Right Opinion

If You Don't Rent to Criminals, Are You a Racist?

You're a private landlord, renting apartments in a building you bought with your savings from years of hard work and modest living. You take pride in maintaining your property, keeping it clean, comfortable, and attractive. You charge a fair rent and treat your tenants with courtesy and respect. Your tenants, in turn, appreciate the care you put into the building. And they trust you to screen prospective tenants wisely, accepting only residents who won't jeopardize the building's safe and neighborly character. That's why you only consider applications from individuals who are employed or in school, whose credit scores are strong, and who have no criminal record.

Climate Change Is for Real!

I bet that title grabbed your attention. Is it possible, you're asking yourselves, that Prelutsky has gone over to the dark side? Has he signed on to join Obama, Mrs. Clinton, Joe Biden and Al Gore, in proclaiming that in a loony bin of a world in which Iran will soon be a nuclear power, North Korea is threatening to incinerate New York, ISIS is building a caliphate populated entirely by serial killers and Vladimir Putin is counting his blessings that Barack Obama is president and not Ronald Reagan, that the weather is our single biggest worry?

Sorority Ditches Kentucky Derby Party Over 'Racial Connotations'

There will not be a Kentucky Derby party at Dartmouth College this year because some students allege that one of the nation's most prestigious horse races is racist. And fair warning — before reading further you might want to make a batch of Mint Juleps. You're going to need it. Back in 2015, a group of Black Lives Matter protestors targeted an exclusive Kentucky Derby party hosted by the ladies of Kappa Delta Epsilon — calling the event overtly racist and "recreating an Antebellum South atmosphere on the Ivy League campus."

Putting the Democratic Party on the Couch

Bernie Sanders is beside himself. How can Hillary Clinton take $15 million in contributions from Wall Street and at the same time claim to represent working families? How can she take millions in contributions from the oil and gas industry and claim to be for the environment? How can she take $675,000 in speaking fees from Goldman Sachs and claim that she will be tough on the big banks? One thing is clear. Bernie Sanders doesn't understand the Democratic Party. That's not surprising. He doesn't even call himself a Democrat.

A Battle to Save a Battlefield

One of history's most important battles happened here on a field you can walk across in less than half the 45 or so minutes the battle lasted. If George Washington's audacity on Jan. 3, 1777, had not reversed the patriots' retreat and routed the advancing British, the American Revolution might have been extinguished. Yet such is America's neglect of some places that sustain its defining memories, the portion of the field over which Washington's nation-saving charge passed is being bulldozed to make way for houses for faculty of the Institute for Advanced Study (IAS). To understand the gravity of this utterly unnecessary desecration, you must understand the astonishingly underestimated Battle of Princeton.

The Left's Climate Inquisition's New Target

In a truly outrageous abuse of his authority and a misuse of the law, the attorney general of the U.S. Virgin Islands, Claude E. Walker, has served a subpoena on the Competitive Enterprise Institute (CEI) demanding documents related to CEI's research on global "climate change." Walker is part of a network of state "AGs United for Clean Power" who have formed a grand inquisition to go after those they claim have lied about climate change — which is a contentious and unproven scientific *theory*.

PayPalling Around With Radicals

After this week, PayPal may need a pal! After pulling the plug on a major expansion in Charlotte, the money transfer business is getting hammered over their political posturing that is clearly inconsistent with their corporate actions and policies. CEO Dan Schulman kicked off the controversy when he announced earlier this week that he was so outraged by North Carolina's H.B. 2 that he was scrapping plans for their Charlotte office. Why? Because the state won't force businesses to let men in the women's restroom. Like most Americans, Governor Pat McCrory (R-N.C.) thinks that decision belongs in the hands of individual companies — not imposed on them by the government's heavy hand.

Obama: The Enemy Within

Changing Tone, Not Teaching

The media are all atwitter over the release of a new document from Pope Francis on the family. The paper, "On Love In The Family," is the result of two meetings (synods) between the pope and the world's Catholic bishops. Those on the left hoping that the pope would upend more than a thousand years of traditional Christian teaching on marriage and the family were disappointed. Typical of Pope Francis' style, he calls on pastors to demonstrate more grace, while firmly advocating for the sanctity of life and normal marriage.

Supreme Court Got It Wrong: Noncitizens Shouldn’t Be Counted

In a loss for voters, the Supreme Court has ruled unanimously against two residents of Texas who had argued that the Texas legislature diluted their votes when it used total population to redraw state Senate districts. In Evenwel v. Abbott, the Supreme Court allowed states to use total population in redrawing district lines, even though that this includes a large number of noncitizens (legal and illegal), felons, and others who are ineligible to vote.

Can Donald Close the Deal in Cleveland?

Thanks to Ted Cruz's primary win in Wisconsin, it's now all but certain the Republican convention is going to be contested. Donald Trump is going to come close to winning the delegates he'd need to win the nomination on the first ballot, but I don't see him getting the GOP cigar. Someone else will, I'm guessing. And don't be shocked if his initials are not TC or JK. The big question for right now is how the conventioneers in Cleveland and the Republicans watching on TV will react when their party's intramural cage match is over.

Cruz or Bust

If the Republican Party is to be saved from Donald Trump, Ted Cruz's runaway victory in Wisconsin will have been the inflection point. If you thought this service to the GOP would be met with plaudits from the party's insiders, you obviously don't know anything about their relationship to the Texas senator. St. Augustine famously prayed, Dear Lord, make me chaste — but not yet. The GOP establishment's prayer is, Dear Lord, deliver us from Donald Trump — but not with Ted Cruz.

HBO's Fetish for Mapplethorpe

HBO shocked the world on April 4 by unveiling a 100-minute documentary honoring the legacy and legislative career of Sen. Jesse Helms. Kidding — delayed April fool. It did, though, feature Senator Helms as a villain in a 100-minute documentary honoring the life and art of Robert Mapplethorpe, the infamous anti-Christian, penis-obsessed purveyor of sadomasochistic black-and-white photography.

Run Against Obama

When a Republican has been in the presidency for eight years, as George W. Bush was, Democrats run against the Republicans. When a Democrat has been in office for eight years, as Barack Obama will soon have been, Republicans run against Republicans. This is a year in which the multiple failures of the Obama years should be irresistible for Republican presidential candidates. Democrats, correspondingly, should be awkwardly sidestepping and tightrope walking to avoid a too-close association. Instead, partly due to the eccentric obsessions of Donald Trump, we've seen Republicans reprising debates about the wisdom of the Iraq War while ignoring the greatest foreign policy debacles of the Obama years.

We Don't Have to Break It to Fix It

I constantly hear that only Donald Trump supporters can understand the Trump phenomenon, as if it were inaccessible to nonbelievers, like the secret knowledge of ancient Gnostics. But I don't believe it's a matter of comprehension. Trump supporters are so tired of the ruling class and are so adamant about a handful of issues that they seem willing to overlook even monumental flaws in their candidate, so long as he will carry the torch against Washington — at least on those major issues. They aren't just willing to ignore flaws; they don't care about them, because things are so bad that only a rogue-like character will have the guts and wherewithal to shake things up.

Sorry — Economic Conservatives Are Nothing Like Trump

Whether you believe House Speaker Paul Ryan is a squishy Republican unworthy of the nomination, or you think he's the sort of rational conservative voice that could save the GOP from doom, there's one thing he most certainly isn't: Donald Trump. Then again, the idea that "Donald Trump is just Paul Ryan on steroids," as Matt O'Brien wrote in The Washington Post's Wonkblog, and others assert, is the kind of predictably lazy attack we should get used to for the foreseeable future. Every Republican is going to be like Trump. And this will be Trump's short-term legacy.

Arguments Against Free Trade Are Deeply Flawed

For years, supporters of free trade have been trying to reach a bipartisan consensus on the issue. They've finally succeeded. Free trade is now unpopular in both parties. Perhaps because I am a conservative, I can at least understand where most conservatives are coming from in their opposition to free trade. Overt displays of nationalism and patriotism (which are not the same thing, by the way) are not merely tolerated on the right, they're often celebrated. Conservative intellectuals openly extol American exceptionalism while liberal intellectuals tend to deride the notion. Virtually no Republican politician agonizes over wearing a U.S. flag pin.

Wisconsin Republicans Bid No Trump

"Donald J. Trump withstood the onslaught of the establishment yet again." That's the first sentence in a Trump campaign statement tweeted out Tuesday night by the Washington Post's Robert Costa. It's also a strange way to respond to a solid defeat, reminiscent of the Monty Python knight who insists he is winning after both his arms are hacked off. Ted Cruz — "Lyin' Ted" to the Trump campaign — won 48 percent of the votes in Wisconsin's Republican primary. Trump won 35 percent. John Kasich got only 14 percent. The delegate count was even more one-sided. Cruz won 36 delegates. Trump won six. Kasich won none.

Growing Up Is Hard to Do

One of the things candidates for president sometimes find is that, as they gather strength, their campaign nature changes. Gone are the friendly faces a candidate is long accustomed to. Those who know the candidate's routines get shuffled out. The general election pivot brings on more professional types and more mercenaries who are in it to win, not in it for the candidate.

The Coming Train Wreck

Yes, the big Wisconsin story is Ted Cruz's crushing 13-point victory. And yes, it greatly improves his chances of denying Donald Trump a first-ballot convention victory, which may turn out to be Trump's only path to the nomination. Nonetheless, the most stunning result of Wisconsin is the solidity of Trump's core constituency. Fundamentalist Trumpism remains resistant to every cosmic disturbance.