Right Opinion
The best of conservative opinion and commentary, updated daily.
Wednesday, May 20, 2015
Why Jeb Bush Can't Be Trusted With an Army
His Reluctance to Criticize His Brother's War Reflects a Dangerous Desire to Forget the Past
Maglite's Tony Maglica: Torchbearer of the American Dream
In our home, we try to instill a life lesson for our kids best summed up in Latin: *Nihil boni sine labore.* It means, "Nothing good achieved without hard work." Few people I've met in my lifetime embody this motto better and more brilliantly than Tony Maglica, inventor of the iconic Maglite flashlight. The spry 84-year-old founder and CEO of Mag Instrument still traverses his 450,000-square-foot factory floor dozens of times over the course of his 12-hour workday, six days a week, beginning at the crack of dawn and ending after most of his 800 employees have clocked out. I visited his Ontario, Calif., headquarters while doing research for my new book, "Who Built That: Awe-Inspiring Stories of American Tinkerpreneurs." Born on the tiny island of Zlarin off the coast of Croatia, Maglica came here determined to make something of himself. His first job was sewing piecework in a sweatshop at 50 cents an hour. He worked hard to assimilate, teaching himself English from a dictionary. With his wife and young child in tow, the ambitious 20-year-old tinkerer packed up a rusted, bald-tired 1947 Studebaker and headed West.
Jeb Bush Has Bigger Problems Than Iraq War Stumble
By now everyone has had their say about Jeb Bush's terrible, horrible, no good, very bad week. The consensus is that Bush misheard Megyn Kelly's "knowing what we know now" question about the Iraq war. I'm not convinced. Politicians routinely answer the question they wish they were asked rather than the question they were actually asked. Indeed, those are the only kinds of questions some politicians — particularly ones with the last name Clinton — ever answer. The question Fox News' Kelly asked is the tougher one, at least for Bush, so perhaps he opted to answer in a way that let him take a shot at Hillary Clinton, who also supported the war? But it doesn't matter. Bush should have murder-boarded every possible variant of that question. His team should have run drills on it, as if he were prepping for a presidential debate. And, he should have given a speech specifically about the Iraq war months ago to inoculate himself against all of this.
The True Black Tragedy
Hustlers and people with little understanding want us to believe that today's black problems are the continuing result of a legacy of slavery, poverty and racial discrimination. The fact is that most of the social pathology seen in poor black neighborhoods is entirely new in black history. Let's look at some of it. Today the overwhelming majority of black children are raised in single female-headed families. As early as the 1880s, three-quarters of black families were two-parent. In 1925 New York City, 85 percent of black families were two-parent. One study of 19th-century slave families found that in up to three-fourths of the families, all the children had the same mother and father. Today's black illegitimacy rate of nearly 75 percent is also entirely new. In 1940, black illegitimacy stood at 14 percent. It had risen to 25 percent by 1965, when Daniel Patrick Moynihan wrote "The Negro Family: The Case for National Action" and was widely condemned as a racist. By 1980, the black illegitimacy rate had more than doubled, to 56 percent, and it has been growing since. Both during slavery and as late as 1920, a teenage girl raising a child without a man present was rare among blacks.
Dr. Capitalism
For years, my scientist brother Tom was the nonpolitical Stossel. I defended free markets on TV, and he studied blood at Harvard and Brigham and Women's Hospital. Mom asked me when I'd get a "real job" like his. Then the crusade against capitalism reached his world. Medical "journalists" demanded that corporations distance themselves from medical research. They'll bias the results, "put profits before people" and sell dangerous goods. Tom didn't notice this "conflict of interest crusade" until he joined the scientific advisory board of a biotech company and learned how difficult it is to bring medical innovation to market. Now he's furious about what he calls "pharma-phobia."
Tuesday, May 19, 2015
Giving Kids a Chance to Succeed
Scholarships for low-income children are worth preserving
Escaping Poverty in Kenya and Baltimore
Books and pencils, not money. That's how you truly escape poverty. American liberals still don't understand that simple concept, but millions of poor people living in the sprawling slums of Nairobi do. They know it's much better to be given an education instead of a handout. I've seen how the urban poor think in Kenya. I've been to Nairobi with my wife Colleen, who is a travel agent. When she takes 24 wealthy clients to Kenya for a safari, she always makes it a point to take them to a remarkable private school in the middle of Nairobi's slums.
Judges for Higher Taxes, Not Pension Reform, in Illinois
Last week the Illinois Supreme Court overturned a state law that would help fix the state's notorious pension crisis. What a tragedy for the state's taxpayers. The justices basically ruled that the pension arrangements are iron-clad, although these pensions are on a course to bankrupt the state and imperil public services that Illinois families depend on. The unions come first. This could have negative consequences for more than half the states that are trying to defuse government employee pension time bombs. By way of background: Illinois has one of the deepest public employee pension holes in the nation. The long term deficit is estimated at above $110 billion and the red ink rises every year. Even in California — where several cities have declared bankruptcy — the pension sink hole isn't as deep on a per capita basis.
Why Pamela Geller Is Hated
Pamela Geller — the woman whose group, the American Freedom Defense Initiative, organized the Muhammad cartoon drawing contest in Garland, Texas — may be the most hated person in America right now. She is certainly the left's chief villain. And, sad to say, though few conservatives hate her, more than a few have condemned her. The question is why? Here are three reasons. **Reason One: The left Hates Those Who Confront Evil** The first and most important reason is a rule of life that I wrote about in a recent column explaining the left's hatred for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu: Those who don't fight evil hate those who do.
Rise Up for Free Speech!
Columnist and Fox News contributor Kirsten Powers' new book, "The Silencing: How the Left Is Killing Free Speech," links her snugly to the cause of unfettered thought and expression — important for conservatives, certainly but also for non-conservatives. As it should be for any American, come to think of it, as the "progressive" left pounds and pulverizes anyone of differing mind and purpose. The politicization of almost everything has put at some risk, in the most talkative of ages, the broadly assumed right of First Amendment-cherishing Americans to speak their pieces. "The illiberal left," says Powers, "... believes that people who express ideological, philosophical, or political views that don't line up with their preferences should be completely silenced." In other words, delegitimized as people worth hearing on the showing of "self-appointed overlords — activists, university administrators, journalists, and politicians — who have determined what views are acceptable to express. So, shut up — or else."
Report Shows No Rapport on Freedom
As shocking as it was to see President Obama bow to King Abdullah in 2009, it's been more frustrating to see him bend to the Saudis' religious intolerance. Although Saudi Arabia continues to climb the charts of faith-based hostility, the subject was probably as absent from last week's Camp David's Arab talks as the King himself. While the President plows ahead with his Iran agenda, he's missing a crucial opportunity to address the growing issue of global persecution with the countries most responsible for spreading it. Even his own government is sounding the alarm about the explosion in Christian genocide — most recently in the annual report by the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF). With all eyes on the Middle East, USCIRF explains that ISIS is turning the region into the biggest hotspot for faith-based oppression. "Humanitarian crises fueled by waves of terror, intimidation, and violence have engulfed an alarming number of countries in the year since the release of [our] prior report last May," the Commission explains. "The horrors of the past year speak volumes about how and why religious freedom and the protection of the rights of vulnerable religious communities matter."
Patriot Act's Most Controversial Section Fades to Black
Section 215 of the Patriot Act will not survive another month. The most controversial piece of the post-9/11 law that broadly expanded the federal government's surveillance powers is set to expire on June 1, and the House of Representatives on Wednesday gave its overwhelming approval to a far less sweeping replacement. On a 338-to-88 vote, Republicans and Democrats registered broad support for the USA Freedom Act, which will end the National Security Agency's bulk collection of "metadata" from millions of Americans' phone records. The legislation faces some opposition in the Senate, where Majority Leader Mitch McConnell is pushing to extend the Patriot Act with no changes. That won't happen. Other Republican senators, including at least two who are running for president, want Section 215 scrapped or curtailed, and the political tides are with them.
Who Is a Journalist?
My first job in journalism was as a copyboy at the NBC News Bureau in Washington, D.C. In my early 20s, I asked Bill Corrigan, the newsroom manager, "What must I do to get on the air?" He replied, "Get a college degree and a minimum of five years writing experience with a newspaper or wire service." In those days every reporter at NBC News and the other two networks came from print because television was relatively new and as network news president Reuven Frank noted in his book "Out of Thin Air," we were making it up as we went along. I got the college degree, but avoided the wire service and newspapers (until later) and have managed to enjoy a decent career in broadcast and print journalism. The rules of the road to journalistic success have changed dramatically, as has the definition of journalist. Today, one can self-identify as a journalist without any background or experience.
The Two-Point-Something Campaign
This spring it seems as if there have been two-point-something Republican presidential candidacy announcements per week. And, since she made her own announcement April 12, Hillary Clinton has answered an average of about two-point-something questions from the press each week. Those (imprecise) statistics illustrate the asymmetrical nature of the presidential race. One party has so many candidates that media sponsors can't figure out how to get them all in a presidential debate. The other has one candidate who attends events with hand-picked audiences and has little to say about anything. One solution for the Republican debate problem is to adapt something like the practice in the recent British election, where party leaders were questioned separately. Perhaps four hour-long debates, each with four candidates picked by lots.
'Just Asking'
In a recent panel discussion on poverty at Georgetown University, President Barack Obama gave another demonstration of his mastery of rhetoric — and disregard of reality. One of the ways of fighting poverty, he proposed, was to "ask from society's lottery winners" that they make a "modest investment" in government programs to help the poor. Since free speech is guaranteed to everyone by the First Amendment to the Constitution, there is nothing to prevent anybody from asking anything from anybody else. But the federal government does not just "ask" for money. It takes the money it wants in taxes, usually before the people who have earned it see their paychecks.
Denying Reality Itself: Progressivism's Last Gasp
Two seemingly unrelated stories need to be linked together in order to more fully explain the dogged determination of an American left hell bent on fundamentally transforming the United States by any means necessary. Let's begin with the latest and completely unsurprising revelation regarding illegal immigration. According to a report by the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse at Syracuse University, the backlog in federal immigration courts has reached an all-time high of 445,706 cases, representing a 30 percent increase since Oct 1, 2013. The principal driver of that backlog? Last summer's border "surge" that included "68,500 unaccompanied children and about as many family units crossing the southern border, most from Central America," the LA Times reports.
Hillary's Going Left; GOP Needs to Return Right
I think Hillary Clinton has learned (or believes she has learned) a great deal from Barack Obama over the years, though none of it has to do with statesmanship. It has to do with how a presidential candidate positions herself with the electorate. From all indications and a recent Washington Post article on the subject, Hillary's strategy is to emulate Obama's appeal to his leftist base and his arrogant disrespect for any constitutional limitations on his authority. Hillary is covering all the bases of the Democratic base — gays, blacks, Hispanics, women, teachers unions. She has announced her undying fealty to same-sex marriage. There is no evolving for her. It's as if she (or her husband) never felt or said otherwise. She has come down hard on incarceration policies. And surely, everyone noticed her shameless move on immigration, promising to be even more extreme and lawless than Obama has been. I know, I know, she said she'd follow the law, but that's like a school shooter's bragging about his gun licenses.
Monday, May 18, 2015
Candidates Win Evangelicals With Pro-American Worker Immigration Policy
Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker, an expected GOP presidential candidate, drew the ire of the political right and left recently over his comments on immigration. When it comes to the immigration issue, Republicans are expected to use the tried and true, consultant tested "secure the border" talking point and move on to other issues. Gov. Walker, like former Senator Rick Santorum, has taken things further than just a discussion of illegal immigration. They have dared to discuss the impact of legal immigration on American workers. Like most Republicans, I'm still undecided about the presidential field. But I have an enormous amount of respect for these guys and what they have done as they campaign. I applaud their statements on immigration and their willingness to go against the status quo on immigration. What radical proposal could have inspired attacks from liberal media outlets like MSNBC, Mother Jones magazine and the Huffington Post as well as The Wall Street Journal and establishment Republicans such as Senators John McCain (R-AZ) and Orrin Hatch (R-UT)?
A Fitting Sentence for the Boston Marathon Terrorist
Dzhokhar Tsarnaev's life is a meager compensation for the murder of Martin Richard, Lingzi Lu, Krystle Campbell, and Sean Collier. But it is the highest price he can be made to pay under our system of justice, and a jury of his peers has unanimously recommended that he pay it. From the outset, the death penalty was the sentence most Americans believed Tsarnaev should receive, assuming he was guilty of the grisly Boston Marathon bombing. Long before the case went to trial, all doubt of his guilt had vanished. Not even his lawyers tried to suggest otherwise. On the trial's opening day, defense attorney Judy Clarke bluntly acknowledged: "It was him." What all these weeks in the federal courthouse in South Boston established was not that Tsarnaev is a murderer and a terrorist — that we knew. What was made brutally clear is that he feels no remorse for the blood he shed and the pain he caused. Witness after witness described, in heartbreaking and agonizing testimony, what Tsarnaev's bombs had wrought. The jury saw and heard it all, and drew the logical conclusion: The heartbreak and agony were the whole point.
Gods and Generals: Left Wars Against Military Faith
In today's military, you can put on the uniform — but leave the armor of God at home! Something as simple as talking about prayer can land you in a heap of trouble under this administration, and anti-faith extremists are doing everything they can to exploit this new hostility. At the Military Religious Freedom Foundation, Mikey Weinstein and team had some initial success calling Christian expression to the carpet with the Pentagon, but that relationship is more strained now — as Americans have started pushing back on the anti-faith agenda in the military. Unfortunately, that hasn't stopped MRFF from harassing service members for exercising the religious freedom they're fighting to protect. Weinstein's latest target is a two-star general, the Air Force's Maj. Gen. Craig Olson, who was invited to speak at the National Day of Prayer Task Force meeting last week. Not surprisingly, General Olson talked about … prayer. He told the audience he was a "redeemed believer in Christ" and gave God the glory for his success in the military.