Right Opinion
The best of conservative opinion and commentary, updated daily.
Sunday, August 21, 2016
The Next Supreme Court Justice
When Justice Antonin Scalia passed away this February, talk turned almost immediately to who would replace him — although in a large sense he is irreplaceable. Even those who disagreed with Justice Scalia acknowledge his profound impact. His scholarship and judicial opinions, through brilliance and wit, transformed how we think about the law and the Constitution. He inspired a generation of law students and lawyers. He provided a foundation for the work of judges and legislators, as well as attorneys general like myself. And all who knew him personally will attest that his brilliance was matched only by his warmth, cheer, and grace. He will be deeply missed.
Saturday, August 20, 2016
Air Force Officer Faces Review Over Bible
The Military Religious Freedom Foundation is demanding an Air Force major be “aggressively punished” for having an open Bible on his desk at Peterson Air Force Base in Colorado Springs, CO. “It [the Bible] is very obviously a statement of Christian preference, Christian primacy,” MRFF founder Mikey Weinstein told me. “Had that been the Book of Satan or the Koran there would be blood in the freaking streets.” He accused Maj. Steve Lewis, a supervisor at the Reserve National Security Space Institute, of “harboring and encouraging a truly abhorrent example of First Amendment civil rights violations.” Mr. Weinstein is a fussy little fellow, isn’t he?
To Russia, With Love
So much for the old accusation that the Republican Party has a “Cold War mentality.” Or if it still does, it has switched sides. The 2016 presidential campaign continues to play out like a Christopher Buckley novel gone completely off the rails, perhaps most implausibly in Paul Manafort’s role in the Russia-friendly Donald Trump campaign. Let’s consider the mind-bending reversals of the norms: It is the outsider candidate who has a lobbyist at the heart of his campaign. And not the upstanding sort of lobbyist who merely persuades the Ways and Means Committee to bequeath tax loopholes on the likes of General Electric, but a truly sinister influence peddler who, by all accounts, made a mint working at the right hand of a small-time foreign thug and thief (Ukraine’s Viktor Yanukovych) who was the handmaiden of a big-time foreign thug and thief (Russia’s Vladimir Putin).
A Dramatic Lesson About Political Actors
The Danish series ‘Borgen’ speaks to the growing detachment between leaders and the led.
Defeating Terrorism Overseas and Civilization Jihad at Home
With regard to foreign policy and issues of war and peace, it’s important to reflect on history to understand how the fighting of wars has changed and what is at stake today for all Americans. Looking back over the last century, World War I and II had ideological components, but the main events were full-blown military engagements that entailed massive loss of life, property and the destruction of entire cities. What some have referred to as World War III has had more ideological components and lesser military conflicts — at least so far.
Trump Expresses Regrets
There was an extraordinary moment in Donald Trump’s speech [Thursday] in Charlotte, North Carolina. He said the following: “As you know, I am not a politician. I have worked in business, creating jobs and rebuilding neighborhoods my entire adult life. I’ve never wanted to learn the language of the insiders, and I’ve never been politically correct. . . Sometimes, in the heat of debate and speaking on a multitude of issues, you don’t choose the right words or you say the wrong thing. I have done that, and I regret it, particularly where it may have caused personal pain. . . But one thing I can promise you is this: I will always tell you the truth.”
My Invitation to a Tea Party
I recently had the pleasure of addressing the members of the 405/605 Tea Party Patriots. I said the following: You folks don’t know me and since I’ve never appeared on Fox and never had the opportunity to guest host the Rush Limbaugh Show, you probably have never even heard of me. So by way of introduction, let me say I don’t admire politicians, not even Republican politicians, not even conservative politicians. But I do sympathize with them. At least up to a point.
Friday, August 19, 2016
Firefighters Blast Order to Remove U.S. Flag as Disgraceful
The firefighters in Poughkeepsie, New York, are patriots — especially the guys in the Arlington Fire District. They love America and they love to fly an American flag on their fire trucks. There’s nothing quite like watching the Star-Spangled Banner wave from the back of a truck tearing down Burnett Boulevard. But on Monday, the Arlington Fire District’s Board of Fire Commissioners ordered the men to remove Old Glory. The commissioners, in a 3-2 decision, said the flags would distract motorists and posed a liability, the Poughkeepsie Journal reported. Joseph Tarquinio, the head of the local firefighters union, was disgusted by the order.
Trump Needs More Votes, Less Applause
I’ve finally figured out what Donald Trump’s main problem is. No jokes, please. It’s because at his core he’s an entertainer who’s looking for applause, not a politician who’s looking for votes. Applause makes you feel good on stage at the Improv or at the end of a Broadway play. But it doesn’t get you elected. If Trump really wants to save what’s left of Western Civilization from four years of President Hillary Clinton, he’s got to learn how to get his message out to more voters.
Not the Way to Do Minority Outreach
In the nanosecond between Donald Trump’s foot-in-mouth moments this week, just before he made headlines by announcing changes in the topless blender that is his senior staff, he gave what many consider to be the finest speech of the campaign. CBS’ Major Garrett tweeted “Having been listening since august 2015, objectively best drafted & best delivered (Trump) speech of campaign. Will resonate.” Byron York of the Washington Examiner, while acknowledging some of Trump’s critics’ objections, thought Trump delivered a “focused, powerful, and disciplined speech ... focused largely on problems that disproportionately afflict black Americans, arguing that his proposals on crime, immigration, trade, jobs, education, and other issues will improve African-American lives more than Hillary Clinton’s.”
Reminder: ObamaCare Is Still a Disaster
So a giant, rent-seeking insurance company is accused of having threatened to leave Obamacare’s health insurance “marketplace” if the government didn’t approve its giant merger. If true, this would be the least surprising development in the past six years of Obamacare fiascos. Any giant regulatory scheme bringing together big business and big government inevitably leads to cronyism and corruption. Not long after the Justice Department blocked Aetna’s merger with Humana, the company announced it would be scaling back participation in Affordable Care Act exchanges. Now, Obamacare consumers in 11 states won’t be able to keep their insurance, even though, one imagines, they like their plans. But choices are getting scarcer by the year. Aetna is now one of about a dozen major insurance providers that have dropped completely out or scaled back participation in exchanges.
Obama, the Worst President Ever, Except Maybe for Hillary
It’s one thing for “Never Trump” Republicans to criticize Donald Trump, but Democrats, the liberal media and pedestal-perched professors who have enabled President Obama and now support Hillary Clinton have no standing to do so. President Obama set out to fundamentally transform America (read: systematically destroy America as founded). Measured in terms of accomplishing this goal, Obama has been one of the most successful presidents in history. Measured in terms of doing what is best for America, Obama undeniably ranks among the worst. Obama’s progressive defenders whitewash his record, but it is objectively horrible — unless you either are in a fantasy world or truly consider America’s comeuppance and its economic, military and cultural decline glorious developments.
Media Bias
Donald Trump’s Wisconsin speech reaching out to black voters on the theme of law and order is getting a lot of attention. His address directly challenged the narrative that Democrats have used for decades and most especially in this campaign — that the Republican Party is racist, that Trump is racist and that conservatives don’t care about minorities. Now that Trump has delivered a major speech with the theme that law and order benefits minorities in high crime areas, what are Democrats and their left-wing allies doing? They are attacking his speech . . . as racist because the audience he addressed was white. Consider this mocking headline from The New York Times: “Trump, Rallying White Crowd for Police, Accuses Democrats of Exploiting Blacks.” The media are desperate to shut down this bold, new approach.
The Perfect Media Manners for Malia
Civility and political decorum demand that one should never pick on a president’s family. Presidents’ children did not choose their parents’ careers. Until they are grown and speaking out on the campaign trail, they should be left out of political commentary. Their privacy should not only be respected; it should be actively protected. Pretty much the entire media observed this rule perfectly when Radar Online published blurry pictures of 18-year-old Malia Obama puffing some sort of cigarette at the Lollapalooza music festival in Chicago, Illinois on July 31. Radar’s eyewitness cried weed. Video footage also showed Obama dancing suggestively to a rap song.
Learning the Right Lessons
The growing consensus among Democrats and Republicans in Washington and among people within the orbits of both the Clinton and Trump campaigns is that Hillary Clinton will be the next President. The latest campaign shakeup by the Trump campaign, designed to “let Trump be Trump,” will not gain him new support. The Trump campaign has shoved aside everyone who wanted Trump to pivot into a grownup presidential campaign and replaced them with yes men to stroke Trump’s ego. Meanwhile, the Clinton campaign is scaling back resources in Colorado, Virginia, Pennsylvania, and Michigan and redirecting those resources to Republican states. The GOP finds itself, with less than 100 days to go, playing defense in states Mitt Romney won with no options to play offensive in Democrat leaning states.
As Gawker Learned, Media Corporations Aren’t Above the Law
If you want proof of the journalism profession’s staggeringly high self-regard, you could do worse than to study the kerfuffle over the not-quite-demise of Gawker. Gawker was a successful news and gossip site founded by Nick Denton that often prided itself on being mean-spirited, prurient and callous all in the name of attracting as many eyeballs as possible. It went — and still goes — by the motto “Today’s gossip is tomorrow’s news.” I was never a fan of Gawker, but I never loathed it either. What I found unfathomable, though, was the fascination with it. People talked about it as if it represented a paradigm-shifting revolution in media. What started as a blog became a collection of blogs and ultimately a bundle of different properties, including the sports site Deadspin, the women’s site Jezebel and the D.C. gossip site Wonkette. Maybe they took these beats to the next level (or to a lower one), but this wasn’t exactly reinventing the wheel.
Trump and Blacks
Who would have thought that Donald Trump, of all people, would be addressing the fact that the black community suffers the most from a breakdown of law and order? But sanity on racial issues is sufficiently rare that it must be welcomed, from whatever source it comes. When establishment Republicans have addressed the problems of blacks at all, it has too often been in terms of what earmarked benefits can be offered in exchange for their votes. And there was very little that Republicans could offer to compete with the Democrats’ whole universe of welfare state earmarks. Law and order, however, is not an earmarked benefit for any special group. It is a policy for all that is especially needed by law-abiding blacks, who are the principal victims of those who are not law-abiding.
The Price of Powerlessness
This week Russian bombers flew out of Iranian air bases to attack rebel positions in Syria. The State Department pretended not to be surprised. It should be. It should be alarmed. Iran’s intensely nationalistic revolutionary regime had never permitted foreign forces to operate from its soil. Until now. The reordering of the Middle East is proceeding apace. Where for 40 years the U.S.-Egypt alliance anchored the region, a Russia-Iran condominium is now dictating events. That’s what you get after eight years of U.S. retrenchment and withdrawal. That’s what results from the nuclear deal with Iran, the evacuation of Iraq and utter U.S. immobility on Syria.
Today’s Candidates Don’t Measure Up to Roosevelt or Reagan
Donald Trump has just made changes, again, in his campaign’s top leadership, shoving aside the seasoned Paul Manafort and installing Breitbart News Chairman Steve Bannon and veteran pollster Kellyanne Conway. He’s obviously acting in response to his falling poll numbers nationally, in target states and even in some states that have been safely Republican in recent elections. Choosing the right people for important jobs is one of the chief responsibilities of a president. History underlines this. It took a president as brilliant as Abraham Lincoln several years to find the generals — Ulysses S. Grant and William T. Sherman — who would win the Civil War. Franklin Roosevelt, in contrast, picked the right generals and admirals for the right jobs before or just after Pearl Harbor.
Thursday, August 18, 2016
The Nihilism in Milwaukee
Tim Pool is a fearless social-media reporter who specializes in getting close to the action. It almost doesn’t qualify as a protest or a riot if Pool isn’t live-streaming from the streets. But he is pulling out of Milwaukee because it is too dangerous for white people. In a carefully stated YouTube video, Pool described the verbal taunts and threats, as well as actual violence, directed at whites. After an 18-year-old male was shot in the neck and extracted by Milwaukee police in an armored vehicle — Pool identifies the victim as white, although other press reports don’t mention his race — he concluded he had to leave. (For the record, Pool is half Korean — not that rioters care.)