Right Opinion
The best of conservative opinion and commentary, updated daily.
Friday, March 4, 2016
'Soul Murder' in Altoona
If you've seen the excellent movie "Spotlight," you know what it takes for a newspaper to expose the sexual abuse of children by priests in the Catholic Church. "Spotlight," which won the Academy Award for best picture of 2015, is the true story of how the Boston Globe's investigative Spotlight team uncovered the massive scandal of child molestation and cover-up within the Boston Archdiocese. Challenging one of the most powerful institutions in Boston, digging up the ugly truth and detailing it on Page 1 took a strong mix of principle and guts by the Globe's editor, Marty Baron.
The End of Reagan Nostalgia?
If there's anything we thought we knew about the GOP, it is that it is the party of Reagan. Paying obeisance to Ronald Reagan — his memory, his accomplishments, his policies — has long been the price of entry to Republican presidential politics. Yet here comes Donald Trump, who gives no indication of caring the slightest about Reagan's legacy, and he has rampaged to front-runner status anyway.
Infant Messaging With the Select Panel
After Super Tuesday, it was defensive Wednesday for abortion groups like Planned Parenthood. On one side of the street, the Supreme Court was debating common sense clinic regulations — and on the other, a panel of House members was getting to the bottom of Planned Parenthood's black market of baby body parts. Both events hold tremendous sway in the future of the abortion business, which has been under heavy scrutiny since last year when undercover videos caught the industry's own joking about the dark world of baby organ harvesting. "There is something going on," said Select Investigative Panel Chairman Marsha Blackburn (R-Tenn.), "something that deserves investigating and that demands our best moral and ethical thinking."
Time for GOP Establishment (and Trump Supporters) to Unite Behind Ted Cruz
Mitt Romney's speech against Donald Trump is not likely to win many converts. Romney's remarks will just further vindicate and entrench Trump supporters. Romney, though a good man, is quintessentially GOP establishment and has shown, by his speech, that he still doesn't understand the role he and his colleagues have played in bringing about the Trump surge. During campaign season, these guys always seem to get it. They profess to understand how destructive President Obama's agenda is, but once they're elected, they lose their will to fight, which makes many conservatives believe they didn't believe their own rhetoric in the first place.
Servergate Immunity
Late [Wednesday] evening, it was reported that the FBI granted immunity to Bryan Pagliano, the former State Department employee who set up former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton's private email server that she used for official government business. According to the latest release of her emails, more than 2,000 messages on her private server contained classified information.
Contra 'Too Late'
Mitt Romney made a compelling and urgent case for why the Republican Party's soul is at stake in this election cycle. And speaking of Romney, his experience in 2012 illustrates why those who are shrugging that it is too late to stop Donald Trump are mistaken. Attempting to stop Trump is not some underhand effort to steal a prize that he has already won. "Trump is winning fair and square, so why should the nomination be grabbed from him?" asked former Secretary of Education William Bennett. It's a fair question, but here's the answer: He hasn't won yet. Not even close. Only 15 of the Republican primaries or caucuses have been completed. Most years, things wrap up early, but that doesn't mean it's illegitimate to battle on. The 2008 competition between Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama didn't conclude until June.
Trump Backers Shouldn't Complain About How the Game Is Played
When losing to the star of a reality TV show, is it really so crazy to resort to reality-show tactics to defeat him? I'm not referring to Marco Rubio's decision to fight fire with fire with Donald Trump and return insult for insult. I, for one, thought it was wholly appropriate for Rubio to give the schoolyard bully a taste of his own medicine. The evidence shows that Rubio's attacks, while tardy, paid off. Voters not already enraptured with Trump are open to persuasion, and late deciders broke disproportionately for Rubio on Super Tuesday in most races.
Can Donald Trump Be Stopped? Maybe
The Republican race goes on after Super Tuesday. In ordinary years, Donald Trump's wins in seven of the 11 Super Tuesday contests after three out of four wins in February, together with his delegate lead, would make him the nominee. Politicians would hurry to back the apparent winner. But, thanks to Trump, this is not an ordinary year, and his extraordinary campaign seems to leave many Republican politicians and voters not eager to join his campaign but desperate to stop it.
Donald Trump: Defender of the Faith
What happened to the evangelicals? They were supposed to be the bedrock of the Ted Cruz candidacy. Yet on Super Tuesday he lost them to Donald Trump. Cruz still did make a reasonably good showing, winning Alaska, Oklahoma and Texas, the latter by an impressive 17 points. But he didn't have the great night he needed to put away Marco Rubio and emerge as Trump's one remaining challenger. Cruz had done all the groundwork to win evangelicals and sweep the South by putting together strong alliances with local pastors and leaders. And yet, outside Oklahoma and Texas, he lost them to Trump by stunning margins — by 21 points in Alabama, 13 in Georgia, 14 in Tennessee, 16 in Virginia and 36 in, of all places, Massachusetts.
The Savagely Anti-Catholic Sitcom
When Disney and ABC decided to make a sitcom based on the teenage years of hatemongering homosexual "Savage Love" advice columnist Dan Savage, anyone could guess this was going to be a religion-bashing extravaganza. Now the show is here. It's called "The Real O'Neals," which is an odd title, since they couldn't have manufactured a more wooden set of caricatured Catholics, who are both wildly dysfunctional and shallower than a thimble. The show's promotional video intones: "In the beginning, the perfect Irish-Catholic family was created. And then all hell broke loose." Which is to say, all Hollywood broke loose.
Thursday, March 3, 2016
Indoctrination, Population Control and Climate Change
What a Masters in Environmental Science Learned at the University
5 Key Exchanges From Biggest Abortion Supreme Court Case in a Decade
Wednesday, while a huge crowd of protesters stood in front of the U.S. Supreme Court building, the justices heard oral argument in the first major abortion case in nearly a decade. In Whole Woman's Health v. Hellerstedt, the Supreme Court is considering whether Texas' H.B. 2 law — a commonsense reform intended to increase women's health and safety — has the purpose or effect of imposing an "undue burden" on women seeking abortions. The law requires abortion clinic doctors to have admitting privileges at a hospital within 30 miles of the clinic and clinics to meet the minimum health and safety standards that other ambulatory surgical centers have to meet.
South Dakota GOP Governor Has No Problem with Boys in Girls’ Locker Rooms
South Dakota Governor Dennis Daugaard, a Republican, officially has no problem with boys in girls' locker rooms. There's no other way to say it. Special interests and big businesses effectively lobbied the governor to veto a good bill because of the threats they made. Welcome to cultural cronyism at the bathroom.
Time to Budge on the Budget
The year 2016 may well go down in history as the Year of the Fed-Up Voter. On issue after issue, too many of our elected officials refuse to make hard choices. They govern on autopilot, apparently hoping that some rousing speeches at election time will distract us. Take the federal budget. For years, it's been ballooning out of control. Government has grown to an unprecedented size and now reaches into virtually every aspect of our lives. It's on a dangerous financial trajectory that will have serious consequences for all of us.
Hey President Obama, for Most Americans the Economy Is Still Weak
Bernie Sanders says this is an economy that has been rigged with only the gains of the last decade going to the richest one percent. Hillary Clinton admits the middle class is falling behind. In fact, about the only person in America who is happy with the economy is Obama himself. Every new statistic documents what American voters keep saying: they are sick of slow growth, flat wages, runaway debt, and the gains going only to the top 10 percent.
Super Choose Day!
Super Tuesday led to one thing: super turnout. While Democrats struggle to generate any real enthusiasm, the GOP is blowing past primary records in one state after another. In Virginia alone, Republicans cast more than one million votes — crushing the mark set in 2000 by more than 50 percent. The story was much the same in Tennessee, Georgia, Texas, Alabama, Arkansas, and more. Experts say the GOP's intensity is at historic levels, and after seven years of Obama's lawlessness, they show no signs of letting up.
The Death of Liberalism Updated
I wrote a book in 2011 with the felicitous title "The Death of Liberalism." The book's title pretty much said it all. By 2011, the ideology of Adlai Stevenson, of Hubert Humphrey, of Daniel Patrick Moynihan had expired. In the book I explained why liberalism was dead. Today the evidence is even more abundant. A socialist and a liberal naysayer as the sole candidates for the Democratic nomination? Liberalism is history. President Bill Clinton in his 1996 State of the Union address was succinct: "The era of big government is over." President Ronald Reagan in the 1980s made it so. Newt Gingrich in the 1990s was seeing to it that the liberal corpse could not be resurrected, and not much that Clinton did in his presidency resuscitated liberalism. By 2011 I thought it was time for an autopsy.
The Results
Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton will be the Democrat nominee for president this November. Hillary Clinton has won more than twice as many delegates than Bernie Sanders — 1,034 to 408. The "Bern" has been controlled and is beginning to go out. The Republican contest is more fluid. It was Donald Trump's night [Tuesday] night, but his win was not as overwhelming as pundits had predicted 48 hours earlier. There were many suggestions that Trump might even carry Texas and shutout the other contenders. That did not happen.
Last Chance for America? Part II
The worst political blunder of all time, according to scientist Freeman Dyson, was the decision of the emperor of China in 1433 to cut off his country from the outside world. In the wake of that decision, China lost its position in the forefront of human achievements and fell behind, over the centuries, to become a Third World country. Before the end of this month, the United States of America may break that record for the worst political blunder of all time. Professor Dyson attributed the Chinese emperor's blunder to "powerful people pursuing partisan squabbles and neglecting the long-range interests of the empire." That can be our path to disaster as well.
Oscar Night: Hypocrisy Dressed to the Nines
Last Sunday was Oscar night, where the leftism of Hollywood — one-third of the "axis of indoctrination" — is on its annual full display. (The other two-thirds are media and academia.) The biggest surprise of the night was a lack of Donald Trump jokes, two at the most. Of course, there were zero sightings of Hillary Clinton or Bernie Sanders jokes. Before the Oscar show, actor Will Smith and his wife, actress Jada Pinkett Smith, and director Spike Lee blasted the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences for its second consecutive year without major black Oscar nominees.