Right Opinion

Deadly DC: The Land of No Consequences

In life and leadership, accountability means consequences for bad behavior. In Washington, accountability means yet another congressional meeting about another government scandal perpetrated by tax-subsidized corruptocrats who get away with murder. Literally.

When Pro-Abortion Mantras Trump Facts

Three people were killed and nine were injured when Robert Lewis Dear opened fire at a Planned Parenthood center in Colorado Springs, Colorado. After capturing the shooter, the authorities resisted identifying a motive for Dear's attacks, because they didn't have one. Early reporting based on interviews with his recent neighbors in North Carolina turned up nothing. "If you talked to him, nothing with him was very cognitive," said neighbor James Russell to CBSNews.com. "Two topics Russell said he never heard Dear talk about were religion or abortion." The Washington Post found the same: "The neighbors said they never saw Dear with a gun, and they never heard him speak about politics or abortion rights."

Obama Wants to Organize the World Around Climate Change

President Barack Obama has expressed an apocalyptic vision he suggests other reasonable people must embrace. On Monday, in Paris, he said he foresees: "Submerged countries. Abandoned cities. Fields that no longer grow." And also: "Political disruptions that trigger new conflict, and even more floods of desperate peoples seeking the sanctuary of nations not their own." Climate change, he argues, threatens to cause these problems. Therefore, at the international climate change conference, he repeated his call for an international agreement that seeks to curb global carbon emissions from human activities.

Grape Waste Leads to Fund Raisin

Who says Christmas only comes once a year? According to Senator James Lankford (R-Okla), taxpayers have been giving all year long. They just didn't know it! And now thanks to his new "Wastebook," Americans are finding out just how generous they were forced to be. Taking the handoff from long-time waste-watcher Senator Tom Coburn, Lankford's new "Federal Fumbles" tackles pricy projects that cheated taxpayers in 2015. As always, this year's top 100 projects will have you laughing at someone's expense — yours!

A Brief Survey of Current Political Frauds

Can We Learn From Europe?

Earlier this year, my column asked, "Will the West Defend Itself?" I pointed out that America's leftists and progressives believe that the U.S. should become more like Europe. I wonder whether they also want to import European policies that created barbaric extremism among its Muslim population. France's recent tragedy is not surprising, given some of its policies that are not widely publicized abroad. France has no-go zones, which are officially called "zones urbaines sensibles," or sensitive urban zones, where police are reluctant to go.

School District Bans the Word 'Christmas' From Flyer

The school superintendent in Marlborough, New Hampshire issued a Yuletide edict to the local American Legion post: you can't call a Christmas tree a Christmas tree. John Fletcher, the commander of the local American Legion post, said he was banned from using the word "Christmas" to promote the town's upcoming Christmas tree lighting. The event is sponsored by the American Legion and the Monadnock Lions Club.

University President Rebukes 'Self-Absorbed, Narcissistic' Students

A chapel sermon on love left a student at Oklahoma Wesleyan University feeling "offended" and "victimized." But instead of capitulating to the offended young scholar, OWU President Everett Piper pushed back with a blistering rebuke of what he called "self-absorbed and narcissistic" students. "This is not a day care. This is a university," he wrote in a blog that has since gone viral.

Abdication: Obama Cedes Leadership to Russia and France

For months now, ISIS has sold oil on the international market through Turkey, and Russian President Vladimir Putin is furious with petroleum prices plunging along with Russia's economy. Consider that context as we consider the following.

The Abuse of Colorado Springs

The murderous rampage at a Colorado Springs, Colorado, Planned Parenthood clinic had barely ended before the left began using it to try to shut down the abortion debate. The shooting was an act of terrorism directed against women's "health-care services," and incited by the inflammatory rhetoric around video exposes of Planned Parenthood. The triple murder had been nearly inevitable given, in the words of Planned Parenthood President Cecile Richards, the "toxic" environment created by "hateful rhetoric."

Christmas Gifts

People who want to buy Christmas gifts, without having to confront the crowds at the local shopping mall (or shopping maul) can take a load off their feet by buying books or movies on the Internet, while sitting in the comfort of their own homes. In addition to old standbys like gorgeous coffee table books of Ansel Adams' scenic photographs or the collected works of Shakespeare — or of "Calvin and Hobbes" comics — there are also many thought-provoking books on current events or on history.

Syrian Immigration

I joined more than 60 conservative leaders today in the Conservative Action Project (CAP) calling on Congress to take action addressing the potential national security threats posed by the insufficient vetting of Syrian refugees. ... We outlined compassionate approaches that mitigate the security risks that currently exist. Meanwhile, doubts are growing in Europe about the wisdom of taking in hundreds of thousands of unvetted migrants, mostly from Islamic countries. German authorities are reporting that many Muslim migrants are seeking out Arab language mosques, some of which are known to be havens for Islamic extremists.

Andrea Mitchell's Selective Concerns on Divisiveness

On NBC's "Meet the Press" Sunday, Andrea Mitchell accused Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump of divisiveness. Trump's alleged divisiveness aside, this is rich from an acolyte of the most divisive president in history, Barack Obama. Mitchell was referring to Trump's disputed claim that thousands of American Muslims celebrated the terrorist attacks on our soil on 9/11. Mitchell said: "It's not only that the facts are wrong. It's that what he is saying is so emotionally and politically powerful. He is lighting fires. He is turning people against people. ... The kinds of facts that he is misstating are so ... incendiary."

A Response to a Black Student at Columbia

Two weeks ago, the Columbia University newspaper, the Spectator, published an article titled "Students, faculty address institutionalized racism at University Life event." As described in the article, one example of the institutionalized racism that black Columbia students must endure is the university's Core Curriculum. In the words of one of the panelists, fifth-year undergraduate student Nissy Aya, a young black woman, "It's traumatizing to sit in Core classes. We are looking at history through the lens of these powerful, white men. I have no power or agency as a black woman, so where do I fit in?"

The Darkest of Black Fridays

Planned Parenthood has always been a grim place, but last Friday, its Colorado clinic was the scene of different kind of tragedy. In a senseless shooting, one disgruntled man took the lives of three innocent people and wounded several more in a terrible atrocity that cast a somber shadow over the holiday. Regardless of what the gunman's motives may be (and the media has suggested several), we strongly condemned this violence. All of us at the Family Research Council join with the pro-life movement in praying for the injured officers and families who lost loved ones.

Obama's Environmental Legacy Hangs in the Balance of the Courts

After running for president on a hard-Left environmentalist platform in 2008, Barack Obama neither attempted nor achieved much in his first term — and for good reason. Actually *doing* what he'd promised would alienate huge numbers of voters as they saw jobs disappear, incomes fall, and costs rise under the increasingly tyrannical bureaucracy of the federal Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), and of course he wanted a second term.

Sexual Orientation and Gender Identity (SOGI) Laws Threaten Freedom

America is dedicated to protecting the freedoms guaranteed under the First Amendment to the Constitution, while respecting citizens' equality before the law. None of these freedoms is absolute. Compelling governmental interests can at times trump fundamental civil liberties, but sexual orientation and gender identity (SOGI) laws do not pass this test. Rather, they trample First Amendment rights and unnecessarily impinge on citizens' right to run their local schools, charities, and businesses in ways consistent with their values. SOGI laws do not protect equality before the law; instead, they grant special privileges that are enforceable against private actors.

History Returns Violently in the Mediterranean and Beyond

Sometimes you can learn something about today's world from a history book — even a book about obscure characters in a long-ago time in a far-away corner of the planet, featuring conflicts between regimes that ceased existing at least a century ago. For me, one such book has been "Agents of Empire," by the Oxford historian Noel Malcolm, gaudily subtitled "Knights, Corsairs, Jesuits and Spies in the Sixteenth-Century Mediterranean World."

American Energy Will Help Defeat Terrorism

President Obama has been mocked, and appropriately so, for his ludicrous comment that the upcoming climate change summit in Paris will be a "powerful rebuke" to the terrorists. No. This summit is a powerful rebuke to common sense. It says a lot about the lack of clarity and commitment to the growing threat of the Islamic State that the world leaders are gathering in the city where the murderous attacks just happened, with the blood barely dry, and the prime topic of discussion will be how to stop the rise of the oceans.

Invading Germany

In an ironic twist, Germany, which in the last century twice invaded other countries, contributing to two world wars, is now being invaded by hordes of Muslims. According to Pew Research Center, there are 4,760,000 Muslims in Germany, about 5.8 percent of its population, and that number is steadily growing. The Wall Street Journal writes, "The government estimates that about 800,000 foreigners will seek asylum in Germany this year, almost four times as many as last year."