Right Opinion
The best of conservative opinion and commentary, updated daily.
Friday, January 20, 2017
The Next JFK
The work of unraveling President Barack Obama’s legacy is underway, but even if the Trump administration and a Republican Congress reverse every last law and regulation, they won’t be able to touch the core of it.
The Science of Intellectual Tribalism
“David Gelernter, fiercely anti-intellectual computer scientist, is being eyed for Trump’s science adviser” (Washington Post, Jan. 18). Um. Well, huh. For those unfamiliar with David Gelernter, he essentially created parallel computing, which sounds like witchcraft to me, but I’m told it’s a really big deal. He was also one of the first people to see the internet coming, in his 1991 book “Mirror Worlds.” Bill Joy, the co-founder of Sun Microsystems, described Gelernter as “one of the most brilliant and visionary computer scientists of our time.” Ted Kaczynski — aka “the Unabomber” — agreed, which is why he maimed Gelernter with a letter bomb in a 1993 assassination attempt.
Great Expectations for Life as Page Turns in Washington
The commitments President-elect Trump and Vice President-elect Pence made at Family Research Council’s 2016 Values Voters Summit are still making waves. [Wednesday], Gov. Pence was asked about his VVS promise to be the champion on pro-life priorities and to defund Planned Parenthood. Pence said, “The president will be their champion. The president has taken a strong stand on the sanctity of life,” and that he shares that conviction. Pence went on to discuss the role he will play in advancing the new administration’s pro-life agenda forward by working with Congress and the American people.
The Anti-Business Businessman
We’ve been instructed not to take our new president literally but instead seriously (in the felicitous phrasing of Salena Zito). As I write, there are hints that the inaugural address will focus on the theme of “America First.” President-elect Trump may or may not be familiar with the historical taint of that phrase, but in any case the meaning he attaches to it has been clear enough.
The Democrats’ Fight Against School Choice Is Immoral
There’s something perverse about an ideology that views the disposing of an unborn child in the third trimester of pregnancy as an indisputable right but the desire of parents to choose a school for their kids as zealotry. Watching President-elect Donald Trump’s pick for education secretary, Betsy DeVos, answer an array of frivolous questions this week was just another reminder of how irrational liberalism has become.
Obama’s Inexcusable Commutation
I highly doubt that President Obama commuted Chelsea Manning’s sentence out of compassion — and suspect it was just one more slap in America’s face on his way out the door.
Serious About Spending
Washington, DC, is in panic mode. Check out this headline: “Trump Team Prepares Dramatic Cuts.”
Snoozing at Teachers Who Abuse Children
On Jan. 13, a judge in Houston, Texas, sentenced Alexandria Vera to 10 years in prison. Her crime? The 25-year-old teacher at Stovall Middle School struck up a sexual relationship with a 13-year-old student — having sex almost every day, she said, for nine months — but with the parents’ approval. She could be eligible for parole in five years.
Trump’s Inauguration Is Not Without Precedent
The United States has just had three consecutive eight-year presidencies, and it’s only the second time in history that that’s happened. The only other such moment came on March 4, 1825, 192 years ago.
Obama’s Self-Revealing Final Act
Barack Obama did not go out quietly. His unquiet final acts were, in part, overshadowed by a successor who refused to come in quietly and, in part, by Obama’s own endless, sentimental farewell tour. But there was nothing nostalgic or sentimental about Obama’s last acts. Two of them were simply shocking.
The Remarkable Unremarkable
We take it for granted. It is completely unremarkable, but so remarkable in the grand scheme of history. At noon on Jan. 20 of the year following a presidential election, a man will stand before the nation and world and swear “that [he] will faithfully execute the office of President of the United States, and will to the best of [his] ability, preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution of the United States.” This happens whether it is raining or snowing, whether it is cold or warm.
Thursday, January 19, 2017
Obama’s Legacy Is a Weaker and More Divided America
Americans voted in November for seismic change, but our outgoing president is still as clueless as ever about the nation he governed.
A Never Trumpers Wish-List for Trump’s First 100 Days
Elections have surprising consequences. It is hard to know who is most surprised by the results of the 2016 presidential race: Hillary and her supporters, who have spent the last two months vacillating between tears and anger; conservative Never Trumpers who thought Trump was unfit for office; or Trump himself. But while some Hillary supporters are busy popularizing the grammatically and legally incorrect “not my President” hashtag, most Never Trumpers have recognized that Trump is in fact the President-elect, and as conservatives, hope for the best from and for Trump.
Trump ‘Disrespects’ the Intel Community? What About Obama’s Iraq Bug-Out?
President Barack Obama and his team *still* engage in a hissy fit over Donald Trump’s questioning Obama’s place of birth. To even raise the issue is to “otherwise” the first black President. In short, they argue, it is racist. But to claim that Vladimir Putin put Trump in the White House is nothing more than an obvious observation, right? When the Supreme Court ruled in favor of George W. Bush in 2000, a number of disgruntled Democrats referred to him as “President Select.”
Obama’s Shame
Lame duck President Barack Obama has been working harder in recent weeks than he has in the past eight years. He has been busy attempting to delegitimize the election of Donald Trump and undermining the national security of the United States. He hit a new low yesterday when he commuted the sentence of Bradley/Chelsea Manning.
Obama’s Week Starts With Horrible Commute
As one of his final acts, President Obama has chosen to cap off eight years of national security failures by pardoning one of the worst traitors in modern American history: Chelsea (formerly Bradley) Manning. The Army private, who was charged with 22 different crimes related to espionage, pled or was convicted on almost every charge except aiding the enemy. As a result, Manning was sentenced to 35-years in prison for leaking more than 750,000 classified documents. [Tuesday], he got word he would soon be free after President Obama cut his sentence 28 years short — putting an exclamation point on two terms of President Obama’s anti-American policies.
Manning’s a ‘Young Woman’; Vietnam’s ‘Raging Capitalist’
White House spokesman Josh Earnest and Secretary of State John Kerry finished President Barack Obama’s final term with fitting acts of propaganda.
Amongst the Demonstrators
This is supposedly the week of multitudinous demonstrations in Washington, D.C. The hordes are getting more media attention than the hundreds of thousands of President-elect Donald Trump supporters who are also coming into town. Whether the demonstrations will be as multitudinous as anticipated by the media, I cannot say. Certainly, they are getting plenty of publicity already, though their actual numbers as of Tuesday night are disappointing.
The Waterbeetle of American Politics
Leaving aside the missing element of grace and the improbability of his ever stopping to think, Donald Trump is the waterbeetle of politics. His feral cunning in manipulating the masses and the media is, like the waterbeetle’s facility, instinctive. The 72 days of transition demonstrated a stylistic seamlessness with his 511 days of campaigning, which indicates that the 1,461 days of his term that begins Friday will be as novel as his campaign was.
Trying a Different Way
Some years ago a friend of mine wrote a book titled “The Seven Last Words of the Church, or, We’ve Never Tried It That Way Before.” It is about what he regarded as the entrenched bureaucracies in his denomination that are reluctant — even hostile — to change.