Right Opinion
The best of conservative opinion and commentary, updated daily.
Thursday, December 10, 2015
All Roads Lead to Washington as Congress Resurrects Ex-Im Bank
After allowing the Export-Import Bank of the United States' charter to lapse June 30, Congress voted to revive it this month on the back of an expensive highway bill. The agency is the modern iteration of a New Deal-era program that mostly extends loans and loan guarantees to foreign companies to buy U.S. goods and services, backed by your hard-earned tax dollars. It's an outrageous example of corporate welfare for companies with no need of government subsidies, and its reauthorization is yet another sign of how much power the business lobby and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce hold.
Guns and the 'No-Fly' Grandstanders
The bodies of the San Bernardino victims were still warm, and President Obama conceded that officials didn't "know that much yet" about the circumstances or motives of the killers. But that didn't stop him from exploiting the moment to call for more gun control. There was the usual shopworn pitch for "stronger background checks." There was also a demand that anyone on the "no-fly" list be prohibited from buying guns. "We have a no-fly list where people can't get on planes," Obama told CBS News, "but those same people who we don't allow to fly could go into a store right now in the United States and buy a firearm. ... That's a law that needs to be changed."
Public Discontent Has Fueled the Trump Phenomenon
The more analysts try to figure out Donald Trump's appeal, the more they sound baffled. Pundits cite Trump's verbal sloppiness and ridiculousness as proof that he must soon implode. But Trump sees his daily bombast as an injection of outrage for a constituency now hooked on someone who finally voices their pent-up anger. The more reckless Trump's doses of scattergun outrageousness, the better the fix for his supporters.
The Frank Sinatra We Remember
In today's culture of hyperbole, born of desperate attempts to be noticed amid the Niagara of Internet and other outpourings, the label "genius" is affixed promiscuously to evanescent popular entertainers, fungible corporate CEOs and other perishable phenomena. But it almost fits the saloon singer — his preferred description of himself — who was born 100 years ago, on Dec. 12, 1915, in Hoboken, New Jersey.
Wednesday, December 9, 2015
An Insider’s Take on Two Supreme Court Cases That Could Affect the Makeup of Your State Legislature
On Tuesday, the Supreme Court heard oral arguments in two important voting rights cases. How the Court rules could have a huge impact on the composition of state legislatures across the country. Both cases involve the "one person, one vote" guarantee embodied in the Fourteenth Amendment's Equal Protection Clause. This guiding principle requires that all voters have approximately equal voting power. The first case of the morning, Harris v. Arizona Independent Redistricting Commission, dealt with state legislative districts drawn by Arizona's so-called Independent Redistricting Commission.
Liberty, Fraternity, Security
What should we do about terrorism? After the attacks on Paris, the French government passed a law that allows anyone suspected of being a security threat to be placed under house arrest and searches to be conducted without warrants. Reason's Anthony Fisher reports that this can lead to nasty experiences for anyone who associates with people from the Middle East.
Autonomous Terrorism Calls for Autonomous Defense
There is not much the government can do about the sort of terrorist threat that President Obama described in his speech on Sunday. It will always be difficult to stop self-radicalized jihadists, operating under no one's instructions, from carrying out attacks on soft targets too scattered and numerous to secure. The only viable alternative, self-help, is one that Obama seems ideologically incapable of considering. His proposals for new restrictions on firearms move in the opposite direction, based on the assumption that the problem is too many guns in too many hands.
Trump Ups the Ante
Billionaire Donald Trump certainly knows how to draw attention. [Monday], in a prepared statement and in follow-up interviews, he called for a moratorium on all Muslim immigration to the United States. He was immediately condemned not only by big media and the political left, but also by many Republicans.
Democrats' Best Weapon: Trump
The dictionary defines "bogeyman" as "an imaginary evil spirit, referred to typically to frighten children." Hello, Donald Trump. It's not clear whether he set out intentionally to elect Hillary Clinton, but there is little question that he could not be fulfilling the role of Republican bogeyman to greater effect. As Commentary's Jonathan Tobin noted, during a week in which the disastrous fecklessness of President Obama and his party in the face of terrorism ought to have been Topic A, we are all talking about Trump instead. Brilliant.
Obama: Seriously, Out of Touch
Barack Obama wanted 15 minutes of airtime on Sunday night, the most heavily watched night of the week, to speak to the nation about the San Bernardino shooting. It was appropriate for the president to request it, and for the networks to grant it, but everyone knew he would say nothing new of substance. On the matter of Islamic terrorism, he never does. And he didn't. And in so not doing, he wowed the press again.
Hijacking the Little Sisters' Religion
When President Barack Obama addressed the nation Sunday night about the terrorist attack in San Bernardino, he was careful to build a wall of separation between the terrorists who had murdered 14 Americans and the religion they claimed to embrace. "But it is clear that the two of them had gone down the dark path of radicalization, embracing a perverted interpretation of Islam that calls for war against America and the West," Obama said. Were the president to exhibit this same zeal in defending the integrity of Christianity, he would drop his administration's legal pursuit of the Little Sisters of the Poor.
Do You Fear What I Fear?
The IRS isn't exactly topping conservatives' nice list this Christmas — so the idea of handing over even more sensitive information to an agency caught leaking it doesn't exactly thrill most Americans. Unfortunately, that's exactly what the Obama administration is proposing under a little rule quietly announced this September. The IRS didn't make much noise about the idea, and considering the opposition — it's easy to see why.
National Security Profiling Is a No-Brainer
Calm down and think, America. While everyone's undies are in a bunch over Donald Trump's proposal for a Muslim immigration moratorium, it is undeniable in a time of "heightened alert" — when violent jihadists have no problem targeting their enemies here and around the world — that national security profiling is imperative to our survival. Yes, that means taking politically incorrect criteria such as ethnicity, nationality and religion into account when battling radical Islamist throat-slitters, suicide bombers and hijackers who incinerate children on airplanes traveling to Disneyland, plant bombs in their shoes, underwear, soda bottles and belts, and shoot up concert halls, restaurants, malls, Army bases and social services centers.
Scholars Shine New Light on Old Truths for Fighting Poverty
Two of the oldest and most venerated public policy institutes in Washington, D.C., the American Enterprise Institute and the Brookings Institution, have produced a new joint report dealing with the issue of fighting poverty in America. The report, "Opportunity, Responsibility, and Security: A Consensus Plan for Reducing Poverty and Restoring the American Dream," is noteworthy for a number of reasons. One is that it reflects a consensus view between long established Washington institutions representing opposite sides of the political spectrum, with AEI being right of center and the Brooking Institution left of center.
Chicago Police Scandal Highlights Problems With One-Party Rule
For a moment at least, the biggest political beneficiary of the shootings in San Bernardino wasn't a presidential candidate or terrorist group. It was Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel. The killing spree in Southern California distracted the national press at precisely the moment it was about to go into a feeding frenzy over a scandal consuming his mayoralty. If such political scorekeeping seems gauche, it's a fitting tribute to Emanuel, who may have participated in a political cover-up.
Stop Terrorists From Killing Americans, Not Americans From Owning Guns
Another terrorist attack, another refusal by President Barack Obama to tell the truth. Instead of admitting that Islamic terrorists had staged another murderous assault on innocent people, he turned the victims into a political prop. Instead of explaining how he intended to stop terrorists from killing Americans, he launched another campaign to stop Americans from owning guns.
Squandered Resources on College Education
Most college students do not belong in college. I am not by myself in this assessment. Washington Post columnist Robert Samuelson said, "It's time to drop the college-for-all crusade," adding that "the college-for-all crusade has outlived its usefulness." Richard Vedder, professor emeritus of economics at Ohio University, reports that "the U.S. Labor Department says the majority of new American jobs over the next decade do not need a college degree. We have a six-digit number of college-educated janitors in the U.S." Vedder adds that there are "one-third of a million waiters and waitresses with college degrees." More than one-third of currently working college graduates are in jobs that do not require a degree, such as flight attendants, taxi drivers and salesmen. College was not a wise use of these students', their parents' and taxpayer resources.
Should We Religiously Profile?
Months ago, a concerned American at a school in Texas spotted a 14-year-old Muslim boy toting around a contraption that looked very much like a bomb. That Texan called the police, who came and detained the boy; after learning that the boy's device was actually a disassembled clock, they released him. Weeks ago, a concerned American in San Bernardino spotted a "half-dozen Middle Eastern men" in the area of an apartment housing Syed Rizwan Farook and Tashfeen Malik. He didn't know what they were doing there, but they seemed suspicious. He didn't call the cops.
Tuesday, December 8, 2015
Immigration and the Roosevelt Rule
First, let us dispense with all that blather about how many millions of Muslims are "peace-loving" and that Americans should not blame all of Islam for the barbarisms perpetrated by a few of its believers. Certainly one can argue that most Germans during the world wars were peace loving, along with most Russians during the Cold War, most Vandals in the middle of the fifth century, most Aztecs when they ruled in present day Mexico, most Assyrians when they were besieging their enemies, most Japanese when their empire was running rampant throughout Asia — the list goes on. Probably you can throw in any other group that comes to mind, because it can still be maintained they all wanted peace. But only on their own terms.
A Churchill-Like Moment
Wisdom can often be found in unexpected places. During debate in the House of Commons on whether Britain should join the U.S. and Russia in bombing ISIS targets in Syria, Hilary Benn, the shadow foreign secretary of the liberal Labour Party, delivered a speech that approached Winston Churchill in its vision.