Right Opinion
The best of conservative opinion and commentary, updated daily.
Wednesday, August 31, 2016
Storm Clouds Are on the Horizon
In predictable economic times, it makes sense — indeed it is essential — to put money aside and save for the coming rainy day. Trouble is brewing for each and every one of us. For some, it is just two appliances failing in the same month. For others, it is the unexpected loss of employment due to a company buyout or a changing marketplace. For some, it will be a cancer diagnosis with many expenditures, no matter how strong your insurance plan. Have you prepared for your rainy day?
Knowing the Facts Is Easy, But...
“Knowing the facts is easy. Knowing how to act based on the facts is difficul” (Han Feizi). A good friend and mentor shared the above quote with me this last week and it got me thinking… In this age of Google and Siri, it has become commonplace to find out the answer to nearly any question we have. No longer do we need to go to a bookshelf and pull out a volume of the World Book encyclopedia to find out the answer to a problem we might be having.
NFL Cowards Stand Down as Second-Rate QB Spits on America
Rush Limbaugh made an excellent point about the controversy over San Francisco 49ers quarterback Colin Kaepernick and the Star-Spangled Banner. The Dallas Cowboys wanted to put a decal on their helmets to honor five Dallas police officers killed by a sniper. But the National Football League denied the request. “Everyone has to be uniform with the league and the other 31 teams,” a team spokesman told the Dallas News. “We respect their decision.” But the NFL took a very different approach to Mr. Kaepernick, the second-rate quarterback with a great big unpatriotic chip on his shoulder.
ObamaCare Stumbles On
For years, Obamacare supporters have been telling critics of the law to shut up and fall in line. Now, they are urging them to come to its rescue. A key part of President Barack Obama’s domestic legacy is sputtering so badly that even the law’s boosters are admitting that the federal government needs to do more to prop it up. The Obamacare exchanges were supposed to enhance choices and hold down costs — and are doing neither. Abandoned by more and more insurers, the exchanges — once billed as robust “marketplaces” — are becoming pitiful shadows of themselves.
Dirty Harry Strikes Again
He’s at it again. Dirty Harry Reid, the Senate Democrat Leader, is trying to manipulate the election by smearing the Republican nominee. Here’s the latest: [Monday], Reid sent a letter to FBI Director James Comey demanding an investigation into Russian interference in the political campaign. According to Reid, there is a “direct connection between the Russian government and Donald Trump’s campaign.” Reid alleges that Russian President Vladimir Putin is “tampering with this election.” There is a reason Reid is called “Dirty Harry.” You may recall that he did something very similar in August of 2012.
Colorado’s Anti-Fracking Crackup
If a pair of extreme green ballot measures fall in the Rocky Mountains and no one in the liberal media is paying attention, does the collapse make a sound? This week, two anti-fracking initiatives backed by deep-pocketed environmental lobbying heavyweights, such as the Sierra Club and Greenpeace, failed to gather enough signatures. The more draconian of the efforts, Initiative 78, would have imposed a mandatory 2,500-foot setback around all oil and gas operations — essentially halting drilling in upward of 95 percent of Colorado’s energy-rich land area. These drastic attempts to sabotage the oil and gas industry didn’t just miss by inches. They missed by a mile high and wide.
What We Can Learn From Simone Biles
The story of remarkable Simone Biles, America’s new record-breaking Olympic gymnast, serves up a powerful elixir for America’s troubled soul. We need only take a close look and learn. Biles came into this world in circumstances which most would conclude were hopeless: black, poor, fatherless, with a drug-addicted mother. Circumstances such as these point to a high likelihood that this child would expect a life of poverty. But as everyone now knows, Simone Biles, at the age of 19, already has achieved far more than any average child and, with great likelihood, a life of achievement and prosperity awaits her.
The Unfolding Clinton Foundation Fiasco
The Clinton Foundation has become a serious problem for the Hillary Clinton campaign. Everyone knows the Clintons made a mockery of the promises they made to Team Obama. Even the left-wing site PolitiFact says that it’s “Mostly False” that they obeyed the rules. Like her husband, Bill Clinton, who infamously claimed, “I did not have sexual relations with that woman,” Monica Lewinsky, Hillary Clinton is going around claiming, “My work as secretary of state was not influenced by outside sources.” On Jan. 5, 2009, Clinton sent a letter to State Department Designated Agency Ethics Official James Thessin promising, “I will not participate personally and substantially in any particular matter that has a direct and predictable effect on my financial interests or those of any person whose interests are imputed to me,” including her husband.
Hillary Clinton on Partial Birth Ban
Hillary Clinton went down to the Senate floor on March 12, 2003, to advocate for the culture of death while claiming to oppose the culture of debt. The legislation up for debate that day aimed to prohibit a specific means of taking innocent life. As described in its first paragraph, it would make illegal that act when “a physician deliberately and intentionally vaginally delivers a living, unborn child’s body until either the entire baby’s head is outside the body of the mother, or any part of the baby’s trunk past the navel is outside the body of the mother and only the head remains inside the womb, for the purpose of performing an overt act (usually the puncturing of the back of the child’s skull and removing the baby’s brains) that the person knows will kill the partially delivered infant.”
Arizona AG Brnovich Defends the First Amendment
The Freedom from Religion Foundation folks must have been licking their chops the day they heard about the Arizona Department of Economic Security (DES) director’s emails to his employees. This was going to be easy. The Wisconsin-based foundation would whip up a letter alleging a constitutional violation of the separation of church and state and Arizona officials would fall all over themselves to admonish DES Director Tim Jeffries. After all, he had used the state email system to send out an email to employees informing them that he would be going to Lourdes as a member of the Order of Malta to serve the “seriously afflicted and dying.” Not only that, but he offered to carry employees’ “special intentions” to Lourdes if they wrote to his assistant. Jeffries even ended his emails with the Latin phrase “Ditat Deus.” (“God Enriches”).
We Have Nothing Left Holding Us Together
On Friday, a South Carolina high school stopped students from bringing American flags to a football game against a heavily Hispanic rival school. Why? The principal was presumably worried that waving the flag might offend the Hispanic students. According to the principal, “This decision would be made anytime that the American flag, or any other symbol, sign, cheer, or action on the part of our fans would potentially compromise the safety of all in attendance at a school event.” This isn’t the first such situation. The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled last year that a public school in California could ban students from wearing a shirt emblazoned with an American flag on Cinco de Mayo thanks to fears over racial conflict at the school. The lawyer for the children complained, “This opens the door for a school to suppress any viewpoints that are opposed by a band of vocal and violent bullies.”
Neither Dictator Nor King
It was refreshing to moderate a “town hall” with the Libertarian presidential and vice presidential candidates last week because Govs. Gary Johnson and William Weld respect limits on presidential power. Sunday, when Fox’s Chris Wallace challenged Johnson’s plan to replace the IRS with a consumption tax, Johnson pointed out that he’s “not getting elected dictator or king.” Wallace suggested that means, “Don’t take my policies seriously because they won’t get through.” I disagree. It means that Johnson understands that America is a constitutional republic and there are (and ought to be) checks on what presidents can do.
Economic Conspiracies
A general economic principle is that any law or regulation that restricts market entry tends to impose the greatest burden on those who can be described as poor, latecomers, discriminated-against and politically weak. The president of the NAACP’s St. Louis chapter, Adolphus Pruitt, has petitioned a circuit court judge to reject the St. Louis Metropolitan Taxicab Commission’s conspiratorial call to issue a temporary restraining order that would force Uber to shut down. He says the order would negatively impact nearly 2,000 African-Americans who work as Uber partners in black neighborhoods that have long been ignored by taxis and other transportation providers. In a statement, Pruitt said, “The immediate harm of a (temporary restraining order) would strand thousands of African American riders who depend on Uber to travel around a city that has measurable gaps in its transportation system and has failed to serve our neighborhoods for decades.”
A Gem in Chicago
We have gotten so used to seeing college presidents and other academic “leaders” caving in to so many outrageous demands from little gangs of bullying students that it is a long overdue surprise to see a sign that at least one major university has shown some backbone. Dr. Robert J. Zimmer, president of the University of Chicago, has spoken out in the plainest language against the stifling of opinions that differ from political correctness, on campuses across the country. “Free speech is at risk at the very institution where it should be assured: the university,” Dr. Zimmer said. “Invited speakers are disinvited because a segment of a university community deems them offensive, while other orators are shouted down for similar reasons,” he said. Demands have been made that assigned readings in some courses be eliminated because they “might make some students uncomfortable.”
In Denouncing Alt-Right, Hillary Treads Where GOP Will Not
Last week delivered one of the most remarkable moments of this most remarkable political season. A major politician defended the conservative movement and the Republican Party from guilt-by-association with a fringe group of racists, anti-Semites and conspiracy theorists who have jumped enthusiastically on the Donald Trump train: the so-called alt-right. “This is not conservatism as we have known it,” the politician said. “This is not Republicanism as we have known it.” That politician was Hillary Clinton, and that’s astonishing. Clinton is normally comfortable unjustly condemning conservatism and the GOP for the sins of bigotry and prejudice, not exonerating it. After all, she coined the phrase “vast right-wing conspiracy.”
Tuesday, August 30, 2016
Voter ID and the Real Threat to Democracy
The Supreme Court concluded in 2008 that voter ID is constitutional and doesn’t impose an unreasonable burden on voters. But the recent decisions of three federal courts throwing out voter-ID laws in North Carolina, Texas and Wisconsin as discriminatory have put opponents of common-sense election reforms in raptures. These erroneous rulings twist the Voting Rights Act from a law intended to stop racial discrimination into one that transfers the power to determine routine election procedures — which the Constitution delegates to the states — to the judiciary.
Abstract Immigrants in an Abstract World
Why would a country with the world’s largest Jewish population, outside of Israel, admit large numbers of immigrants from countries where hatred of Jews has been taught to their people from earliest childhood? This question is ultimately not about Muslims and Jews. It is about discussing immigrants in the abstract, rather than in terms of the specific concrete realities of particular immigrants in particular circumstances at a particular time and place — that time being now and that place being the United States of America. A hundred years ago, when immigration from other parts of the world was a major issue, there was a government study which provided voluminous statistics on how immigrants from various countries performed in American society — economically, educationally and in terms of social pathology.
Where There’s Smoke There’s Fire
The prize quote of this incendiary political year may go to Hillary Clinton. In response to Donald Trump’s charge that the Clintons set up a pay-for-play arrangement that granted big contributors access to Clinton while she was secretary of state, Hillary Clinton said, “My work as secretary of state was not influenced by any outside forces. I made policy decisions based on what I thought was right to keep Americans safe and protect our interests abroad.” She added, “I know there’s a lot of smoke, and there’s no fire.” Can there be smoke without fire? I asked an expert. My son, Jay Thomas, has spent most of his professional life as a firefighter. He tells me: “Very simply put, where there is smoke there is, or was, fire. Smoke is a byproduct of combustion. There are three stages of fire: smoldering, incipient and free burning. Each one (emits) smoke.”
Maybe Borders Aren’t the Worst Invention Ever
“Borders are the worst invention ever made by politicians.” Those were the words of Jean-Claude Juncker, president of the European Union’s European Commission, at the Alpbach Media Academy last Monday. Nonsense, most readers will surely think, in numbers going far beyond the legions of Americans dismayed with the choices they face in this year’s presidential race. But it’s worth thinking a bit more about where Juncker is coming from, and the implications of his statement in what is, in Europe as well as America, a fraught political year. Literally, Juncker comes from Luxembourg, a 998-square-mile country wedged between France, Germany and Belgium, where he served as prime minister from 1995 to 2013. If you look up Luxembourg in lists of world economic statistics, you’ll find it rated No. 2 in gross domestic product per capita.
Not Standing for Kaeperick
The latest hero of the left is San Francisco 49ers quarterback Colin Kaepernick. He is making headlines, but not for his talent. In fact, his career is fading. Kaepernick has a long record of tweeting anti-American sentiments like this one: “Folks always want to make it seem like White Supremacy is whiteness gone wild. No. It’s a standard [American] practice.” Evidently that wasn’t getting him enough attention so he’s now refusing to stand for the National Anthem. “I am not going to stand up to show pride in a flag for a country that oppresses black people and people of color,” he said, adding, “There are bodies in the street and people getting paid leave and getting away with murder.” Irony hangs heavy in the air. In 2014, Kaepernick signed a multi-year contract for $126 million. All he has to do is look down the bench at his next game and he will see multiple black Americans who are millionaires.