Right Opinion
The best of conservative opinion and commentary, updated daily.
Tuesday, February 3, 2015
ObamaCare's Crash and Byrne
While Pennsylvania's groundhog is seeing shadows, Republicans are hoping to cast one on the future of ObamaCare. After four years of grinding out votes against the President's health care failure, spring has finally come for Republican leaders. Four times the chamber has tried to sink ObamaCare (seven, if you count the appropriations process), but [today's] repeal vote will be the first under total GOP control. "We will begin the month renewing our commitment to individual freedom and opportunity," House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) told conservatives. And for once, they'll be able to renew that commitment without the brick wall known as Sen. Harry Reid (D-Nev.) on the other side of the Capitol. With public support for ObamaCare slipping to the low 40s in most surveys, Americans are more anxious than ever to dispose of this "medical waste!"
The Second Coming of Jeb
Back in the '90s I bantered once or twice with Karl Rove. It had to do with the Bush boys, George and Jeb. I said something like, "Come on, Karl" -- we enjoyed a slight and, to my mind, professionally cordial connection through Texas journalism -- "Jeb's the conservative. He's the Bush we ought to want to see in the White House." This was assuming, of course, that the stars were in alignment for a victory in 2000 by either Bush boy, upon the constitutionally mandated retirement of Bill Clinton. Jeb was governor of Florida then. He talked and played a good conservative game on policy, but Karl was having none of it. George W. was the likelier, and more impressive, conservative -- just the conclusion you would expect from one who was already an official adviser to George W.
Obama's Mad Dash to the Finish Line
President Obama has no intention of heeding the call of American voters to curb his statist agenda. That's not what extreme ideologues do, and that's not what he did after his party's shellacking in the 2010 congressional elections. In fact, despite what conciliatory bones he may have thrown the Republicans after those elections, he doubled down on his agenda. Having done that, he still won re-election in 2012. Even if the 2014 elections were a referendum on his policies, as he said they would be and I believe they were, he doesn't have to worry about another election for himself. So as far as he's concerned, there's no reason to put on the brakes now.
Stormy Weather and Politics
It was refreshing to see meteorologists apologize for their dire -- and wrong -- predictions of an unprecedented snow storm that they had said would devastate the northeast. It was a big storm, but the northeast has seen lots of big snow storms before and will probably see lots of big snow storms again. That's called winter. Unfortunately, we are not likely to hear any similar apologies from those who have been promoting "global warming" hysteria for years, in defiance of data that fail to fit their climate models. What is at issue is not whether there is "climate change" -- which nobody has ever denied -- but whether the specific predictions of the "global warming" crowd as to the direction and magnitude of worldwide temperature changes are holding up over the years.
The Faith Factor (2016 Edition)
We are one year away from the Iowa caucuses and already several Republican presidential candidates are trying to secure an advantage by talking about their faith. Before announcing his non-candidacy last Friday, Mitt Romney had indicated if he ran for a third time he intended to be more "open" about his Mormon faith. Mike Huckabee, former governor of Arkansas, regularly invokes his Baptist faith. And now Republican Gov. Scott Walker of Wisconsin, a self-described evangelical Christian, is testifying to his faith. There will be others. Appearing at the Iowa Freedom Summit in Des Moines, Walker spoke about the successful battle he waged against his state's public unions over their attempt to expand bargaining rights. He told the audience, "You prayed for us. We could feel the power of those prayers."
Bad Policy, Bad Politics
Word comes that Barack Obama's budget will, not surprisingly, call for ending the sequester spending limits now in effect. That's not surprising. White House aides proposed the sequester, but Obama thought it wouldn't go into effect because Republicans couldn't accept its sharp limits on defense spending. But with voters recoiling against foreign military involvement, they could and did. At the time, Keynesian economists predicted that the sequester -- "austerity" -- would squelch economic growth. And they predicted that Republicans' failure to continue extending unemployment benefits beyond 26 weeks would result in mass misery.
Monday, February 2, 2015
'Leading From Behind' Isn't Working, Mr. President
Nearly nine out of 10 Americans skipped President Barack Obama's State of the Union address. According to Nielsen, only 31.7 million tuned in on Jan. 20 -the second lowest viewership attracted by the event in 15 years. Yet it's safe to assume that many, if not most, world leaders were quite curious to hear what the leader of the free world had to say, and our nation's friends and allies must have turned from the screen deeply disappointed that they barely merited a mention. The speech's section on America's place in the world was all too brief. That's a shame, because friendly nations are eager for closer dialog with the White House. We know, because we have been on what Hillary Clinton would call a "listening tour," meeting with officials from allied and partnering nations to learn of their concerns and what they would like to see from the United States.
Freedom Is Best Way to Help Low-Income Students
Senators Mike Lee of Utah and Ted Cruz of Texas and Congressman Luke Messer of Indiana have introduced a bill that could produce positive, badly needed change in American K-12 education. The bill allows for Title 1 education funds "to follow low-income students to any public or private school of their choice." What is Title 1 funding? It goes back to President Lyndon Johnson's War of Poverty. In 1965 Johnson signed into law the Elementary and Secondary Education Act. Title 1 of the Act provides federal funds to schools with the target being low-income students. The motivation is special assistance to students from low-income families to close the performance gap in reading and math between them and national averages.
Obama's Drilling Ban in Alaska Isn't About Saving Polar Bears. It's About His Radical Agenda
It was just recently that President Obama took credit for falling gas prices in his State of the Union address, and already he is sticking another knife in the back of America's domestic oil and gas producers -- to say nothing of the residents of Alaska. Obama's latest anti-fossil-fuels directive is to move off-limits to exploration and drilling some 12 million acres in Alaska's Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. This is one of the most oil-rich regions in the world. The area to be removed from drilling is larger than the combined land area of Connecticut and Massachusetts. Alaska's economy is already softening because of low oil prices; now he tosses the state's drowning economy an anchor.
The Kids Are Not All Right
It's almost a foregone conclusion that researchers who compare children raised by heterosexual parents to those raised by a homosexual one will be vilified, harassed, and professionally targeted. An amicus brief filed with the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals might explain why. In their own words, four of these adult children are breaking their silence in an official court document about how growing up with homosexual parents changed their lives. At a time when the Left is desperately trying to prove that all families are the same, these stories -- from the powerful to the painful -- speak for themselves.
No, 2014 Wasn't the 'Warmest Year in History'
Unless you've spent the last few weeks in solitary meditation on a remote island, you couldn't miss the wave of media stories breathlessly proclaiming that 2014 was the hottest year in recorded history. As usual, the coverage was laced with alarm about the menace posed by climate change, and with disapproval of skeptics who decline to join in the general panic. Among those seizing on the news to make a political point was President Obama, who used his State of the Union address to voice disdain for those who don't share his view. "I've heard some folks try to dodge the evidence by saying they're not scientists," he scoffed. "Well, I'm not a scientist, either. But. . . I know a lot of really good scientists at NASA, and NOAA, and at our major universities."
Movies, Morons & Muslims
Barack Obama continues setting free one Islamic terrorist after another in his rush to empty Gitmo, all the while insisting he has to get the place shut down because it is a major recruiting tool for the jihadists. The only problem with that explanation is that, like everything else he says, it's a big, fat lie. You see, the detention center wasn't opened until January, 2002, four months after 3,000 Americans were killed on 9/11. By that time, the Islamists had already taken hostages in Iran; attacked three of our embassies in Africa and the Middle East, along with the U.S.S. Cole and the Marine barracks in Lebanon; initially bombed the World Trade Center in 1993 and, finally, the Islamic version of Pearl Harbor which took place on September11, 2001.
Sunday, February 1, 2015
A Season of Wretched Excess
Beer, Benjamin Franklin supposedly said but almost certainly didn't, is proof that God loves us and wants us to be happy. Without cannonballing into deep theological waters, perhaps Deflategate proves the same thing. This scrumptious NFL pratfall -- think of someone insufferably self-important stepping on a banana peel; hello, Donald Trump -- has come to lighten the mood of America's annual Wretched Excess Season. It consists of the days -- this year, 12 of them -- between the State of the Union address and the final merciful tick of the clock of the Super Bowl. The State of the Union has become, under presidents of both parties, a political pep rally degrading to everyone. The judiciary and uniformed military should never attend. And Congress, by hosting a spectacle so monarchical in structure (which is why Thomas Jefferson sent his thoughts to Congress in writing) deepens the diminishment of the legislative branch as a mostly reactive servant of an overbearing executive.
Saturday, January 31, 2015
After Mitt: A GOP Message of Incentives, Sound Money and Growth
Mitt Romney showed once again that he is truly a class act. In his announcement that he will not be running for president in 2016, he stated, "I believe that one of our next generation of Republican leaders, one who may not be as well known as I am today, one who has not yet taken their message across the country, one who is just getting started, may well emerge as being better able to defeat the Democrat nominee." This was unusual political humility. But let me highlight this specific phrase: "one who has not yet taken their message across the country." Message.
Spare the Blogger and Lash Us Instead
On Jan. 9, the government of Saudi Arabia publicly whipped a liberal Muslim writer, Raif Badawi, flogging him 50 times outside a mosque in Jeddah. It was the first installment of the 1,000 lashes to which Badawi had been sentenced -- in addition to 10 years in prison and a fine of more than $250,000 -- for the crime of "insulting Islam" on his former website, the Saudi Free Liberals Forum. Two days later, following the Charlie Hebdo massacre, the Saudi ambassador to France joined in the great Paris solidarity march in defense of freedom of expression. Such hypocrisy was more than seven members of the United States Commission on International Religious Freedom could abide. The commission -- an independent, bipartisan federal agency -- had several times expressed concern about the persecution of Badawi; it denounced his lashing as "a cruel and barbaric act" inflicted "for nothing more than creating an online forum for diverse views to be expressed freely." Last week, writing in their individual capacities to the Saudi embassy in Washington, the seven commissioners drew attention to the glaring inconsistency between Saudi Arabia's public show of support for civil liberties in France and its brutal denial of those very liberties in Badawi's case.
It's Official -- I'm Not Running!
Although even Hillary Clinton, who vowed at the age of four to one day be President, is acting coy about making a run in 2016, I am trying to set a good example for others by announcing that under no circumstances will I be tossing my hat in the ring. That being said, I don't understand why so many Republicans who are also not running seem so upset at the prospect of Mitt Romney giving it another try. The notion that just because he failed to defeat John McCain for the nomination in 2008 or Barack Obama in 2012, he shouldn't run again is just plain goofy. After all, any sane person would acknowledge that we have all lived long enough to rue the results of both those races.
Mideast Meltdown
Good for Michelle Obama! She refused to cover up during a recent snap visit to Saudi Arabia. And our First Lady showed more grit than the entire Obama administration. She is also closer to a correct U.S. posture vis à vis the Mideast. President Obama has been vigorously pursuing a policy of appeasement in the Mideast for his entire term. He has apparently adopted the view that if we give billions to the "democracy" movements within the Muslim majority lands, and back them up with military force where they happen, however tenuously, to gain control, they will support our efforts to crush the "violent extremists" in their midst. Heaven forbid we call them Islamists or Jihadists. We wouldn't want to offend the overwhelming majority there. White House spokesmen claim, for example, that the Taliban is an armed insurgency, not a terrorist group. (Even though they harbored al Qaeda and are themselves listed as a sponsor of terrorism.)
From The Comedy Store
The Super Bowl is predicted to draw over one hundred million viewers to NBC. The influence of the game is enormous on America. The Seattle Seahawks most successful play in last year's Super Bowl was the end-around, and Obama's been running it on Congress ever since.
Friday, January 30, 2015
A Lynch Pin at DOJ?
Loretta Lynch isn't Eric Holder -- but that still might not be enough to win over Senate conservatives. At [Wednesday's] Judiciary Committee meeting, the New York prosecutor was on the hot seat -- but it was former Attorney General Holder's record that was on the stand. The only man in Washington more unpopular than President Obama, Holder spent six years enforcing one thing: the American people's distrust of government. As the nation's AG for six years, Holder heaped disgrace after disgrace on one of the most powerful agencies in government. Loretta Lynch is the White House's best hope at redemption for a Department struggling to pick up the pieces after Fast and Furious, conservative targeting, terrorist trial, voter ID, and marriage law scandals.