If Obamacare is allowed to stand - and Congress is allowed to make the purchase of government-endorsed health insurance compulsory - there will be no meaningful limit on Washington's reach into the lives of the American people. That is certainly not what the Founders intended.

By the Obama administration's reasoning, it would be constitutionally permissible to make Americans purchase nearly any product (broccoli, gym membership) that improved their health and thereby contributed to lower health-care costs.

I'm speaking of the ability of people of faith to freely express their beliefs in the public square.

The spread of democracy, the new foundation of the rule of law, and the creation of fledgling representative governments that honor and respect human rights-together these actions spell out the increasing marginalization of the terrorists, as they have fewer and fewer places to run and hide.

The Violence Against Women Act has been a true bipartisan success story since it was first enacted in 1994. In my home state of Texas alone, its programs have helped hundreds of thousands of victims to break free from the terrible cycle of domestic violence.

If there is a nuclear tactic being used here, I submit it is the use of that obstruction where a willful minority blocks a bipartisan majority from voting on the President's judicial nominees.

But last year there were 540,000 people, roughly, detained coming across the border illegally. Forty-five thousand of them came from countries other than Mexico, demonstrating the fact that Mexico itself now is a pathway into the United States for people all around the world, and we don't know what their intentions are.