Right Opinion

The Struggle for Economic Liberty

Here's my taxi question. If a person is law-abiding, has a driver's license, has a car or van that has passed safety inspection, and has adequate liability insurance, is there any consumer-oriented reason he should not be able to become a taxicab owner/operator? Put another way: If you wish to hire the services of such a person, what right does a third party have to prevent that exchange? Many cities have granted monopoly power to taxi companies — the right to prevent entry by others. Sometimes this monopoly takes the form of exclusive government-granted rights to particular individuals to provide taxi services. In other cases, the number of licenses is fixed, and a prospective taxi owner must purchase a license from an existing owner. In New York City, such a license is called a taxi medallion. Individual medallions have sold for as high as $700,000 and corporate medallions as high as $1 million. In other cities — such as Miami, Philadelphia, Chicago and Boston — taxi licenses have sold for anywhere between $300,000 and $700,000. These are prices for a license to own and operate a single vehicle as a taxi.

School Under Fire for Football Prayer, Marching Band's Religious Song

In the South, faith and football go together like biscuits and gravy. And that's especially true in a place like Laurens County, Georgia — where faith flavors everyday living — far beyond the walls of the church house. Those traditions were especially evident at West Laurens High School where the marching band performed great songs of the faith and folks bowed their heads to pray before Friday night football games. But those traditions are a problem, according to Americans United for Separation of Church and State, a Washington, D.C.-based group that loves to put its nose in other people's business — especially when it comes to public displays of the Christian faith.

Hillary Clinton and 'Black Lives Matter': An Unproductive Confrontation

Reporters and voters have so far gotten few glimpses of Hillary Clinton speaking candidly. One of the few examples available is in the videotape and transcript of her meeting with Black Lives Matter protesters in New Hampshire last week. Clinton handled herself adeptly, but her effort to propitiate the protesters spotlights a problem Democrats face — appeasing a movement whose premises are factually questionable and whose tactics are off-putting to many voters. The candidate was attacked for her husband's acceptance of welfare reform ("disasters in impoverished communities of color") and "the domestic and international War on Drugs." Clinton said that these policies were adopted in a period of high crime and were responses to concerns of "communities of color and poor people." As she put it: "There was a different set of concerns back in the '80s and early '90s."

Mortgage Madness Returns

Last month I bought a house in Potomac, Md., a trade-up on my current home, and was shocked to learn in the ensuing weeks that I couldn't get a mortgage loan. First, I went to PNC bank. Then Wells Fargo. Then another. Denied. Denied. Denied. No, I don't feel entitled to a loan, and the banks have every right not to lend me money. But my tale of woe tells a broader tale of what is going on in the lending industry these days. All the bankers told me the same thing: "Steve, if you'd walked in our bank eight years ago with this mortgage application, we would have rubber-stamped it in five minutes, and you would have walked out with a bag of money."

GOP Should Worry Less About Trump and More About Itself

Commentators and political consultants are working overtime to divine why Donald Trump's candidacy is explosively successful despite his breaking all the established rules. They're outthinking themselves. They say he is a flash in the pan, the darling of disaffected independents, the tea party's dream, a Clinton plant or the right wing's narcissistic alternative to Barack Obama. Folks, it's not that difficult. For many Americans — who knows what percentage? — the Republican Party is not an antidote to President Obama's seven-year wrecking ball.

Immigration Fault Lines

Many issues illuminate America's cultural fault lines, but none is hotter than immigration, and it's time to provide some much-needed perspective for no other reason than to counter the blizzard of b.s. being foisted on the American public. An American public that will be labeled nativist, bigoted or mean-spirited if they don't buy into every contemptible ounce of it. We begin where everyone begins these days with Donald Trump. Like him or hate him, he has done this nation an enormous service in bringing the immigration issue front and center.

Why Do Many Jews Support the Iran Deal?

The more one knows about the Iran deal, the more obvious it becomes that it is not a deal so much as it is a fraud. According to the Merriam-Webster dictionary, the definition of a fraud is "something that is meant to look like the real thing in order to trick people." That precisely describes the Iran deal. Virtually every claim made for it is either not true or insignificant. There are no "anytime, anywhere" inspections, as Americans were promised during the negotiations.

Jimmy Carter's Peace

When Ronald Reagan announced in November 1994 he had been diagnosed with Alzheimer's disease, even some of his most ardent political opponents paused to wish him well. It was the same last Thursday when former President Jimmy Carter, who will soon be 91, held a news conference in Atlanta to announce that a cancer first discovered in his liver has spread to other parts of his body, including his brain. While death is the ultimate end of all on Earth, the knowledge that one's expiration date is getting close has a way of focusing the mind, and not just for the person who has received the news. Reporters at the news conference were unusually deferential to Carter, which has not always been their attitude since he left office in 1981.

Sorting the Candidates

Despite a nuclear Iran looming on the horizon, the media seem to be putting most of their attention on two candidates for their respective parties' presidential nominations next year. Moreover, Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump each make their own party nervous. If next year's election comes down to Clinton versus Trump, a lot of people may simply stay home in disgust. When we are this far away from the official start of the primary election season, we can usually just say, "It's still early days." Many a front runner this early in the process ended up out of the running by the time the party conventions were held, and totally forgotten by election day. That is the way it usually is. But that is not likely to be the way it will be this time.

Hillary Clinton's 'New College Compact' Raises an Important Question: Did She Ever Take Econ 101?

The Quiet Revolution: How the New Left Took Over the Democratic Party

Frustration with division and gridlock in Washington lead many Americans to impugn both political parties for the current broken and ineffective state of government. There is plenty of blame to go around, but below the surface there has been a quiet revolution going on in only one of the two parties — the Democratic Party — which is the main source of today's irreconcilable division and moral confusion. What's remarkable is how the political and cultural center of American values has collapsed in the last two and a half decades with the Democratic Party having moved dramatically to the left. Recently, Democratic National Chair Debbie Wasserman Schultz could not explain the difference between the modern Democratic Party platform and that of socialism, while at the same time gushing over the prospect of Socialist Bernie Sanders having a prominent place at the 2016 Democratic Party convention.

School Band Told to Stop Performing 'How Great Thou Art'

There was no halftime show under the Friday night lights at Mississippi's Brandon High School — the marching band had been benched. The band was ordered off the field because the Christian hymn "How Great Thou Art" was a part of their halftime show — in violation of a federal court order. "The Rankin County School Board and District Office are very saddened students will not be able to perform their halftime show they have worked so hard on this summer," the district wrote in a statement to the Clarion Ledger newspaper.

Why Conservatives Should Care About Ferguson

Last Saturday I made a first-ever visit to the down town Dallas Police Department to fill out a report. I had never been to a police department before. My only image of one was the police station I had seen on the television series *Hill Street Blues*. Unlike the television show, the building I approached was thoroughly modern — constructed of glass and steel. I was impressed. Also unlike the television show, the building was locked. Locked? Yes locked. The police take off on weekends? Apparently. From what I remember, people walked in and out of the *Hill Street Blues* police station at any time night or day. It was part of the community. Not in Dallas.

Trump Defines Down the GOP

It has come to this: The GOP, formerly the party of Lincoln and ostensibly the party of liberty and limited government, is being defined by clamors for a mass roundup and deportation of millions of human beings. To will an end is to will the means for the end, so the Republican clamors are also for the requisite expansion of government's size and coercive powers. Most of Donald Trump's normally loquacious rivals are swaggeringly eager to confront Vladimir Putin, but are too invertebrate — Lindsey Graham is an honorable exception — to voice robust disgust with Trump and the spirit of, the police measures necessary for, and the cruelties that would accompany, his policy. The policy is: "They've got to go."

Dems, Dese & Dose

When I was a kid, guys who said dem, dese and dose when they were attempting to say them, these and those, were regarded as ignorant mugs, and in the movies were often portrayed by the likes of Nat Pendleton and "Slapsie" Maxie Rosenbloom. These days, dese and dose have pretty much vanished from the scene, leaving only the dems, otherwise known as Democrats, as representative of gross stupidity.

We Need Caroline Glick's Passion!

Caroline Glick is a columnist for the Jerusalem Post. Raised in the U.S., she made Aliyah several years ago and now lives and writes in Israel. Caroline Glick spoke to a huge "Stop IRAN" rally in New York City in late July. She passionately appealed to Sen. Chuck Schumer (D) and Reps. Jerry Nadler (D) and Elliott Engel (D). She publicly demanded they oppose the Iran nuclear deal negotiated by Sec. of State John Kerry. "If you are men of honor," she said, you must oppose this dangerous deal. At a time when Chuck. Schumer's office was saying the designated future leader of Senate Democrats was carefully analyzing the details of the deal, Caroline Glick boldly told him not to immerse himself in the details, but to look instead at "the big picture."

'Sesame Street' Moves to HBO, and Everyone Wins

Starting this fall, "Sesame Street" will be brought to its millions of viewers by the letters H, B, and O. After 45 years as a jewel in the crown of public broadcasting, the iconic children's television program is moving to the cable network better known for such decidedly adult fare as "Game of Thrones" and "True Detective." The five-year deal, announced last week by Sesame Workshop and HBO, is a good-news story from every angle: good for the show's fans, good for the nonprofit that creates it, and good for anyone who never before noticed that there was always an obvious and reassuring response to the public-television slogan: "If PBS doesn't do it, who will?"

Abracadabra

There is a very good reason why Obama declared that the Faustian deal he and John Kerry made with Iran is not a treaty, but simply an agreement. If it were a treaty, according to the Constitution, it would require the consent of two-thirds of the Senate. This way, once the Senate rejects it, Obama will only require the votes of 34 Democrats to override their rational objection. The question is how and why the GOP-controlled Senate allowed him to get away with this vile example of political legerdemain.

Group Is Gunning for Small Town's Veteran Memorial Cross

The memorial features a silhouette of a soldier holding a gun and kneeling at the foot of a cross. It was installed a few months ago alongside Freedom Rock at Young's Park in the small town of Knoxville, Iowa. "It was clear to us it was a memorial to fallen veterans," Mayor Brian Hatch told me. But it wasn't clear to everyone. About a month ago a citizen filed an anonymous complaint — arguing that the memorial was promoting Christianity and therefore violated the Establishment Clause of the U.S. Constitution.

St. Louis Back in Flames

As the progressive crime waves claims more black lives.