Right Opinion
The best of conservative opinion and commentary, updated daily.
Wednesday, May 6, 2015
Will GOP Congress Stop DC's Attack on Conscience?
The District of Columbia Council and Mayor Muriel Bowser have launched a two-front war against the First Amendment rights of Catholic schools and other religious and pro-life institutions in Washington, D.C. The question now: Will House Speaker John Boehner and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell use the authority the Constitution gives Congress over D.C. and expenditures from the Treasury to protect religious liberty in the nation's capital itself? This is a defining issue for this Congress. In January, Bowser signed two pieces of D.C. legislation — the Reproductive Health Non-Discrimination Amendment Act and the Human Rights Amendment Act.
What Assata Taught Me
"What Assata taught me" is the new "Hands up, don't shoot." For $35, you, too, can sport a politically correct black hoodie emblazoned with a fugitive convicted murderer's name. Assata's apparel is the new rage among perpetually enraged Baltimore and Ferguson social justice warriors. It won't be long now before hipster actresses and cable news progressives are Instagramming themselves wearing this latest entry in radical chic to show their "solidarity." Here's what Assata taught me: The left's sick fetish for cop-killers is still going strong after four decades of violence, bloodshed, bigotry and excuses. The timing couldn't be more blood-boiling. As the relatives, friends and colleagues of NYPD Officer Brian Moore, 25, prepare to bury their hero on Friday after he was brazenly shot in the face this weekend by a thug with a long rap sheet and a deep hatred of police, Assata's army remains as militant as ever.
'Hate Group' Blamed for ISIS Attack
Liberals claim to be the world's boldest defenders of freedom of expression, which is, of course, nonsense. Here's another canard: Liberals also claim to be the most offended against anyone "blaming the victim." What liberals possess is an ideological system which identifies favored groups as victims and supports squelching the free speech of anyone challenging them. One of those favored groups is Muslims. Over the weekend, the American Freedom Defense Initiative held the Muhammad cartoon contest in Dallas, obviously a provocative event. But it wasn't meant to result in two Islamic extremists showing up with assault rifles, later shot to death by police after they opened fire. Two men identifying as ISIS have now attacked America — in our homeland. So how did the press respond? Liberal journalists deplored AFDI's exercise of free speech and blamed the targeted victims for the attack.
Why Freddie Ran
A Fatal Injury in Police Custody Highlights Baltimore's History of Bogus Busts
Huckabee Buzzing: Arkansas Gov. Renews GOP Bid
Mike Huckabee knows how to put the "Hope" in GOP hopeful. The former Governor became the sixth official Republican presidential candidate earlier [Tuesday], packing out the biggest venue in his small hometown of Hope, Arkansas. For a community of less than 20,000, the town has pumped out an impressive number of presidential hopefuls. And if Governor Huckabee is successful, it won't be the only home he has in common with President Bill Clinton. With his eyes set on the White House, this return contender is bringing a wealth of experience to the table — first as a pastor, then as the third-longest tenured governor of Arkansas, and most recently as a popular Fox News host. With a likability factor that's off the charts and a strong conservative backbone, Governor Huckabee packs a powerful punch in what could shape up to be one of the most formidable fields yet. While Senators Ted Cruz (R-Texas), Rand Paul (R-Ky.), and Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) are still in their first Senate terms, Mike already has one presidential campaign under his belt and a lifetime of speaking forcefully and sincerely about the important issues of our day.
Black Lives Matter
Before we examine the issue of police shootings of blacks, I would like to start the conversation with another question. Here it is: If a person chooses to stand on railroad tracks in the face of an oncoming train, who is responsible for his being run over? And if many people meet their maker this way, what would you recommend as the best way to reduce such deaths? Would you focus most of your efforts on train engineers, or would you counsel people not to stand on railroad tracks in the face of an oncoming train? In principle, the answer to these questions might help with the issue of police shootings in general and particularly those of blacks. First, the Ferguson, Missouri, case: Having robbed a liquor store, the person is walking in the middle of the street and blocking traffic. A police officer tells the person to get out of the street. What would you suggest the person do? Would you suggest that he ignore the police officer's instructions, push the officer as he attempts to get out of his vehicle and afterward attempt to take the officer's pistol?
America's Slow-Rolling Economic Crisis
Are the alarm bells finally ringing at the White House and in Congress? They should be. Last week's pitiful 0.2 percent economic growth for the first quarter of this year means the Obama slow-growth machine trudges onward. It's the slowest recovery in half a century. The Summer of Recovery that Joe Biden promised in 2009 still hasn't arrived, six years later. This is a national crisis, not any less significant than the burning of Baltimore last week. Actually, the two may be tied together. Economist Arthur Laffer shows that racial rioting in big cities is negatively associated with the economic growth rate. In the late 1960s and 1970s, cities became war zones, but the rioting almost entirely disappeared in the high-flying 1980s and 1990s, when incomes were rising, and job growth surged. Under Obama's slow-growth economy, urban unrest is bubbling over.
The New Lynch Mob
On Sunday, Democratic Maryland State Senator Catherine Pugh lavished praise on state's attorney Marilyn Mosby, who just days before announced that her office would file a bevy of charges against all six officers involved in the death of 25-year-old Freddie Gray. Gray's death drove protests and riots throughout Baltimore, serving as the spark to ignite local rage, and focusing national attention on the state of inner city black Americans. Pugh said that Mosby "really set the bar for the nation in terms of how these sorts of cases ought to be looked at." Pugh wasn't Mosby's only conspicuous fan. Rep. Elijah Cummings, D-Md., who has represented the failing city of Baltimore for decades, said, "Her integrity is impeccable without a doubt." The widow of Eric Garner, the New York City man who died after police officers used a submission hold on him, said, "I feel like the same scenario that happened in Baltimore also happened with my husband. I would just like to see something done." Race-baiter and riot-stoker extraordinaire Al Sharpton stated, "We cannot keep playing Russian roulette on whether or not we get a good prosecutor or not." Crowds in Baltimore reportedly celebrated Mosby's indictment of the officers. The Huffington Post called her "objectively badass." Fusion called her "America's favorite prosecutor."
Hillary's Armor
"This vast right-wing conspiracy," Hillary Clinton said, "has been conspiring against my husband since the day he announced." That was the "feminist" first lady's response when her husband was accused of having sex with a 21-year-old. Bill was more lawyerly. He said things like, "It depends upon what the meaning of the word 'is' is." The Wall Street Journal's Kim Strassel suggests that the Clintons must have a Scandal Manual: "The standard operating procedure never changes." Forty years ago, Hillary would have us believe that she wasn't just the wife of a man running for Arkansas governor -- she was a lucky or brilliant investor who in less than three weeks doubled her money. No, tripled! No, wait — quadrupled ... no, actually, much more!
Will Marriage Ruling Jeopardize Critical Private-Public Partnerships?
Last Tuesday's Supreme Court arguments on same-sex marriage showcased the need for a new federal law to protect private organizations who hold a view on marriage different from our growing and increasingly powerful federal government. If the Court decides the same-sex marriage question in the affirmative (its written opinion is expected in late June), its decision will have rippling effects throughout society — especially for those whose moral views and consciences compel them to disagree with the idea that marriage can be something other than a relationship between one man and one woman. One serious implication was on full view at the oral arguments, when Solicitor General Donald Verrilli was asked whether a college or university could have its tax-exempt status revoked if it opposed same-sex marriage. Representing the Obama administration's views on this matter, General Verrilli replied "I don't deny that ... it is going to be an issue."
To Break the Cycle of Poverty, Fix the Culture of Poverty
Neighborhoods matter. That's the upshot of two fascinating new studies from Harvard economist Raj Chetty and his colleagues. In the 1990s, the federal government launched an experiment, called the Moving to Opportunity project. It created a lottery for housing vouchers that would allow the winners to move out of high-poverty neighborhoods into low-poverty ones. The project's initial findings were a disappointment for people — like me — who argue that culture matters quite a lot. It did find that neighborhood poverty was a big factor in determining economic mobility, but researchers saw little evidence that getting poor people out of poor communities and into thriving ones helped them all that much. But Chetty et al. revisited the data, looking at how a move affected young children. The changes were enormous. The earlier kids got out of impoverished neighborhoods, the better they did over their lifetimes.
Tuesday, May 5, 2015
Running on Empty Is Unsustainable
Baltimore, Baltimore, Baltimore. In the space of a single week we've heard every theory, every rationalization, every speculation, good, bad and ugly, about what happened and why. Yet if truth be told, Baltimore is a symbol of something far more unsettling than the painful and largely inaccurate attempt to turn it into a metaphor about the racial divide that besets America. I say largely inaccurate because three of the cops charged in the case are black, including the officer charged with the most serious offense, second degree depraved murder. Yet there is a genuine divide afflicting America. It is the one between those who believe there is an over-arching code of morals to which society must adhere, and those who believe in the polar opposite, more familiarly known as anything goes. Quite simply there are millions of Americans who either don't know the difference between good and evil, and right and wrong — or simply don't give a damn. In their universe, life is an ever-evolving series of rationalizations allowing every type of execrable behavior to be justified.
2016 Field: The Doctor Is In!
Ben Carson is an amazing physician — but can he fix what's ailing America? Conservatives will be the judge, now that the famed doctor is throwing his surgical cap into the 2016 ring. Joining a crowded field that already includes Senators Ted Cruz (R-Texas), Marco Rubio (R-Fla.), Rand Paul (R-Ky.) and Carly Fiorina, Dr. Carson isn't your run-of-the-mill presidential candidate — and that may be the best thing the neurosurgeon has going for him! A lifetime in medicine, not politics, has given the popular speaker a different perspective on the country's woes — one that many believe is desperately needed. "I'm probably never going to be politically correct because I'm not a politician," he said. "I don't want to be a politician. Because politicians do what is politically expedient — I want to do what's right." Most famous for his 2013 National Prayer Breakfast speech, in which he criticized the administration's failed policies in front of the President, Dr. Carson has rocketed up the conservative charts. Since then, the African-American doctor has never shied away from criticizing the far-Left agenda, earning him plenty of fans in a country fed up with the mushy middle.
Why the Left Won't Call Rioters 'Thugs'
Two months ago, The New York Times published an op-ed piece by a professor of philosophy titled, "Why Our Children Don't Think There Are Moral Facts." This is how the professor began his piece: "What would you say if you found out that our public schools were teaching children that it is not true that it's wrong to kill people for fun or cheat on tests? Would you be surprised? I was." The problem, as the professor described it, is that a generation of Americans has been taught that there is no moral truth. There may be scientific truth and historical truth, but no moral truth.
Leftist Media See Conservative Goblins Everywhere
Three more Republicans declare their intention to be presidential nominees, and the leftist media, as if on cue, pounce on their prey like panthers. When venerated neurosurgeon Ben Carson announced his intentions, Washington Post reporter Robert Samuels leaped into action, under a headline reading in part, "Many blacks see a hero's legacy fade." So what has changed? Has Carson been charged with a crime? Did he commit some violent act? Domestic issues? No, it's simply that "for many young African Americans who grew up seeing Carson as the embodiment of black achievement — a poor inner-city boy who became one of the world's most accomplished neurosurgeons — his emergence as a conservative hero and unabashed critic of the United States' first black president has been jarring."
The Silence of the Lambs
Here's how it stands with Western civilization — what's left of it, I mean — insofar as various Westerners are concerned. You keep your lip buttoned whenever foes, internal as well as external, jump up and down on you, kick you around, make known their fondest wish is to do you in, ideals and all. You hope for the best while doing nothing. You follow, that is to say, the counsel of "Jacques," who posted Monday on the New York Times' website, disburdening himself as follows concerning the Sunday shootings at the Mohammed poster contest in Garland, Texas: "The Far Right is using 'freedom' as a stick to beat and provoke Muslims. Cartoons depicting the Prophet Mohammed do not advance the cause of freedom one iota. It is provocation pure and simple."
Satellite Data Sets and Monthly Trends Defy NOAA and NASA Claims
March saw the cold ease in the north, central and southeast U.S. as global anomalies fell in the NOAA analysis data (base period of 1981-2010) that goes into computer models. Despite a global anomaly of just 0.233 degrees Celsius, NOAA and NASA announced it was the warmest March in the record back to 1895. Satellite remote sensing covers the entire globe far better than the land station and ocean data sources and can be trusted to give a more accurate data assessment. On land in the current global data sets, some 1,200 stations are used. Many are warm biased, especially at night by urban heat island contamination. Also, as the Government Accountability Office found, over 42% of U.S. stations did not meet NOAA's own established minimum requirements for siting and had warm biases.
Race, Politics and Lies
Among the many painful ironies in the current racial turmoil is that communities scattered across the country were disrupted by riots and looting because of the demonstrable lie that Michael Brown was shot in the back by a white policeman in Missouri — but there was not nearly as much turmoil created by the demonstrable fact that a fleeing black man was shot dead by a white policeman in South Carolina. Totally ignored was the fact that a black policeman in Alabama fatally shot an unarmed white teenager, and was cleared of any charges, at about the same time that a white policeman was cleared of charges in the fatal shooting of Michael Brown. In a world where the truth means so little, and headstrong preconceptions seem to be all that matter, what hope is there for rational words or rational behavior, much less mutual understanding across racial lines?
Clinton Defenders Advance an Unpersuasive Argument
Some of Hillary Clinton's defenders have taken to saying that voters shouldn't pay attention to the latest Clinton scandals — the gushing of often undisclosed millions to the Clintons and their organizations by characters seeking official favors — because the charges are just one more in a long series: Whitewater, the Rose law firm billing records, the Buddhist temple fundraising, the Lippo Group. So, the theory goes, because the Clintons have been accused of so many scandalous doings before, people shouldn't be concerned now about Secretary Clinton's actions that helped certain donors turn over 20 percent of U.S. uranium reserves to a state-run Russian company.