Right Opinion
The best of conservative opinion and commentary, updated daily.
Wednesday, January 6, 2016
Inside the Garden of Political Town Hall Plants
On Thursday, CNN will host a town hall with President Obama as part of his "final-year push to make gun control part of his legacy." In addition to sitting down with liberal anchor Anderson Cooper, the network says Obama will "take questions from the audience." Uh-oh. Get out your best pruning shears and trowels. In an age of micromanaged partisan stagecraft and left-wing media enablers, there is no such thing as a spontaneous question.
Planned Parenthood and the Profits of Doom
If anyone's anxious to turn the page on 2015, it's Planned Parenthood. Rocked by more scandals than any organization not named the IRS, it hasn't exactly been smooth sailing for Cecile Richards's group since David Daleiden pulled back the curtain on the organization's trafficking in baby organs. With videos of her sinister side business in the double digits, it's only by the Obama administration's crass indifference that the group has survived this long.
Burying Negative Polls
Network news outlets conduct their own polls. They also bury the poll results when they don't like them. On PBS on Jan. 1, liberal pundit Mark Shields brought some very bad news for the left. The NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll found 73 percent say they want the next president to take a different approach from President Obama's. So NBC, both the creator of the poll and a relentless cheerleader of Obama, chose not to air that bombshell. Instead, they buried it deep in an article on the "Meet the Press" website. "This will become a high hurdle for the Democrats at some stage of the 2016 election," Democratic pollster Fred Yang declared in that piece.
The Tearful Dictator
The tyrant cries. While announcing his new slate of gun control measures designed to pave the way for a national gun registration regime, President Obama welled up in a press conference on Tuesday. He'd spent nearly half an hour berating Republicans, American voters and the National Rifle Association for their supposed intransigence in failing to embrace his executive actions. Finally, he reached up to his eyes, rubbed at them, and as tears wet his cheeks, he stated, "Every time I think about those kids, it gets me mad. ... We need voters who want safer gun laws, and who are disappointed in leaders who stand in their way, to remember come election time."
Showman-in-Chief
Those who have been marveling at Donald Trump's political showmanship were given a reminder of who is the top showman of them all, when President Barack Obama went on television to make a pitch for his unilateral actions to restrict gun sales and make a more general case for tighter gun control laws. It was beautifully choreographed, like a great ballet, and performed with consummate skill and understated eloquence. First of all, the scene was set with a room full of people who had lost loved ones to gun violence. A father whose son had been gunned down made a long introduction before the president showed up, walked down the aisle and up on to the stage to growing applause.
Obama Takes Aim at Second Amendment
"The biggest problems that we're facing right now have to do with [the president] trying to bring more and more power into the executive branch and not go through Congress at all. And that's what I intend to reverse when I'm president of the United States of America." Those words could have been spoken by any conservative in opposition to President Obama's newly announced executive actions targeting Second Amendment rights. But they weren't. They were uttered by then-Senator Barack Obama in 2008 in opposition to George W. Bush's limited use of executive authority.
Election Should Be About Restoring the American Vision
Year-end surveys convey a picture of disillusionment and cynicism among Americans about their government and their country. According to the Pew Research Center, only 19 percent now say they "trust the federal government to do what is right always or most of the time." This is close to the lowest it has been in the last 50 years. Consider that in 1964, 80 percent expressed trust in the federal government. In recent Gallup polling, 69 percent of Americans say big government is the "biggest threat" to the nation's future.
The Term 'Neocon' Has Run Its Course
In interviews and on the stump, Sen. Ted Cruz likes to attack President Obama, Hillary Clinton and "some of the more aggressive Washington neocons" for their support of regime change in the Middle East. Every time we topple a dictator, Cruz argues, we end up helping terrorists or extremists. He has a point. But what interests me is his use of the word "neocon." What does he really mean? Some see dark intentions. "He knows that the term in the usual far-left and far-right parlance means warmonger, if not warmongering Jewish advisers, so it is not something he should've done," former George W. Bush advisor Elliott Abrams told National Review. Another former Bush adviser calls the term "a dog whistle."
In Gun Sales, Whose Hands Are Wrong?
The new gun controls that President Obama announced on Tuesday include a "clarification" of who is "engaged in the business of selling firearms," the upshot of which is that more gun buyers will be subject to background checks. Obama describes expanding the background check requirement (which Congress has declined to do) as a "commonsense gun safety reform" aimed at "keeping guns out of the wrong hands."
Unappreciated Tax on the Poor
A few years ago, BET had a commentary titled "Where Are the Grocery Stores in Black Neighborhoods?" One wonders whether anyone thinks that the absence of supermarkets in predominantly black neighborhoods means that white merchants do not like dollars coming out of black hands. Racial discrimination cannot explain the absence of supermarkets in black communities.
Tuesday, January 5, 2016
President Obama Wants to Disarm America
President Obama is plotting with his attorney general to get our guns. The president will purportedly bypass Congress and crack down on small scale gun sellers. Fox News reports the plan would require gun sellers to order background checks on prospective buyers and tighten laws for gun sales to those who have committed domestic-abuse offenses. If the White House really wants to crack down on gun violence, maybe they should enforce the laws that are already on the books.
The Gift of Ignorance and Sophistry
Another "Holiday Season" is behind us. And every such season, the purge of religion in our public schools just gets worse. In fact, the season now serves to remind us of one thing for certain: the God-purgers are on an unyielding secular crusade that gets more self-righteous ever year. This past season seemed to reach new levels of absurdity. What we're seeing now is remarkable not only for its vigorous assault against everything religious, but for the apparent willingness by secularists to embrace ignorance and sophistry in the process. They are willing to make their students — whom they're supposed to educate — dumb about historical reality and to look downright silly in the process. I'll illustrate with two examples, starting with this past Thanksgiving, the kick-off of the long "Holiday Season."
Yes, Muslims Should Be Asked to Condemn Islamic Terror
Last week, an opinion piece appeared in The Washington Post that tells you much of what you need to know about the moral fabric and intellectual depth of the ACLU and much of the left. Written by Rana Elmir, deputy director of the Michigan chapter of the ACLU, the title says it all: "Stop asking me to condemn terrorists just because I'm Muslim."
GOP House: Resolved to Reconcile
Christmas may be gone, but Scrooge is still here! Much to our disappointment, Congress passed a massive funding bill before leaving town for Christmas that continued the taxpayer funding of Planned Parenthood and the farce of the "Affordable" Care Act. When conservatives cried foul, Republicans pointed out they didn't have the 60 Senate votes they needed to end Americans' forced partnership with Planned Parenthood.
Recruiting Jihadists
The radical Islamic terror group al-Shabaab released a recruitment video over the weekend. It features Malcolm X, stokes racial tensions and urges black Muslim Americans to rise up against our country. It sounds like it could have been written by Louis Farrakhan, the Nation of Islam leader once honored by Obama's Chicago church. But what the media focused on was footage of Donald Trump calling for a temporary ban on Muslim immigration to America until we can sort out the peaceful Muslims from those who hate us.
The Delusional Self-Importance of the Liberal Media
I have long marveled at liberals' air of superiority and lack of self-reflection, which have always been particularly evident among liberal media elites and journalists. They tend to view themselves as sacrosanct and above scrutiny. Perhaps this attitude sprang from the British and, later, American tradition that the press is the Fourth Estate. It doesn't just serve to inform the people and make them better contributors to the democratic process. It is the virtual fourth branch of government, operating as a watchdog on the formal branches to further check their potential abuses of power.
Battening Down the Hatches, Reminiscent of the 1930s
Battening down the hatches. That's what America and much of the rest of the world seem to be doing today, in an eerie re-enactment, though to much less of a degree, of what America and the world did in the 1930s. The result then wasn't very pretty. The result now is unknown. One way the hatches are being battened down is that the volume of world trade has been declining, and not just temporarily, in response to the financial crisis of fall 2008.
Roots and Identity
Ever since the miniseries "Roots" was shown on ABC in 1977, Americans have demonstrated a keen interest in finding out more about where they came from and the names and circumstances of their ancestors. Harvard University Professor Henry Louis Gates Jr. is fulfilling that longing in the latest installment of the PBS series "Finding Your Roots." Next to "Downton Abbey," which is again drawing large audiences in its sixth and final season, Gates' program (premiering Jan 5) is the best and most compelling television you will ever see.
Complicating the Obvious
Engineers who design computerized products and services seem to have an almost fanatical determination to avoid using plain English. It is understandable when complicated processes require complicated operations. But when the very simplest things are designed with needless complications or murky instructions, that is something else.
Monday, January 4, 2016
Judicial Watch Files for Contempt in Supreme Court Against State of Hawaii
A little less than one month ago, Judicial Watch reported to you our historic Supreme Court victory. Our lawyers convinced the Supreme Court to issue an injunction halting a race-based "Native Hawaiian-only" election in Hawaii. In August, Judicial Watch filed a federal lawsuit on behalf of five Hawaiian residents and one Texas resident of Hawaiian descent who opposed the discriminatory election process (Keli'i Akina, et al. v. The State of Hawaii, et al. (No. 1:15-cv-00322)).