24 new federal judges by Christmas? That’s what outgoing Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) wants in the lame duck session of Congress. Faced with an incoming Republican majority, Barack Obama and Harry Reid want to stack the judiciary in yet another egregious power grab.

“It takes 60 votes to do a lot of things in the Senate, but there are some things we can do with 51 votes,” said Senator Mitch McConnell. If he is truly determined to use the power of the purse, McConnell should get busy in the December funding bill — before the 2016 presidential election cycle consumes the congressional cycle. Take as many bites at the apple as possible.

In a private meeting with Americans for Limited Government (ALG) staff, senior aides to Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) promised that should Republicans reclaim a majority in the Senate on Tuesday, they would use the budget reconciliation process to go after Obamacare.

The midterm elections are just a week away, and with most predicting a Republican sweep on November 4, House Majority Leader Rep. Kevin McCarthy is setting his sights on the 2015 governing agenda. But before a new Congress is sworn in, the government’s funding for FY 2015 is due to run out on December 11, and Politico’s Jake Sherman reports “[McCarthy] would like to use the lame-duck session to pass a long-term government-funding bill, so Washington can begin focusing on big-picture legislating, instead of just trying to keep government’s doors open.”

We’re more likely to default on our national debt than to ever pay it off. The national debt has increased every single year since 1958 to its current level. Who really believes that trend will be reversed?

This is easily one of the most favorable political environments for Republican congressional prospects in quite a long time, particularly on the Senate side of the equation. Yet, if the polls are any indication, at the moment, the landscape appears more mixed.

One of the few constitutionally enumerated responsibilities of the federal government is to secure the nation’s borders and ports of entry, and to provide consistent rules for entering the country, as in the aforementioned clause of Article I, Section 8. The reason for such safeguards is obvious.

Congressional Democrats want to kick the can into the post-election, lame duck period, so they can use another anticipated shutdown to their advantage to achieve their budget priorities without having to worry about voter backlash. Yet, Congressional Republicans would be foolish to accept such a deal. But if House Republicans fear a shutdown hurting their chances in November, expect them to get rolled in budget negotiations.

Department of Justice attorneys for the Internal Revenue Service told Judicial Watch on Friday that Lois Lerner’s emails, indeed all government computer records, are backed up by the federal government in case of a government-wide catastrophe. The Obama administration attorneys said that this back-up system would be too onerous to search.

Don’t think the government is ubiquitous? Consider the following data published by the U.S. Census Bureau. In 2012, 109.6 million Americans were on some form of means-tested welfare, including Medicaid, food stamps and public housing. Another 43.7 million were on Social Security, Medicare, unemployment, and other government programs.