Right Opinion
The best of conservative opinion and commentary, updated daily.
Thursday, April 6, 2017
Our National Scourge of Misinformation
Impulse control is unfashionable as well as unpresidential, but perhaps you should resist the urge to trip people who stride briskly down the sidewalk fixated on their phone screens, absorbed in texting and feeling entitled to expect others to make way. New technologies are shaping behaviors and dissolving civilities.
Thinking About Pence and O’Reilly
Last week, we spent six or seven days gawping at Vice President Mike Pence and his wife, Karen, for their supposedly bizarre or retro marriage rules.
The Russian Emperor’s New Clothes
The Susan Rice bombshell at least explains why the Democrats won’t stop babbling about Russia. They need a false flag to justify using national intelligence agencies to snoop on the Trump team. Every serious person who has tried to locate any evidence that Russia attempted to influence the 2016 election — even Trump-haters at the New York Review of Books and Rolling Stone magazine — has come away empty-handed and angry. We keep getting bald assertions, unadorned with anything resembling a fact.
Tennessee Republicans Tout #FakeTaxCut
This last year has been a year in which the term #FakeNews gained prominence in America. It seems that everywhere you turn, false reports are regularly popping up as fact.
Ancient Laws, Modern Wars
The United States may be entering just such a perilous transitional period.
The Pence-Graham Rule
Millennials and others of a certain age have not lived in a time when fidelity was universally valued and mostly supported by culture — though sometimes hypocritically — and its opposite was roundly condemned. There was even a time when a divorced person could not expect to become president, though plenty of married presidents managed to conduct clandestine affairs, often with the indulgence of the media.
Is the Sky the Limit for the Debt Ceiling?
When the national debt ceiling’s suspension was automatically lifted March 15, yet another countdown commenced. Congress will be compelled to raise the government’s borrowing limit again before April 28 and fund the government. Meanwhile, the Congressional Budget Office released yet another report showing that our debt crisis may be here sooner than later and be bigger than ever.
Republicans Must Keep Promise to Repeal ObamaCare
As the legendary Robert Novak once said, “God put the Republican Party on earth to cut taxes. If they don’t do that, they have no useful function.”
Rice ‘Confesses’ and Denies
Late Tuesday afternoon Susan Rice, former President Obama’s national security advisor, conceded that she had “unmasked” Trump associates. “Unmask” is the term used in the national security community to describe when a U.S. citizen’s communication is captured incidental to the surveillance of someone else.
Wednesday, April 5, 2017
Don’t Nuke the Filibuster — Restore It
As Senate Democrats filibuster the nomination the Neil Gorsuch to the Supreme Court, Senate Republicans are preparing to invoke the “nuclear option” and allow the nominee to be confirmed by simple majority vote.
The Left’s Basketball of Deplorables
North Carolina scored a big victory Monday night — and not just on the court! It looks like the NCAA is finally starting to address the question that the organization’s president, Mark Emmert, raised in the Final Four press conference last week: “What’s the appropriate role for a national athletic association in public policy issues?” By accepting the legislature’s small changes to HB 2, the organization has indicated that it’s either decided to stick to sports or it’s beginning to ignore the small but rowdy agitators on the Left who’ve used the NCAA to fight their losing political battle over the state’s public safety bill.
Ordinary Americans Get What’s at Stake in Fight Over Neil Gorsuch
A recent C-SPAN poll found that 53 percent of respondents couldn’t name a single Supreme Court justice. Some might claim this only shows that Americans pay little attention to the High Court. But that same poll, as well as one conducted by The Heritage Foundation, also found that Americans understand quite well the power of the Supreme Court, its effect on their everyday lives, and the importance of the Senate’s vote on President Trump’s nominee, Judge Neil Gorsuch.
The Dumbest Filibuster
Throughout its history, the United States Senate has experienced disgraceful filibusters (Strom Thurmond against the 1957 Civil Rights Act), entertaining filibusters (Huey Long in 1935 reciting a fried oyster recipe) and symbolic filibusters (Rand Paul making a point about drone strikes in 2013). But the filibuster that Chuck Schumer is about to undertake against Judge Neil Gorsuch’s nomination to the Supreme Court is perhaps the institution’s dumbest.
It’s the Democrats Who Collude With the Russians
Are those pushing the Trump/Russian collusion conspiracy living in Alice in Wonderland or what? Accepting this conspiracy narrative requires both the suspension of common sense and the collective amnesia about the history of Democrats’ actions that have earned favor from Soviet and Russian leadership over past decades and right up to the present.
Enough Protection Already
“Trump may have just signed a death warrant for our planet!” warns CNN host Van Jones.
Planned Parenthood: A Great American Disgrace
One minute it’s a living, moving, perfectly formed little boy or girl inside its frightened mother, and the next minute it’s a dead specimen on a steel table being dissected like a frog.
Susan Rice Is Still Lying
Eli Lake at Bloomberg News reported on April 3 that President Trump’s lawyers discovered it was former President Obama’s national security adviser Susan Rice who allegedly “requested the identities of U.S. persons in raw intelligence reports on dozens of occasions that connect to the Donald Trump transition and campaign.”
Making America Safe Again Through Smart Missile Defense
When it comes to national security, eight years of former President Barack Obama’s diplomatically weak approach to dealing with hostile regimes has made America and our allies less safe.
The Northwestern University Rape Outbreak That Wasn’t
Campus feminists whipped up a Category-5 frenzy over sexual assault allegations at a Northwestern University fraternity in February. But last week, the school’s Vice President for Student Affairs Patricia Telles-Irvin was forced to muster up her best impression of “Saturday Night Live’s” classic foot-in-mouther, Emily Litella.
On Human Nature and Mike Pence’s Dinner Partners
This week, the Washington Post published a long form piece about Vice President Mike Pence, which included a little tidbit that said, “In 2002, Mike Pence told the Hill that he never eats alone with a woman other than his wife and that he won’t attend events featuring alcohol without her by his side, either.”