Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal has been working hard to raise achievement levels for students in his state by expanding choices in the academic marketplace. Standing in Jindal’s way? The U.S. Department of Justice — which filed a lawsuit last month seeking to block Louisiana’s recently expanded choice program on the grounds it might increase “racial identifiability” at failing, government-run schools.

After years of ignoring increasingly dire warnings, America is now facing a debilitating disability crisis — one draining tax dollars (and workers) from our economy. Yet rather than reforming our broken entitlement programs, policymakers continue turning a blind eye to the root problems associated with these unsustainable behemoths: liberally defined benefits, lax bureaucrats, rubberstamping judges and rampant overpayments.

Just when it appeared Washington, D.C. had become impervious to a full-blown political scandal, along comes a seismic revelation jarring Americans of all ideological moorings – one that’s placed one of the most feared (and fastest-growing) “independent” government agencies squarely on the hot seat. Last week’s startling acknowledgement by senior staff at the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) of the agency’s discriminatory practices against limited government groups is indeed “chilling” and “thuggish,” as a pair of moderate U.S. Senators have suggested. But it’s much more than that.

The Separatist Pilgrims who landed at Plymouth Rock in November 1620 began their new settlement utilizing overtly communist economic principles. In addition to common ownership of the land, the Pilgrims farmed corn on a communal plot and divided their harvest evenly amongst themselves. This is the theoretical Marxist utopia.

In his victory speech, Obama pledged he would continue pursuing “the kind of bold, persistent experimentation that Franklin Roosevelt pursued during the only crisis worse than this one.” That’s a truly frightening thought. In fact if left unchecked, Obama’s “bold, persistent experimentation” could very well wind up making this crisis every bit as bad as that one. And ObamaCare’s ill effects are already starting to show.

“Buy now, pay never.” That’s the modus operandi of government at all levels, where a “high time” spending preference continues to flood our nation with a rising tide of red ink. “High time” spending — or the ongoing accumulation of present and future deficits to fund new entitlement promises — has reached epidemic proportions, and both major parties are guilty of fueling this worsening addiction.

Built up over more than two centuries, America’s “irreversible trend toward more freedom” has been suddenly (and stunningly) reversed over the last decade – with tragic consequences for business owners, taxpayers and citizens alike. Once a bastion of free market ideology and unprecedented prosperity, America’s ongoing descent into dependence-inducing command economics is fast approaching terminal velocity.

Across America politicians of both parties will tell you the number one issue facing our country is job creation. They’re right — yet what they continually refuse to acknowledge is that creating these jobs is not their responsibility.

British Prime Minister David Cameron caused an international stir last month when he addressed France’s new €7.2 billion tax hike program — a 75 percent “super tax” on annual earnings above €1 million. French snootiness, anger and vindictiveness aside, the fact remains that a sizeable portion of the nation’s assets will soon be headed to England (and Ireland, Monaco, Switzerland, etc.) whether Hollande and his socialist allies like it or not — and whether Cameron rolls out the red carpet or not.

“Barack Obama is a socialist.” eard that one before? Of course you have. In fact if polling is to be believed, it’s more likely than not that you have accepted this premise at some point in the not too distant past. But is Obama a socialist? And if he’s not — what is he?