BREAKING NEWS: Shots were fired on Capitol Hill this afternoon. Reuters reports that several people were injured. The U.S. Capitol was temporarily locked down and a female suspect is reportedly dead. 

Obama's Rhetoric 

Yesterday Barack Obama sat down for an interview with CNBC's John Harwood. I nearly fell out of my chair when Harwood asked Obama about the appropriateness of some of his recent rhetoric. Here's what Obama said: 
 

• "John, I think it's fair to say that during the course of my presidency I have bent over backwards to work with the Republican Party. And have purposely kept my rhetoric down."

Obama has been the one of most ideologically driven presidents in our history. 

He never stops campaigning. He never gets off attack mode. In fact, he did it again this morning. During a speech in Maryland, Obama claimed that the "reckless Republican shutdown" is hurting the economy. 

Let me repeat: Republicans did not shut down the government. They have made five attempts to fund the government and keep it open. Senate Democrats have rejected them all due to their uncompromising position on Obamacare. 

More importantly, a two-day partial government "slim down" is not hurting the economy. What is hurting the economy are tax increases, radical environmental policies and Obamacare.

But the notion that Barack Obama has "bent over backwards" to negotiate with Republicans is laughable. Obamacare was rammed through Congress without a single Republican vote. 

Obama's reelection strategy was based on savaging Mitt Romney, not running on his record. His campaign refused to renounce ads suggesting Romney was responsible for a woman's cancer death. 

When he wasn't savaging Romney, he was dividing the country, engaging in class warfare and accusing conservatives of "waging war on women." He has inserted himself into various controversies, fanning the flames of racial tension rather than calming concerns. 

And as the debate over the government shutdown has played out in recent days, it was liberals, not conservatives, who started lobbing insults and using overheated rhetoric. White House adviser Dan Pfeiffer compared Republicans to homicide bombers. Nancy Pelosi called them "legislative arsonists," and Harry Reid said conservatives were "anarchists." 

By the way, Democrats and their liberal media allies, who are so alarmed by the prospect of a government shutdown, don't know their own history. There have been 18 government shutdowns since 1976, and Democrats have routinely shutdown the government over policy disputes, including abortion funding. 

Veterans Win; Troops Lose 

Our veterans have won another victory: After two days of terrible press coverage, the Obama White House surrendered and will no longer attempt to keep veterans out of the World War II Memorial. 

This news came after Reince Preibus, chairman of the Republican National Committee, said the RNC was willing to pay the necessary expenses required to keep the memorial open during the shutdown. 

Unfortunately, our active duty troops and their families are facing a major inconvenience. The Obama Administration, which decides what gets closed and what stays open during a government shutdown, has closed grocery stores on military bases. But the golf course at Andrews Air Force Base, where Obama frequently plays, will remain open. 

More Bad News For Obamacare 

Day 2 of the Obamacare rollout didn't go much better than Day 1. In California, officials were forced to admit that they had grossly inflated the number of people who tried to access the state's Obamacare exchange site. They initially claimed that five million people visited the site. The real figure was just 645,000. Of those, fewer than 8,000 actually completed an application.

Denise Rathman of Des Moines, Iowa, told the Associated Press, "It was worse today than it was yesterday." 

In Minnesota, Pastor David Berge didn't fare any better. He reportedly tried nearly a dozen times to create an account yesterday on the state's Obamacare site with no luck. 

Matt Hadzick, manager of a Highmark retail insurance store in Allentown, Pennsylvania, told reporters, "It's day two of health care reform, and we have yet to have someone successfully register on the marketplace." 

Again, these are technical issues that will no doubt eventually be fixed. The bigger problem is that Obamacare is structurally flawed. So much so that it has already been changed 19 times. 

Conservatives warned that Obamacare would be a disaster. Some said it even seemed designed to fail. Others suggested it was a cruel joke, and they may well be right. 

If you experience problems with Obamacare online, you can call the national hotline at 1-800-318-2596. But as The Daily Caller notes, leave out the "1" and the phone number spells: 1-800-3(F) 8(U) 2(*) 5(*) 9(Y) 6(O). 

Surely that is just an unfortunate mistake. Isn't it? 

Out-Of-Control IRS 

Do you remember Dr. Ben Carson? He burst onto the political scene with a barnburner of a speech at this year's National Prayer Breakfast. With Barack and Michelle Obama seated just a few feet away, Dr. Carson blasted America's moral decay and irresponsible spending. 

Dr. Carson says that he experienced a "first contact" with the IRS as result of that speech. He was audited four months later. "I guess it could be a coincidence, but I never had been audited before and never really had any encounters with the IRS," Dr. Carson said. 

The IRS insists that it found no evidence of political bias in the Tea Party scandal. Now we learn that a "world-renown neurosurgeon" suddenly became a target after he dared to criticize Obama. 

Speaking of the IRS, the National Organization for Marriage (NOM) announced that it is filing a lawsuit against the tax collection agency for leaking its confidential tax returns. It is a felony for government workers to release tax information. 

NOM's complaint resulted in an investigation by the IRS inspector general, but the results of that investigation are being treated like classified intelligence secrets. Despite repeated demands for information, NOM cannot get any feedback from the IRS. Unbelievably, the agency is claiming that the very laws it violated now prevent it from telling NOM exactly what happened, who did it and whether anyone was held accountable. 

The IRS is out-of-control. Perhaps congressional conservatives should consider a new proposal by Rep. Randy Forbes (R-VA). In a statement yesterday, Rep. Forbes announced he was introducing legislation to "to reopen all areas of the government except for the Internal Revenue Service. Not one penny for the IRS."