Two bits from the Wednesday edition of the Morning Jolt:

Obama’s national security team is like the Iran and Iraq war: I keep looking for somebody to root for, and just find more villains. The one who we thought was the hawk, Hillary, seems to be in the witness protection program; apparently Brennan is there to make Dennis Blair look good, Blair acts like his primary target in the war on terror is Leon Panetta and appears to be in place to make Eric Holder look good; Holder acts like his biggest worry is that bin Laden will run afoul of the mob in The Ox-Bow Incident and yet somehow Holder looks like David Palmer in a crisis compared to Janet “All is Well” Napolitano. You would call them the gang that can’t shoot straight, except that their aim seems to magically improve once the target is somebody pointing out the administration’s failures.
Sen. Kit Bond (R., Mo.), vice chairman of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, tells National Review Online that Brennan’s op-ed is “baffling” and part of a “political mess at the White House” that “puts our country at risk.” Bond says that Brennan “needs to go,” and is no longer “credible.”
A.J. Strata: “It is clear from the Ft Hood Massacre and the Christmas Day Bombing attempt that Brennan, Holder and Obama succeeded in implementing their plan to be less reactive to every possible lead. They set the warning sensor to the ‘middle’ and it missed two very dangerous individuals as a result. Brennan is out fighting for his life now because he and Holder have been trying to make the claim they had permission from all over the intel community and from the GOP congress to lawyer up Abdulmutallab. As Doug Ross notes – someone is lying. Brennan has to be desperate to cover his tracks by taking on Congressional leaders in the House an Senate. Only a fool calls congressional leaders essentially liars – and the GOP leaders are challenging Brennan.”
I would note Speaker Pelosi claimed that the CIA “lied to Congress all the time” with no serious political consequence.
Erick Erickson will have none of this: “There is no greater aider and abetter of Al Qaeda than Barack Obama’s White House. Through sheer incompetence and arrogance, they are handing over to Al Qaeda vital intelligence and giving them all the PR they need to effectively recruit new terrorists. How many Americans will die because of Barack Obama’s handling of national security?”

Meanwhile, a good indicator of how state governments are quietly strangling any recovery through runaway taxation:

One of my recurring observations is that even if Obama has not raised most taxes in his first year (although he did raise taxes on tobacco products), state and local governments went on a tax-hiking spree in 2009, which adds to the public perception that government at all levels is taking more and expanding wildly. CNN Money spotlights a good example of this: “Employers are getting hit with a massive tax hike at a time when they can least afford it. Companies in at least 35 states will have to fork over more in unemployment insurance taxes this year, according to the National Association of State Workforce Agencies. The median increase will be 27.5%. And employers in places such as Hawaii and Florida could see levies skyrocket more than ten-fold.”