Right Opinion
The best of conservative opinion and commentary, updated daily.
Thursday, December 4, 2014
Ferguson Won't Go Away
As we saw last weekend at the start of the St. Louis Rams-Raiders game, we'll be dealing with the facts and symbolism of Michael Brown's death for a long time. "Hands Up, Don't Shoot" doesn't accurately describe what really happened when Ferguson police officer Darren Wilson shot Brown to death last summer. But it should be pretty clear to everyone by now that the facts don't matter that much anymore in the Michael Brown case.
Black People the Media Hate (And Rand Paul Isn't Wild About)
Now that the Ferguson grand jury documents have been made public, even MSNBC has had to quietly drop its fantasy of Michael Brown being gunned down like a dog in the street by Officer Darren Wilson. Instead, MSNBC is defending the looters. On Monday night, MSNBC's Chris Hayes objected to anyone referring to the people who "set fires or looted as 'thugs.'" His guest, former Seattle chief of police Norm Stamper, said, "I could not agree more." (Stamper did such a bang-up job dealing with the World Trade Organization riots in 1999 that he was forced to resign -- which may explain why he is the left's favorite police chief.)
Mistletoeing the Line on Amnesty?
While the President is busy playing Santa to millions of people illegally coming to the United States, Americans want to know how many little helpers his agenda will have. With less than a month to go before Republicans gavel in a new majority, time -- and options -- are running short. Every conservative wants to counter the White House's lawless amnesty order, but not every Republican agrees how. Yesterday, House leaders put all the options on the table, including a plan to put spending bills on two tracks: one for the majority of appropriations bills that the House already slogged through for the remainder of the 2015 fiscal year (an omnibus) and a separate, short-term continuing resolution (a CR) for the funds dealing with immigration. The thinking is that most federal agencies would have the money they need to finish out the year -- while giving the new majority a chance to revoke the authority on immigration that the President never had. But not everyone wants to wait until early next year to dethrone King Obama.
An Unlawful Scheme to Raise Legislators' Pay
"The louder he talked of his honor," wrote Ralph Waldo Emerson in 1860, "the faster we counted our spoons." As a resident of Massachusetts, Emerson knew better than to take at face value anything public officials say about their own rectitude. That was a prudent attitude a century and a half ago. It's just as prudent now. So when Beacon Hill created a high-powered "advisory commission" to evaluate the salaries paid to top elected officers and lawmakers, only a naïf could have doubted it would come back with anything but a recommendation for hefty pay raises all around -- and pitch that recommendation as a matter of fairness, honor, and good government. Huge increases in what are already among the highest salaries paid to legislative leaders and statewide officials in America, concluded the commission in a report released Monday, is the best way to attract "publicly spirited and honest individuals" to state government. More lavish paychecks will "ensure that there is not a temptation to betray the public trust."
Ferguson: Inconvenient Facts About the Encounter
Is it relevant that St. Louis, near Ferguson, recently had the third-highest per capita murder rate of any large city (with 250,000 or more residents) in America, ranking behind New Orleans and Detroit? And, according to an analysis of 2011 FBI crime stats, St. Louis had the second-highest overall crime rate among large cities. Is it relevant that the state of Missouri ranks second among states in per capita black homicide victimization rate? According to the Violence Policy Center, only Nebraska has a higher per capita murder rate for black victims, based on 2011 FBI data. Last year, according to FBI statistics, more than 6,300 blacks were homicide victims, or almost 18 per day, almost all at the hands of other blacks. Even more disturbing, a decreasing number of murders are "cleared" (solved). In 1961, 93 percent of all homicides were cleared. That number now is down to 64 percent in 2013, primarily because of drug and gang-related murders where people don't talk because of a "no snitch" culture or fear of retaliation.
The Challenge: Waiting Through Advent
Waiting for peace; hoping for joy; anticipating something wonderful. All of creation waits in earnest for the time of salvation. It is this time of year when we think about how the Kingdom of Heaven has been forcefully advancing since the day a voice shouted in the wilderness, "Prepare the way for the Lord's coming! Clear the road for him!" John the Baptist -- the prophet who baptized men in rivers -- proclaimed that the long-awaited Messiah was coming to baptize them with fire. He was born for advent -- born to tell the news: "The morning light from heaven is about to break upon us, to give light to those who sit in darkness and in the shadow of death and to guide us to the path of peace" (Luke 1:78-79).
War Clouds
The world is changing and becoming even more dangerous -- in a way we've seen before. In the decade before World War I, the near-hundred-year European peace that had followed the fall of Napoleon was taken for granted. Yet it abruptly imploded in 1914. Prior little wars in the Balkans had seemed to predict a much larger one on the horizon -- and were ignored. The exhausted Austro-Hungarian and Ottoman empires were spent forces unable to control nationalist movements in their provinces. The British Empire was fading. Imperial Germany was rising. Czarist Russia was beset with revolutionary rebellion. As power shifted, decline for some nations seemed like opportunity for others.
Walker & Martinez, 2016
Recently I announced that my dream ticket for the 2016 presidential election would be the governors of Wisconsin and New Mexico. I explained that Scott Walker and Susana Martinez represented a nice geographical balance, representing the upper Midwest and the Southwest. In addition, both are proven winners. In Walker's case, in spite of the unions squandering millions of dollars of their members' dues to defeat him in two regular elections and a recall, he has won three times in four years. For her part, Governor Martinez is both Hispanic and female, and could be counted on to draw a great deal of support from both voting blocs.
Another Case for Term Limits
In 2010, Plymouth, Conn., was awarded $430,000 for widening sidewalks and related matters near two schools. This money was a portion of the $612 million Congress authorized for five years of the federal Safe Routes to School program intended to fight childhood obesity by encouraging children to burn calories by walking or biking to school. Really. Fortunately, Plymouth is near Sharon, Conn., home of the Buckley family, whose members, when their gimlet eyes notice nonsense, become elegantly polemical. So, Congress' Safe Routes silliness inadvertently did something excellent. It helped to provoke James Buckley to write a slender book that, if heeded, would substantially improve American governance.
David Cameron Gets It on Immigration
There is nothing like a little heat from a third political party to get the attention of career politicians who wish to stay in office. Nigel Farage, leader of the upstart UK Independent Party (UKIP), has been turning up the heat on British Prime Minister David Cameron over the issue of migrants who come to the UK without jobs and immediately sign up for government benefits. The debate in Britain mirrors the one in the United States with one important exception: A treaty with the European Union requires Britain to accept migrants from all EU countries, no matter their employment status or health condition. As in America, this has put pressure on British taxpayers, many of whom think these migrants are taking jobs from British citizens and overburdening schools and the National Health Service.
The Shock of Christmas
Alas it is over. I am speaking of the Thanksgiving Day celebration -- one of my favorite holidays. It is a serious celebration as we give thanks for our many blessings. Yet it is also a jolly day, full of good food, drink and sport -- perhaps touch football, more likely a televised game. The whole family comes together and, often in the company of friends, has a festive time. Moreover, there is a venerable sense of tradition to the feast that renders the whole holiday somehow reassuring. However, now comes a time troubled by a deep sense of apprehension, especially for people of faith. I am speaking of the Christmas season. The apprehension begins with how we greet people? Last week it was customary to say, "Have a Happy Thanksgiving" or just "Happy Thanksgiving." I must have intoned that line a hundred times, never with a premonition of giving offense or of introducing an evangelizing spirit into a brief social encounter. "Happy Thanksgiving" might be prefatory to devastating a plump bird, but only the very morbid are offended and they can always munch on a nutrition bar.
Wednesday, December 3, 2014
EPA’s Goofy Green-Energy Rules
If you think President Obama's unilateral exercise of executive powers granting near-blanket amnesty to illegal immigrants was an abuse of power, get a load of what this administration is doing over at the Environmental Protection Agency. The EPA's proposed Clean Power Plan regulations are the most expansive and economically disruptive rules in four decades from an agency that is notorious for its reckless disregard for the financial consequences of regulation under the Clean Air Act. The EPA's rule aims to reduce carbon-dioxide emissions from U.S. power plants by 30 percent. That's an enormous and costly burden on our power generating utilities. According to Energy Ventures Analysis, an energy research firm, the annual costs for residential, commercial and industrial energy customers in America would be about $173 billion higher in 2020 -- a 37 percent increase. Average annual household gas and power bills would increase by $680 or 35 percent.
Libs Needle FDA on Blood Ban
Are you willing to contract HIV to prove how "tolerant" you are? If the FDA repeals its blood bank policy, you may not have a choice. At a meeting of the Food and Drug Administration this morning, liberal activists went for the jugular in their latest push to overturn its ban on blood donations from those who engage in risky sexual behavior. The debate, which seems to resurface every year at the FDA and HHS, refuses to die -- even though people could with radical changes to the government's 30-year-ban. This time around, homosexual groups are more confident than ever that the administration will roll back the prohibition, despite the increased risks it poses to the U.S. population. As FRC's Peter Sprigg testified at today's meeting, "Gay, bisexual, and other men who have sex with men represent approximately 2% of the United States population, yet . . . in 2010, gay and bisexual men accounted for 63% of estimated new HIV infections in the United States and 78% of infections among all newly infected men."
A Football Hero Who Was an American Hero
As a halfback at Michigan, he ran for 33 touchdowns, threw for 16 more, won the Heisman Trophy and was the first player picked in the NFL draft. But the hardest hits Tom Harmon ever took were not on a football field. They were in the Army Air Corps during World War II. Harmon came out of a big Catholic family in a small Midwestern town -- and was proud of both. "Lou and Rose Harmon were good Catholics, and they were raising their family to have faith in the 'Big Boss' upstairs," he wrote about his parents in his 1944 memoir "Pilots Also Pray."
Nothing on Terry Bean
If real estate mogul and deep-pocketed White House donor Terry Bean were a Republican, he'd be a household name by now. Bean's face would be splashed all over the covers of grocery-stand newsweeklies. The garrulous hostesses of ABC's "The View" would be haranguing the GOP to return his campaign contributions. Child-welfare advocates would be demanding his resignation from top political advocacy and civic groups. Media satellite trucks from NBC's "Today" show would be parked outside the Lane County, Ore., Circuit Court on Dec. 3 for his first appearance.
The Hypocrisy Over Presidential Kids
It's an obvious rule: Never pick on a president's family. Elizabeth Lauten, the formerly unknown "communications director" for two-term GOP congressman Stephen Fincher resigned after a national-media feeding frenzy over some stupid words about the president's daughters on her personal Facebook page. No one came to her defense for this idiocy, and correctly so. Republican Party spokesman Sean Spicer decried her remarks, and then attacked the media for its hypocrisy, for launching into an obscure Republican staffer's social-media statements, something it has never done for Democrats. Again, he was absolutely correct.
Conspicuous Calorie Counts Can't Control Consumption
The new federal regulations requiring conspicuous calorie counts for "restaurant-type food" not only force eateries, bars, bakeries, grocery stores and movie theaters across the country to present consumers with information. They force consumers to see that information, whether or not they want it, on the theory that they will be grateful when they recognize the error of their gluttonous ways. Putting aside the ethics of this paternalistic intervention, there are good reasons to question its effectiveness. There is little evidence that calling attention to the caloric content of food and beverages through mandatory disclosures on menus and signs affects purchases, let alone total consumption or weight.
Can Racial Discrimination Explain Much?
In the medical profession, there is the admonition *primum non nocere*, the Latin expression for "first, do no harm." In order not to do harm, at the minimum, requires accurate diagnostics. Suppose a patient presents with abdominal pains, and the physician diagnoses it as caused by the patient's ingrown toenails. If that isn't the cause, the physician can spend all the resources he wants treating the patient's ingrown toenails and not remedy the patient's abdominal pains. The decency of accurate diagnosis should be given to analyzing the problems of a large segment of the black community. Very often, major problems are erroneously seen as being caused by racial discrimination. No one argues that racial discrimination does not exist or does not have effects. The question that's relevant to policy, as well as resource allocation, is: How much of what we see is caused by discrimination?
Rape Story Sends Shock Waves -- and Stretched Credulity
Rolling Stone has published an incredible story about a rape at the University of Virginia, sending shock waves around the country. But when I say the story is incredible, I mean that in the literal, largely abandoned sense of the word. It is not credible -- I don't believe it. I'm not saying that the author of the story, Sabrina Rubin Erdely, deliberately fabricated facts. Nor do I believe that all of her reporting was flawed. There may be an outrageously callous attitude toward sexual assaults at UVA. Rape, particularly date rape, may be a major problem there. I've talked to enough people with connections to the campus to think that part is credible enough.