Right Opinion
The best of conservative opinion and commentary, updated daily.
Friday, May 8, 2015
Clinton's Phony Immigration Push
Like her former boss Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton is more interested in goading Republicans on immigration than she is in actually fixing our broken system. This week, Clinton announced that she would expand on Obama's executive action, which would defer deportation and grant work permits for up to five million illegal immigrants in the U.S. "I will fight to stop partisan attacks on the executive action that would put DREAMers, including those with us today, at risk of deportation," she said in reference to students in the audience who had come to the U.S. illegally as children. "If Congress refuses to act, as president, I would do everything possible under the law to go even further." Clinton also said she favors a pathway to citizenship for most of the 11 million illegal immigrants currently in the U.S. What she didn't say was that she would work with Congress to achieve those aims. Nor would she commit to making immigration reform an early agenda item in her presidency — saying only it would be a "priority."
SFC Christopher Speer Is Dead; Omar Khadr Is Free
A Canadian judge ruled this week that Omar Khadr poses no public safety threat. Tell that to the children of Sergeant First Class Christopher J. Speer and the surviving American soldiers who valiantly fought Khadr on the battlefield. In 2012, Khadr pleaded guilty, guilty, guilty, guilty and guilty to five charges related to the killing of Speer, a 28-year-old medic with the U.S. Special Forces. This young American hero died in Afghanistan in 2002 during an ambush by al-Qaida operatives. Just days before he gave his life, Speer had fearlessly walked onto a minefield to rescue two wounded Afghan children. It was Khadr, born and bred an Islamic jihadist by his terrorist father, who lobbed the fatal grenade in the war zone. Another American soldier, SFC Layne Morris, survived the attack, but was blinded in one eye for life. In a sealed plea deal at Guantanamo Bay, Khadr admitted to throwing the grenade. He admitted to attempted murder, conspiracy, spying and providing material support to terrorism. He signed a 50-paragraph stipulation that classified him as an "enemy belligerent because he has purposefully and materially supported hostilities against the United States and its coalition partners" and documented his family's intimate association and friendship with al-Qaida leaders Osama bin Laden, Ayman al-Zawahiri and Muhammad Atef.
Hollywood's Climate Hypocrites
Hollywood and global-warming panic have always been a natural match. After all, who can tell you better to cut back on your wasteful ways better than a high-flying multimillionaire movie star with the carbon footprint of a Tyrannosaurus rex? It's never mattered that the stars have all the scientific expertise of Pee-wee Herman. They're just so good-looking and famous, who cares? PBS broadcast a 10-hour series in 1990 entitled "Race to Save the Planet." The show's host was Meryl Streep, who proclaimed: "By the year 2000 ... the Earth's climate will be warmer than it's been in over 100,000 years. If we don't do something, there will be enormous calamities in a very short time." Oops.
Huckabee Is the Wrong Candidate for the Wrong Time
Sometimes, probably because he's such an affable media presence, I forget why I dislike the political version of Mike Huckabee so much. Maybe it's the aw-shucks populism, which isn't substantively very different from the class conflict rhetoric we hear from so many on the left these days. Or maybe it's that Everyman Huckabee has been running for one political office or another for the past 25 years — a fact that might escape the attention of anyone listening to the nuggets of blue-collar wisdom found in his speeches and those God-guns-grits-and-gravy books he writes. Since his previous run for the presidency, Huckabee has hosted a national radio show and television show, and he's endorsed all sorts of interesting products, including "secret biblical cures for cancer" to, no doubt, some unfortunate and desperate people — because Huckabee, like all of those selfish plutocrats he likes to denounce, is out to make a buck.
The Left's Inconsistent Stance on Provocative Art
Why aren't liberals offering Pamela Geller a federal subsidy? Geller is the blogger-activist who organized the "Draw Muhammad" exhibition in Garland, Texas, which inspired some DIY jihadists to attack the event. The would-be terrorists chose poorly: They were cut down by Texas lawmen shortly after wounding a security guard. Let's hop in the WayBack Machine for a moment. In 1986, the National Endowment of Arts paid about $20,000 for Andreas Serrano's "Piss Christ." Serrano peed in a glass, plunked a plastic icon of Jesus on the cross into it and then snapped a picture. I will say the lighting was lovely. But, as strange as it seemed to the "arts community," some people were offended.
Is Baltimore's Mosby Seeking Justice or Something Else?
It is the prerogative of Baltimore City State's Attorney Marilyn Mosby to prosecute the police officers involved in the incident that led to the death of Freddie Gray if the facts and law warrant it, but I am concerned that Mosby is pursuing something other than criminal justice. I say this based on her apparent rush to file these charges, some of her comments and assurances in her prepared statement, and what appears to be a gross overcharging of these officers. We were initially led to believe that the decision to prosecute wouldn't come so quickly, but then, almost out of the blue, she filed this raft of charges within 24 hours of obtaining the police department report against all six officers, three of whom are black — a fact I mention only because we are being forced to view this case, as we are with so many others, through the prism of race.
Free Willy!
We often wonder how people of the past, including the most revered and refined, could have universally engaged in conduct now considered unconscionable. Such as slavery. How could the Founders, so sublimely devoted to human liberty, have lived with — some participating in — human slavery? Or fourscore years later, how could the saintly Lincoln, an implacable opponent of slavery, have nevertheless spoken of and believed in African inferiority? While retrospective judgment tends to make us feel superior to our ancestors, it should really evoke humility. Surely some contemporary practices will be deemed equally abominable by succeeding generations. The only question is: Which ones? I've long thought it will be our treatment of animals. I'm convinced that our great-grandchildren will find it difficult to believe that we actually raised, herded and slaughtered them on an industrial scale — for the eating.
Is There a Mole at The Washington Post?
*Man is not a rational animal. He is a rationalizing animal. —Robert Heinlein* What to make of the resolutely pro-choice The Washington Post's Style section travelogue following a woman who drove 407 miles to obtain a second-trimester abortion? Is this part of the campaign to destigmatize abortion? If so, they've chosen a very odd way to do it. Or perhaps Post writer Monica Hesse is a pro-life mole? "Emily" is a married woman with a graduate degree and a good job living in Wyoming. When she and her husband learned of the pregnancy, they were "so excited." But later, he got into trouble — a bar fight or something; the story leaves it vague. Because he had a criminal record, the couple was unsure whether he would get prison time.
Americans Pray It Forward
As Charles Spurgeon once said, "Prayer moves that arm that moves the world." [Yesterday], that arm provided a hopeful and encouraging sign — Americans all across the nation praying for our country. On the first Thursday of every May, the spell of religious cynicism is broken, and we declare through the National Day of Prayer what America is — and has been: one nation under God. It's a powerful reminder that while the forces of secularism may be doing everything they can to take God out of our culture, they can't take Him off our hearts. For one brief day, the hammers swinging away at our greatest pillar of strength — faith — fall silent, and men and women enjoy with one powerful voice the freedom to ask God's blessing on our nation. How long this solemn tradition will survive the rough seas of religious liberty is anyone's guess. But for now, we live in grateful recognition that no government of man or ruling from the courts is more capable of changing this nation than millions of people on their knees in prayer. We are still a country whose highest leader — whether out of obligation or sincere belief — "invites the citizens of our Nation to give thanks, in accordance with their own faiths and consciences, for our many freedoms and blessings."
Why Americans Oppose Economic Redistribution Despite Income Inequality
Skeptics about democracy in the 18th and 19th centuries argued that the enfranchised masses would use their votes to seize the property of the relatively few rich. What could be more natural? But it hasn't happened, in this country or abroad, to anything like the extent that those would-be Cassandras feared. Nonetheless, we continue to hear calls for economic redistribution, the clinical term for public policies transferring money from the relatively few rich to the much more numerous non-rich. We also hear cries of frustration from advocates of such polices. The latest example is Thomas Edsall, the longtime Washington Post reporter now writing for the New York Times. Unlike most other liberal reporters, who are optimistic cheerleaders for their team, Edsall has long been alert to signs of liberalism's weakness.
Thursday, May 7, 2015
Why Baltimore Burned
Liberals have been the biggest losers in the Baltimore Blame Game. For a week they've been saying a lot of stupid things about the cause of the riots in Baltimore. — They said the wild night of rioting, looting and burning by young black men was caused by Freddie Gray's death, which was supposedly yet another example of our country's racist policing methods even though three of the six cops indicted were black. — They said the rioting in Baltimore was caused by the inner-city's bad economy or the shortage of jobs that'll pay high school dropouts with no skills $15 an hour. — They said the rioting was caused by the mass incarceration of black men, the growing wage gap between rich and poor, Republican cuts in social spending, underfunded schools and the legacy of slavery.
Handle With ObamaCare
The Lone Stars *aren't* alone in their objections to the ObamaCare mandate. In Texas, legislators are stopping one of the most egregious elements of the President's signature failure: the order that forces Americans to become unwilling partners in the abortion business. Twenty-five states have beaten back the attack by building their own wall between policyholders and abortion coverage. And if Lieutenant Governor Dan Patrick and State Senator Larry Taylor (R) get their way, Texas will be number 26. In a bill that just sailed out of the Lone Star Senate, leaders voted 21-10 to opt out of abortion under ObamaCare. Despite pressure from the Left's Wendy Davis wannabes, Taylor was clear: "This is not a ban on elective abortions... Under this bill, Texans can choose to pay for abortions, or they can choose not to pay for the abortions of others." In fact, he said with irony, "this bill is all about choice."
Clinton Cash and Clinton Corruption
It turns out that 17 years ago Independent Counsel Kenneth Starr was lucky that, at the end of his long pursuit of President Bill Clinton, he could fasten upon a DNA sample left by the president on Monica Lewinsky's dress to prove that Clinton was lying when he said, "I did not have sexual relations with woman, Miss Lewinsky." Otherwise Starr might still be pursuing the wily ex-president. At the beginning of "Clinton Cash," an excruciatingly thorough investigation of the Clintons' massive accumulation of wealth ($136.5 million since Hillary said they were "dead broke"), Peter Schweizer describes how Secretary of State Hillary Clinton waived or ignored department restrictions on the Clintons' cosmopolitan circle of donors. Schweizer writes: "Any serious journalist or investigator will tell you that proving corruption by a political figure is extremely difficult." What a shame that "journalists and investigators" could not come across a DNA sample proving Bill and Hillary had lied about, say, that State Department concession to the Russians over their purchase and shipment of American uranium. The Russians needed her approval, as did dozens of other dubious recipients of State Department concessions. With scientific proof of wrongdoing in hand, both Clintons could be indicted. Possibly they will be indicted, but a DNA sample would have made it so much easier. Ask Ken Starr.
Baltimore: The Intersection of the Grievance Culture and the Welfare State
After the mysterious death of suspect Freddie Gray, the Maryland state's attorney for Baltimore charged all six Baltimore police officers involved with his arrest and transport. The crimes ranging from "second-degree depraved-heart murder" to involuntary manslaughter, assault, misconduct in office and false imprisonment. Locals cheered her decision to charge all six. The charges followed three days of riots triggered by Gray's funeral and came almost immediately after the medical examiner filed his report calling Gray's death a "homicide." Now for the hard part. Not only will the charges be difficult to prove but three of those charged are black. The claim of illegal "racial profiling" argues that white racist officers possess an unwarranted fear of young black men. But what happens to that analysis when the accused officers are black? If black cops are just as likely to engage in race-based misconduct, why did Ferguson demonstrators demand a "diverse" police force?
No Law, No Civilization
Why did Rome and Byzantium fall apart after centuries of success? What causes civilizations to collapse, from a dysfunctional fourth-century-B.C. Athens to contemporary bankrupt Greece? The answer is usually not enemies at the gates, but the pathologies inside them. What ruins societies is well known: too much consumption and not enough production, a debased currency, and endemic corruption. Americans currently deal with all those symptoms. But two more fundamental causes for decline are even more frightening: an unwillingness to pay taxes and the end of the rule of law.
Smart Policing: Lock Up Liberals
Astronomically low crime rates may be one of the greatest public policy triumphs in history. All this time, liberals have been lying in wait, dying to undo all the accomplishments of the last 20 years. A quarter century of peace has lulled ordinary people into taking their safety for granted. They naturally assume that everyone regards it as a good thing that people are able to go about their lives without being raped, beaten, slashed or murdered. They don't know liberals. I've been warning you since 2001 that, as soon as we left the room, liberals would start emptying the prisons and loosing predators on us again. The stunning crime reduction of the last couple of decades is being called a "public policy disaster" from every news outlet — even the news outlets currently being looted in Baltimore.
The Terrorists Among Us
The Obama administration says it is still trying to determine whether ISIS was behind the attack in Garland, Texas, in which two terrorists were shot dead after trying to kill people attending a "draw the Prophet Muhammad" contest. ISIS is not only claiming responsibility, but promising new attacks. On anonymous message board JustPasteIt, a group that identified itself as ISIS posted its intentions: "The attack by the Islamic State in America is only the beginning of our efforts to establish a wilayah (governing province) in the heart of our enemy. Our aim was the khanzeer (swine) Pamela Geller and to show her that we don't care what land she hides in or what sky shields her; we will send all our Lions to achieve her slaughter. ... To those who protect her: this will be your only warning of housing this woman and her circus show. Everyone who houses her events, gives her a platform to spill her filth are legitimate targets. We have been watching closely who was present at this event and the shooter of our brothers. We knew that the target was protected. Our intention was to show how easy we give our lives for the Sake of Allah."
Speak Truth to Narrative
"If absolute power corrupts absolutely," the actor Harry Shearer once asked, "does absolute powerlessness make you pure?" The answer, according to a lot of people, is yes. Upon receiving the George Polk Career Award last month, Gary Trudeau, the creator of the satirical comic strip Doonesbury, attacked the staff of the French magazine Charlie Hebdo: "By punching downward, by attacking a powerless, disenfranchised minority with crude, vulgar drawings closer to graffiti than cartoons, Charlie wandered into the realm of hate speech, which in France is only illegal if it directly incites violence. Well, voilà — the 7 million copies that were published following the killings did exactly that, triggering violent protests across the Muslim world."
Patrician Blacksmith for President?
America's smallest state — one Nevada county is nearly eight times larger — has the longest name: In a 2010 referendum, voters kept the official title, State of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations. The state also has a dark-horse presidential candidate who is the only Democratic candidate so far who can shoe a horse. "Put a blacksmith in the White House" could be Lincoln Chafee's slogan. A prep-school classmate of Jeb Bush at Andover, Chafee is a scion of one of Rhode Island's Five Families. His implausible hope is to defeat Hillary Clinton's implausible campaign to be anointed champion of, simultaneously, downtrodden Americans and foreign uranium magnates. He promises a third Barack Obama term: "President Obama has led admirably. He has revived our economy." Chafee said this shortly before the grim expectation that the economy's first-quarter growth would be a miserable 1 percent proved to be five times too optimistic.
Wednesday, May 6, 2015
