Right Opinion
The best of conservative opinion and commentary, updated daily.
Wednesday, September 2, 2015
Back to School: Let the Left-Wing Indoctrination Begin
It's no secret that our nation's public universities want to transform American young people into a bunch of hyper-sensitive, intellectually neutered cream puffs. But now they're trying to deconstruct gender identity by parsing pronouns. Across the fruited plain, institutions of higher education are turning their taxpayer-funded fiefdoms into gender neutral zones where free thought is outlawed. I've got several incidents to share with you — so pour yourself a glass of iced tea and prepare to be dumbfounded.
Can a Christian Be a County Clerk in America?
Can a Christian be a county clerk in the United States? This is a question it now appears may ultimately be decided by five Supreme Court justices. With it, too, will ride such questions as: Can a Christian be a doctor? A nurse? A public-school teacher? In June, when five justices declared that the Equal Protection Clause of the 14th Amendment creates a right to "same-sex marriage," Justice Clarence Thomas issued a warning.
Katrina, Ten Years Later
Ten years have elapsed since one of the most amazing cases of Republican-bashing media bias in the television era began. The media elites laugh when preachers say immorality causes God to send hurricanes, but they suggested with straight faces that Hurricane Katrina was a death sentence President George W. Bush and his cronies brought to the less fortunate. In the early spin, race-baiting rapper Kanye West and "objective" anchors like Brian Williams were in rhetorical sync: George Bush didn't care about black people.
Iran's Shopping Spree, Act of Love, Bashing Boehner, Forgotten Already
Advocates of the nuclear treaty with Iran, including President Obama, have repeatedly claimed that the agreement strengthens moderates and will change Iran's behavior. They are wrong. [Monday], Ayatollah Mohammad Yazdi, chief of Tehran's top clerical body, said that the United States remains Iran's "number one enemy" and that the nuclear treaty changes nothing.
Eric Cantor: Poster Boy of the Beltway GOP Crapweasels
Ooouuuch. My sides are still aching after last week's comical announcement by GOP presidential candidate Jeb Bush that he had snagged the coveted endorsement of notorious electoral reject Eric Cantor, the former House majority leader kicked to the curb by disgusted voters in Virginia's 2014 primary election. Newsflash to GOP elites: Getting Cantor's support is not like landing a prized marlin. It's like hooking one of those hideous bottom-feeding blobfish named the world's ugliest creature. Inside the Beltway, The Washington Post reported, "Cantor remains well-liked and respected in the Virginia business community and among the Republican donor class in the commonwealth."
What the Other GOP Candidates Can Learn From Trump
According to polls, the No. 1 thing Donald Trump's fans like about him is that he "tells it like it is." I think his fans are wrong about this. But that's a column — actually a lot of columns — for another time. It is true, however, that there is something refreshing about the way Trump talks. It's not actually candor, though lots of people mistake it for that. Rather, he's unfiltered. The one thing you can be sure of is that he hasn't consulted with a political consultant about how to talk. He doesn't worry what the liberal editors at The New York Times or The Washington Post — or, for that matter, the conservative editors at National Review — think of him.
A Cowardly, Un-American Deal With Iran
Many Americans rightly watch in disbelief as leaders of our country push to conclude a dangerous and ill-conceived nuclear agreement with an incorrigible and evil nation, a leading sponsor of terrorism. Since when does the United States negotiate out of fear, out of weakness? But this is what is happening. How else to explain moving forward with a deal this complicated and dangerous with people no rational person would trust? Abrogation of American leadership, meaning America acting in an unprincipled and cowardly way, leads inevitably to a world more dangerous and less free. We should be ashamed.
Market Magic
People have long lists of things they think the market can't possibly do — from building subways to fighting wars. Sometimes, the market does them anyway. War, for example. Even conservatives, who often praise markets, assume that only government can fight terrorists. Tell that to Matthew VanDyke. VanDyke and his group, Sons of Liberty International, spent the past months in Iraq training the Nineveh Plains Protection Unit, several thousand Christians willing to risk their lives fighting against ISIS's brutal forces there.
Why Home Schooling?
Many public primary and secondary schools are dangerous places. The Justice Department's Bureau of Justice Statistics and the Department of Education's National Center for Education Statistics show that in 2012, there were about 749,200 violent assaults on students. In the 2011-12 academic year, there were a record 209,800 primary- and secondary-school teachers who reported being physically attacked by a student. Nationally, an average of 1,175 teachers and staff were physically attacked, including being knocked out, each day of that school year. In Baltimore, each school day in 2010, an average of four teachers and staff were assaulted. Each year, roughly 10 percent of primary- and secondary-school teachers are threatened with bodily harm.
No, the Democrats Don't Care About Israel
For years, the American Israel Public Affairs Committee has hosted President Obama or a high-ranking representative of his administration at their annual conference in Washington, D.C. No matter how anti-Israel the Obama administration's policies have been, no matter how hostile to Israel the president's rhetoric, AIPAC has offered President Obama or his lackeys a platform from which to tout their supposed pro-Israel credentials. AIPAC has always rationalized such outreach as an attempt to keep the pro-Israel position bipartisan, to cultivate supporters for the Jewish state on both sides of the aisle. What a waste.
Denver's Unconstitutional Harassment of Jury Nullification Activists
The City Treats Handing Out Pamphlets Near a Courthouse as a Crime
Tuesday, September 1, 2015
Oil, America's Inexhaustible Resource
"The United States of America cannot afford to bet our long-term prosperity, our long-term security on a resource that will eventually run out, and even before it runs out will get more and more expensive to extract from the ground." —Barack Obama, 2011. In August 1859 on the eve of the Civil War, Col. Edwin Laurentine Drake completed the first commercial oil well in the United States on Oil Creek just outside of Titusville, Pa. Over the next century and a half, oil and gas companies have extracted tens of billions of barrels of oil from the ground from California to New York and nearly everywhere in between.
A Revealing Clue
Even those of us who are not supporters of either Donald Trump or Jeb Bush can learn something by comparing how each of these men handled people who tried to disrupt their question-and-answer period after a speech. After Bush's speech, hecklers from a group called "Black Lives Matter" caused Bush to simply leave the scene. When Trump opened his question-and-answer period by pointing to someone in the audience who had a question, a Hispanic immigration activist who had not been called on simply stood up and started haranguing.
Poll Position, Lives Matter
New polling out of Iowa is sending shock waves throughout the political establishments of both parties. A Des Moines Register poll of likely caucus goers finds Bernie Sanders surging to within seven points of Hillary Clinton. Thirty percent of Iowa Democrats back the Vermont socialist compared to 37% for Clinton. Fourteen percent of Democrats back Vice President Joe Biden. Pollsters note that Hillary has lost one-third of her support and see another potential upset in the making. Among young Iowa Democrats, Sanders beats Clinton by 23 points. He leads among likely first-time caucus goers by 12 points. It was this kind of enthusiasm that Obama successfully channeled to overcome the Clinton machine in 2008.
Let's See More of Hillary Now, to See Less of Her Later
Hillary Clinton shows signs of anger and desperation and pops out of her shell with shrill and extreme rhetoric. She should be nervous, with both the feds and rivals breathing down her neck. But she's no more effective at scaring her attackers than any other turtle under siege. She should retreat back inside, where at least her handlers can pretend she's presidential — and inevitable. Her bunker mentality leads to unforced errors, such as irately exclaiming to Congress regarding Benghazi, "What difference, at this point, does it make?" But the more rattled she is the more she'll emerge.
Wanting It Both Ways
I am frustrated by many things, but intellectual inconsistency is near the top of the list. Unfortunately, many Americans, perhaps even an electoral majority, embrace it. Let's begin with Hillary Clinton. An inadvertently laugh-out-loud headline accompanies the latest effort by Politico writer Steven Shepard to maintain that website's grim determination to promote Democrat Party talking points even as it feigns objectivity. "Can Hillary overcome the 'liar' factor?" the title of the piece asks. Liar "factor?" Anyone else think Hillary Clinton's repeated, documented, shameless, reflexive lying about virtually everything is something a tad more problematic than a factor?
The Left Sees Only White Evil
In the past week, two television reporters in Roanoke, Va. — Alison Parker and Adam Ward — were murdered by a black man who hated whites, and a white police officer in Houston — Darren Goforth — was murdered by a black man. Neither crime has been labeled a hate crime. And no mainstream media reporting of the murders attributes either to race-based hate. For the mainstream media, the Roanoke murders were committed by "a disgruntled former employee," and regarding the Houston policeman, the media report that, in the words of The New York Times, "a motive for the shooting remained unclear."
Tragedy in Roanoke
The horrible murder of two local journalists in Roanoke, Virginia, has affected me more than I thought it would. Journalists are taught early on to compartmentalize. As a local TV reporter, I saw bodies from plane crashes and victims of mass murder. I covered natural disasters and witnessed the aftermath of cruelty to children and other inhumanities. The murders of 24-year-old Alison Parker and her 27-year-old cameraman, Adam Ward, by a deranged and disgruntled man whose shoulder chip was as big as a boulder took me back to my early days in the business.
Another Impossible Thing May Happen: Change in Partisan Alignments
In my last column, I looked at the possibility of two impossible things — impossible things in the sense used by Alice and the Red Queen — happening in the already turbulent 2016 presidential cycle. Here I'll look at another: the possibility that the partisan division lines that have endured with little change for two decades might suddenly shift and change. This has happened before. History teaches two lessons pointing in opposite directions: Partisan divisions can stay the same for a long time. And they can change suddenly and without much warning.