Last week’s State of the Union address was a sad and pathetic affair, full of transparent rhetoric and demagoguery, brimming with incandescent hypocrisies, variegated with an expansive assortment of half-truths and lies, palled by a mediocrity that almost seemed intentional, detached from reality like an unmoored hot-air balloon that slowly ascends to the heavens, stuffed with dense and infuriating arrogance, and draped over our nation like a several-sizes-too-small coat with promises and ideas rendered diminutive in the shadow of the historical moment.

At the end of Sunday mass at the church this writer attends in Washington, D.C., the pastor asked the congregation to remain for a few minutes. Then, on the instructions of Cardinal Archbishop Donald Wuerl, the pastor proceeded to read a letter. In the letter, the Church denounced the Obama administration for ordering all Catholic schools, hospitals and social services to provide, in their health insurance coverage for employees, free contraceptives, free sterilizations and free “morning-after” pills.

Cheers for Senator Mike Lee (R-UT) for standing up to President Obama on his unconstitutional recess appointments.

As the implementation of Obamacare rolls into high gear, we’ve been given insight into how it will be implemented in general. On January 20, the Department of Health and Human Services announced that it would not exempt health plans provided by non-profit religious employers from the requirement to provide “contraceptive services.” … Today the department is announcing that the final rule on preventive health services will ensure that women with health insurance coverage will have access to the full range of the Institute of Medicine’s recommended preventive services, including all FDA -approved forms of contraception.

When Pliny the Younger was a provincial governor in the Roman Empire, he wrote a letter to Emperor Trajan asking whether he should execute Christians who refused to burn incense in worship of the emperor. Pliny, in keeping with the customs of the empire, did not care about forcing Christians to believe that the emperor was a god.

If there’s one thing about the Marxists controlling today’s unions, it is that they are

First lady Michelle Obama the other day railed at “the few at the top,” who do all sorts of bad things. A few months ago, we began hearing of the “1 percent” who are responsible for the current economic mess

Now is a particularly dangerous moment for American national security interests.

While being grilled by co-host Ann Curry on Wednesday's NBC Today on Arizona's illegal immigration law causing racial discrimination, Governor Jan Brewer hit back and declared: “I believe truly that the media and others have tried to throw out that race card to shut down the debate. It's not about that. It's about illegal immigration.” Audio available here Earlier, Curry fretted: “Now what would justify such a law that required people, essentially, to carry papers, identification, something that proved that they're American citizens?” Brewer replied: “…it's under reasonable suspicion, it's no different than what law enforcement actually does today….So it's a simple issue, and the press, the liberal media tried to blow that completely totally out of perspective.” View video after the jump Curry pressed Brewer on whether police in Arizona would racially profile: “You say the people in Arizona are not racist or bigots

A House subcommittee is set to take up a bill that would restrict travel in the United States for senior Chinese officials, in a protest over China’s one-child “family planning” policy. Republican Representative Chris Smith, a frequent and fierce critic of China’s human rights record, authored the legislation going before the House Judiciary Subcommittee on Immigration Policy and Enforcement. Smith’s proposal would empower Obama to deny US entry to any senior Chinese official, or family members of any official closely tied to policies that set back democratic reforms in China

There they go again. The American left, caught in the act of brandishing their electronic rope for yet another conservative black man, is busy dodging their long and horrendous history of racism

I missed the Occupation of Europe by a few years so I’m delighted to have an opportunity to Occupy America. Hey, it’s a start.

At the Heritage Foundation last week, House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan demonstrated why he doesn’t need to be running for President to be framing the debate for 2012. He delivered there on October 26 a breathtakingly beautiful speech on Saving the American Idea, which defines the Spirit of 2012.

The politics of economic obstruction Occupy Oakland strike promoter Boots Riley, who penned “5 million ways to kill a CEO,” celebrates the attack on the World Trade Center My new column spotlights the Occupiers’ “general strike” action scheduled for today — and climaxing tonight in an anticipated shutdown of the Port of Oakland (Calif.). Many of the same old agitators I’ve covered over the past decade are behind the latest manufactured chaos. I refresh your memories below of the Bay Area Left’s violent Oakland port shutdown in 2003 and the ignominious Oakland agitator and strike leader Boots Riley, and also connect the dots between Riley, Oakland’s Van Jones, Occupy Oakland, and the violent ILWU thugs and their supporters who kicked off the Day of Rage warm-up show in Longview, Washington in September

**Written by Doug Powers Most US presidents since Theodore Roosevelt, with a couple of exceptions , have established national monuments via executive order. But I don’t recall very many doing so because they have the promise of being massive job creators : President Obama says his declaration of a deactivated Army fort as a national monument Tuesday will help create jobs, but a GOP congressional leadership aide says the claim “tanks on the straight face test.” Obama signed a proclamation Tuesday afternoon to designate Fort Monroe in Virginia’s Tidewater area as a national monument.

**Written by Doug Powers In 2009, a weepy Nancy Pelosi denounced rhetoric she claimed was coming from the Tea Parties, claiming the protest could lead to a climate of violence.

The Islamic democracy project is nothing if not beguiling. From Clinton’s Orwellian “peace process” through Bush’s cloying “freedom agenda” to Obama’s contortion of an Islamist ascendancy into “the Arab Spring,” the dream teems with self-congratulation, so much so that its debilitating downsides go unseen and unaddressed.

A lot of people seem startled that President Obama just announced that 100 US troops are going to central Africa to aid in the fight against the Lord’s Resistance Army, a loathsome group that has been brutally terrorizing the region for 24 years. But it’s actually not that surprising, and is in fact explicitly authorized by an act of Congress (which is more than we can say for the intervention in Libya). The Lord’s Resistance Army Disarmament and Northern Uganda Recovery Act of 2009 establishes , among other things, that US policy includes providing political, economic, military, and intelligence support for viable multilateral efforts to protect civilians from the Lord’s Resistance Army, to apprehend or remove Joseph Kony and his top commanders from the battlefield in the continued absence of a negotiated solution, and to disarm and demobilize the remaining Lord’s Resistance Army fighters; The bill passed with no real opposition — by unanimous consent in the Senate, and by voice vote in the House.

New York Times media reporter Brian Stelter was in St. Petersburg, Fla., but that didn’t stop him from marking his media colleague’s burgeoning coverage of the Occupy Wall Street movement for Thursday’s “ A News Story Is Growing With ‘Occupy’ Protests .” Stelter hyped the increasing media coverage that the lefty aggregation “Occupy Wall Street” has been granted as it spreads to other cities, including in Florida. But Stelter wasn’t nearly so accomodating to the conservative Tea Party when it first broke through in early 2009.

I’m not a number. I’m not a line item on a budget. And I’m definitely not a pushover.