Raising the traditional and early retirement ages will mean extending workers' taxable earning years, fueling economic growth and putting a dent in our unfunded-liabilities crisis by delaying payouts.

What our country deserves from everyone who enjoys its fruits and freedoms is a little more gratitude - and a lot less greed.

At the dawn of his administration, President Obama opined: 'A democracy requires accountability, and accountability requires transparency.' Magical rays of white-hot sunlight emanated from his media-manufactured halo. And then bureaucratically engineered darkness settled over the land.

Birds of a lawless, bigoted feather bully together.

It's time for ordinary Americans to come out of the shadows and remind Washington every day in words and actions that we are a sovereign nation, not a sanctuary nation.

ACORN, you may recall, is the left-wing activist group with longtime ties to community organizer-turned-President Barack Obama. The nonprofit, which now takes in 40 percent of its revenues from American taxpayers after four decades on the public teat, has a history of engaging in voter fraud, corporate shakedowns, partisan bullying and pro-illegal immigration lobbying. The Democrats' stimulus proposals could make the group - and its lesser known but even more radical ideological allies - eligible for upward of $5 billion in new public cash.

Environmentalists hate sprawl - except when it comes to the size of their expansive pet legislation on Capitol Hill.