Right Opinion
The best of conservative opinion and commentary, updated daily.
Thursday, September 10, 2015
Democrats, Republicans and Mushroom Clouds
The Democratic Party has been weak-minded on defense for decades, but with the Iran capitulation, they've achieved a new threshold of cowardice and treachery. While it's true that an honorable handful of Democrats have resisted the president's pressure, the overwhelming majority have chosen to go over the cliff with Barack Obama, a president who never met an enemy he didn't wish to conciliate or an ally he didn't seek to betray. Democrats have long tended toward appeasement of aggressors. Throughout the Cold War, they scared themselves (and everyone else) silly conjuring specters of nuclear holocaust. Then-Sen. John Kerry was one of many prominent Democrats who endorsed the "nuclear freeze." It wasn't America's enemies that we should fear, the Democrats argued, but the weapons themselves.
Show Vote Showdown
It may not be a comfortable position for Republican leaders, but it's certainly a familiar one. Caught between Planned Parenthood and a hard place, the GOP has to decide whether to continue the funding of an organization that's been exposed for trafficking in baby body parts or stand up to a President who has vowed to defend the nation's largest abortion provider no matter what.
A Palestinian 'Samaritan' Teaches a Lesson in Humanity
Last week a middle-aged businessman rescued five students from a lynch mob. Now the lynch mob is after the businessman, threatening to kill him for his act of bravery. "I'm not a hero," insists the man, as heroes usually do. "I did it because I'm a human being." The incident happened in Hebron, the ancient city in Israel's West Bank that today is largely controlled by the Palestinian Authority. Five yeshiva students, haredi ("ultra-Orthodox") tourists from America, took a wrong turn while driving to the Cave of Machpela, the sacred burial site of the Biblical patriarchs, and suddenly found themselves under attack in one of Hebron's Arab neighborhoods.
Refugees: Another One for the 'Not Our Problem' File
Among the benefits of Donald Trump's proposed immigration moratorium is that we won't have to keep importing hordes of Third World "refugees," such as the ones currently swarming across Europe. For decades, the United States has taken in far more refugees than the entire rest of the world combined. Nearly half of the refugees we take in are Muslim. And it's worked out great!
Funding the U.S. Department of Offense
If you want to know how serious Republican presidential candidates are about fiscal responsibility, just look at their positions on the spending caps put into place by the Budget Control Act of 2011. The caps, which largely cover domestic discretionary programs and the defense budget, brought a modicum of restraint to the federal spending train that careened out of control under the Bush and Obama administrations. But for the special interests that live off the largesse — particularly weapons manufacturers and lobbies for foreign governments that don't mind U.S. taxpayers footing the bill for their defense needs — restraint on the Pentagon's war chest is unacceptable.
The Passing of a Giant
Here I am out in the Spanish hinterland, and John Von Kannon, one of the giants of the conservative movement, has passed on. Known to The Spectator followers as the Baron Von Kannon, he was one of my dearest friends and wisest advisers for nearly 50 years. He will be a loss for me and for the conservative movement, but it was God's call. Today, these 48 years seem fleeting. The Baron went to Washington with what eventually numbered a dozen Indiana University graduates to advance the conservative movement. Many of those students started with me at The American Spectator there in Bloomington, Ind. None was more vital than the Baron. He hawked the magazine on campus, raised money for it and was responsible for more than a few of our greatest gags. Then he went on to raise money for the Heritage Foundation, where he raised more than a billion dollars.
Trump Is a Malleable Mess
"I remember, when I was a child, being taken to the celebrated Barnum's Circus, which contained an exhibition of freaks and monstrosities, but the exhibit on the program which I most desired to see was the one described as 'The Boneless Wonder.' My parents judged that that spectacle would be too revolting and demoralizing for my youthful eyes, and I have waited fifty years to see The Boneless Wonder sitting on the Treasury Bench." —Winston Churchill in the House of Commons, referring to Prime Minister Ramsay MacDonald, 1931. Donald Trump, whose promises are probably as malleable as his principles, promises to support the Republican nominee. Some of his rivals for the nomination, disoriented by their fear and envy of him, are making the GOP seem like the party of boneless wonders.
Two Kingdoms in Conflict Over Same-Sex Marriage
Let's get something straight. America has never been a "Christian nation." Those who believe otherwise have an obligation to say what part of our history was uniquely Christian. Was it when slavery was legal? How about when women were denied the vote? The Gilded Age? The Roaring '20s? America is a nation in which Christians — and every other religious and nonreligious person — have the right to practice their beliefs in private and public free of government intrusion, except in some cases of life-threatening medical conditions in which the courts have occasionally intruded. It may make some evangelicals feel better to believe the country once reflected biblical principles, but despite generic quotations about "Divine Providence" that hark back to our founding, that's difficult to prove.
Hillary Searches for a Heart
Hillary Clinton has now decided to re-relaunch her flailing campaign. She'll do so by showing "more humor and heart," according to The New York Times. In other news, the Wizard gave Joe Biden a brain and Bernie Sanders courage. The Wizard also apparently gave Biden and Sanders better poll numbers: In the latest Monmouth poll, Clinton still leads at 42 percent, but Biden picks up 22 percent and Sanders 20 percent. That's trouble in Clintonia.
Will GOP Congress Fund Group That Killed 327,653 Babies in One Year?
Go online and pull up Planned Parenthood's latest annual report and you will see that the group plainly states how many unborn babies it kills in abortions and how much tax money it gets. In fiscal year 2013, the report says that Planned Parenthood performed 327,653 "abortion procedures." That means it deliberately killed 327,653 innocent and defenseless unborn human beings. The same report says that during the year that ended on June 30, 2014, Planned Parenthood raked in $528.4 million in "government health services grants and reimbursements."
America's Descent Into Lawlessness
Do you remember Lewis "Scooter" Libby? In 2003, the Department of Justice appointed a special counsel to investigate allegations that Libby, Vice President Dick Cheney's chief of staff, unlawfully disclosed the covert status of CIA operative Valerie Plame. Yet Plame may not have been a covert undercover agent, based on the formal government definition of that role. And even if she were, it was widely known at the time that Secretary of State Colin Powell's subordinate, Richard Armitage, had most likely disclosed her status earlier.
Wednesday, September 9, 2015
Choir Replaces Jesus With Hillary in Gospel Song
It was quite a spectacle over the weekend in New Hampshire, when followers of Hillary Clinton sang praise songs to their Lord and Savior. "I woke up this morning with my heart stayed on Hillary," crooned the Voices of the Heart, a "women's alternative chorus." The ladies desecrated an old gospel song at an official campaign stop, replacing the word Jesus with the word Hillary. This is just plain creepy — and not just because a bunch of women are waking up thinking about Hillary Clinton
Rebranded Hillary Is Just More of the Same
What if this is as good as it gets? You have to wonder if that's what Hillary Clinton's handlers are saying to each other right about now. Of course, that's not what they're saying in public — or on background to the press. The New York Times reported this week that Clinton plans to be spontaneous from now on: "There will be no rope lines to wall off crowds, which added to an impression of aloofness. And there will be new efforts to bring spontaneity to a candidacy that sometimes seems wooden and overly cautious."
Meet Candy Carson: The Anti-Michelle Obama
After nearly eight years of the East Wing's politics of mope and complain, it's refreshing to see a presidential candidate's spouse who is always smiling. Candy Carson — wife of GOP 2016 hopeful Dr. Ben Carson, mother of three sons, and grandmother of two — is the anti-Michelle Obama. She's a quiet but confident ray of sunshine: down-to-earth, devoutly Christian and proudly patriotic. While Mrs. Obama first gained notoriety carping about racism and trashing America, Mrs. Carson helped kick off her husband's 2016 bid by playing the violin with a gospel choir as they performed a joyful, rousing rendition of The Star-Spangled Banner.
Pain for Many on Labor Day
My 22-year-old son lives at home and still depends on his old man for spending money. My profoundest fear is that like Will Ferrell's character in "Wedding Crashers," he will never leave the nest. I'm not alone. There are some 20 million college grads living at home. A 2014 study reported by CNNMoney found that half of kids who are two years out of college rely on their parents to pay some or all of their bills. It's the new normal for 20-somethings. Gee, parents sure are getting a great financial return on the $150,000 they've shelled out for four years of college.
Cutting Red Tape
I'm upset that the presidential candidates, all of them, rarely mention a huge problem: the quiet cancer that kills opportunity — regulation. The accumulated burden of it is the reason that America is stuck in the slowest economic recovery since the Depression. I understand why candidates don't talk about it: Regulation is boring. But it's important. The founders of this republic were willing to die rather than be subject to other people's rules. Today we are so accustomed to bureaucracy that we've forgotten what it means to be free. We now have a million rules — many so complex that even legal specialists can't understand them. Yet bureaucrats keep writing more. And 22 million people work for government!
A Europe Without Borders
The European Union has been devoted to eliminating borders, and now finds itself functionally with none amidst its worst refugee crisis since World War II. To paraphrase Stalin, the migrant crisis stopped being a statistic — more than 2,000 migrants have drowned this year — and became a tragedy with the heart-rending images of a dead 3-year-old Syrian boy washed up on a Turkish beach. The scale of the crisis is mind-boggling. About a million people left Russia after the 1914 revolution. In Syria alone, about 4 million people have fled the country, and another 7 million have been internally displaced. Refugees and migrants also are coming from Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya and other hopeless places, adding up to potentially tens of millions of migrants.
Obama Breaks Law He Signed, Don't Give Up, Christians & the Law
A county clerk in Kentucky spent the holiday weekend in jail for refusing to follow the law. (More on that below.) But President Obama is also refusing to follow a law that he signed. When the New York Times last year leaked the news that the Obama White House would not submit his nuclear deal with Iran to the Senate for ratification as a treaty, members of Congress were outraged. In a rare moment of bi-partisan agreement, Democrats and Republicans came together to demand that Congress have some say on the most important foreign policy decision of this administration.
Obama Mulls Resettling Thousands of Syrian 'Refugees'
Terrorist-linked CAIR calls on the administration to "bring them here."