Right Opinion
The best of conservative opinion and commentary, updated daily.
Tuesday, November 29, 2016
Rust Belt Recount
Election officials in Wisconsin are scrambling today. Late Friday, Green Party presidential candidate Jill Stein filed paperwork formally demanding a recount of the November 8th election results. Stein also announced that she raised nearly $6 million for this effort and will demand recounts in Michigan and Pennsylvania as well.
Hillary Clinton Didn’t Get the Memo
If Democratic Party leaders in Washington care to know why Hillary Clinton lost – garnering the fewest electoral votes by a Democratic nominee since 1988 - they might want to consider talking to David Betras, who serves as the chairman of the Mahoning County Democratic Party in Ohio. Betras blames Clinton’s loss on the Democratic Party caring “more about where someone else went to the restroom than whether they had a good-paying job.”
10 Reasons Left-Wingers Cut Trump Voters From Their Lives
Many Hillary Clinton voters have ceased communicating with friends, and even family members, who voted for Donald Trump. It is so common that The New York Times published a front-page article on the subject headlined, “Political Divide Splits Relationships — and Thanksgiving, Too.”
Monday, November 28, 2016
Death by Fidel
Fidel Castro is dead. To say those words is so strange. I’ve never known a moment when he wasn’t alive.
Fidel Castro and Dead Utopianism
With the end of Fidel Castro’s nasty life Friday night, we can hope, if not reasonably expect, to have seen the last of charismatic totalitarians worshiped by political pilgrims from open societies. Experience suggests there will always be tyranny tourists in flight from what they consider the boring banality of bourgeois society and eager for the excitement of sojourns in “progressive” despotisms that they are free to admire and then leave.
On Punditry
I must confess that as a young boy, I never fantasized about growing up to be a political pundit. The truth is that even though I have been devoting most of my attention to the political scene for the past 16 years, if I were out walking and someone were to holler “Hey, pundit!” I would probably look around to see if someone like Charles Krauthammer or George Will was in the neighborhood.
Obama Whitewashes Castro’s Tyranny in ‘Carefully Worded’ Statement
President Obama and the mainstream media are mourning the death of Cuban dictator Fidel Castro, whitewashing his crimes against the Cuban people while comparing him to George Washington.
Sunday, November 27, 2016
Less Frank Costanza, More Mike Pence
Of the prayers that observant Jews recite each day, the one I appreciate most is offered before going to bed. Here is how it begins: “Master of the universe, I hereby forgive anyone who angered or antagonized me or sinned against me — whether physically or financially or through disrespect, or in any other matter affecting me; whether involuntarily or willfully, carelessly or deliberately; whether by word or by deed. I forgive every person: let no one incur punishment because of me.”
The Boondoggle of Infrastructure Spending
History has a sly sense of humor. It caused an epiphany regarding infrastructure projects — roads, harbors, airports, etc. — to occur on a bridge over Boston’s Charles River, hard by Harvard Yard, where rarely is heard a discouraging word about government.
No More Business as Usual, Mr. Trump
He has to abandon his company in order to deal on the country’s behalf.
Saturday, November 26, 2016
Spice Maker Says Republicans Embraced Racism by Electing Trump
Penzeys, a Wisconsin-based spice retailer, has accused the Republican Party of embracing racism for backing Donald Trump.
No Longer a Kakistocracy
Until recently, I had no idea there was a single word that described Obama’s two terms and what we faced if Hillary Clinton had been elected. A kakistocracy is defined as “a government by the least qualified or worst persons.” I don’t think it’s a mere coincidence that the word sounds like a combination of kaka and catastrophe.
Friday, November 25, 2016
Football and Fallacies
This is a football story with both political and legal implications. It was fourth down in a National Football League game, and the punting team came onto the field. The other team went into their formation to defend against the punt. Then somebody noticed that the man set to kick the punt was black.
The Hilarious ‘Hamilton’ Hubbub
Vice President-elect Mike Pence was in New York during the transition, and he took his family to Broadway to see “Hamilton,” the hot hip-hop Founding Fathers musical that people are overpaying to see. What resulted wasn’t exactly surprising — rude and obnoxious, but not surprising.
California Should Try to Secede
Left-wing activists in California want Californians to secede from the Union. They point to Scotland, Brexit, Catalonia and other modern secession movements as proof that the Civil War precedent is no longer binding. That precedent, like a roach motel, is that once a state is in the union it can never leave.
Dear Media: Please Stop Normalizing the Alt-Right
Why does the March for Life, a rally that attracts tens of thousands of anti-abortion Americans to Washington, D.C., every year get less prominent media coverage than a fringe neo-Nazi gathering? Because institutional media and white nationalists have formed a politically convenient symbiotic relationship.
Is Thanksgiving Constitutional?
As Americans gather around the holiday table this week, no one is likely to be concerned about the legitimacy of our most cherished national holiday, or about the president’s yearly Thanksgiving Day proclamation. Yet in the early years under the Constitution, Thanksgiving fueled a lively debate that touched on two core elements of American liberty: the division of power between the federal and state governments, and the separation of church and state.
For Democrats, the Road Back
One of the more salutary outcomes of the recent election is that Democrats are finally beginning to question the wisdom of basing their fortunes on identity politics. Having counted on the allegiance of African-Americans, Hispanics, gays, unmarried women and the young — and winning the popular vote all but once since 1992 — they were seduced into believing that they could ride this “coalition of the ascendant” into permanent command of the presidency.
Thursday, November 24, 2016
DoJ Fines Sheriff Department for Hiring Only U.S. Citizens
In a sharp illustration of how the federal government refuses to play by the same rules as everyone else, the Denver Sheriff’s Department has agreed to pay a $10,000 fine for making U.S. citizenship a qualification for being hired as a deputy sheriff.
Self-Government in the Wilderness
The Mayflower had a harrowing two months crossing the Atlantic. Its mast splintered in rough water and two people died, as supplies dwindled and passengers grew sick. It arrived in the New World later than expected, on the cusp of a punishing winter.