Right Opinion
The best of conservative opinion and commentary, updated daily.
Saturday, April 11, 2015
No Truth, No Consequences
When I was a kid, a very popular radio show hosted by Ralph Edwards was "Truth or Consequences." Contestants would be asked questions and if they muffed one, they would have to face the consequences, which usually involved performing embarrassing stunts in public and then returning the following week to describe their humiliation. But since there were prizes bestowed for "being such a good sport," there was an endless queue of willing victims. That was then, this is now. People – especially those in public life, particularly political life -- can do or say just about anything and get away with it. For instance, even though Eric Holder's own Justice Department found that Officer Darren Wilson had done everything by the book – and you have to know how much Mr. Holder hated that conclusion! – and that the shooting of Ferguson thug Michael Brown was justified, no member of the Congressional Black Caucus ever apologized for standing on the front steps of Congress conveying the false narrative that Brown had raised his hands in surrender.
Tougher Sanctions Necessary to Force Iran to Change Its Terrorist Ways
If recent news accounts are to be believed, the framework of agreement between the U.S. and Iran is on the rocks. Iran's top officials, Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei and President Hassan Rouhani, are saying economic sanctions must end immediately and that U.N. inspectors will not be granted unfettered access to military installations and nuclear construction sites. But this may be nothing more than Iranian domestic political spin. And as long as there's a potential deal, a critical point needs to be made: There is no provision for, or even discussion of, putting political restraints on Iran. That is, there is nothing in this deal that would force Iran to change its terrorist ways. Iran will continue to be the No. 1 state sponsor of terrorism in the Middle East, no matter what the deal. How can this be?
From The Comedy Store
The White House said that Russian hackers made it into the White House's computers last year through State Department computers. They gained access to Obama's top-secret daily schedule. The Russians not only knew what golf course he was at, they knew what hole he was on.
Friday, April 10, 2015
Still Worth Arguing About the Financial Crisis
The candidates who are announcing for president will be cheered to know that the Democratic Party has been hemorrhaging popularity the way the housing market lost value in 2008. In 2009, 62 percent of Americans had a favorable view of the party. In January, only 46 percent said the same. But the Democrats' loss has not been the Republicans' gain. A 2015 Pew survey found that 40 percent of Americans had a favorable opinion of Republicans in 2009, and just 41 percent do today. Republicans might profitably ponder two things. First, this question from a Pew poll: Which party "cares about the problems of the middle class"? Sixty percent said the phrase applied to Democrats. Only 43 percent thought it accurately described Republicans.
Tsarnaev Conviction Puts Death Penalty Opponents in an Awkward Spot
How about now? Are you in favor of the death penalty now? I ask because the preferred argument from opponents of the death penalty is doubt: We can never be sure; look at all of the people released from death row; we can't afford to risk ending a single innocent life. None of those arguments apply to Dzhokhar Tsarnaev. He admitted, through his lawyers, that he and his brother murdered three people and maimed 260 others at the Boston Marathon. (A few days later, they murdered a police officer.) Tsarnaev knowingly left a bomb next to a family on a family outing. Martin William Richard, 8 years old, died. His sister Jane lost a leg. His mother lost an eye.
Rand Paul Puts on a Clinic
At this point, I am mighty bullish on Sen. Ted Cruz but I very much like several other possible GOP presidential contenders, and I have to say that Republicans can learn a valuable lesson from Sen. Rand Paul's recent handling of the ambush media. Often when Republicans are ambushed, they fumble around, grow defensive and apologetic, and shrink to a point just short of the fetal position. They just can't seem to take the heat of the accusations that they are bigoted or uncompassionate. Instead of striking back, they raise one arm up in defense, get further bludgeoned and descend into retreat. We are right on the issues. We are the champions of liberty. We advocate colorblindness and equal treatment under the law. But we end up groveling to people of smaller numbers with bigger megaphones. No wonder we're losing the culture war. Yes, politics rolls downhill from culture to a great extent, but political leaders have a unique opportunity to impact the culture upstream. Sadly, our side usually doesn't even recognize this opportunity.
The Iran Deal: What We've Given Up
It was but a year and a half ago that Barack Obama endorsed the objective of abolition when he said that Iran's heavily fortified Fordow nuclear facility, its plutonium-producing heavy-water reactor and its advanced centrifuges were all unnecessary for a civilian nuclear program. The logic was clear: Since Iran was claiming to be pursuing an exclusively civilian program, these would have to go. Yet under the deal Obama is now trying to sell, not one of these is to be dismantled. Indeed, Iran's entire nuclear infrastructure is kept intact, just frozen or repurposed for the length of the deal (about a decade). Thus Fordow's centrifuges will keep spinning. They will now be fed xenon, zinc and germanium instead of uranium. But that means they remain ready at any time to revert from the world's most heavily (indeed comically) fortified medical isotope facility to a bomb-making factory.
The Challenge: What Next?
Churches were full last Sunday morning. People around the world, many hungry for the hope of new life, flocked into chapels to hear the Easter story. It is a good story. But everyone who hears the story must wonder at some point or another; "What next? How does this story change anything for me, really?" The story of God's love for us is far more than just a story. It is the miracle of God making the ultimate sacrifice — giving the life of his only son as a sin offering — so that we might be redeemed. His triumphant resurrection, conquering the power of death, enables us to conquer it too. And there is much more to this faith than Easter morning.
Shocking Primetime Balance on CBS
Conservatives know what to expect when the networks create shows about lawyers. From "L.A. Law" to "Ally McBeal," we've observed countless crusading liberal protagonists confront and defeat conniving corporate executives and other corrupt establishment villains. This seemed to describe "The Good Wife" on CBS over the past five years. But something interesting has happened over the past few weeks. Producers have introduced a wealthy conservative character named Reese Dipple, who engages seasoned liberal lawyer Diane Lockhart on the hot-button social issues of the day. As they say on cable TV, you won't believe what happens next.
Obama Strikes Out Again
I know that some people were upset that Barack Obama didn't call to congratulate Bibi Netanyahu on his monumental victory in the Israeli election, the way that the leaders of Canada, India and the U.K., did. I wasn't one of those people. For one thing, everyone knows by this time that the only thing worse than Obama's policies are his manners. He just might be the pettiest individual to have ever been engaged in American politics. Judging by the man he turned out to be, I'm betting that as a kid, Obama was the sort of brat who would hold his breath and stomp his feet if he didn't get his own way. Besides, it's Netanyahu who should have called and thanked Obama. Just knowing that Obama hated Israel's P.M., and that he had even sent his operatives to Israel and helped to fund their activities on behalf of the opposition, was probably all it took to turn what was predicted to be a squeaker of an election into a rout.
Slow-Motion Justice
Justice has been done in Boston, but it's not finished. Dzhokhar Tsarnaev has been found guilty in the Boston Marathon terrorism bombing. The verdict Wednesday was no surprise. Everyone in the country already knew that Tsarnaev and his dead brother planted two bombs in the crowd at the Boston Marathon on April 15, 2013. Even Tsarnaev's defense team acknowledged that he took part in the act of domestic terrorism that killed three and wounded 260 others.
Obama Deal With Iran in Trouble
Is the tide turning against President Obama's purported nuclear weapons deal with Iran? One sign that the answer is yes is the devastating opinion article in Wednesday's Wall Street Journal by former Secretaries of State Henry Kissinger and George Shultz. The architect of Richard Nixon's opening to China and the partner of Ronald Reagan in his negotiations with the Soviet Union are diplomatic in their criticisms. They pay passing tribute to their successor John Kerry's "persistence, patience and ingenuity." But they have many disturbing questions -- I count 16 question marks in the article -- about the deal. Certainly it falls far short of what Obama himself cited as minimum requirements as recently as December 2013. The Fordow underground facility will not be eliminated; the heavy water Arak reactor won't be closed down; and Iran will be allowed thousands of centrifuges unnecessary for any peaceful nuclear power program.
Thursday, April 9, 2015
Can the Left Come Up With One True Story?
From the Duke lacrosse team, the Columbia mattress girl and the University of Virginia, the left has not been able to produce one actual rape on a college campus. It's beginning to look as if the rape of the Sabine women never happened, either. Someone's going to have to go back and investigate. The big finale to the latest college rape fable, Rolling Stone's whimsical "A Rape on Campus," about a fraternity gang rape at the University of Virginia that never happened, is the Columbia Journalism Review's "investigation" of the story, released Sunday night. It's more of a house of mirrors than a finale, inasmuch as CJR's report is so preposterous that it demands its own investigation.
Is the Modern American University a Failed State?
Modern American universities used to assume four goals. First, their general education core taught students how to reason inductively and imparted an aesthetic sense through acquiring knowledge of Michelangelo, the Battle of Gettysburg, "Medea" and "King Lear," Beethoven's "Ode to Joy," and astronomy and Euclidean geometry. Second, campuses encouraged edgy speech and raucous expression -- and exposure to all sorts of weird ideas and mostly unpopular thoughts. College talk was never envisioned as boring, politically correct megaphones echoing orthodox pieties. Third, four years of college trained students for productive careers. Implicit was the university's assurance that its degree was a wise career investment.
Bill Clinton Spoke the Truth, Honest
Some of my most cherished lines from President Bill Clinton's presidency had nothing to do with women with whom he did or did not have sexual relations. Rather, they were inspired by the federal Religious Freedom Restoration Act, which he signed on the South Lawn of the White House on Nov. 16, 1993. At the time, there was not much controversy about what he then said, but they were admirable lines nonetheless. Today they might be deemed heroic lines. Back in 1993, President Clinton said that our Founding Fathers "knew that religion helps to give our people a character without which a democracy cannot survive." Then he elaborated on the Religious Freedom Restoration Act, saying: "What this law basically says is that the government should be held to a very high level of proof before it interferes with someone's free exercise of religion. This judgment is shared by the people of the United States, as well as by the Congress. We believe strongly that we can never be too vigilant in this work." In the coming years, some 30 states adopted variations of the Religious Freedom Restoration Act, and all was quiet, until whammo.
Obama's Iran Deal: Someday the World Will Cry, 'Why?!'
Barack Obama is a young man. By the time he leaves office, he will be in his mid-50s. Based on life expectancy, he could live for another 40 years or so. So he will be around to see the full consequences of his disastrous Iran nuclear "framework." The deal is done. No matter what Republicans do, Europeans fully intend to let sanctions expire. They just needed an excuse to do so, an excuse that Obama provided. Someday, nations will ask why the world's superpower ignored chants of "death to America" and "death to Israel" and allowed Iran to slow-walk toward getting nuclear weapons.
When Everything Is a Crime
What began as a trickle has become a stream that could become a cleansing torrent. Criticisms of the overcriminalization of American life might catalyze an appreciation of the toll the administrative state is taking on the criminal justice system, and liberty generally. In 2007, professor Tim Wu of Columbia Law School recounted a game played by some prosecutors. One would name a famous person -- "say, Mother Teresa or John Lennon" -- and other prosecutors would try to imagine "a plausible crime for which to indict him or her," usually a felony plucked from "the incredibly broad yet obscure crimes that populate the U.S. Code like a kind of jurisprudential minefield." Did the person make "false pretenses on the high seas"? Is he guilty of "injuring a mailbag"?
Carly Fiorina, a Woman of Accomplishment
When people speak of "the first woman president" they usually mean Hillary Clinton, who is expected to announce her candidacy soon. But there's another woman, a Republican, who will shortly vie for the top job. She is Carly Fiorina, former CEO of Hewlett-Packard. The polls don't register much support for Fiorina, but if people listen to what she has to say, particularly about Hillary Clinton, that could change. In an interview, Fiorina told me that, unlike a male candidate, she could better take on Hillary Clinton: "No matter what that man says, she will play the gender card or the war on women card. She won't be able to do that with me."
Iran Nuke Deal Is No Deal At All
The first thing one needs to know about the nuclear deal with Iran is that it is not, in fact, a deal. You might be confused about this point, given that so many news outlets refers to a "deal" that doesn't exist. In fairness, many do so simply for expediency's sake. The various parties to the talks did come away with an agreement, but it was an agreement to haggle more about what a deal might look like. We don't have a good word for such things, so people use "deal" as a placeholder. But in any other realm of life, if you left a negotiation where things stand in Lausanne, Switzerland, you wouldn't think you had a deal. The known disagreements are profound and the room for further disagreements vast.
Wednesday, April 8, 2015
Why the Left Lies
"When yet another hand clamped over her mouth, Jackie bit it, and the hand became a fist that punched her in the face. 'Grab its motherf---ing leg,' she heard a voice say. And that's when Jackie knew she was going to be raped." Thus started a 9,000-word article in Rolling Stone magazine about the supposed rash of campus rapes across America. The writer, Sabrina Erdely, began with the horrifying story of Jackie, a college girl who found herself raped by seven men at the Phi Kappa Psi fraternity house at the University of Virginia while two other men, including her date, "gave instruction and encouragement." The University of Virginia banned Phi Kappa Psi from campus. People vandalized the frat house, hurling rocks through windows and covering the premises with graffiti. Commentators and politicians all over the nation bloviated gravely about the deep problem of sexual brutality on campus. Those who questioned Jackie's story were accused of not taking rape seriously enough; to demand facts equated to shaming a rape victim.