Right Opinion
The best of conservative opinion and commentary, updated daily.
Friday, June 12, 2015
Clueless & Planless
We've known for a long time that Barrack Obama is clueless when it comes to dealing with what's left of Iraq. Now we also know he's still planless. Our president was in Europe earlier this week at a "Group of Seven" conference, where he met with leaders of the world's seven most industrialized economies. During his concluding remarks he made news when he said his top security advisers were still working on a plan for how to train Iraq defense forces to fight ISIS.
Thursday, June 11, 2015
Obama Hearts Private School — for Himself and Family
Barack Obama, for his own education, never set foot in a public school. When he was 10 years of age, his mother shipped him back from Indonesia to his grandparents in Hawaii so that young Barack could get a first-class American education. He entered Punahou, the expensive and most prestigious prep school in the islands. From there, despite his admittedly indifferent grades, Obama was admitted to Occidental, an elite private college in Los Angeles. He spent two years there, after which he transferred to Columbia University, one of the private Ivy League schools. After Columbia, Obama attended Harvard Law, another private Ivy League school. What about Michelle, then Michelle Robinson? Doesn't she often brag that she attended public schools? But her public school cheerleading requires an asterisk. True, Michelle attended a public high school. But it was Chicago's first magnet school, and admission was a selective and highly competitive process. Michelle spent close to three hours each day on a bus to escape her subpar local public school. So Michelle, in essence, attended an exclusive high school, an option available to her because of her proactive, pro-education parents and her willingness to sacrifice the time to go to and from this superior school.
Pride and Christian Prejudice
If you asked Americans what the mission of the military is, most would probably say to fight and win wars. And by wars, they wouldn't mean the cultural wars. President Obama's radical social policies seem to suggest the latter, as [Tuesday's] Pentagon festivities made painfully clear. The latest Secretary of Defense, Ash Carter, who's made more headlines for his attack on values than on terrorists, led the military parade for gay pride month at the Pentagon's official party — which featured one of the Army's "transitioning" officers, among things. To a standing room-only crowd, Carter's biggest rah-rah moment was introducing Brigadier General Randy Taylor, who shared that he had to hide his relationship with his boyfriend under "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" (DADT).
Millennials Rethink Abortion, for Good Reasons
A Gallup poll last month found that 50 percent of Americans identified themselves as "pro-choice" on abortion, surpassing the 44% who called themselves "pro-life." It was the first time in seven years that the pro-choice label was more popular — as recently as 2012, Gallup was reporting that the share of self-described "pro-choice" Americans had dipped to an all-time low of 41 percent. Whatever Americans may call themselves, however, fewer and fewer are getting abortions. From the Associated Press this week came word that abortion rates are plunging in almost every state, in many cases by more than a fifth since 2010. "Abortions have declined in states where new laws make it harder to have them," the AP's David Crary wrote, "but they've also waned in states where abortion rights are protected."
Immigration — Hey, Look! A Cop Yelling at a Black Girl in a Bikini!
I'm impressed by the coolness and steadiness of our media in suppressing any news about immigration. It's as if they've built a triple-layer fence with border guards around immigration topics. And guess what? Their fence is working! How many thousands of news stories have there been on Ferguson, ISIS, Chris Christie's "Bridgegate" or men becoming women? But the media will never tell you about Mexicans gang-raping a lesbian in Richmond, California, an Indian immigrant in San Francisco importing 12-year-old girls he bought from their parents for sex, or three children being beheaded by Mexicans in Baltimore.
A Vote for TPA Is Not a Vote for Obama
Before presidential politics — the game of getting to 270 electoral votes — completely eclipses governing, there is the urgent task of getting to 217 votes in the House of Representatives to pass Trade Promotion Authority (TPA). This would guarantee a vote without amendments on the Trans-Pacific Partnership trade agreement. Without TPA, any trade agreement will be nibbled to death in Congress by persons eager to do organized labor's bidding. So, Republicans who oppose TPA are collaborating with those who oppose increasing the velocity and rationality of economic life. TPA touches two challenging problems: one economic, one constitutional. Regarding both, conservatives have special responsibilities. The economic challenge is to generate economic growth sufficient to restore vigor and upward mobility to an underemployed America, sustaining national security and entitlements as, every day, another 10,000 baby boomers become eligible for Social Security and Medicare. The constitutional problem is how to restore institutional equilibrium by bringing the presidency back within the restraints the Founders devised with the separation of powers.
No More Green and White
My high school colors were green and white. At graduation the boys wore green robes and the girls wore white. No one considered the girls inferior because of the color of their robes. Today, we live in different times. My alma mater, Walter Johnson High School in Montgomery County, Md., is one of several schools to have decided that their commencement ceremony this year will feature single-color robes to respect transgender students and those who do not identify as either male or female. In the age of Caitlyn Jenner, any effort to classify the sexes is becoming increasingly difficult, if not downright impossible. The Washington Post reports "student advocates" have been campaigning for this, claiming the use of one color for boys and another for girls does not allow for the full panoply of "gender identity" increasingly on display in the marketplace of the bizarre.
Why WWII Didn't End Sooner
Seventy-one years ago, the British, Canadians and Americans landed on the Normandy beaches to open a second ground front against Nazi Germany. Operation Overlord — the Allied invasion of Western Europe — proved the largest amphibious operation in military history, dwarfing even Xerxes' Persian invasion of Greece in 480 B.C. Brilliant planning, overwhelming naval support, air superiority and high morale ensured the successful landing of 160,000 troops on the first day — at a cost of about 4,000 dead. Three weeks after the June 6 landings, nearly a million Allied soldiers were ashore, heading eastward through France. Hitler's once-formidable Third Reich seemed on the verge of collapse.
Hillary's New Constituency
For a generation — perhaps longer — the liberals have been segregating Americans into smaller and smaller groups. Then they claim to be each group's unique champion. First they fragmentize America. Then they step forward and represent themselves as fragmented America's noblest defenders. Last week, Hillary Clinton identified yet another of these fragmentized groups, and she promised to take up their cause in time for the 2016 election. Her cause is the voter who oversleeps, particularly the voter who oversleeps on Election Day. Hillary is coming to the aid of these drowsy voters by demanding at least a 20-day period for them to vote. Even a chronic oversleeper ought to be able to awaken at least one morning in 20. Hillary assures us that the 20-day period will include evenings and weekends and perhaps mood music. Possibly the Federal Election Commission will throw in an alarm clock and a cup of coffee. Voting rights advocates claim that as many as one-third of our fellow citizens suffer from this disability.
The Con of Certificate of Need Laws
If I got a dollar each time the federal or state government promised that new regulations of the health care market would reduce the cost of health care — and it subsequently failed to deliver on that promise — I would be a rich woman. The Affordable Care Act is the most recent example of such failed promises, obviously. But certificate of need laws take the cake at the state level. CON restrictions come in addition to state licensing and training requirements for medical professionals. They require that all medical providers wanting to build or expand an existing health care facility, offer new services or acquire new medical equipment must first gain approval from state regulators. Born out of bad economics and fears that the oversupply of hospital capacity would increase costs, New York was the first state to institute a CON program, in 1964. Over the following decade, 23 other states adopted CON programs. In 1974, the federal government joined in the effort and required states to implement CON requirements in exchange for receiving funding through certain federal programs.
Wednesday, June 10, 2015
The Consequences of Obama's Jerusalem Passport Supreme Court Win
Why Congress’s ability to weigh in on foreign affairs has taken a blow.
The Myth of the Idle Rich
President Obama recently acknowledged what every sane person knows to be true: The best anti-poverty program is a job. Mr. Obama said this at a recent conference on poverty. But he continues to repeat a falsehood over and over. This is the claim that the poor work just as hard as the rich do. Well, yes, many people in poor households heroically work very hard at low wages to take care of their families. No doubt about that. Yet the average poor family doesn't work nearly as much as the rich families do. And that's a key reason why these households are poor. The most recent Census Bureau data on household incomes document the importance of work. Census sorts the households by income quintile, and we will label those in the highest quintile as "rich," and those in the lowest quintile as "poor." The average household in the top 20 percent of income have an average of almost exactly two full-time workers. The average poor family (bottom 20 percent) has just 0.4 workers (see chart). This means on average, roughly for every hour worked by those in a poor household, those in a rich household work five hours. The idea that the rich are idle bondholders who play golf or go to the spa every day while the poor toil isn't accurate.
Politico's Clinton-Scandal Dismissals
Politico keeps posting ridiculous columns by both Democrats and Republicans who charge that the Clinton scandals are either (1) nonexistent or (2) all politically harmless. Joe Conason, a leftist author who's been dismissing every Clinton scandal for decades in books with titles like "The Hunting of the President," is at it again. This time he's produced "The Fake Clinton Scandals Are Back: The right's newest crusade has an old fake villain." Conason should be easily dismissed by the editors for criminal ignorance — or downright deception. One can downplay things like Benghazi. One cannot deny they are scandals — or at the very least, serious controversies. It's better to focus on the second kind, a Republican who thinks the Clintons are much smarter than idiotic conservatives who hold their scandals against them.
How Bush Empowered Obama to Erode the Constitution
In 2002, President George W. Bush signed a law he did not intend to fully obey. Thus, a Republican president set in motion a chain of events that allowed a Democratic president to claim, and an activist liberal Supreme Court to affirm, that the president has a unilateral power in foreign policy that the Framers did not envision and that is not consistent with representative government. When he took office in 2001, Bush placed his hand on a Bible and swore to "preserve, protect and defend the Constitution." Article 2 Section 3 of that Constitution commanded Bush to "take care that the laws be faithfully executed."
Dissent Leads to Descent of Abortion
Liberals have done everything they can to make abortion more appealing. They've added spa robes and hot tea. They made it available on Skype, by carry-out, through pills. They've recruited celebrities to gush that its providers are "really, truly, no-kidding awesome." As the Washington Post said, "...Activists are seeking to normalize abortion, to put a human face — and even a positive spin — on the procedure." Unfortunately for them, there already is a human face on the procedure: the baby's. And no amount of Planned Parenthood gift certificates or Black Friday abortion deals can lessen the real cost in people's minds. After years of changing opinion, monsters like Kermit Gosnell only cemented what most Americans already knew — there's nothing compassionate about "choice."
Teach for America's Professional Agitators
It's increasingly difficult to tell the difference between Teach for America — whose leaders are at the forefront of inflammatory anti-police protests in Baltimore, Ferguson, and now McKinney, Texas — and left-wing activist groups such as Organizing for Action (President Obama's partisan community organizing army). Guess what, taxpayers? You're paying for it! Wendy Kopp founded Teach for America in 1989 after writing her Princeton University thesis on the need for a "national teaching corps" of elite college grads who would serve students on short-term stints in low-income neighborhoods. The do-gooder group has exploded into a massive, nonprofit business.
SCOTUS Misses an Opportunity to Defend the Second Amendment
This week, the Supreme Court passed up an opportunity to get the government out of the bedroom. Counterintuitively, the case involved an ordinance adopted by the famously tolerant and progressive city of San Francisco eight years ago. The puzzle is solved when you learn that the ordinance deals with guns, tools for exercising a constitutional right that is decidedly unfashionable in the City by the Bay. By declining to hear the case, the Supreme Court — which in 2010 affirmed that the Second Amendment binds states and cities, as well as the federal government — undermined that principle, suggesting that the right of armed self-defense is constrained by local sensibilities.
Hillary Clinton Needs a Do-Over
Almost exactly two months after Hillary Rodham Clinton's official announcement that she's running for president, she will give her first "official campaign announcement speech," on June 13, according to her Twitter account. In other words, the Clinton campaign wants a do-over. Her first rollout was the most disastrous nonfatal presidential campaign debut in modern memory, so she wants another. Her initial announcement video in April — which most outlets accurately reported as her official announcement — was well done. After that, everything went downhill; a steady stream of news stories and damning allegations about her family foundation and tenure as secretary of state has dogged her almost daily.
Improving Black Education
Last summer's Ferguson, Missouri, disturbances revealed that while blacks were 67 percent of its population, only three members of its 53-officer police force were black. Some might conclude that such a statistic is evidence of hiring discrimination. That's a possibility, but we might ask what percentage of blacks met hiring qualifications on the civil service examination. Are there hundreds of blacks in Ferguson and elsewhere who achieve passing scores on civil service examinations who are then refused employment? There is no evidence suggesting an affirmative answer to that question. According to the National Assessment of Educational Progress, sometimes called the Nation's Report Card, nationally, most black 12th-graders' test scores are either basic or below basic in reading, writing, math and science. "Below basic" is the score received when a student is unable to demonstrate even partial mastery of knowledge and skills fundamental for proficient work at his grade level. "Basic" indicates only partial mastery. Put another way, the average black 12th-grader has the academic achievement level of the average white seventh- or eighth-grader. In some cities, there's even a larger achievement gap.
Green Lies
Millions go to SeaWorld to learn more about sea life and get closer to killer whales. But fewer go now because the documentary "Blackfish" exposed what one reporter called "the darker side" of SeaWorld. The movie, which CNN bought and ran over and over, tells how greedy businessmen take baby whales from their mothers and imprison them in small aquariums, where the frustrated animals are a threat to each other and their trainers. "All whales in captivity have a bad life," says a biologist in the film. "They're all psychologically traumatized." "Blackfish" is persuasive. Watching it made me agree with the protesters who shout, "SeaWorld is synonymous with cruelty!" SeaWorld wouldn't talk to CNN, but they did talk to me. I will be showing their responses on Fox News this weekend.