Right Opinion
The best of conservative opinion and commentary, updated daily.
Monday, January 26, 2015
Government Housing Is a Bad Idea
This past week, following the nation's celebration of the birthday of civil rights leader Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., the U.S. Supreme Court heard an important case related to landmark law enacted during the civil rights era – the Fair Housing Law of 1968. This case highlights how some policies that followed civil rights era legislation – in this case government low-income housing projects – actually have hurt the very communities they were supposed to help. The Court heard arguments in the case Texas Department of Housing and Community Affairs v. The Inclusive Communities Project, a non-profit defining itself as for "thriving racially and economically inclusive communities."
The EPA's Newest Strategy to Sneakily Restrict Fracking, Drilling
Recently the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) announced major new regulations on the emissions of methane into the air from oil and gas production. It calls methane a "potent" pollutant and its new rules would require a 45 percent reduction by 2025 from 2012 levels. Most Americans support these new rules, according to polling from environmental groups. This isn't surprising. Methane sounds like a dirty and dangerous pollutant and even deadly if leaked into water or the air. However, methane is just another term for the main component of natural gas. Drillers have a powerful motive to stop leakage on their own, because they want to sell it, not spill it. How much of a menace is methane from the oil and gas industry? The amount of leakage into the atmosphere is minuscule, says Dan Kish of the Energy Research Institute. "Cows emit more methane when they pass gas than the natural gas industry," he notes. Look for the EPA to start regulating cattle.
Collins Defends Military Mettle
As an Iraq war veteran, Congressman Doug Collins (R-Ga.) knows better than anyone how comforting faith can be on the battlefield. So when an Army leader goes out of his way to punish a chaplain for doing his job, Rep. Collins is understandably upset. Like FRC, he couldn't believe what happened in his District's own backyard at Fort Benning. To the surprise of Chaplain Joe Lawhorn, he was summoned to his commander's office on Thanksgiving Day, where Col. David Fivecoat reprimanded him over a suicide prevention training Lawhorn had led in which he dared to include faith as a resource for depression.
No Lame Duck, but a Lame Dove!
President Obama's State of the Union Address made it clear he is no Lame Duck. Despite his midterm election drubbing, the President came out swinging. The economy has come off the mat. Ironically enough, he is benefiting from crash of oil prices. But in his case, he did everything he could do to *prevent* the surge in domestic oil and natural gas production. It reminds us of what Adlai Stevenson once said about Richard Nixon: He's the kind of man who would chop down a redwood, then mount the stump to give a speech on conservation! Ditto Mr; Obama. President Obama's fighting State of the Union Address proves he is determined to use every constitutional weapon he has and also to put a horseshoe or two in his boxing gloves. While he is no Lame Duck, he is certainly a Lame Dove.
On Immigration, It's GOP v. GOP
The morning after President Obama's State of the Union address, Politico had a story on how Republicans had responded to one contentious issue. The headline: "Priebus struggles to explain GOP immigration messages." That would be Reince Priebus, the Republican Party chairman. His "struggle" was to clarify why Iowa's new senator, Joni Ernst, said nothing at all about immigration in her 10-minute reply to the president, whereas Florida Representative Carlos Curbelo, in a Spanish-language version of the GOP response, urged Obama to work with Republicans "to create permanent solutions for our immigration system, to secure our borders, [and] modernize legal immigration." Good thing Priebus wasn't asked about the formal Tea Party response to the president's speech, delivered by another Florida Republican, Rep. Curt Clawson, or he'd have had still more reason to squirm. Speaking in English *and* Spanish, Clawson called pointedly for "embracing … legal immigrants, and the millions waiting in line legally to begin their own American Dream."
Sunday, January 25, 2015
Obama to the Nation: Debt, Debt and More Debt
"The shadow of crisis has passed," President Obama told us on Tuesday night. "The State of the Union is strong," he added. But is it really? If you had accumulated a debt that is more than 20 times the size of your household income, would you say your household finances were in good shape? Well, that's where we are as a country. Under about a dozen federal entitlement spending programs, we have made promises that we haven't been willing to pay for. In the process, we are leaving an enormous financial burden for our children and grandchildren.
Bye-Bye, Babs
I got such a lift from the midterm elections that I have only recently returned from the stratosphere, leading some people to wonder if I took off again when I heard that Barbara Boxer would not be seeking a fourth term in 2016. I'm afraid not. There is a world of difference between Democrats losing elections and simply retiring, which isn't to say I'll miss seeing or hearing Boxer, whose speaking voice was nearly as off-putting as the liberal malarkey she spewed. Whether we're speaking about Barbara ("Call me Senator") Boxer or Henry (The Garden Gnome) Waxman, their retirement only means that a younger, but equally pigheaded leftist will replace them. Until those who kept re-electing these louts for several decades are retired, we shouldn't expect any miracles.
Vermont's Sanders Has Mountains to Climb
The young man who answered the phone in the Senate office of Vermont's Bernie Sanders told the caller, a would-be campaign contributor, that it is illegal for funds to be accepted on federal property. He advised the person to contact Sanders' political operation, which might become a presidential campaign. Sanders, 73, does not smile promiscuously, as befits someone who thinks the republic is being ruined by the government's parsimony regarding social programs, its obsequiousness toward Wall Street, and its tolerance of billionaires influencing electoral politics. If, however, he wants to seek the Democratic nomination, he should soften his starchy disapproval of rich donors.
Saturday, January 24, 2015
The GOP Cannot Outbid Dems for the Middle Class
It's too easy to label President Obama's State of the Union as more tax-the-rich and redistribution. We know that. Rather than name-calling, Republicans must draw a clear line in the sand between their worldview and Obama's. I'd call that line commonsense economics. First, you can't create a new business or sustain an existing one without the seed corn and nourishment of capital investment. Second, only businesses create jobs. You can't have a job without a business. Third, jobs create all incomes, including middle-class incomes.
From The Comedy Store
The N.Y. Mercantile Exchange saw oil prices fall to forty-five dollars a barrel. Fifteen states across the country now have gas prices that have dipped underneath two dollars a gallon. This means that it's now cheaper to buy a gallon of liquid dinosaur bones than a cup of coffee at Starbucks.
Friday, January 23, 2015
Democratic Revolt on Iran
In what was one of the most stunning rebukes of a sitting president by a member of his own party, Sen. Robert Menendez accused President Obama of taking his talking points on Iran "straight out of Tehran" after the president's State of the Union address. It's not the first time the ranking member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee has disagreed with the president. In early January, when the president announced his unilateral opening to Cuba, Menendez said the administration "got absolutely nothing for giving up everything that the Castro regime wants." Menendez gives hope that there are at least a few Democrats who understand the nature of totalitarian regimes. Menendez may not be Henry "Scoop" Jackson, the legendary Democratic hawk who was the scourge of the appeasement wing of his party in the U.S. Senate from 1941 to 1983, but he knows a bad deal when he sees one. And the president's line on Iran's nuclear program -- that "we've halted the progress of its nuclear program and reduced its stockpile of nuclear material" -- is nothing short of a lie. Now the question for Democrats will be whether others will join Menendez in pushing for tougher sanctions against Iran. The president has already announced he will veto a sanctions bill, but Menendez would need only 12 other Democrats to join the 54-member Republican majority to overturn a veto.
Sniper-Smearing in Hollywood
Clint Eastwood's movie "American Sniper" dominated the box office race over the long Martin Luther King weekend with a gross of $103.5 million. That's more than twice as high as the previous January opening weekend record. It received a rare "A+" CinemaScore from people who saw it, suggesting word-of-mouth will be wildly positive. This movie wasn't very controversial -- until, that is, the film earned six Oscar nominations and had that amazing weekend at the box office. That's when the hostility erupted from leftist Hollywood types on Twitter, hell-bent on pushing back against the wave. Radical director Michael Moore slammed American snipers in general on Twitter: "My uncle killed by sniper in WW2. We were taught snipers were cowards. Will shoot u in the back. Snipers aren't heroes." Moore hasn't made a real movie in six years. He sounded almost desperate for attention.
Obama's Bloody Yemen Disaster
When President Obama declares something a "success story," you know it has "TOTAL FAILURE" embedded in its DNA. Four months ago, America's King Midas in Reverse crowed about the fruits of his triumphant foreign policy in jihad-infested Yemen. A "light footprint" approach to counterterrorism operations, he claimed, was the most effective path to stability. In addition, Obama has shoveled nearly $1 billion in American tax-subsidized foreign aid to Yemen. Four months later, Iran-backed Shia rebels seized a Yemeni presidential palace. The president and his entire cabinet tendered their resignations on Thursday, creating a vacuum that al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula is ready and eager to fill. ISIS is gaining its own Sunni foothold in the Muslim terror-breeding ground. And while the JV team at the State Department dithers with hashtag games and selfies, adults at the Pentagon want to evacuate U.S. embassy personnel and other Americans before it's too late.
Obama: President of France
Barack Obama's sixth State of the Union address was an homage to France. The president might not have intended it as such -- he mentioned the nation only glancingly when denouncing terror attacks in Pakistan and Paris. Yet France was at the heart of the president's address. France has everything that Obama finds wanting in his own country. His entire presidency is a prolonged effort to tear the United States away from free market economics and decentralized political power (what the French deride as the "Anglo Saxon model") toward the kind of socialist, government-dominated society France has achieved.
Republicans Surrender to Infanticide
Evidently, Republicans don't feel competent enough to make a case against infanticide. Why else would the GOP pull its 20-week abortion limit bill? Here's a short list of things that are less popular than banning late-term abortions: "Acting" on climate change. "Free" community college. Taxing the wealthy. Building the Keystone XL pipeline. President Barack Obama. Future President Hillary Clinton. Every Republican who's thinking about running for president. A new Marist poll finds that 84 percent of Americans favor some level of further restrictions on abortion. And regardless of their feelings about the legality of the procedure, 60 percent believe it to be "morally wrong." If you aren't keen on that poll -- it was sponsored by the Knights of Columbus, after all -- you can take your pick of others.
Obama Still Reading From the Same Old Script
It's hard to believe that was only President Obama's sixth State of the Union address. It feels like he's given so many more. Maybe that's because the man seems to be constantly talking. And talking. The talking is the background noise of much of the last decade, auditory wallpaper that seems to line the corridors of everyday life. And when he talks, he's often talking about himself -- particularly about things he's said on other occasions when he was talking. Like many liberals today, Obama has a particular weakness for the logical fallacy known as the argument from authority, and you know he is about to invoke his favorite authority when he begins a sentence, "As I said before." As if there are large swaths of people who say, "Oh, he said it before, so it must be true."
Obama's Doubly Deceitful SOTU
It was an otherworldly experience to watch President Obama delivering his State of the Union speech. Even after watching him for seven years, I can't decide who the primary victim of his deceit is, him or us. Is it even possible for this guy to extricate himself from campaign mode? Is there ever a time when he's not puffing his product? His incessant salesmanship would be bad enough if he truly had a stellar record. If we give him the benefit of the doubt and assume he is just self-deceived, then the culprits are probably his blinding ideology and his narcissism.
Iran's Emerging Empire
While Iran's march toward a nuclear bomb has provoked a major clash between the White House and Congress, Iran's march toward conventional domination of the Arab world has been largely overlooked. In Washington, that is. The Arabs have noticed. And the pro-American ones, the Gulf Arabs in particular, are deeply worried. This week, Iranian-backed Houthi rebels seized control of the Yemeni government, heretofore pro-American. In September, they overran Sanaa, the capital. On Tuesday, they seized the presidential palace. On Thursday, they forced the president to resign. The Houthi have local religious grievances, being Shiites in a majority Sunni land. But they are also agents of Shiite Iran, which arms, trains and advises them. Their slogan -- "God is great. Death to America. Death to Israel" -- could have been written in Persian.
The State of the Bubble Address
I didn't watch the State of the Union address Tuesday night. Instead I sat with my lovely wife, had a glass of wine and played with the dogs. But let me guess how it went. President Obama stood in front of Congress and declared the state of the union is strong — except for a whole bunch of new government freebies and new federal laws he wants to see enacted to make it even stronger.
House Makes a Fund-amental Change to Abortion
The streets of Washington were warming up just as pro-life action was heating up inside Congress! Late Wednesday, a handful of Republicans managed to derail an effort that had been underway for months on the Pain-Capable Unborn Child Protection Act -- stalling a bill that pro-lifers had hoped to celebrate during [Thursday's] March for Life. After meeting all day with conservatives, House Rules Committee Chair Pete Sessions (R-Texas) made the reluctant decision to pull the pain ban and replace it with another pro-life measure, H.R. 7, the No Taxpayer Funding of Abortion Act, which is another one of FRC's top priorities.