Columns

WASHINGTON -- Someone you probably are not familiar with has filed a suit you probably have not heard about concerning a four-word phrase you should know about. The suit could blow to smithereens something everyone has heard altogether too much about, the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (hereafter, ACA).

WASHINGTON -- President Obama is correct in wanting to make higher education more affordable and accessible, but Americans would also be correct in wondering just what they're paying for.

While the Florida Supreme Court voted 4-3 to place a medical marijuana constitutional amendment on the November ballot, the political impact of this decision and future treatment of marijuana in Florida are anything but clear.

Does John Kerry understand the world he inherited? Is he in denial? Consider. At Davos, Switzerland, Kerry called it a "myth" that America is withdrawing, and "the most bewildering version of this disengagement myth is about a supposed U.S. retreat from the Middle East." Is he serious? How else does Kerry describe Obama's pullout of all U.S. troops from Iraq, and from Afghanistan by year's end?

With the 50th anniversary of President Lyndon Baines Johnsons declared War on Poverty, much is being written about perspectives on levels of success, value of the effort, and only a little about the length and cost of a war that has been declared, yet never correctly embraced.

WASHINGTON -- As undignified as it is unedifying and unnecessary, the vulgar State of the Union circus is again at our throats. The document that the Constitutional Convention sent forth from Philadelphia for ratification in 1787 was just 4,543 words long, but this was 17 too many. America would be a sweeter place if the Framers had not included this laconic provision pertaining to the president: "He shall from time to time give to the Congress information of the state of the union."

CNN anchor Jake Tapper blandly admitted the obvious in a radio interview with conservative host Hugh Hewitt. The same reporters that insist their former Republican Party favorite Chris Christie is ruined for 2016 by traffic jams on a bridge are letting Hillary Clinton skate for embassy-security neglect that led to four dead government employees at Benghazi.

What do young Americans want? Something different from what they've been getting from the president they voted for by such large margins. Evidence comes in from various polls. Voters under 30, the millennial generation, produced numbers for Barack Obama 13 percentage points above the national average in 2008 and 9 points above in 2012.

WASHINGTON -- Disabusing the Republican Party of a cherished dogma, thereby requiring it to forgo a favorite rhetorical trope, will not win Clark M. Neily III the gratitude of conservatives who relish denouncing "judicial activism." He, however, and his colleagues at the libertarian Institute for Justice believe America would be more just if judges were less deferential to legislatures.

WASHINGTON -- The question du jour is, why did Hoboken Mayor Dawn Zimmer wait so long to step forward and level her corruption charges at Chris Christie? As surely everyone knows by now, Zimmer claims that following Hurricane Sandy, New Jersey Lt. Gov. Kim Guadagno told her that Hoboken wouldn't receive relief funds unless the mayor supported a commercial development project favored by Christie.

"He ended one war and kept us out of any other," is the tribute paid President Eisenhower. Ike ended the Korean conflict in 1953, refused to intervene to save the French at Dien Bien Phu in 1954, and, rather than back the British-French-Israeli invasion, ordered them all out of Egypt in 1956. Ending America longest wars may prove to be Barack Obama's legacy.

There's no question that Gov. Rick Scott's pro-business policies are producing results that benefit Florida families, but it is not a one-man show. The Florida Legislature deserves a share of the credit as well.

The Census Bureau's holiday treat is its release of annual state population estimates, to be digested slowly in the new year.

WASHINGTON -- By early 2011, writes former Defense Secretary Robert Gates, he had concluded that President Obama "doesn't believe in his own [Afghanistan] strategy, and doesn't consider the war to be his."

"I've got a pen," said President Obama early this week. "I can use that pen to sign executive orders and take executive actions ... that move the ball forward." "When I can act on my own without Congress, I'm going to do so," the president added Wednesday at North Carolina State.