When under attack, no country is obligated to collect permission slips from allies to strike back.

Loyalty to the President is great, but loyalty to truth, integrity, and country is even better.

It is an old liberal theme that conservative ideas, being red in tooth and claw, cannot possibly emerge from any notion of the public good.

Preemption is a kind of pre-deterrence that stops the threat at an earlier, safer stage.

The Democratic line is that the Republican House does nothing but block and oppose. In fact, it has passed hundreds of bills only to have them die upon reaching the desk of Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid. He has rendered the Senate inert by simply ensuring that any bill that might present a politically difficult vote for his Democratic colleagues never even comes to the floor.

Guerrilla war is a test of wills. Obama's actual objectives - rollback in Iraq, containment in Syria - are not unreasonable. But they require commitment and determination. In other words, will. You can't just make one speech declaring war, then disappear and go fundraising.

We must now brace ourselves for disquisitions on peer pressure, adolescent anomie, and rage.