Right Opinion
The best of conservative opinion and commentary, updated daily.
Thursday, June 4, 2015
What You Need to Know About Child Molesters
In the past few weeks we've learned that Josh Dugger was a child molester, former Speaker of the House Dennis Hastert was a child molester and the Methodist Church in the UK has apologized for 2,000 cases of abuse dating back to 1950. Child molesters can be found in the highest reaches of politics. Molesters can be television celebrities. And molesters can ply their abuse under the cover of the church. With abusers that pervasive it makes sense to learn more about the perpetrators. Thanks to an excellent article in The Jewish Woman we can. The really bad news in the report titled "Things You Need to Know About Child Molesters" is that child abuse is an infinite chain. "The vast majority of child molesters are male, and most sexual abusers were sexually abused as children." And although in retrospect we consider them monsters, child molesters are successful because they "usually try to be very charming and friendly." They are also patient. After gaining the trust and approval of parents and organizations dealing with youth they are often given positions of authority that the molester abuses along with the children.
$15 Minimum Wage: Women, Blacks Hurt Most
Fourteen to one, in favor. That was the Los Angeles City Council vote to raise, over the next five years, the city's minimum wage from $9 an hour to $15. Of course, as Investor's Business Daily tells us, the $15 per hour really is closer to $20. How does it get to $20? Investor's Business Daily says: "Once all the nonwage costs are added, including payroll taxes, paid sick leave and the big one — ObamaCare's employer mandate — minimum compensation for a full-time worker could rise as high as $19.28 an hour by 2020, an IBD analysis finds. That would amount to a jump of $10.67, or 124 percent, since June 2014." How cynical is the push for higher minimum wage?
Wednesday, June 3, 2015
The College Board's Sabotage of American History
A stellar group of American historians and academics released a milestone open letter yesterday in protest of deleterious changes to the advanced placement U.S. history (APUSH) exam. The signatories are bold intellectual bulwarks against increasing progressive attacks in the classroom on America's unique ideals and institutions. Moms and dads in my adopted home state of Colorado have been mocked and demonized for helping to lead the fight against the anti-American changes to APUSH. But if there's any hope at all in salvaging local control over our kids' curriculum, it lies in the willingness of a broad coalition of educators and parents to join in the front lines for battles exactly like this one. As the 55 distinguished members of the National Association of Scholars explained this week, the teaching of American history faces "a grave new risk." So-called "reforms" by the College Board, which holds a virtual monopoly on A.P. testing across the country, "abandon a rigorous insistence on content" in favor of downplaying "American citizenship and American world leadership in favor of a more global and transnational perspective."
On the Magistrate and Narrow...
If the government wants to boost jobs, it ought to stop driving people out of the ones they have! In places like North Carolina, help is wanted — but conscience isn't. At least six offices are scrambling to find new magistrates now that the state has made violating personal beliefs a condition of employment. When the courts struck down the Tar Heels' 2012 marriage amendment, North Carolina's Administrative Office of the Court decided to chuck the First Amendment along with it, issuing a decree that officials would either perform same-sex "marriages" or clean out their offices. Of course, the great irony here is that liberals have always encouraged the courts to impose their personal views on the law. Now, when judges want to recuse themselves because of them, the Left screams "prejudice!"
Open Our Border, Then Collect Everyone's Phone Records?
A pair of decisions handed down by federal appeals courts in the last month highlight two telling pillars of recent U.S. national security strategy. They are: open our border and collect everyone's phone records. In Texas v. U.S.A., the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit refused to allow President Obama to move forward with his plan to unilaterally grant legal status to as many as 4.3 million illegal aliens. The administration argued that Texas and 25 others states that sued to stop Obama's plan did not even have standing to challenge the action. These states, the administration argued, would suffer no injury from Obama's legalization of illegal immigrants.
The Media's Worst Liberal Brain Cramps
Journalists are supposed to be the most informed members of society. Nothing is supposed to get past the iron traps in their brains. So which one of these concepts sounds more like a brain cramp? 1. Why would Hillary Clinton avoid taking questions from the press now that she's running for president? She's fantastic at defending herself when the scandals mount. 2. President Obama has run an administration amazingly free of scandal. Not just the president, but also everyone he has chosen to serve has been a pillar of integrity. These are actual concepts forwarded on television in the last few days.
Needles, Haystacks and NSA Snooping
How a Misbegotten Metaphor Helped Defeat Mass Surveillance
Intellectual Dishonesty
President Barack Obama's stance, expressed in his 2014 State of the Union address, is that the debate is settled and climate change is a fact. Obama is by no means unique in that view. Former Vice President Al Gore declared that "the science is settled." This "settled science" vision about climate is held by many, including those in academia. To call any science settled is sheer idiocy. Had mankind acted as though any science could possibly be settled, we'd be living in caves, as opposed to having the standard of living we enjoy today. That higher standard of living stems from challenges to what might have been seen as "scientific fact." According to mathematician Samuel Arbesman's book, "The Half-Life of Facts: Why Everything We Know Has an Expiration Date," many ideas taken as facts today will be shown to be wrong as early as five years from now. Arbesman argues that a study published in a physics journal will lose half its value in 10 years.
Socialist 'Justice'
Protestors demand "social justice." I hate their chant. If I oppose their cause, then I'm for social "injustice"? Nonsense. The protesters usually want to punish capitalism. "Spread those resources," says Hillary Clinton. Even capitalists often make the mistake of talking about "social justice" as if it's the opposite of free markets or a reason to rein in markets with more regulations or redistribution of wealth. But there's nothing "just" about the leftist protesters' claimed solution: more big government. Oliver Stone, Sean Penn and Harry Belafonte praised Venezuela's Hugo Chavez for his socialist revolution. Chavez then proceeded to destroy much of his country.
The False Populism of George Pataki
I keep thinking we're done with George Pataki — but like an order of bad clams, he keeps coming back up on me. The three-term Republican governor of a famously blue state seems like a serious 2016 presidential contender on paper — until you read the fine print. Pataki had a promising start. He beat Democratic icon Mario Cuomo in 1994. He cut income taxes 25 percent and trimmed other taxes as well. In his first two years in office, spending went down 2.5 percent. If you had stopped the Pataki show there, he'd be the next Reagan. Similarly, if Napoleon had quit before invading Russia, he'd be remembered very differently, too.
Left Exploits Mental Illness to Push PC Agenda
My grandfather was deeply mentally ill. He spent nearly a year in a psychiatric institution after being diagnosed with bipolar disorder; he heard the radio talking to him. He became suicidal. He spent years battling the condition, until he was prescribed lithium. For the next several decades, the medication brought his mental illness under control. Nothing would have been crueler to my grandfather than had society told him that his delusions were correct — that the radio was, in fact, talking to him; that the curtains were indeed threatening him; that he was normal, and that it was the stereotypes of the world inducing his paranoia. Yet that is the view of the anti-science left that this week declared former Olympic champion Bruce Jenner a woman. Vanity Fair led the way, featuring Jenner wearing a one-piece corset, Photoshopped and made up beyond nearly all recognition. The 22-page profile of Jenner insists that everyone call him Caitlyn, addresses him as "she," and explains that despite the fact that Jenner has all male genitalia and all male genetics, he is in fact a woman — even though the writer explains his own confusion as to gender pronoun usage.
Tuesday, June 2, 2015
Disaster Du Jour, Part II
I want to share this with you. It's excerpted in large part from a post at weatherbell.com. For many it might be a little too technical, but I think you will get the main message after the initial explanation of what we are seeing going forward with the evolving El Niño. The forecasted strength of El Niño is backing down a bit, but still hits a two-degree positive anomaly in ENSO 3.4 on the U.S.-generated CFSv2. We believe this is too strong. Sea surface temperatures (SSTs) near Australia are not nearly as cold this year compared to 1997.
Minimum Wage, Maximum Hypocrisy
Utterly shameless. There really is no other way to describe what some unions are trying to pull when it comes to the minimum wage. The issue, of course, has been in the news quite a bit lately, especially in Los Angeles, with supposedly incensed workers waving their "Fight for 15" placards. It's all perfectly packaged for the media, an alleged David versus Goliath fight. Will those mean ol' fast-food joints and other stingy employers finally start paying a "living wage"? Tune in for the dramatic video. Never mind that a substantial hike in the minimum wage would price many unskilled workers right out of the market. Goodbye, entry-level jobs for men and women who will later become workers making a much better wage at a job with more responsibilities.
Bakers' Case Gives Rise to Bias
After months of stress, Oregon's young bakers are turning up the heat on someone else: state officials. Aaron and Melissa Klein, who became the face of America's religious liberty debate when they turned down a cake order for a same-sex wedding, have spent the last two years trying to make ends meet after losing their business. Staring down a $135,000 fine for exercising their beliefs, the couple is doing everything they can to hold their life together for their five kids. Now, thanks to emails uncovered by the Daily Signal, the Kleins might finally have the break they've been waiting for. It turns out that there is prejudice in Aaron and Melissa's case — but not from the Kleins. While the state was busy accusing Aaron and Melissa of bias, emails suggest their agencies were full of it. In emails, text messages, phone calls, and other documents, Daily Signal found a shocking amount of coordination between the Oregon Bureau of Labor and Industries and the largest LGBT activist group in the state: Basic Rights Oregon (BRO).
A Sense of Proportion
Evidence of the country's much-vetted shift to the political left is the strengthening and spread of the movement to abolish capital punishment, that relic of barbarous times when we struck off people's heads for, you know, social revenge. Sort of like what ISIS does. As we don't want to be like ISIS, or the remaining repositories of organized revenge, such as Iran, we need to cool it on capital punishment. So, in part, goes the argument that Nebraska legislators adopted in overriding their governor's veto of a bill to abolish the death penalty. Nebraska got a lot of publicity at the time because there wasn't much else going on besides the Texas floods and also, because of Nebraska's being a "red" state, its action might be seen as auguring great change in the near future: a movement from revenge to mercy.
Demoralizing Police Forces Is Insane
Writing for the Wall Street Journal, columnist Heather Mac Donald has chronicled one of the least surprising cause and effect stories afflicting America. "The nation's two-decades-long crime decline may be over," she writes. "Gun violence in particular is spiraling upward in cities across America." Why, as if one didn't know? "The most plausible explanation of the current surge in lawlessness is the intense agitation against American police departments over the past nine months," she explains. The stats are daunting. Homicides in Milwaukee are up 180 percent by May 17 compared with the same period last year. In St. Louis there's an uptick in shootings, robberies and homicide by margins of 39 percent, 43 percent and 25 percent respectively. Atlanta has seen a 32 percent spike in murders, Chicago a 24 percent increase in shootings and a 17 percent increase in homicides, and violent crime in Los Angeles was up 25 percent. And in Baltimore, where a somnambulant Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake gave rioters "space" to loot and pillage either by accident or design, the murders of a young mother and her 7-year-old child brought Baltimore's monthly homicide total in May to 38. By Sunday, the total had topped out at 43, making May the deadliest month the city has seen in more than 40 years.
Leftist Censors Strike Again
I have often maintained that threats to freedom of expression in this country come predominantly — probably exclusively — from the political left. The censoring of a pro-life student club in a Las Vegas high school is a recent egregious example. Angelique Clark, a sophomore at West Career and Technical Academy in Las Vegas, says the Clark County School District denied her application to charter a pro-life club as a chapter of Students for Life of America, the nation's largest youth pro-life organization. The district, according to Clark, said, "It was too controversial, and it would be too exclusive, and it would leave out pro-choice people." Fox News reported that in a statement, the school district said that all the school district's clubs must have a faculty adviser before being allowed to form an official club and that Clark's proposed club did not. But Fox affiliate KVVU reports that it obtained a copy of Clark's charter application, dated December 2014, and it in fact does include a faculty adviser's signature.
Paying the Price
Baltimore is now paying the price for irresponsible words and actions, not only by young thugs in the streets, but also by its mayor and the state prosecutor, both of whom threw the police to the wolves, in order to curry favor with local voters. Now murders in Baltimore in May have been more than double what they were in May last year, and higher than in any May in the past 15 years. Meanwhile, the number of arrests is down by more than 50 percent. Various other communities across the country are experiencing very similar explosions of crime and reductions of arrests, in the wake of anti-police mob rampages from coast to coast that the media sanitize as "protests."
Is It Clinton Cash — or Saudi Hush Money?
Many of us applauded when President Bill Clinton signed the International Religious Freedom Act in 1998. That law — passed with broad bi-partisan support — established a U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF) that was required to issue annual reports. The law called for the appointment of an Ambassador-at-Large in the State Department who would make religious freedom a key concern. These initiatives gave great hope to advocates of religious freedom around the world. In the nearly twenty years since that good law was passed and signed, however, the picture for religious freedom worldwide has grown far darker. Only recently, we saw twenty-one Coptic Christians paraded before cameras on a beach in Libya and then ritually beheaded by Islamist murderers aligned with ISIS.