Right Opinion
The best of conservative opinion and commentary, updated daily.
Tuesday, March 10, 2015
What Happened to Obama's Moral Authority?
One vast, towering reason for Barack Obama's victory over John McCain in 2008 was the widespread expectation that an articulate and half-black chief executive would help the country overcome at long last its racial anxieties. He'd speak about race with far-seeing eye and reasonable demeanor. He'd see all sides of the matter. He'd guide with confidence -- as he sought to do in Selma the other day, reminding Americans that "the march is not yet over; we know the race is not yet won. We know reaching that blessed destination where we are judged by the content of our character requires admitting as much." Etc. -- words and more words, glistening for a minute or two in the sunlight, then just lying there. So it goes.
The 'Disparate Impact' Racket
The U.S. Department of Justice issued two reports last week, both growing out of the Ferguson, Missouri shooting of Michael Brown. The first report, about "the shooting death of Michael Brown by Ferguson, Missouri police officer Darren Wilson" ought to be read by every American. It says in plain English what facts have been established by an autopsy on Michael Brown's body -- by three different pathologists, including one representing the family of Michael Brown -- by DNA examination of officer Darren Wilson's gun and police vehicle, by examination of the pattern of blood stains on the street where Brown died and by a medical report on officer Wilson, from the hospital where he went for treatment.
Selma Plus 50
I liked the movie "Selma," though it could have done without the rap song during credits that referenced "hands up, don't shoot," a slogan that emerged from the shooting of Michael Brown by a Ferguson, Missouri, police officer whose actions the Justice Department recently determined did not "constitute prosecutable violations" of federal civil rights law. As President Obama marched last weekend in Selma, Alabama, along with others commemorating that seminal civil rights demonstration, it became clear that the time has come to stop focusing on marches and take a sober look at what really troubles the African-American community today and how to un-trouble it. We might ask: Are African Americans better off than they were 50 years ago when it comes to jobs, economic independence and especially intact families?
King v. Burwell's Very Existence Says a Lot About ObamaCare
On Wednesday the Supreme Court heard oral arguments in King v. Burwell, the case challenging the IRS's decision to pay subsidies to lower-income health insurance buyers in states with federal insurance exchanges -- even though the Obamacare legislation authorizes subsidies only in states with exchanges "established by the state." The Obama administration is thus in the uncomfortable position of arguing that the president's signature law says what it doesn't say. Nevertheless, initial analyses of the oral argument suggest the government might win. The four Democratic-appointed judges seemed determined to advance arguments that, if you look at the statute as a whole, Congress wanted to pay subsidies to lots of people, even if it didn't say so. A similar argument was made with considerable invective in a dissent in an identical case by D.C. Circuit Judge Harry Edwards, a Democratic-appointed judge who otherwise during a long career encouraged consensus and civility in a once-rancorous court.
Monday, March 9, 2015
What Is the Future of Religion?
Science! It's given us lasers and spaceships and explained the many great mysteries of life, like what is the sun, where does lightning come from, and what's the deal with platypuses? Every day, the men in the lab coats tease out more secrets from this universe, and technology solves more of our problems (remember back in the day, when if you were lost in the woods, you couldn't pull out your phone and quickly look up the filmography of the guy who played Balki in *Perfect Strangers*?).
Pass the Marriage and Religious Freedom Act
The Marriage and Religious Freedom Act was introduced in the last Congress – in the Senate by Sen. Mike Lee (R-UT) with 11 co-sponsors and in the House by Rep. Raul Labrador (R-ID) with 92 co-sponsors. This legislation will soon be re-introduced in the current session and should be given priority by Senate and House leadership and passed. It is of enormous national importance. The bill will protect individuals from discrimination, under federal law, so that they may be free to express and conduct their business according to their religious conviction that marriage is a union between one man and one woman and that sexual relations take place within this framework.
Do Citizens Have a Lobby?
I'm beginning the sympathize more and more with the average man who thinks the system is rigged against him. The current unemployment rate in California, where I live, is 5.4 percent. This is almost a full percentage point higher than the unemployment rate for the nation as a whole. So you can imagine how the average unemployed Californian feels when he reads that the state Employment Development Department in Sacramento has hired citizens of India to process Golden State unemployment claims. According to News10, "with the exception of two managers, everyone inside the office is from outside of the U.S. They are employed by Deloitte, a major U.S. IT company hired by the state to create and manage its Unemployment Insurance Modernization project. The mostly Indian nationals are allowed to work here under a visa program called H-1B."
How Wisconsin Becoming a Right-to-Work State Will Boost Its Job Growth
Wisconsin is poised this week to become the 25th "right-to-work state," ending forced unionization and allowing individual workers to decide if they want to join a union or not. The Wisconsin Senate just recently passed right-to-work, and our sources in Madison say that the House, which is controlled by Republicans, will enact a similar law in the days ahead. Republican Gov. Scott Walker, a leading presidential candidate, is sure to sign the bill when it gets to his desk. "This isn't anti-union," insists Walker. "It restores worker rights and brings jobs back to Wisconsin." Some 3,000 liberal protesters stormed the Capitol in Madison over the weekend to reverse the momentum for the new law. This isn't Walker's first dust-up with union bosses. Four years ago, nearly 100,000 activists grabbed nationwide headlines when they protested his reforms in Wisconsin's collective bargaining process with public employee unions.
Patriots Deflate Marriage
A month after winning their fourth Super Bowl title, the New England Patriots are stepping onto another turf: the marriage debate. [Last] week, the NFL powerhouse -- along with Major League Baseball's Tampa Bay Rays and World Series-winning San Francisco Giants -- went on the offensive in the heavy-weight battle for marriage at the U.S. Supreme Court. In a brief signed by 370 other businesses, the Patriots, Rays, and Giants went on the record with their radical views, insisting that "allowing same-sex couples to marry improves employee morale and productivity, reduces uncertainty, and removes the wasteful administrative burdens imposed by the current disparity of state law treatment." They argue that state laws "that prohibit or decline to recognize marriages between same-sex couples hamper employer efforts to recruit and retain the most talented workforce possible in those states."
Keolis Agreed to High Standards -- Not Impossible Ones
When the French transit company Keolis landed an eight-year contract in January 2014 to operate commuter rail for the Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority, the deal was hailed by T general manager Beverly Scott for its stringent "no-excuses expectation that the operator will run the trains on time." "No excuses" promptly became a catchphrase, invoked repeatedly over the past year whenever Keolis and its performance have been in the spotlight. A Nexis search yields dozens of news stories referring to the "no-excuses contract" the company signed. As commuter service all but collapsed under the crippling snowstorms that hit Greater Boston this winter, the state's new transportation secretary, Stephanie Pollack, bluntly insisted Keolis would be held to its tough performance benchmarks, despite the snowfall's historic proportions.
Sunday, March 8, 2015
Obama Needs GOP for TPP
Michael Froman received from a Harvard Law School classmate, Barack Obama, a job that validates the axiom that the unlikelihood of any negotiation reaching agreement grows by the square of the number of parties involved. In trade negotiations, even one's own country is troublesome, as the catfish conundrum illustrates. And the degree of difficulty in achieving a free trade pact is proportional to the number of Democrats in Congress. As U.S. trade representative, Froman's goal is completion and ratification of the Trans-Pacific Partnership involving the United States and 11 Asia-Pacific nations, from Chile to South Korea, who generate 37 percent of the world's economic product. The TPP aims not just to liberalize trade but to reform some of these nations' domestic policies, particularly concerning labor and environmental issues, partly to entice certain Democratic constituencies to soften their opposition to free trade.
Hillary Has Already IMPLODED
Hillary has already imploded. An unnamed Democratic leader in the important state of Iowa has publicly worried: "What if she implodes?" We believe she has already imploded. The current scandal du hour is but the latest in a long line of Clinton scandals. Have we all forgotten the Rose Law Firm papers that were subpoenaed as part of the Whitewater investigation? She just happened to "find" them several years late. Maybe she misplaced them while dusting the third floor of the White House. Then there was her accusation that Bill and Monica were all part of "a vast right wing conspiracy." Eight month later, after a number of terror attacks on our embassies while we were fixated on the latest Clinton scandal, we learned that it really was Bill and Monica after all. Hillary was, by her own admission, the last of 315 Americans to figure that one out.
The Democrats' Dilemma
Here's a shocker. Rahm Emanuel may not be re-elected as mayor of Chicago. The reason? Emanuel has been siding with poor, minority children who want a better chance in life against Chicago teachers unions who view the public schools as a jobs program rather than a place to educate children. Guess which of these two groups is not allowed to vote? When he was running for office, John Edwards reflected the way that many Democrats would probably like to think of themselves. Edwards talked about two Americas – which he characterized as the haves and the have nots. He promised to raise taxes on the richest two percent and spend the money on … well …. If you weren't listening very carefully you might have assumed he was going to spend it on the poor.
Bait & Switch
In spite of constantly lying and cheating, liberals always claim to hold title to the moral high ground. Their instinct is always to pretend to care about things they don't. For instance, the House Republicans, in an attempt, to prevent Obama's granting legal status to five million illegal aliens, tied funding for Homeland Security to defunding Obama's blatantly unconstitutional power grab. Predictably, the Democrats in the Senate said that proved Republicans didn't care about protecting us from terrorists without even referring to the actual sticking point. And Mitch McConnell, who is as useless as a human appendix, never bothered making the Democrats explain why they were willing to sacrifice national security for the sake of providing illegal aliens with Social Security numbers and the ability to collect tax refunds for taxes they never paid!
Saturday, March 7, 2015
From The Comedy Store
California gun rights activists are lobbying legislators in Sacramento to change the state's law which bans Californians from openly carrying handguns. The ban has a few exceptions. The law allows exemptions for hunting and shooting events, such as changing lanes on the Hollywood Freeway.
Time for a Military Man in the White House?
"More than any election since 1980," ace pollster Kellyanne Conway tells me, "2016 will be a national-security contest." And she says former Gov. Rick Perry may have the best chance to convince voters that he can be commander-in-chief. Let's think on that. With the world in turmoil, who do you really want sitting across the negotiating table from Vladimir Putin, the Iranian mullahs or the Chinese? How about a military man to command the war to destroy radical-Islamic jihadism? Very few people know that between 1972 and 1977, Perry served in the U.S. Air Force, flying C-130 tactical aircraft in Europe and the Middle East. He is the only current GOP candidate to have worn the military uniform. And he rarely talks about it.
Friday, March 6, 2015
There Goes the NEA Again
Elizabeth Harrington at the Washington Free Beacon offers a familiar old slice of sleaze funded by the federal government. An "investigative theatre" company in New York, The Civilians, has been granted almost $950,000 by the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) and believe it or not, the National Science Foundation. Why should the American taxpayer -- you -- be forced to pay for the garbage that follows? Because you, and everyone else, would never pay for it if it weren't mandated by this radical administration which will be gone in 22 months, thank God. Their most recent work of "art" was a musical called "Pretty Filthy," exploring the "human side of the porn industry." While the porno piece wasn't directly funded by the NEA, federal funds keep this propaganda wagon on the road.
Help Charities Keep the Faith!
Is it possible to be "too Christian" to care for kids? Some liberals think so. Instead of welcoming the help that charities offer with the adoption and foster parent system, some intolerant states seem intent on walling off their support. While the government struggles to keep up with the demand, faith-based groups have picked up the slack with decades of work connecting needy kids with loving homes. Unfortunately, that partnership has been a rocky one of late, as some states decide that their beliefs about homosexuality disqualify them as service providers. A few years ago Catholic Charities in D.C. was forced to close its doors on a popular foster care program after an ugly confrontation with the City Council about its decision not to place children with same-sex couples. When the nonprofit refused to change its policy, city officials issued an ultimatum: ignore the Church's core teachings or wave goodbye to $2 million in foster care funding. Susan Gibbs, a spokesman for the group, explained that Catholic Charities really had no choice. "The city (said) that in order to provide social services, you need to be secular. For us, that's really a problem."
Conservative Solutions
Now that Republicans have walked back from the brink on funding for the Department of Homeland Security, it's time to figure out whether there is any way forward on the immigration reform. I've spent the past few weeks talking -- and listening -- to conservatives on the issue, and I've actually become more hopeful, but I don't expect it will be easy. Nor do I expect it will happen soon. The major obstacle to immigration reform as far as the GOP is concerned is President Obama. They just do not trust him to enforce the law -- any law -- if he happens to disagree with it. When Obama decided to take executive action to give temporary legal status and work permits to four million illegal immigrants, he ruined any chance that compromise could be found while he is in office.
Netanyahu Was Right to Bring Up the Holocaust
One aspect of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's speech to Congress that really seemed to get under the skin of many Obama loyalists was his contention that the Jews are facing another 1938. And of course, the historical analogy is imperfect because historical analogies are almost always imperfect. The problem for the Jews is that in this case, there simply isn't a better one. Across the media, Netanyahu's reference to the greatest tragedy in Jewish history was treated as some kind of political stunt. It was kind of like ... well, I guess, like questioning a president's patriotism. "At the end of it, when I think he really veered off into political territory, don't know if it was on a delay at that point, but when he sort of raised the specter of the Holocaust and 'never again' and Elie Wiesel, I mean, there was this great -- Ari Fleischer could have done this great political speech," explained Gloria Borger on CNN.