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mmigration: A federal judge blocked most of Arizona's immigration law on the grounds that it puts an undue burden on the federal government. That leaves Arizona defenseless to open borders and derelict feds. One could almost hear the cheers from the badlands of Durango and Sonora, home of the biggest Mexican drug and people-smuggling cartels, to read District Court Judge Susan Bolton's ruling effectively striking down Arizona's immigration law, SB 1070. Bolton blocked the main provisions of Arizona's law requiring state lawmen to ask people they come into legitimate contact with to show documentation if there's reasonable suspicion they're here illegally. Brought to you by GoToAssist.com/techpodcast by OutloudOpinion.com For more Podcasts visit www.outloudopinion.com

Debt: In the long debate over financial reform, proponents repeatedly argued that an overhaul was needed to "prevent the next financial crisis." Who'd have thought the real threat for another crisis was government itself? That stunning assessment comes not from a think tank or political group, but the government itself. The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office, whose job it is to make reasonable projections about the economy and budget, now says it's not the financial sector that's putting us at serious risk — it's government's almost insatiable desire to spend ever larger sums of money. In a new report this week, the CBO grimly summarizes America's fiscal future: "Unless policymakers restrain the growth of spending, increase revenues significantly as a share of GDP, or adopt some combination of those two approaches, growing budget deficits will cause debt to rise to unsupportable levels." Brought to you by GoToAssist.com/techpodcast by OutloudOpinion.com For more Podcasts visit www.outloudopinion.com

Leadership: As Americans suffer economically, President Obama golfs, vacations, campaigns, appears on a frivolous talk show — and vacations some more. Gee, don't we have a war and other problems to attend to? Will history record that Barack Obama's only great achievement as president was getting his golf handicap down to the teens? The president played more than two dozen rounds of golf in his first year in office — as many as George W. Bush did over his entire eight years. This week, he traveled to New York City to be swooned at on ABC's daytime gal fluff-fest "The View." It led Pennsylvania Democratic Gov. Ed Rendell to remark, "I think there should be a little bit of dignity to the presidency... I think the president of the United States has to go on serious shows.". Brought to you by GoToAssist.com/techpodcast by OutloudOpinion.com For more Podcasts visit www.outloudopinion.com

Energy: A new analysis of the effects of the offshore drilling moratorium shows more to worry about than beaches and tourism. Massive job loss and economic hardship lie ahead, and we're doing it on purpose. It's been 100 days since the Deepwater Horizon disaster cast a pall over America's energy future while endangering the environment onshore and off. Whether it was due to negligence or the inherent dangers of deep-water drilling, it pales in comparison to the self-inflicted wound of increased energy regulation and taxes and the Obama administration's moratorium. President Obama has succeeded in turning a crisis into an economic disaster. During a conference call with journalists, Jack Gerard, president of the American Petroleum Institute, detailed the harmful effects of expected new energy taxes and regulation in administration proposals. Brought to you by GoToAssist.com/techpodcast by OutloudOpinion.com For more Podcasts visit www.outloudopinion.com

Immigration: Even with time running out, Democrats haven't dropped the idea of ramming through illegal-immigrant amnesty to create more Democratic voters. Their new push shows an array of underhanded tactics to sneak that in. After passing major programs that most Americans don't want — from a wasteful stimulus to a health care nightmare — Democrats know it's time to pay the piper with voters. But another touchy issue — immigration — looms large on their to-do list. And because 70% of Latinos backed Democrats in 2008, a lot of mischief could be in the works — including an amnesty for illegals that would serve both as political payback and a way to create a new voting bloc. Brought to you by GoToAssist.com/techpodcast by OutloudOpinion.com For more Podcasts visit www.outloudopinion.com

National Security: The 9/11 attacks were famously blamed on the Free World's failure of imagination. The WikiLeaks attack has found the West, once again, unprepared for a new kind of threat. In the wake al-Qaida's 9/11 atrocities, New York Times columnist William Safire asked, "Why, with $30 billion a year spent on intelligence, couldn't our FBI, CIA and NSA prevent this well-coordinated, two-city attack?" The 9/11 Commission's report answered that: "The most important failure was one of imagination. We do not believe leaders understood the gravity of the threat." The Commission noted that "National security used to be considered by studying foreign frontiers, weighing opposing groups of states, and measuring industrial might. To be dangerous, an enemy had to muster large armies. Threats emerged slowly, often visibly, as weapons were forged, armies conscripted, and units trained and moved into place." Brought to you by GoToAssist.com/techpodcast by OutloudOpinion.com For more Podcasts visit www.outloudopinion.com

Terrorism: The administration says it was surprised and angry at the Lockerbie bomber's "compassionate" release. Now a letter reveals that it actually lobbied for it. Was this malicious intent or mere incompetence? Last week, at a joint press conference with British Prime Minister David Cameron, President Obama was asked what he thought about a possible Senate investigation into the "Lockerbie bomber stuff" — namely that British Petroleum, among its other sins, lobbied the British government to release convicted Lockerbie bomber Abdelbaset Ali al-Megrahi in order to win oil contracts from the Libyan government. Obama replied: "I think all of us here in the United States were surprised, disappointed and angry about the release of the Lockerbie bomber, and my administration expressed very clearly our objections — prior to the decision being made and subsequent to the decision being made." Brought to you by GoToAssist.com/techpodcast by OutloudOpinion.com For more Podcasts visit www.outloudopinion.com

Leadership: A major poll just gave Congress a favorability rating of 11% — lowest in history. Never, it seems, have our representatives in Washington been so disconnected from the people they purport to serve. The disconnect was most evident in separate comments made by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid at a conference of the far-left group Netroots Nation last weekend in Las Vegas. Both weighed in on vital topics. Both revealed why they're so out of touch with reality. Pelosi told the audience she adamantly opposes raising the retirement age for Social Security and said the Depression-era program shouldn't be cut to help reduce the deficit. "When you talk about reducing the deficit and Social Security, you're talking about apples and oranges," she said. Brought to you by GoToAssist.com/techpodcast by OutloudOpinion.com For more Podcasts visit www.outloudopinion.com

Overregulation: Leave it to California's 9th Circuit Court of Appeals to mark the 20th anniversary of the Americans With Disabilities Act (ADA) with another of its goofy, ripe-for-recision rulings. This one involves the counter height at a couple of Chipotle Mexican Grills in San Diego. Seems the 45-inch walls between customers and the food-preparation areas prevent people in wheelchairs from "fully participating in the selection and preparation of their order," as Judge Daniel Friedman put it. In short, Friedman wrote for the court, the wall "significantly reduced" the "ability to enjoy the Chipotle experience." We won't argue that "the Chipotle experience" isn't worth fully taking in. The Denver-based chain is the country's most successful publicly held restaurant operator, and it's hard to argue with success. But the two outlets in question tried to accommodate disabled persons by providing alternatives, such as showing a customer a sample of food in a spoon or assembling meals elsewhere. Brought to you by GoToAssist.com/techpodcast by OutloudOpinion.com For more Podcasts visit www.outloudopinion.com

Americas: Venezuela's Hugo Chavez sputtered rage and fury Sunday after Colombia charged him with harboring terrorists. It was about par for a bully whose nation is going downhill fast. It didn't get much play in the media, but on Friday Colombia's government laid out scads of evidence — photographs, videos, satellite GPS coordinates and computer e-mails — to the Organization of American States showing why it's so tough to fight terrorists. Brought to you by GoToAssist.com/techpodcast by OutloudOpinion.com For more Podcasts visit www.outloudopinion.com