Right Opinion
The best of conservative opinion and commentary, updated daily.
Wednesday, October 19, 2016
WikiLeaks Emails Will Poison Hillary Clinton’s Presidency
Sometimes you can’t just plan for the ball; you have to plan for the hangover, too. No matter how 2016 ends, there will be a headache that haunts the country for years to come. Let’s start with the most obvious but less likely scenario: Donald Trump wins the presidency in perhaps the biggest black swan event in the history of American politics. Whether you think Trump’s presidency would be an unfolding disaster of biblical proportions (“The Potomac! It’s turned to blood!”), or the unfolding of a biblical prophecy to save America (“The Winning! So. Much. Winning!”), or something in between, no one can deny the enormous change it would represent, and the hostility and fear it would likely elicit from various institutions and constituencies, particularly the news media, but also Hollywood, higher education, our NATO allies, unions, left-wing activists and perhaps even Wall Street, the Pentagon and much of the federal bureaucracy.
Freedom to Work
If a person wants to go into business as a taxicab owner, what requirements should be imposed to protect the public? The prospective taxicab owner should show that he is honest and can operate a vehicle safely. His vehicle should pass a safety inspection, and he should have a liability insurance policy. Some cities require the purchase of an existing license, sometimes called a medallion. A medallion has cost as much as over $1 million, as in the case of New York City, and the cost has reached $700,000 in Boston and $360,000 in Chicago. There is no public protection interest served by forcing a person to go into debt to purchase a taxi medallion, but doing so does serve an interest.
A Better Choice
Hillary Clinton is a manipulative, power-mad liar. Donald Trump is a selfish, sexist, narcissistic bully. These are our choices Nov. 8? The leading candidates’ avarice is bad enough. Their ideas are worse. Clinton wants to micro-regulate America into poverty and stagnation. Trump would start a trade war, if not an actual war. While America is going bankrupt, both candidates brag that they will spend *more* — Trump on the military and his pointless wall, Clinton mostly on social programs.
The Left and the Masses: Part II
It is never easy to tell what people’s motives are. But, when the political left proclaims their devotion to improving the lives of others in general, and of the poor in particular, we can at least get some clues from the way they go about it. One of the first things the left does is take away the right of other people to make their own choices. For example, under current California law, Hispanic school children cannot be taught in Spanish if their parents want them taught in English. Like parents in other immigrant groups before them, Hispanic parents tend to want their children to learn English, so that those children will have more opportunities when they become adults in an English-speaking country.
Tuesday, October 18, 2016
The Cruel Irony of Hillary Clinton’s ‘Pro-Women’ Stance
Hillary Clinton is campaigning that she, of all the candidates, is the one who is a “champion for women and girls” specifically because, among other things, she protects “women’s reproductive health” and “confronts violence against women.” Her primary talking point is that she has worked 30 years for women and children. The media and various groups accept this claim without examining just how illogical it is and without considering the cruel irony.
Immigrant: I Don’t Understand Why Some Americans Hate America
My column about the Millikin University football player who stood alone to honor the national anthem struck a chord with our readers. I was especially moved by a letter I received from a legal immigrant from India. He asks a very important question in his letter. “I have not known any other country where some of the people desecrate their flag, disavow their national anthem or tear down their own country,” he wrote. Read and ponder his words — and be glad this Indian-American is now one of our fellow countrymen.
Which Party Will Hold the Senate and House?
Which party is going to control the House and hold a majority in the Senate in January 2017? Even if you regard the presidential contest as over — a proposition for which there is powerful evidence, including Donald Trump’s current campaign message choices — the answers to those questions are, respectively, mildly and very unclear. The Trump campaign has a legitimate gripe against mainstream media for their nonstop coverage of the groping charges against him and their downplaying — or complete blackout — of the WikiLeaks and other revelations about Hillary Clinton and her supporters inside and outside the Obama administration. Does she really, as she swore under oath, have no recollection of key facts about her email servers?
The Insincere, Arrogant Clinton Campaign
The website PolitiFact jumped all over Rudy Giuliani earlier this year when he said, “Hillary Clinton is for open borders.” It spent about 700 words sifting through the evidence, and ended up rating the former New York City mayor’s claim “false.” Now we know that PolitiFact blew its call because it lacked access to the most important datum — Hillary Clinton’s real view. For that, it would have had to be present at one of her paid speeches at a major financial institution, in this case the Brazilian bank Banco Itau. In May 2013, Clinton told her audience at the bank, “My dream is a hemispheric common market, with open trade and open borders.” Ding, ding, ding — there’s the magic phrase, in Hillary’s own words.
Corruption and Collusion
Modern journalists have little in common with those I was privileged to know when I was a copyboy at NBC News in Washington in the ’60s. Today’s “journalists” will disagree, but as numerous surveys have shown, the public trust in what is collectively called the media has sunk to an all-time low. Only the media think they don’t have to change and can continue to sell a product more and more people refuse to buy. WikiLeaks dumps of Clinton campaign emails with reporters should contain enough proof for any reasonable person that big media is in the tank for her. In what may be unprecedented, The New York Times allowed Hillary to edit her own quotes.
The Left and the Masses
The greatest moral claim of the political left is that they are for the masses in general and the poor in particular. That is also their greatest fraud. It even fools many leftists themselves. One of the most recent efforts of the left is the spread of laws and policies that forbid employers from asking job applicants whether they have been arrested or imprisoned. This is said to be to help ex-cons get a job after they have served their time, and ex-cons are often either poor or black, or both. First of all, many of the left’s policies to help blacks are disproportionately aimed at helping those blacks who have done the wrong thing — and whose victims are disproportionately those blacks who have been trying to do the right thing. In the case of this ban on asking job applicants whether they have criminal backgrounds, the only criterion seems to be whether it sounds good or makes the left feel good about themselves.
Yes, I Still Support Donald Trump
I have been asked a dozen times by news reporters over the last week: Do you still support Donald Trump? The elites at The New York Times, Washington Post and CNN would love to be able to add me and dozens more to the list of Republicans who have publicly denounced the Trump-Pence ticket. What I don’t get about the prominent Republican defectors who have declared they are now for Hillary Clinton is why they get this weird high off being praised by the leftists in the media. Is it really that important to them to be back on the invite list for the next press club dinner? Yes, I am offended by many of Trump’s actions and words. Who isn’t? But who isn’t offended and frightened more by every word uttered and action taken by Hillary Clinton? I’d vote for my pet frog over Clinton, but alas, he’s not running.
Rigged System
Every media outlet is highlighting Donald Trump’s alleged inappropriate interactions with women, some of which date back decades. Meanwhile, they are ignoring bombshells about Hillary Clinton that would normally be major topics of national debate. That is one reason why Trump keeps talking about a rigged election. And many Americans agree with him. Recent polling finds that 62% of Americans believe the economy is rigged against them, and 68% are angry at the politicians in Washington. Hillary Clinton won’t change a thing.
It Cuts Like a Ninth
Groups like NARAL say that all they want from pregnancy resource centers (PRCs) is “disclosure.” But let’s be honest. The real goal is just *closure*. And you have to hand it to abortion activists — they’ve gotten pretty creative in their strategies to beat back those who give women the choice of choosing life. With the help of local leaders across the country, the Left has managed to pass a handful of laws putting the squeeze on PRCs and their right to operate by their beliefs. First, liberals tried to force the centers to post signs about the services they don’t offer, in hopes of deterring more women from visiting. When courts struck down those ordinances in places like Baltimore, the abortion movement took a more aggressive approach.
In Defense of Pro-Trump Christians
There are many good conservatives who are Never-Trumpers, and there are many good conservatives who will vote for Donald Trump. Eight months ago, I warned that conservatives must resist gratuitous hatred or they will destroy themselves more effectively than the left ever could on its own. I used the term “gratuitous hatred” because it is the term Jews and Judaism use to describe the reason for one of the greatest calamities of Jewish history: the destruction of the Second Temple and the second Jewish state. It wasn’t the Romans who Jewish tradition blames; it was the Jews themselves — for hating one another for no good reason.
Monday, October 17, 2016
Football Player Stands Alone to Honor America
Connor Brewer is fiercely loyal to his college football team. But he is also fiercely loyal to the United States of America. So when the Millikin University football team decided to protest the national anthem by remaining inside the locker room instead of on the sidelines, Connor was faced with a decision. Would he join his teammates in their university-approved safe space or would he stand on the sidelines and honor America? Connor chose to stand — alone.
Hillary’s Abortion Doctor
When asked in the last presidential debate what she wanted in a Supreme Court justice, Hillary Clinton did not hesitate to go to abortion. “I want a Supreme Court that will stick with Roe v. Wade and a woman’s right to choose,” affirmed Mrs. Clinton, to no one’s surprise. There is nothing more sacrosanct to Hillary Clinton than a “woman’s right to choose.” It is her alpha and omega, beyond doubt her highest priority. I wrote an entire book on the faith of Hillary Clinton, and the one thing that struck me above all else, from start to finish, was her absolute fealty to Roe v. Wade. It is Hillary’s hill to die on. I believe Hillary Clinton would give her life for Roe v. Wade.
Talking About the Weather
For the past twenty years or so, more and more people have been gulled into believing they have the power to make Mother Nature say “Uncle!”
Sunday, October 16, 2016
Does Hillary Clinton Believe in Anything?
What does Hillary Clinton really believe? Does she have strong beliefs about anything? A new raft of emails from the Clinton camp give us reason to doubt. The documents show the Clinton advisors carefully and meticulously messaging the Clinton position on a wide range of issues — on everything from the Keystone pipeline to the Trans Pacific Partnership Agreement (TPPA). As they emailed back and forth, the advisors carefully weighed the costs and benefits (in terms of votes, campaign contributions and favorable or unfavorable publicity) of nuanced positions.
How the Religious Right Embraced Donald Trump and Lost Its Moral Authority
It will take a long time to assess the full extent of the damage wrought by Donald Trump on the Republican Party and American conservatism. But this much is already clear: Buried under the post-election wreckage will be the moral credibility of the religious right. Hypocrisy and politics have gone hand in hand since time immemorial. But the embrace of Trump by influential religious conservatives — who have always insisted that they, like Hebrew National, answer to a higher authority — is orders of magnitude worse than the customary flip-flopping and sail-trimming of a presidential campaign.
A Judicial Slap to a Careless Congress
Another small step was taken last week on the steep and winding ascent back to constitutional norms. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit, the nation’s second-most important court, did its judicial duty by reprimanding Congress for abandoning constitutional propriety. The court declared unconstitutional the unprecedented independence that Congress conferred on the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. This legal skirmish about one aspect of this one tentacle of the administrative state may seem recondite and trivial. It concerns, however, two momentous matters. One is the integrity of the federal government’s Madisonian architecture. The other is something that not even the prescient James Madison could have anticipated — Congress’ modern eagerness to diminish itself.