Lowry talked to "believes time is on the president's side in this debate, and is very depressed," he wrote Saturday (7/16). Why are Republicans in Washington depressed and losing while Republicans in Minnesota are happy and winning?

"I've bent over backwards to work with Republicans," Mr. Obama said in his news conference Monday (7/11) on negotiations to raise the ceiling on the national debt. Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell disagrees.  "The president has presented us with three choices: smoke and mirrors, tax hikes, or default.  Republicans choose none of the above." Mr. Obama's aides told reporters he'd offered to trim spending by $1.7 trillion over the next ten years in exchange for tax increases.  That $1.7 trillion consists mostly of phantom cuts - "fairy dust" is what Rep. Allen West (R-FL) calls them.  So what should Republicans do?  How about looking at Minnesota?  That's where they'll find Mr. Obama.

Tim Pawlenty should have stayed in Minnesota.  Instead of running for a third gubernatorial term, he decided to run for president.  Big mistake. Prior to the GOP debate in New Hampshire June 13, he'd been gaining some traction by denouncing ethanol subsidies in Iowa, calling for Social Security reform in Florida, and making the most comprehensive statements on foreign policy of any candidate.  Then he zinged Mitt Romney by coining the clever, and accurate, term "Obamneycare" to highlight similarities between Obama's health care plan and the one Romney imposed in Massachusetts when he was governor (2003-2007).   Conservatives who'd overlooked him looked again with new respect. Yet after throwing down the Obamneycare gauntlet on June 12, Pawlenty refused to confront Romney on it during the debate the very next day.  He wimped out, and his candidacy may never recover. Yep, he shoulda stayed in Minnesota, for with Washington gridlocked, action on the fiscal crisis has moved to the states.

Did a secret meeting on the Fourth of July break the biggest scandal since Watergate so far open the "mainstream" media can ignore it no longer? The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) deliberately permitted the transfer of more than 2,000 firearms to Mexican drug cartels, four ATF whistleblowers told a House committee June 15. The guns have been linked to the deaths of 150 Mexican soldiers and policemen, and at least one U.S. law enforcement officer. The Washington Post was outraged... at Rep. Darrell Issa, R-CA, chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, for bringing the scandal to light. But in a meeting on the Fourth with Rep. Issa and Sen. Chuck Grassley, R-IA, Acting ATF Director Kenneth Melson confirmed what the whistleblowers said, and then some.  Mr. Melson's testimony is why the "Fast and Furious" scandal may be Mr. Obama's Watergate.

Lost in the furor over MSNBC's Mark Halperin's calling President Obama a "dick"  last Thursday (6/30) was the substance of his argument.  Mr. Obama's harsh attacks on Republicans will make it harder to reach a compromise on raising the ceiling on the national debt, Mr. Halperin said. "If everybody else is willing to take on sacred cows and do tough things in order to achieve the goal of real deficit reduction, then I think it would be hard for the Republicans to stand there and say that the tax break for corporate jets is sufficiently important that we're not willing to come to the table and get a deal done," the president said. Later, Mr. Obama said Republicans were "willing to compromise their kids' safety so that some corporate jet owner continues to get a tax break." This was more than harshly partisan.  It was mendacious.  That's a fancy word for lying, for being maliciously dishonest on purpose.  On examination, Mr. Obama is habitually so.  He should be known as President Mendacious.

In a poorly crafted speech tepidly delivered, President Barack Hussein Obama announced last week (6/22) 10,000 of the 33,000 additional troops he sent to Afghanistan will be withdrawn before the end of the year, the remainder of the surge force by September 2012. Because winters in Afghanistan are so brutal, the Taliban fights mostly in summer.  Setting a withdrawal deadline in the middle of the fighting season makes no military sense, said retired Lt. Gen. David Barno, a former commander in Afghanistan who is now a fellow at a liberal think tank. Mr. Obama thinks it makes political sense.  He wants those troops home before the presidential election campaign heats up after Labor Day. "If there is anyone who can make the excellent idea of reversing the Afghan surge sound like a bad one, it's our president," said Ann Marlowe of the Hudson Institute, who described the speech as "more or less a concession of defeat."

Richard Nixon took a more expansive view of his powers than any other president.  "When the president does it, that means that it is not illegal," he told David Frost in that famous 1977 interview. More expansive, that is, until now.  Barack Obama has a distinctly Nixonian view of the law.  If it gets in his way, he ignores it. The War Powers Act, which Congress passed in 1973 over President Nixon's veto, says if Congress doesn't approve the mission within 90 days after troops have been committed to "hostilities," they must be withdrawn. The 90 days on Libya ran out last Sunday (6/19).  The top lawyers at Justice and Defense told Mr. Obama the War Powers Act applies to Libya, but he ignored them.  This is not the first time this administration has flouted the law.  There are many other examples.