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One of the most important progressive principles is that righteous ends can justify a whole range of brutal means. – Bruce Thornton

The ballooning Obama scandals – IRS, HHS, DOJ, EPA – are not really about character or competence, but the danger of big government itself. The more power any government has, the more power it will abuse. The more money it spends, the more money it will mis-spend. Dysfunction and corruption grow on government like mold on otherwise perfectly good bread. It has nothing to do with party or ideology – it has to do with human nature. …These scandals shine a light on the inherent flaw of the progressive ideology: the idea that government can and should be trusted with more and more power, because it alone can wield that power in the disinterested pursuit of the common good.– Senator Mike Lee

It’s plausible to grant that Obama himself did not know that IRS agents were targeting tea party groups, Jews and other — one almost wants to write “enemies of the state” — for audits, harassment and delay. If Obama understood the conservative critique of big government even a little, he would know that his lack of knowledge is expected. In fact, it’s part of the problem. As David Axelrod put it, the government is just “too vast” for the president to control.  — Mona Charen

No one can know with certainty why Obama has chosen the path he has chosen. But what seems much more certain is that a nuclear Iran — the world’s foremost terrorist nation — is a danger that dwarfs the danger from Kaiser Wilhelm II in the First World War or Adolf Hitler in the Second World War. — Thomas Sowell

 

New testimony by State Department whistleblowers and an Interim Progress Report prepared by five House Committees show what a huge difference it makes when members of the administration ignore repeated warnings of growing danger, deny requests for additional security and then attempt to cover up their negligence. – Senator Ron Johnson

In 1974, Chile adopted the most far-reaching series of free-market reforms in history, driving a once-poor, socialist-ravaged country to the ranks of the first world within 30 years. - Investors Business Daily

The IRS took the Tea Party out of play for the 2012 election to avoid a repeat of 2010 and another Tea Party landslide. — Lawrence Kudlow

The Obama administration is relentlessly pursuing [the Romeike family] through the courts. President Obama wants this family deported. These evangelical Christian home schoolers fled their native Germany in 2008. They pleaded for and obtained temporary asylum in this country.   They have lived since then in a quiet hamlet in Tennessee, home schooling their six children. Hannalore and husband Uwe were threatened with imprisonment and loss of custody of their children in Germany if they persisted in home schooling them. …The Obama administration denies that this is a problem. If the government’s values clash with those of Christian parents—especially on matters of faith and morals—it is no violation of your rights, the president believes. It’s alright for you to be compelled to send your kids to public schools. … Religious freedom is not seen by this administration as a fundamental human right.  Compare President Obama’s treatment of the Romeikes with his treatment of Imam Feisel Abdul Rauf.  – Robert Morrison

So now not only are your books and Facebook posts legitimate tax issues but so is your hernia, and your prostate, and your erectile dysfunction. Next time round, the IRS will be able to leak your incontinence pads to George Soros.  Big Government is erecting a panopticon state — one that sees everything, and regulates everything. It’s great “customer service,” except that you can never get out of the store. — Mark Steyn

 

[The IRS scandal] harkens back to the days of Richard Nixon and maintaining a political enemies list and treating the federal government as a tool to exact the administration’s retribution. – Ted Cruz

 

They knew that without true civil society organizations to promote self-government, such as the Tea Party, all that’s left is an all-powerful state that citizens must face alone. – Investors Business Daily

Obama’s presidency may yet be, on balance, a net plus for the public good if it shatters American’s trust in the regulatory state’s motives. — George Will

It is an abdication of duty for Congress to stand by idly while the Treasury Department unilaterally rewrites our tax treaty obligations and compromises the private data of millions of law-abiding Americans. – Senator Rand Paul

See how it works? If you reject the voices that warn of tyranny–if you put your faith in the federal government–you will be guaranteed a life of riches and ease. If you listen to the voices, your life will be hell on earth.  There is absolutely no reason–not one–to listen to those voices warning of tyranny. Well, except that their warnings are true. – James Taranto (Wall Street Journal)

When it comes to Obama’s vow to hold the [Benghazi] killers accountable, there is no there there. – Michelle Malkin

So… what, exactly, does Barack Obama “preside” over?  He claims to have learned about the IRS scandal by watching the evening news last Friday.  He’s got no idea what those crazy rogue operatives in the State Department and intelligence community were doing when the Benghazi consulate was attacked, or during the crucial news cycles that followed.  He’s got nothing to do with the economy – he wishes for jobs with all his heart when his head hits the pillow each night, but they never come.  The sequester he insisted on suddenly became a conspiracy to short-circuit his beloved super-government by trimming a few bucks off future spending increases.  Why, Mr. Obama was even helpless to keep the White House open for tours!…He’s a bystander to his own presidency now.  It’s a crappy reality show he watches on TV. — John Hayward

Consider this — the IRS is now involved in a scandal over improper targeting of conservative, constitutional, and Jewish groups. Obamacare expands the IRS to be in charge of your healthcare. -- Erick Erickson

The prevailing view in the so-called mainstream media is that “Team Red” is made up of bad people. The Tea Party wasn’t just angry and boisterous, it was “racist.” The National Organization for Marriage isn’t just uncomfortable with a radical change to the institution of marriage; it’s “hateful” and “bigoted.” The Catholic Church doesn’t simply adhere to countercultural views on human sexuality, it’s waging a “war on women.” That makes it easy to understand how, in Douthat’s words, the abusive IRS employees might have “thought they were just doing their patriotic duty, and giving dangerous extremists the treatment they deserved.” – James Taranto of the Wall Street Journal

I can still hear the voices of Barack Obama and the other con artists behind ObamaCare telling us how it would reduce the deficit.  Now it can only survive if we either pour even more taxpayer money into it, or private industry executives agree to pony up a little charity.  ….[Sebelius] has the power to annihilate every one of the businessmen she’s hitting up for money, and they know it….Kathleen Sebelius can pretend she’s just asking for the money Congress won’t authorize, to shore up a failing program that was supposed to save taxpayers money.  Things will get less cordial when they become more desperate.  Fascism can begin with good manners and an upbeat attitude.  In fact, it usually does. — John Hayward

By one estimate 430,000 nonresidents a year enter the United States for medical care. Canadian patients seeking medical care at U.S. hospitals, for example, are able to get package prices that are about half of what BlueCross patients typically pay. — John C. Goodman

Not only are consumers avoiding the beef and pork that they otherwise may have preferred, but they are opting out of the convenience of prepared foods. This behavior is symptomatic of diminished consumer purchasing power. This is known as getting poorer. – Peter Schiff

For more than a century, the left has been adept at reality-avoidance. (Ex: We can spend our way to prosperity. Government control leads to efficiency.) Ignoring the palpable reality of Islam – written in blood with severed limbs– is its highest achievement; Barack Obama is the pinnacle of its success. — Don Feder

The rules have been stacked against conservatives and Ted Cruz isn’t playing by those rules. He’s fighting for freedom. We should thank him. His efforts are not alone either. He is tag teaming with Rand Paul and Mike Lee. …It was easy when it was just Jim DeMint. They could all largely ignore one man. But that one man worked real hard to get three new young men into the Senate who are playing by new rules. And they are winning in the court of public opinion, they are winning behind the scenes, and their efforts are forcing the rest of the conference to fight with them or be exposed as the schmucks they are.  If Ted Cruz were not putting points on the board, the Wall Street Journal, John McCain, Bill Richardson, Harry Reid, and the rest would not be crying foul. Ted Cruz is winning and they don’t like it that he won’t play the game they designed to marginalize guys like Cruz. — Erick Erickson

Liberals demonstrate they understand the law of demand — that raising the cost of something lessens the amount taken — but they deny that it applies to labor. That’s as ludicrous as suggesting that the law of gravity applies to everything in the universe except cute creatures, such as pandas and puppies. — Walter Williams

Lower lending standards of course meant higher risks of default. But these risks — and the chain reactions throughout the whole financial system — were like the traffic ignored by a small child dashing out into the street in pursuit of their bouncing ball. The whole economy got hit when the housing boom became a housing bust, and we are still trying to recover, years later. – Thomas Sowell

87 percent of Palestinians say a wife must always obey her husband; 89% want to be ruled by Islamic law, and 62% support the death penalty for leaving Islam. — Caroline Glick