Right Opinion

'The Last Full Measure of Devotion'

Memorial Day is to honor those who purchased our freedom with their blood

Millionaire Ex-Presidents Can Pay Their Own Way

The avarice of Bill and Hillary Clinton is a wonder to behold. They crave wealth, it seems, even more than they crave power, and display no qualms about exploiting their political stature to amass it. According to a required financial disclosure filing last week, the former president and his wife have collected more than $30 million since January 2014, most of it from speaking engagements for which they charged an average of $240,000 each. To put that figure in perspective, what the Clintons earn per speech is nearly five times what the median US household earns per year. Since leaving the White House in 2001, the Clintons have made more than $125 million just from what The New York Times has called "the family speechmaking business." Huge book advances have been worth many millions more. For all their poor-mouthing about being "dead broke" and needing to "pay our bills," the Clintons' income puts them well within the top one-tenth of 1 percent of all Americans.

Will America Abide a Nuclear Wakeup Call?

With regard to ISIS, New York Post columnist Michael Goodwin deftly sums up the enduring cluelessness of our current president and his equally clueless administration. "The consequences of Obama's fecklessness fall most heavily on Muslims, Christians and Kurds in Iraq and Syria. But it will not end there," Goodwin explains. "Islamic State wants to attack America and, as its magazine says, 'do something big, something that would make any past operation look like a squirrel shoot ... something truly epic.' Is that what it will take to wake Obama?" The magazine to which Goodwin refers is Dabiq, which I have linked to here for two reasons: one, the quality and sophistication of this propaganda sheet should make it clear the only real "JV team" in this fight isn't ISIS. It's the Obama administration, whose eight month effort to "degrade and destroy" this bloodthirsty band of Islamist killers has done neither.

Janet Yellen's Back-to-the-'50s Interest Rates

Federal Reserve Chairwoman Janet Yellen told us recently that the target for the federal funds rate will be raised slightly later this year. But after that, future rate hikes will be small and gradual over the next several years. In fact, we may never have true normalization (4 percent). In my view, Yellen is offering a back-to-the-'50s approach to interest rates. And she's right, though for many wrong reasons. For average folks, what might this policy mean? I'll take a guess: No boom and no bust. No inflation and no recession. All the post-World War II recessions have been preceded by an inverted Treasury yield curve, in which short rates are higher than long rates. That won't happen for many years. Plus, we're now in a downward energy price cycle, and oil price spikes lead to recessions.

Graduation Gifts

This is the season of college graduations, and many people may be wondering what kinds of gifts would be most appropriate for young people leaving the world of academia and heading out to face the challenges and opportunities of adulthood in the real world. Given the narrow range of left to far left views of the world on most college campuses, and the vast ignorance of other views, even among graduates of elite academic institutions, one valuable gift might be a book giving a different perspective on the world. The recent publication of "American Contempt for Liberty" a hefty, 417-page collection of columns by economist Walter E. Williams, would be an excellent choice. For many college graduates, this book would be virtually an education in itself, covering many issues and presenting many perspectives they have never encountered before, in this era of academic lockstep thinking on social issues.

Differences Between Left and Right: Part I

Most Americans hold either liberal or conservative positions on most matters. In many instances, however, they would be hard pressed to explain their position or the position they oppose. But if you can't explain both sides, how do you know you're right? At the very least, you need to understand both the liberal and conservative positions in order to effectively understand your own. I grew up in a liberal world — New York, Jewish and Ivy League graduate school. I was an 8-year-old when President Dwight Eisenhower ran for re-election against the Democratic nominee, Adlai Stevenson. I knew nothing about politics and had little interest in the subject. But I well recall knowing — knowing, not merely believing — that Democrats were "for the little guy" and Republicans were "for the rich guys."

Obama's Hot-Air Commencement Address

I didn't attend my commencement ceremony at American University in Washington, D.C. I chose instead to receive my degree in the mail. I didn't want to listen to a boring speaker, likely unaffiliated with the school or anyone in it, drone on in Washington's notorious summer heat. Too bad graduates of the U.S. Coast Guard Academy did not have the same option. They had to endure a commencement address by President Obama on "climate change." Linking the rise of Islamic terrorism to a warming planet, the president told the grads, "Understand, climate change did not cause the conflicts we see around the world. Yet what we also know is that severe drought helped to create the instability in Nigeria that was exploited by the terrorist group Boko Haram. It's now believed that drought and crop failures and high food prices helped fuel the early unrest in Syria, which descended into civil war in the heart of the Middle East."

The Problem With Jade Helm

Rep. Louie Gohmert pinpoints why people are so concerned with the military exercises.

Pomp and Circuit Stance

Under this administration, sexual freedom isn't just treated like a religion — it gets more protection than one. In case after case, the freedom of faithful people and organizations is being crushed by this "conform or else" mentality that demands religious people's beliefs take a backseat to the Left's. This continues to play out in an epic battle of the courts, where faith-based groups are fighting for the same relief that companies like Hobby Lobby won: an exemption from the ObamaCare mandate — which is the demand, by the government, that they fund contraception that can end a pregnancy. Like the nuns at Little Sisters of the Poor, Priests for Life and the Catholic Archbishop of D.C. are all desperately trying to wriggle free of the government's suffocating grip and win back the right to opt out of providing coverage that violates their faith. Those hopes were dashed — at least temporarily — at the D.C. Court of Appeals [Thursday], when the judges decided not to rehear the case before the whole bench, leaving in place a horrible ruling that ignores the groups' most fundamental freedom. After years of legal wrangling over the HHS mandate, the Supreme Court's landmark opinion in the Hobby Lobby-Conestoga Wood case was supposed to settle the matter. Now, two years later, the courts still haven't extended the same protection to religious nonprofits that it has to for-profit companies.

Justice for Freddie Gray

A Baltimore grand jury handed down indictments against six police officers Thursday in the death of Freddie Gray while in police custody, the latest chapter in a saga that captured national attention when riots erupted last month following Gray's funeral. Gray's death doesn't lend itself easily to simplistic racial explanations, which were seized upon in other highly publicized deaths of black men in police custody over the past year, including the deaths of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Mo., and Eric Garner in New York City. Three of the accused officers are white; three are black. Five are men, and one is a woman. The police commissioner, whose department is now under scrutiny by the Justice Department for potential civil rights violations, is black. So, too, are the mayor and the city prosecutor bringing the charges. But if Baltimore's political leaders are mostly black and its police force reflects the racial composition of the city, why is there such a sense of racial grievance among its black residents, especially those who live in poor neighborhoods in West Baltimore?

The U.S. Is Now a Mobocracy

In spite of all the attention we have recently paid to Baltimore, it's nothing new. We've had race riots on a regular basis for nearly 50 years. I'm not referring to events like Selma, which were peaceful demonstrations that were turned into riots by the racist cops. But even the assassination of Martin Luther King was merely an excuse for black people to run amok, making asses of themselves by burning, breaking and looting. What a great way to pay tribute to the man who preached passive resistance to racial injustice! Ever since then, this has been an urban form of entertainment in every major city in America. Sometimes the fuse is lit by the local team's winning or losing a championship game. More often, the trigger, so to speak, is some good-for-nothing being shot during a police pursuit. Out here in L.A., we experienced a major riot simply because four cops were acquitted for beating on Rodney King, a career thug who had just led the cops on a 100-mph car chase and then resisted being cuffed, probably because he was high on PCP.

Kaine's Quest for War Legitimacy

The Revolutionary War and Civil War ended in Virginia, which was involved, by the 9/11 attack on the Pentagon, in the beginning of today's war with radical Islam. Now a Virginia senator is determined that today's war shall not continue indefinitely without the legitimacy conferred by congressional involvement congruent with the Constitution's text and history. Tim Kaine, former Richmond mayor, former governor and former national chairman of the Democratic Party, represents the distressingly small minority of legislators interested in crafting an authorization for use of military force (AUMF). This is easier vowed than accomplished. Kaine's interest in Congress' role in the making of war quickened in October 2002, when President George W. Bush, on the eve of midterm elections, sought an AUMF regarding Iraq, even though the invasion was not imminent. The University of Virginia's Miller Center released the report of the National War Powers Commission (NWPC), co-chaired by former Secretaries of State James Baker and Warren Christopher. It recommended a new codification of the allocation of war powers between the president and Congress.

Free the Students

The Challenge: Fragile Freedom

We remember the day well. Papa John wore his best poker face as he climbed carefully through the bomb-bay doors and into the fuselage, his grandchildren scrambling close behind. But it had to have been an emotional moment for him that day at the Fantasy of Flight museum in Florida. During World War II, he served with the 450th bomb group, a nose gunner in a B-24 Liberator, making runs from Italy into southern Europe. Unlike many, he returned to wed, raise a family, and see his kids raise families of their own. Even with its bomb racks empty, the bomb bay was surprisingly cramped. Between the racks, the only way forward to the flight deck and to Papa John's former battle station was a narrow girder. Negotiating that, then hunching down and crawling forward, we watched him advance as far toward the nose turret as his creaky knees would let him, just far enough to brush aside a patch of spider webs and peer inside through its double hatch.

Iraq and the White House Time Machine

Everyone had a field day with Jeb Bush's mishandling of the Iraq question Megyn Kelly posed during a TV interview last week: "Knowing what we know now, would you have authorized the invasion?" Over the course of several days, Bush's answer switched from a firm yes ("I would have") to a firm no ("I would not have gone into Iraq"). Other GOP presidential hopefuls, quick to exploit Bush's fumble, quickly declared that in hindsight *they* wouldn't have gone to war. Obviously there will be no do-over of the Iraq war authorization; the next president can't hop a time machine back to 2003. But even as a theoretical exercise, it's impossible to answer Kelly's question without clarifying the meaning of "knowing what we know now."

The Scooby Doo Needs an Overhaul

When Hillary Clinton decided to give her campaign vehicle a cutesy pie name, I can only imagine that she and Bill preferred that the media would say that they were throwing people under the Scooby Doo rather than under the bus. After all, it is impossible for a Democrat to run for president without leaving a wake of people with tire tracks on their carcass. In 2008, let us remember, Obama tossed his friend and religious mentor, Jeremiah Wright, under the wheels once we all began to hear the vile remarks that Rev. Wright had spewed for 20 years while the Obamas sat savoring every reprehensible word in a front row pew. That same year, when former V.P. candidate Geraldine Ferraro, at the time serving as a major advisor to Mrs. Clinton, said what everyone was thinking — namely, that Obama would not have been running for the presidency if he hadn't been black — Hillary didn't even wait for the bus to slow down before giving her the old heave-ho.

War Is a Four-Letter Word Spelled I-R-A-N

House Foreign Relations Chairman Ed Royce (R-Calif.) recently briefed members of the Israel Allies Caucus on Capitol Hill. He spoke to supporters about Iran. Leading off with a question from decades ago: "What distinguishes the United States' nuclear missile arsenal from that of the Soviet Union?" That question was asked of President John F. Kennedy. And that young President answered succinctly: Attitude. Exactly right. The attitude of the United States is not one of dominance and aggression, whereas that the USSR was undeniably so. President Kennedy had only to point to the Berlin Wall — an ugly spike driven through the heart of a great old European city. Chairman Royce was too diplomatic to say it, but it is the case that liberal Democrats like Kennedy *used* to understand these matters. Not only could Kennedy brush away a pesky reporter's rude question with wit and concision, but he could play offense, too. Many Americans yet remember JFK at the Berlin Wall in the last hopeful springtime of his life. If anyone doubts that freedom is preferable to Communism, "lass is nach Berlin kommen" the young statesman said in very passable German: "Let them come to Berlin!" Happily, there are still some liberal Democrats on the Hill — supporters of the Israel Allies Caucus — who still *do* get it. They are part of a bi-partisan effort to make sure Iran does not get sanctions relief — a "signing bonus" in Chairman Royce's apt phrase — while making no real halt in its lurch for nuclear weapons.

Can Republican Men Criticize Hillary?

Carly Fiorina is articulate, thoughtful and accomplished. For those who keep track of such things, she was the first woman to lead a Fortune 50 business, and she ran a credible, if unsuccessful, campaign for a U.S. senate seat from California. In the early going of the race for the Republican presidential nomination, she is receiving enthusiastic responses from Republican audiences. Though I've long been skeptical of non-politicians running for president of the United States, I'm open to the possibility that she has what it takes — but only if the premise is that she is offering something besides estrogen. This is not a slam at Fiorina, but rather at the presumption out there that only Fiorina can really "take it to Hillary" because she's the only Republican candidate who needn't fear the charge of sexism.

There Is No Such Thing as Unbiased Journalism, So Let's Stop Pretending

If you're an intellectually curious person — and if you're a journalist, let's assume that you are — you are likely to have embraced a number of notions about how the world works, how it should work and who should be running it. This is natural. It's inevitable, then, that most journalists have formed some opinions about partisan politics. It's unrealistic to expect that even the most conscientious journalist can wholly divorce his or her professional work from his or her philosophical positions. And even if that person were to put forth the sincerest effort possible, biases are likely to manifest in the focus and tone of his or her work. And this doesn't even take into account editors and headline writers, often the worst culprits in one-sided political coverage.

The 'Science' of Sex Education

There's no classroom experience the libertine supports more mightily than "sex education." They have struggled to banish even a whisper of a religious worldview from the classroom. Only the secular and "science-based" ideology is allowed. The Daily Beast website recently celebrated a San Francisco ruling: "Hero Judge Rules Abstinence-Only Sex Ed Is Illegal." Judge Donald Black ruled "access to medically and socially appropriate sexual education is an important public right," and that one district had provided "medically inaccurate information," like the notion that sexual abstinence prevents pregnancy and sexually transmitted disease. Do the guardians of "science" — like the happy "reproductive justice" folks at the American Civil Liberties Union — think this is "medically inaccurate" because no child can avoid having sex before graduation?