Right Opinion
The best of conservative opinion and commentary, updated daily.
Wednesday, July 8, 2015
Wealth Gap
Nearly 10,000 people turned out to hear Bernie Sanders in Wisconsin. Why? Apparently, many Democrats want socialism. Sanders is the Vermont senator who is running for the Democratic Party's presidential nomination. Sanders calls himself a "democratic socialist," not to be confused with New York City mayor Bill de Blasio's preferred label, "social democrat," but both believe that more power and wealth in the hands of government (less in the hands of free people and the free market) is a good thing. They just don't want you to think they're dictators like Stalin. They may institute terrible economic policies, but they'll have the backing of voters.
Trump Is a Bad Deal for the GOP
Poor Donald Trump. It wasn't supposed to be like this. For years, wherever The Donald went, he met people who told him he should run for president. His retinue of sycophants surely saw little to gain from explaining that "birthers," celebrity worshippers and devotees of "The Apprentice" are not a statistically meaningful sample of the electorate. Nor did it dawn on him that some people say "you should run for president" the way you tell your long-winded uncle "you should write a book." History is full of failed men who mistook flattery for insight. In the past, Trump always pulled back from the brink. Why risk his beloved TV show? Why endure the embarrassment of revealing he's not as rich as he pretends? Better to play a Cincinnatus who won't relinquish his plow — or in this case, his line of cologne. Flirt but don't commit was the rule.
Christie vs. Paul on Surveillance and Security
New Jersey's Governor Dismisses Concerns About Warrantless Snooping
The Most Idiotic Comment in Presidential History
On Monday, President Obama spoke about his new strategy to take on the terrorist entity Islamic State in Iraq and Syria. In doing so, he explained that the battle against that terrorist group — a group he had once termed "JV" — would amount to a "generational struggle." Why would defeating a ragtag army of primitives take generations? Because, Obama explained, "This is not simply a military effort. Ideologies are not defeated by guns. They're defeated with better ideas." To cap off this airsickness bag of gobbledygook, Obama then concluded, "We will never be at war with Islam." So let's get this straight. A group Obama said he would degrade and destroy can only be degraded and destroyed with ideas. Its own ideologies — its animating force, according to Obama — have nothing to do with Islam. The cretinism here resembles a perfect Jenga tower of fatuity: Remove one phrase, and the whole structure tumbles.
Nikki Haley, Racial Tensions and Change
Coincident with July 4, the Pew Research Center published a survey asking, "Why has the U.S. been successful? Reliance on principles or ability to change?" Fifty-one percent attributed America's success to its "ability to change" and 44 percent to its "reliance on longstanding principles." Not surprisingly, 73 percent of conservatives attribute America's success to its "reliance on principles," and 77 percent of liberals attribute it to its "ability to change." But the survey question, I think, is deeply flawed.
Hillary and Her Roped Media Herd
Hillary Clinton's campaign again signaled its contempt for the press during a July 4 parade in New Hampshire. Aides brought out ropes to cordon off the media. It was the perfect metaphor for a "news" media so cowered by their candidate that they would allow such a humiliating action. The images lit up Twitter on the holiday, but their reaction — or lack thereof — tells you all you need to know about their journalistic pride. The Clinton campaign treated this as a joke. Spokesman Nick Merrill issued a statement: "While the GOP may want to spin a good yarn on this, let's not get tied up in knots."
Bakers Take Path of Yeast Resistance
What part of "cease and desist" don't conservatives understand? Apparently, a lot — or so the Oregon Bureau of Labor and Industry would like us to believe. After four days of negative PR, officials are in full-blown damage control over Commissioner Brad Avakian's $135,000 ruling against Aaron and Melissa Klein, which included a decree that the Christian bakers no longer speak publicly about the decision. When news of the order went viral, Oregon officials tried to refute the story by recruiting their friends on the Left to explain it away. Slate obliged, posting a lengthy column on how the gag order wasn't, in fact, a gag order. With verbal gymnastics that could have medaled in the London Games, the site took the Daily Signal to task for "misreading" the commissioner's threat. That was a difficult assignment for Slate, given that on more than one occasion, Avakian insists that the Kleins must "cease and desist from publishing, circulating, issuing or displaying, or causing to be published... any communication to the effect that any of the accommodations ... will be refused..."
Is Your Church Abetting Sanctuary Nation?
The random, heartless murder of a young tourist on San Francisco's Pier 14 by a five-time illegal alien deportee who benefited from the "progressive" city's sanctuary policy has law-abiding Americans, law enforcement officials and political opportunists of all stripes up in arms. But for decades, feckless government leaders ignored the pleas of families who suffered the bloody consequences of open borders. For every Kate Steinle who died at the hands of an illegal alien sanctuary beneficiary, there is a Tony, Michael and Matthew Bologna in San Francisco.
41.7% of Federal Criminal Cases in 5 Districts on U.S.-Mexico Border
According to data released by the U.S. Justice Department, 41.7 percent of the federal criminal cases that U.S. attorneys filed in U.S. district courts in fiscal 2014 were in the five U.S. attorneys' districts that sit along the U.S.-Mexico border. In fact, the five districts that sit along the border — those for Southern California, Arizona, New Mexico, Western Texas and Southern Texas — were the top five in the country for criminal cases filed in U.S. district courts. The office of the U.S. attorney for Western Texas led the nation last year in filing criminal cases in U.S. district court, according to the United States Attorneys' Annual Statistical Report for Fiscal 2014. During the fiscal year, according to Table 1 in the report, the U.S. attorney for Western Texas filed 5,832 criminal cases in U.S. district court.
Fiddling Away the Future
Let's list major problems affecting black Americans. Topping the list is the breakdown in the black family, where only a third of black children are raised in two-parent households. Actually, the term "breakdown" is incorrect. Families do not form in the first place. Nationally, there is a black illegitimacy rate of 72 percent. In some urban areas, the percentage is much greater. Blacks constitute more than 50 percent of murder victims, where roughly 7,000 blacks are murdered each year. Ninety-five percent of the time, the perpetrator is another black. If a black youngster does graduate from high school, it is highly likely that he can read, write and compute no better than a white seventh- or eighth-grader. These are the major problems that face black Americans. Let's look at some of the strategy since the beginning of the civil rights movement. The black power movement of the '60s and '70s held that black underrepresentation in the political arena was a major problem. It was argued that the election of more black officials as congressmen, mayors and city council members would mean economic power, better neighborhoods and better schools. Forty-three years ago, there were roughly 1,500 black elected officials nationwide. According to the Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies, by 2011 there were roughly 10,500 black elected officials, including a black president. But what were the fruits?
Tuesday, July 7, 2015
The Confederate Flag Flap
You can tell it's presidential election season. Once again, politicians and the mainstream media are being stupid and irresponsible. They are wasting our time on minor issues that get both sides of the conservative-liberal divide riled up at each other, but prevent us from focusing on what really matters. We have a mess of serious problems we have to fix or deal with at home and overseas. And what have the media, the politicians and the whole country been yapping and arguing about for two weeks? The symbolism of a 150-year-old Confederate battle flag.
Oregon Flexes Its Muzzle With Gag Order
No wonder people like Cokie Roberts don't think same-sex "marriage" has "tangible, identifiable victims." The victims are being ordered not to talk about it! That's the latest twist in the long and bitter suit against Aaron and Melissa Klein, the young Christian bakers who turned down a lesbian wedding cake order in Oregon — and have been paying for it ever since. As prepared as the Kleins were to hear their $135,000 fine had been finalized, nothing could have prepared them for the Bureau of Labor's second punishment: forced silence. Labor Commissioner Brad Avakian decided to put his own stamp on the punishment by ordering the parents of five "to cease and desist from publishing, circulating, issuing or displaying, or causing to be published ... any communication to the effect that any of the accommodations ... will be refused, withheld, or denied to..."
I Told You Things Are Getting Crazier
Lately I've shared my lament that in America today we are witnessing a surreal transformation of the greatest nation in history. Last week, a spate of headlines made this point better than I could make it on my own. I was minding my business, mind you, surfing the Internet to check out the news and political sites and forums I customarily visit, and these news and column headlines, most from last week, some from a bit earlier and a few from this week, bombarded me. I wasn't looking for trouble. Nor was the satirical website The Onion one of the sites I visited. The world is upside down, inside out, sideways, crazy, nutso. Bad is good; up is down. Left is right; right is wrong. Evil is good; insanity is sanity. Abnormal is normal. Circles are squares. Hot is cold. Luke warm is red hot — among Republicans, anyway. Common sense is uncommon. The world is otherworldly. Dissent is "hate." Diversity means conformity. The good guys are the bad guys; virtue is vice; sophistry is intellectualism; jerks are celebrated; debauchery is glorified; the holy is debauched. Let me share some of these headlines, which speak for themselves — loudly and depressingly.
100 Million Americans Not Working!
Is America hard at work? Or hardly working? I ask this because Thursday's Labor Department report for June found yet another 430,000 Americans of working age (16 and older) dropped out of the workforce. Over the last year, only 1.3 million Americans of working age have entered the workforce, even as the population of this same demographic increased by more than 2.8 million. Just over 1 million members of this group found jobs. That's right — of the new additions to the working age population, less than four in 10 found jobs.
A Legacy of Clichés
Discussions of racial problems almost invariably bring out the cliche of "a legacy of slavery." But anyone who is being serious, as distinguished from being political, would surely want to know if whatever he is talking about — whether fatherless children, crime or whatever — is in fact a legacy of slavery or of some of the many other things that have been done in the century and a half since slavery ended. Another cliche that has come into vogue is that slavery is "America's original sin." The great Supreme Court justice Oliver Wendell Holmes said that a good catch phrase could stop thinking for fifty years. Catch phrases about slavery have stopped people from thinking, even longer than that.
Redistricting Not Worth the Verbal Footwork
"Words mean what they say," I wrote in my Washington Examiner column one week ago. But, as I added, not necessarily to a majority of justices of the Supreme Court. The targets of my column were the majority opinions in King v. Burwell and Texas Department of Community Affairs v. The Inclusive Communities Project. In King v. Burwell, Chief Justice Roberts interpreted the words "established by the state" in the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (aka Obamacare) as meaning "established by the state or the federal government," even though the law itself defines "state" as the 50 states and the District of Columbia.
Greek Vote: Insanity or Insight?
It is now official: On Sunday, in a resounding demonstration of faith in Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras and his Syriza Party, Greek voters overwhelmingly [rejected](http://wsj.com/articles/polls-close-in-greek-referendum-1436113280) austerity measures demanded by the "troika" comprised of the European Commission (EC), European Central Bank (ECB) and International Monetary Fund (IMF). Sixty-one percent of the Greek electorate voted "no." As a result, the nation that has become the poster child for socialist-inspired profligacy sails into uncharted territory. Perhaps the spookiest aspect of this affair is the level of enduring unreality that attends it. "I'm fully aware that the mandate that I was given is not for a rupture with Europe, but a mandate boosting our negotiating strength for reaching a sustainable deal," Tsipras said in a televised message late on Sunday. In other words, Tsipras and his fellow travelers believe that kicking troika demands to the curb actually strengthens their bargaining position. Apparently for some unfathomable reason they choose to ignore, or completely dismiss, the idea that any concessions granted by the nation's creditors would make it virtually certain that the EU's other economic basket cases, all of which are currently biting the austerity bullet, would demand similarly favorable deals. In relative terms, Greece is an economic pipsqueak. Italy, Spain and Ireland? Not so much.
Evangelicals Should Return to Core Beliefs
In the matter of the "culture wars," evangelical Christians are asking, "what do we do now?" The question is being raised in the aftermath of the Supreme Court's decision striking down state laws reserving marriage for heterosexual couples. The "culture wars," while well-intentioned, were a mistake from the beginning. Evangelical Christians, whose Leader said, "My Kingdom is not of this world," thought they could organize people of like mind and like faith and create a voting bloc to elect people who would impose something resembling that other kingdom on people who do not see themselves as members of that kingdom. Given the number of politicians who seem to have difficulty imposing a moral code of any sort on themselves, such a strategy was doomed from the start. Why didn't they learn from previous "moral improvement" movements that if one wants to change culture, one must first change individuals? For evangelical Christians that can only be done by the transformation of the heart, soul and mind, something that is beyond the power of secular — or even religious — politicians.
Monday, July 6, 2015
The Wrinkle in the ACA Decision
"What chumps!" —Chief Justice John Roberts, June 29, 2015 Roberts' intellectual complexity does not prevent him from expressing himself pithily, as he did with those words when dissenting in a case from Arizona. Joined by Antonin Scalia, Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito, Roberts' dissent should somewhat mollify conservatives who are dismayed about his interpretive ingenuity four days earlier in writing the opinion that saved the Affordable Care Act. Furthermore, they, including this columnist, may have missed a wrinkle in Roberts' ACA opinion that will serve conservatives' long-term interests. To end gerrymanders, Arizona voters, by referendum, amended the state's constitution to strip the Legislature of its control of redistricting. They created an Independent Redistricting Commission (IRC) on which no member of the Legislature may serve.