Right Opinion
The best of conservative opinion and commentary, updated daily.
Wednesday, February 18, 2015
Obama's Unconstitutional Indiscretion
If federal law enforcement officers apprehended a person who had been using false Social Security number, a federal prosecutor with a heavy caseload dominated by more serious crimes might decide not to indict the person. Whatever its merits, that would be an act of prosecutorial discretion. But what if the prosecutor were to tell this user of a false Social Security number: It is OK for you to continue using that false Social Security number tomorrow. In fact, you may do so with impunity for the next three years. Would that be an act of prosecutorial discretion? Or would it effectively make the prosecutor a co-conspirator with someone using a false Social Security number?
The 'Jobs for Jihad Delinquents' Program
At the White House Summit on Extremism That Shall Remain Unspecified Because Violent Followers Belonging To Unnamed Extremist Movement Might Take Extreme Offense And Act Extremely, the feds are touting a groundbreaking new strategy to fight terrorists. Just kidding. It's actually the same old futile strategy that big-government liberals use to cure everything: mo' money, mo' money, mo' money. Instead of killing jihadists, keeping them off of our soil, locking up their poisonous spiritual agitators and shutting off their terror-funding pipelines, President Obama called on America and the world to "invest" in unnamed immigrant "communities" vulnerable to unnamed extremism. Some of the most generous welfare states on the planet have suffered horrific jihad attacks this year. Liberal Denmark's soft-on-jihad rehab program has been a disaster. But that hasn't stopped State Department spokes-babbler Marie Harf from mewling incessantly about "combating poverty" to combat ISIS.
The Challenge: Prone to Wander
This is Ash Wednesday, marking the first day of Lent. It's a holiday that's typically approached and celebrated -- if it's celebrated at all -- with a somber air because those who observe it do so to start a season of making sacrifices. It's easy to see why forty days of fasting would garner less attention and popularity than holidays that involve gifts. But the whole purpose of Lent, which we often forget, is to prepare Christians spiritually for the joy of Easter. And the entire Christian faith rests upon the Easter story; that Jesus conquered death. This miracle of Easter is the source of all our hope and joy not only in this life, but also in the life to come. With that in mind, preparing for Easter throughout Lent is not meant to be a burden, but a season ripe with expectation of the new life that emerges as people draw near to Jesus.
Aiming the Starter's Gun at the GOP
The safest bet you can possibly make at the beginning of a presidential election cycle is that the "objective" national media will savage the Republican contenders with "investigative" journalism. Not just one Republican contender, but all the Republican contenders. It's a bit amazing to look back at 2012 and remember that every Republican candidate was punched in the kisser by "journalism" if and when he or she inched into the lead. Sarah Palin never declared, but she was slimed in 2011 by NBC star Savannah Guthrie, who casually tossed out author Joe McGinniss's claims that she was a bad mother, that she and her husband used cocaine, and she had sex with an NBA star. Proof? Who needs it?
Obama's Phony War Limits
After Fighting ISIS for Six Months, the President Seeks Permission He Says He Does Not Need
The Muslim Brotherhood-ISIS Connection
Another link in a long chain of related terror organizations.
Questioning Ginsburg's Personal Judgment
If she can nap during the State of the Union, it shouldn't surprise us when people wonder if Ruth Bader Ginsburg is asleep on the job! Late last week, the 22-year Supreme Court Justice stunned everyone by commenting on same-sex "marriage" -- just months before the Court is set to decide it. In an interview with Bloomberg, Ginsburg was surprisingly open about her feelings on the issue, crossing an ethical line that raises new questions about the justice's impartiality. For any judge -- let alone one on the country's highest court -- to speak publicly about a pending case is an indiscretion that shocked people on both sides of the debate. Fox News's Brit Hume tweeted out his displeasure: "Justice Ginsburg sounds off on an issue pending before the Supreme Court. Amazing impropriety." The liberal justice, who had nothing but praise for President Obama, insists that America would come around to the Court's redefinition of marriage if it did indeed sweep aside every state's marriage amendment in a ruling this summer.
Barack Obama, Meet King Canute
Over the past six years, Obama has left us with a slew of memorable moments. There was that occasion when he called together a group of Democrats and Republicans, and took the opportunity to tell John McCain to sit down and shut up because one of them had won a presidential election, and that someone wasn't Sen. McCain. Then there were the many times that Obama swore that we could all keep our doctors and our health insurance, hoping nobody would notice he had his fingers crossed. Then there was the speech at the U.N. when Obama claimed that the Benghazi massacre was the direct result of a video nobody had seen or the debate with Mitt Romney when he denied that he had shut down oil production on federal land and got moderator Candy Crowley to back him up.
The President Who Doesn't Get It
A number of maxims surround the practice of war. The main maxim runs to this effect: When you get attacked, fight back. Unless, to be sure, you don't care whether you win or lose -- an option, to be sure, not given to American presidents and other national leaders, assuming, to be sure, they take with maximum seriousness their obligation to the security of their people and their people's freedom. Days after the mass beheadings of Coptic Christians in Libya, profoundly serious questions linger in the air. Does Barack Obama know what's going on all around him? Does he have the slightest inkling?
The University of Michigan's Tolerance Problem
I once asked my late father if he had any experiences with anti-Semitism. There weren't many. Although that was probably in part because of his scoring methodology. The Irish kids who beat up the Jewish kids in his Bronx neighborhood didn't do so because they were anti-Semitic, but because "they had to fight somebody," as my dad put it. Today, such behavior would probably be called a hate crime. So I suppose that's progress. He did tell me that the first time someone said to him "Don't Jew me" was during his freshman year at the University of Michigan. He was more shocked than offended. He couldn't believe someone he was friends with could be so stupid.
Glib 'Happy Talk'
When Alfred E. Neuman said "What me worry?" on the cover of Mad magazine, it was funny. But this message was not nearly as funny coming from President Barack Obama and his National Security Advisor, Susan Rice. In a musical comedy, it would be hilarious to have the president send out his "happy talk" message by someone whose credibility was already thoroughly discredited by her serial lies on television about the Benghazi terrorist attack in 2012. Unfortunately -- indeed, tragically -- the world today is about as far from a musical comedy as you can get, with terrorists rampaging across the Middle East, leaving a trail of unspeakable atrocities in their wake, and with Iran moving closer to producing a nuclear bomb, with an intercontinental missile on the horizon.
Shame
Today's liberals are not racists, but they often behave that way. They would benefit immensely from considering some of the arguments in award-winning scholar Dr. Shelby Steele's forthcoming book, "Shame: How America's Past Sins Have Polarized Our Country." Steele, a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution, explains that in matters of race, there is an ideological vision that completely ignores truth -- a vision he calls "poetic truth." In literature, poetic license takes liberties with grammatical rules, as well as realities, in order to create a more beautiful or powerful effect than would be otherwise possible. Liberals have a poetic commitment to black victimization as the explanation for the many problems affecting a large segment of the black community. The truth that blacks have now achieved a level of freedom comparable to that of others has to be seen as a lie. People who accept the truth about that freedom are seen as aligning themselves with America's terrible history of racism. Accepting that racism is still the greatest barrier to black achievement is the only way liberals can prove themselves innocent of racism. Thus, "modern liberalism is grounded in a paradox: it tries to be 'progressive' and forward looking by fixing its gaze backward. It insists that America's shameful past is the best explanation of its current social problems. It looks at the present, but it sees only the past."
No Gatekeepers
For years, people assumed encyclopedias had to be created by professionals. Then Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales attempted to create an encyclopedia without central planners. That sounded like a terrible idea to the old gatekeepers -- people who hired experts to carefully fact-check and edit every encyclopedia entry. When they heard that Wales would crowdsource an encyclopedia, one Encyclopedia Britannica editor sneered, "The user who visits Wikipedia is a visitor to a public restroom." But today research shows that Wikipedia is as accurate as Encyclopedia Britannica. Wikipedia is now the sixth most visited website, and the hardcover Encyclopedia Britannica no longer exists.
Tuesday, February 17, 2015
A Final First-Place Finish?
Hong Kong could lose its top economic-freedom ranking to Singapore
Libs Come Back for Moore
Leave it to a federal judge named Granade to blow up the marriage debate into an even bigger legal debate. Federal Judge Callie Granade, whose ruling was as explosive as the weapon it sounds like, has been at the center of a national firestorm over marriage since she issued an opinion last month. Her January decision to overthrow Alabama's natural marriage amendment hit an unexpected snag when officials with legal jurisdiction in Alabama refused to capitulate to her judicial overreach. By order of Alabama's Chief Justice Roy Moore, several probate judges across the state have refused to issue same-sex "marriage" licenses -- stunning liberals and threatening to topple the Left's mirage of court-imposed power. As Justice Moore has clearly stated, Granade's decision is limited to the specific parties to the case and only serves as persuasive (not binding) authority to non-parties. But those non-parties include probate judges under Justice Moore's administrative authority. In that capacity, he has informed them that anyone who issues licenses to homosexual couples is "breaking the Alabama Constitution's marriage amendment, which has not been overturned by the United States Supreme Court." And Alabama's word is the final one on marriage until the Supreme Court intervenes this summer.
On the Cusp of War -- Whether We Like It or Not
Last week in a move that defies common sense, the State Department ordered the Marine Security Force evacuating the American embassy in Yemen to destroy their own weapons before leaving the nation. They were leaving because Obama's self-described counter-terrorist "success story" was overrun by the Houthis, an Iranian-backed, Islamist terror group. Over the weekend, an Islamic terrorist in Copenhagen killed two people at an event promoting free speech and a synagogue. Five police were also wounded in the two separate attacks. Also over the weekend, ISIS released another horrific video depicting the beheading of 21 Egyptian Christians. They also paraded 17 Kurdish Peshmerga fighters in cages through the city of Kirkuk, Iraq, promising to burn them alive like Jordanian pilot Muath al-Kaseasbeh. ISIS has also reportedly seized the town of al-Baghdadi in Iraq's Anbar Province, putting them 5 miles from an air base staffed by U.S. Marines. In France, hundreds of Jewish tombs were desecrated at a cemetery. Obama's reaction to this plethora of savagery and anti-Semitism? He took a three-day golf vacation in Palm Springs that included two rounds at a private course owned by Oracle founder and billionaire Larry Ellison.
Why No Swimsuit Issue of Men?
On the happily few occasions when callers to my radio show make a particularly foolish comment, I ask them what graduate school they attended. When they ask why I assume they attended graduate school, I respond, "Only someone who went to graduate school would say something that foolish." Because it is never my intention to humiliate a caller, I always hasten to explain that my comment is not directed at the caller; it is directed at our universities. Moreover, I mean it literally. In order to say certain things that are so obviously foolish, one has to be taught them.
Obama, America's Nero
President Theodore Roosevelt said, "Speak softly, and carry a big stick." More than a century later, President Barack Obama speaks loudly (and incessantly) and carries a twig. Like Nero of ancient Rome, Obama fiddles, takes selfies and does Internet interviews while the world burns. Is he trying to distract himself, or us? To use a sports analogy, is he trying to "run out the clock" and leave office before terrorist fires consume us? We have a president who is mismatched to the times in which we live. He is unserious when seriousness is required. The tyrants of the world have taken notice and rightly calculated they can pretty much do what they want without paying a heavy penalty.
Damaging Admissions
Opponents of charter schools have claimed that these schools are "cherry-picking" the students they admit, and that this explains why many charter schools get better educational results with less money than public schools do. Many controversies about how students should be admitted to educational institutions, especially those supported by the taxpayers, betray a fundamental confusion about what these institutions are there for. This applies to both schools and colleges. Admitting students strictly on the basis of their academic qualifications, which might seem to be common sense, is rejected by many college admissions committees.
Democrats' 'Blue Wall' not Impregnable to Republicans -- If They're Smart
Do Republicans have a realistic chance to win the next presidential election? Some analysts suggest the answer is no. They argue that there is a 240-electoral-vote "blue wall" of 18 states and D.C. that have gone Democratic in the last six presidential elections. A Democratic nominee needs only 30 more electoral votes to win the presidency, they note accurately. A Republican nominee, they suggest, has little chance of breaking through the blue wall. He (or she) would have to win 270 of the 298 other electoral votes.