Right Opinion
The best of conservative opinion and commentary, updated daily.
Tuesday, March 31, 2015
Where the Red Line Came From -- Before It Was Crossed
There are still nearly two years left in Barack Obama's presidency, but historians looking back on his record in foreign policy will surely identify one costly error: his refusal to follow through on the implied threat in stating that the Syrian regime's use of chemical weapons would be a "red line." That statement was made in a press conference on Monday, Aug. 20, 2012. The president was not scheduled to appear; press secretary Jay Carney said, "Looks like there's a surprise guest here." After fielding questions on other topics (Missouri Senate candidate Todd Akin, Mitt Romney's attack ads and tax returns, friendly fire deaths in Afghanistan) Obama responded to NBC's Chuck Todd's question on whether he envisioned using U.S. military to keep Syria's chemical weapons in safekeeping.
A Deal Like the One With North Korea?
Those who have spent considerable time with unabashed jokesters know they have a way of avoiding repetition. "Stop me if you've heard this one before," the wag usually declares, prior to rattling off his latest laugh-line. The Obama administration, with ample help from feckless Europeans, as well as China and Russia--two nations more than willing to undermine America whenever the opportunity presents itself--is poised to inflict a disastrous "joke" on the entire world. And make no mistake: we have heard this one before, courtesy of another Democrat administration and their pursuit of a treaty aimed at preventing a rogue nation from going nuclear. Anyone still remember the Agreed Framework of 1994? That was another "peace in our time" gem put together by President Bill Clinton and his "emissary," the unstintingly naive Jimmy Carter.
How Do You Solve a Problem Like the Clintons?
This being the 50th anniversary of the film "The Sound of Music," please permit me a poor adaption of a few of its song lyrics, which fit in nicely with our current political climate. How do you solve a problem like the Clintons? Their incessant vacuuming of cash and skirting (no pun intended) of laws and regulations would place lesser mortals in danger of prison, yet the Clintons' walk free, their money-making careers booming. "Dough, we fear, we need more, dear'Ray,' the name of a Clinton foeMe, a name that fits myselfFah, as far from law I runSo, I say when bending lawsLa, a shrug to follow soTee(off), with me for lots of 'bread'Which brings us back to dough."
Monday, March 30, 2015
Which Black Lives Matter?
Almost seven months after the fateful, fatal encounter between Michael Brown and former Ferguson Police Officer Darren Wilson, Attorney General Eric Holder officially announced a truth he had been holding close for months – that the "Hands Up, Don't Shoot" mantra that had been used since August was based on a lie. The lie was widely embraced by the media, public officials, and some with celebrity status. We witnessed not only protesters in the streets, but Rams players, members of Congress, and CNN 'journalists' in 'hands up' poses. The lie of 'hands up, don't shoot' concealed deeper truths, truths all too common in America – that Michael Brown was yet another young black male engaged in serious crime and who invited a deadly encounter with a police officer who was merely doing his job. The vastly disproportionate involvement of young men of color as both victims of crime and as offenders had yet again materialized as a deadly specter, opening the door to the harder conversation on race and policing that the superficial 'hands up' chant did nothing to resolve.
Obama's Hypocritical Attack on Netanyahu
It took Bibi Netanyahu nearly a week to apologize properly for his inflammatory comment on Israel's election day warning that Arab voters were "heading to the polls in droves." On Monday, speaking at his Jerusalem residence to a group of Israeli Arab community leaders, the newly reelected prime minister expressed his regret: "I know the things I said a few days ago wounded Israel's Arab citizens. That was not in any way my intention, and I am sorry." But even after four and a half years, there has been no apology from Barack Obama for *his* inflammatory remarks just before the 2010 election, when he exhorted Latinos to generate an "upsurge in voting" in order to "punish our enemies and ... reward our friends." Nor has the president ever expressed regret for his running mate's racially-tinged warning to a largely black audience in 2012 that the GOP was "going to put y'all back in chains" if Mitt Romney won the White House. In fact, the Obama campaign insisted no apology would be forthcoming.
Ted, Monica, and Mickey
In 1979, the year before Republicans nominated Ronald Reagan as their presidential candidate, the Rev. Jerry Falwell and conservative activist Paul Weyrich founded the Moral Majority. It was at the Christian university in Lynchburg, Virginia, Liberty University, founded by Rev. Falwell, where Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) just announced his candidacy for the Republican presidential nomination. Although Cruz made no reference to the Moral Majority in his remarks, his thinking clearly is where Falwell's and Weyrich's was when they founded that organization. That getting a widely politically inactive universe of church going evangelical Christians politically engaged can change America.
Senate Calls the Schatz on Marriage
In the Senate, members are usually spending pork -- not eating it! But a barbeque dinner was one of the few perks of [Thursday] night's vote-a-rama, the closest thing to a Senate sleepover there is. After working well past 4 a.m., members and their staffs were just leaving their offices [Friday] morning when most Americans were headed to theirs. Sixteen hours, 784 amendments, and gallons of coffee later, the weary 100 finally made their way to the exits for a two-week Easter break. By dawn, 42 amendments were actually voted on in the unique budget free-for-all -- which, for all the frenzy, isn't even legally binding. As it has for years, the Senate uses this crazy process to map out a budget blueprint. The benefit is that, unlike other legislative business, leaders can offer an unlimited number of amendments without worrying about filibusters. That usually means senators will take the opportunity to make a political point -- or try to get their colleagues on the record on an issue that they can use to their advantage in campaign ads later on.
Sexing & Texting With the Clintons
Joe Biden says really stupid things nearly every time he opens his yap. But that's small potatoes compared to the crimes and sins of the Clintons. What is truly remarkable about this couple is that, outside of Arkansas, most people had never heard of them prior to 1992. Over the course of 23 years, they have been involved in one scandal after another. A short stroll down memory lane will remind us of Whitewater; Filegate; Travelgate; accepting campaign contributions from China; renting out the Lincoln Bedroom to political supporters; a presidential pardon to fugitive Marc Rich; sex scandals involving Paula Jones, Kathleen Willey, Juanita Broaddrick, Gennifer Flowers and Monica Lewinsky; a cozy relationship with pedophile Jeffrey Epstein; perjury; impeachment; disbarment; accepting contributions from foreign nations while serving as Secretary of State; covering up the Benghazi massacre; and now ignoring legal and ethical sanctions involving the use of unauthorized email accounts.
Sunday, March 29, 2015
What Was Really at Stake in the Israeli Election: Free Enterprise
In terms of skills and education, Israel probably has the highest level of human capital per person in the whole world. Yet it's per capita output is mediocre – in the middle of the developed country pack. Why is that? Because Israel has been slow to adopt capitalism. How do I know that? Because Bibi Netanyahu told me that in an interview in Dallas, several years before he because prime minister. Once he became Israel's leader, he was been able to do something about it. In recent years Israel has become a center for entrepreneurship, innovation and capitalist spirit. But it wasn't always that way. Modern Israel began as a quasi-socialist society with a centrally controlled economy and a Histadrut labor federation. The Histadrut became a mainstay of the Labor Zionist movement and it wasn't merely a trade union. It owned a number of businesses and, for a time, was the largest employer in the country. Until Israel began moving away from a socialism, the Histadrut, along with the government, owned most of the economy.
DeMint at Yale: Academic Censorship as a Political Weapon
*The following are Jim DeMint's prepared remarks delivered to the William F. Buckley Jr. Program at Yale University.* I'd like to start out by telling you the story of a young guy named Omar Mahmood. He was in the news a couple months back. He's a junior at the University of Michigan, and writes for both the mainstream campus newspaper, The Michigan Daily, and the University's alternative conservative publication, the Michigan Review. At least he did, until he became one of academia's latest victims of political correctness. Omar recently wrote a short satire of the "check your privilege" fad. It was just a tongue in cheek article that described how a system of right-handed privilege was oppressing left-handed people everywhere through daily right-handed "micro-aggressions."
Remembrance of Clintons Past
An abscess of anger seems to gnaw at Hillary Clinton, but the reasons for her resentments remain unclear. The world's oldest party, which governed the nation during two world wars and is the primary architect of America's regulatory and redistributive state, is eager to give her its presidential nomination, in recognition of ... what? The party, adrift in identity politics, clings, as shipwrecked sailors do to floating debris, to this odd feminist heroine. Wafted into the upper reaches of American politics by stolid participation in her eventful marriage to a serial philanderer, her performance in governance has been defined by three failures. Her husband, having assured the 1992 electorate that voting for him meant getting "two for the price of one," entrusted to her the project that he, in a harbinger of the next Democratic president's mistake, made his immediate priority -- health care reform. Sen. Daniel Patrick Moynihan urged him to begin with welfare reform, just as wise Democrats wanted President Obama to devote 2009 to economic recovery rather than health care, perhaps sparing the nation six years and counting of economic sluggishness.
Saturday, March 28, 2015
The House of Tudor Didn't Get the Last Word
It's remarkable what five centuries can do for a guy's reputation. When Richard III, the last Plantaganet king of England, was killed at the Battle of Bosworth Field in 1485, his corpse was stripped and hauled in disgrace through the streets of Leicester, "all besprinkled with mire and blood … a miserable spectacle," as Holinshed's Chronicle recounted. Then it was stuffed into a crude grave, naked and coffinless, while "few lamented and many rejoiced."
'Dear Burt...'
I don't envy many people, but I did envy Abigail Van Buren her "Dear Abby" column. For years, she ruled the roost with her advice not only to the lovelorn, but to people having problems with their spouses, their siblings, their in-laws and even with their neighbors and co-workers, and she often got to do it in jokey fashion. I happen to be great at giving advice to people, especially if I can make jokes about their troubles. And in a pinch, Abby wasn't above simply sluffing them off on shrinks, priests and ministers. I, on the other hand, would never think to deal with sub-contractors. There is simply no problem I can't deal with in 100 words or less, so long as it's someone else's and not my own.
Curb Your Economic Pessimism
The economy has been in a tepid, soft, slow recovery for the past five-and-a-half years. It's the weakest rebound in generations. The Commerce Department's revision of fourth-quarter GDP shows that nothing much has changed. Over the past year, real economic growth registered 2.4 percent, slightly higher than the recovery average. It ain't much. Meanwhile, winter economic reports for retail sales, manufacturing and capital investment point to a weaker first quarter, perhaps around 1 percent. And Wall Street is talking about a possible profits recession, with expectations of a 2 or 3 percent drop in corporate earnings for the first half of 2015. So the market bears are out in full force. Now, let's acknowledge that coming off a deep recession, the rebound should have been 4 or 5 percent, not 2 percent. By some calculations, GDP is 10 percent -- or nearly $2 trillion -- below its long-term trend, and jobs may be lagging by 8 to 10 million.
Snake Oil Sociology
The American Psychological Association (APA) and the American Sociological Association (ASA) submitted friend of the Court briefs in the Windsor case. The U.S. Supreme Court ruled portions of the federal Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) unconstitutional. If the Windsor Court majority relied on those briefs, it was reliant on snake oil, not science. The APA and the ASA should be the guardians of good science. Instead, they have joined the ranks of the pink panzers of political correctness. Most studies we have seen that claim that children raised by same-sex parents suffer no disadvantages are so seriously flawed that in any other context, the ASA and APA would be the first to point out those methodological flaws. Some of the studies cited in amicus briefs to the Supreme Court in support of same-sex parenting have serious methodological flaws, which are not small but so basic they violate "Stats 101." The most notable of these is the use of something called an opportunity sample. That error would be committed, for example, if you went to the magazine American Rifleman to ask questions about proposed gun control legislation. American Rifleman is a publication of the National Rifle Association. The results of a reader survey would suffer from volunteer bias. Another flaw is what we call the snowball sample. That would occur if NRA members were invited to enlist friends and family members to be part of the sample and respond to a questionnaire. That only compounds the methodological problem.
From The Comedy Store
Obama played host to high school science students from across America at the annual White House National Science Fair. The president surveyed some projects that are silly and would never work. And after he left his foreign policy meeting, it was on to the kids' work.
Friday, March 27, 2015
Republicans Versus Republicans
When Ted Cruz officially stepped into the 2016 presidential ring this week the boo-birds attacked immediately. But it wasn't just the liberals of the mainstream media who threw bottles and chairs at the conservative Texan. It was Cruz's fellow Republicans. Is he qualified after only three years in the Senate? Where was he born again? Isn't he too aggressively Christian? Isn't he too conservative to win the general election? Shouldn't we nominate someone more moderate, someone who isn't hated by the MSM and wouldn't scare independents?
Even if God Didn't Give Us the Constitution, We Should Act Like He Did
As an atheist, I suppose I should be deeply troubled by Ted Cruz's God-heavy presidential announcement. Although the Texas senator's blast of old-fashioned American exceptionalism garnered most of the chortling media's attention, it's what troubles me the least about his aspirations. If the politicians treated the ideals of the Enlightenment as if they were handed down from heaven rather than a pliable set of guidelines perpetually bending to accommodate the vagaries of contemporary politics, I imagine the world would be a better place. They don't. As one reporter for Yahoo! News asked during Cruz's speech on Twitter: "Bizarre to talk about how rights are God-made and not man-made in your speech announcing a POTUS bid? When Constitution was man-made?"
Nothing Inevitable About Clinton Nomination
A new CBS poll on Hillary Clinton this week suggests that the former first lady, New York senator and secretary of state faces a steeper road to the White House than her supporters might think. Only 26 percent in the poll of the adult population had a favorable view of Clinton, while 37 percent had an unfavorable opinion, and an astonishing 36 percent said they hadn't heard enough to form an opinion or were undecided. Because the poll sampled all adults, not just registered voters, the poll's political significance is limited. Much of the general public pays little attention to politics, and even less so this far out from an election. And, obviously, only those who register and vote actually matter on Election Day.