Isn't it supposed to be just about springtime now?  In Florida last week, I heard no end to grousing about how it's been the coldest winter in memory.  Back in Washington where there are still piles of snow left over from last month's Snowmageddon, everyone is looking forward to three inches of cold rain and flooding this weekend. Enough already.  Enough of crazy cold weather - and enough of crazy Democrat politics.  The political climate on Capitol Hill is so bad now that certain GOP Senators and Congressmen are privately (although not publicly) expressing a genuine worry about the sanity of the President of the United States. Zero's obsession with "health care reform" is being likened to the deranged Captain Ahab's obsession with harpooning the White Whale in Herman Melville's Moby Dick.  That didn't turn out so well for Ahab. To compound their concern, Zero began yet again this week (3/10) demanding "climate change legislation" that would "cap greenhouse gas emissions" - acting as if the unending exposure of ClimateGate frauds never happened. The common image the Capitol Hill GOP invokes is to joke about the Democrats' "circular firing squad."  Yet there is real concern behind the jokes.  "Neither Obama nor Reid nor Pelosi is playing with a full deck anymore," one Senator tells me.

Naples, Florida.  I had to skedaddle back from the Persian Gulf to speak to a conservative organization meeting here today.  I'll be on the podium soon, so let's get started. Richard Rahn this week discusses the economics of raising cigarette taxes in New York, and parenthetically mentions New York's "enormous cigarette smuggling problem." One thing I learned while in the Middle East is that our military intel guys there believe that much of the cigarette smuggling operation on the US East Coast is run by Moslems working for Al Qaeda.  Someone needs to tell New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg his cigarette taxes are resulting in scores of millions of dollars funding Al Qaeda terrorism.  Someone needs to tell the DHS lady, Janet Napolitano, to do something about this.  You wonder why nobody has. Or maybe they just don't care to listen.

Perhaps the surest sign an administration is in trouble comes when members of the president’s party start saying in public the president must shake up his staff. The Obama administration has accomplished the remarkable feat of simultaneously alienating both most moderates and left-winger moonbats.  The moderates see what he’s trying to do, and are frightened and angry.  The moonbats note that he hasn’t yet been able to do it, and are frustrated and angry. The head moonbats would most like to see roll is that of White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel, who, they think, is too willing to compromise.  Agreeing with them is that acme of the moderate Democrat establishment, Leslie Gelb.  Yet it turns out he's not to blame for sinking Obama's ship.

Many government officials like to pretend that the effects of tax rates on the willingness of people to purchase goods or services, or work, save and invest are far less than the empirical and historical evidence shows. The Obama administration is now engaging in this type of misrepresentation and forecast fraud, which will result in much higher deficits and lower levels of economic growth and job creation than it claims. To understand how serious this type of fraud is, think about how government officials would react if a company forecast a huge increase in revenues - and sent press releases of the forecast to the investment community, but failed to reveal that this forecast was based on the intention to double the prices for the company's products while assuming it will not reduce demand. Such actions by company officials would be considered irresponsible misrepresentation, for which they could be held legally liable.  Shouldn't government officials be held liable for their fraud and misrepresentation?