Right Opinion
The best of conservative opinion and commentary, updated daily.
Friday, November 21, 2014
Let's Really Reform Immigration -- To Encourage High-Skill Immigrants
"When the facts change, I change my mind," economist John Maynard Keynes said when charged with inconsistency. "What do you do, sir?" As President Obama threatens to stretch his power to faithfully execute the law to a breaking point by effectively legalizing some 5 million illegal immigrants, perhaps I owe readers an explanation of my own changes of mind on immigration. I tended to support the so-called comprehensive immigration bills passed by the Senate in 2006 and then rejected by the Senate in 2007, due to missteps by new Majority Leader Harry Reid. But I think the similar bill the Senate passed in 2013, which never came forward in the House, is a wrongheaded approach.
Thursday, November 20, 2014
Pipeline Politics
Talk about being in the middle of Middle America. This week I'm in bitterly cold Nebraska -- Omaha, to be exact -- visiting with my wife Colleen's family. On Tuesday night I watched the Die-hard Democrats in the Senate stop a bill to force approval of the Keystone XL Pipeline that would carry oil from Canada and Montana and North Dakota to the refineries of New Orleans. The proposed $8 billion shortcut across Nebraska and other Red States is a big deal.
Downing Street Gruber
Isn't Jonathan Gruber worse than the Downing Street memo? Gruber, who was paid half a million dollars to design Obamacare, is on tape bragging about how the Democrats relied on "the stupidity of the American voter" to pass that law. Which, ironically, was sort of a stupid thing to say on camera. By now there are so many tapes of Gruber explaining how Obamacare fooled stupid Americans that they're being released as a boxed set in time for Christmas.
Jonathan Gruber: Obamacare Architect, Unplugged
Economist Milton Freeman said the promotion of bad policy requires two types of advocates. "Do-gooders," he said, act in good faith but out of ignorance in promoting counterproductive policies. The second type are the "special interest" rent-seekers, those who stand to personally profit from the scheme. For economist Jonathan Gruber, the primary architect and intellectual godfather of both Romneycare and Obamacare, we need a new category. Gruber is a two-fer -- both a do-gooder and a rent-seeker. Gruber, so far, has pocketed $6 million advising the federal and state governments on the very law he helped design.
Teaching Hate
"You've got to be taught to hate..." (Oscar Hammerstein, "South Pacific") The murder on Tuesday of five people and the serious wounding of several others while they were praying at a synagogue in Jerusalem is only the latest in a continuing pattern of violence and hatred directed against Israel and the Jewish people. It also replays a familiar scenario: terrorist act is followed by condemnation (though not as strong as when Israel is perceived to be responsible for Palestinian deaths), followed by threats of retaliation.
Buy Your Health Insurance Out of State
The second open enrollment period for health insurance under the Affordable Care Act is underway, and the law is more unpopular than ever. According to Gallup, a record-high 56 percent of Americans now disapprove of the 2010 law. Reasons to dislike Obamacare have abounded from the outset, and on Friday the administration unveiled a new one: In large swaths of the country, the price of insurance sold on the federal health exchange is going up. That will force many of those who bought coverage last year to scramble to find a new policy or fork over as much as 20 percent in higher premiums. How's that "affordable" health care working out for you?
Congress Pulls Rank in Military Debate
There may not be atheists in foxholes, but there sure are a lot of quiet Christians. With religious freedom under attack in America's military, most troops are scared to even talk about their beliefs. And who can blame them? Under President Obama, the military censors chaplains' sermons, but builds Wiccan fire pits for cadets. It tells commanders to strip God out of an online article, while its missile defense staff spends hours surfing pornography at work. It tears down POW displays for its Bibles, but lets soldiers march in uniform in gay pride parades.
The Challenge: The Threatened Church
"Freedom is never more than one generation away from extinction. We didn't pass it to our children in the bloodstream. It must be fought for, protected, and handed on for them to do the same, or one day we will spend our sunset years telling our children and our children's children what it was once like in the United States where men were free." Those famous words from our favorite modern president, Ronald Reagan, never rang more true than when the freedoms of religion and of speech were recently threatened for pastors in Houston, Texas.
Using a Bludgeon in Wisconsin
It is as remarkable as it is repulsive, the ingenuity with which the Obama administration uses the regulatory state's intricacies to advance progressivism's project of breaking nongovernmental institutions to government's saddle. Eager to sacrifice low-income children to please teachers unions, the Department of Justice wants to destroy Wisconsin's school choice program. Feigning concern about access for handicapped children, DOJ's aim is to handicap all disadvantaged children by denying their parents access to school choices of the sort enjoyed by affluent DOJ lawyers.
Meet the Snobocrats
Last week, Massachusetts Institute of Technology professor Jonathan Gruber, one of prominent architects of Obamacare, was exposed as little more than an elitist fraud. Gruber was caught on videotape expressing the haughty attitude that drove the Affordable Care Act, deriding the "stupidity" of Americans as a way to justify misleading them. Gruber apparently thinks such deception is OK because yokel voters could not handle the truth about the looming chaos he helped to engineer in their health coverage.
Buckle Up for a Bumpy Ride
Anyone who believes that the GOP will have a newly chastened Obama to deal with in 2015 must be living in one of those states where marijuana was recently legalized. After all, the same guy who referred to the 2010 midterms as a shellacking for the Democrats dismissed the even more impressive 2014 drubbing with a shrug and "The Republicans had a good night." As for the two-thirds of registered who didn't bother voting, Obama said, "I hear you." At first, that struck me as truly bizarre. The schmuck hears what people who aren't talking are saying? But then I took a look at those ears of his and decided that, like our dog Angel, who apparently has the ability to hear the mailman even when he's three houses away, Obama's jug handles aren't merely decorative.
A Modest Proposal to My Left-Wing Friends
I have a suggestion for my left-wing Democratic friends in light of all the controversy over Obamacare. That the controversy continues all these years after the bill's passage and that today much of the bill is in danger of amputation must be very dispiriting to those left-wingers who had such high hopes for it. They obviously labored assiduously to render it incomprehensible to the electorate and for a long time they succeeded. Yet the electorate wised up this month and voted into office large numbers of Republicans. Those Republicans are out to gut the legislation.
Climate Change Self-Delusion
That sound you're hearing from across the Pacific is the Chinese rulers and Beijing laughing at us. President Obama and the "green" lobby actually think China is going to honor the new U.S.-China climate-change agreement that pushes both nations to reduce greenhouse-gas emissions over the next 15 years. China agreed to a "target" of deriving 20 percent of its energy needs from renewable resources "around" 2030. In exchange, Mr. Obama agreed that American families and businesses will aim to reduce carbon-dioxide emissions by at least 26 percent by 2025 from 2005 levels.
Wednesday, November 19, 2014
Keystone Killed
Desperate Sen. Mary Landrieu loses the vote, and likely her Senate seat as well.
Midterm Message: Voters Want Tax Reform
The midterm elections were a resounding mandate for tax reform. Across the country, in state races for governor and in federal races for Congress, voters sent a message they want lower taxes and a simplified tax code. Consider what happened in Kansas. Democrats had vowed that voters would hang tax-cutting Kansas Gov. Sam Brownback in effigy. He chopped tax rates and reduced tax burdens on small businesses in Kansas. The national media led by the New York Times pilloried the Brownback tax plan as a failure. Voters didn't see it that way, and he won a second term despite millions spent against him.
Obama's Planned Amnesty Is Latest in a String of Lawless Actions
Fresh off their midterm tidal wave, the Republicans now face the same dilemma as in the story line of "The Untouchables" -- the 1987 classic about dealing with Al Capone in Chicago. As Sean Connery asked Kevin Costner, "What are you prepared to do?" Republican leadership must now decide what they are prepared to do to stop a president hell-bent on taking executive action that ignores the Constitution and overturns current U.S. immigration law by granting amnesty to four million or five million illegal immigrants -- a policy objective a majority of Americans reject.
A White House Mass Pardon for Identity Thieves
President Obama is poised to show his "compassion" this week by granting work cards to an estimated five million illegal immigrants through an imperial executive order. As for the vast, untold number of law-abiding citizens whose identities have been stolen by foreign law-breakers, two words: Tough luck. Social Security card fraudsters have made out like bandits thanks to the White House. Their victims are about to get kicked in the teeth again.
Enabling the Delusional Democrats
After the 2012 campaign, liberal journalists swarmed around Republican Party chair Reince Priebus offering what was called an "autopsy" on every way Republicans failed, with a special emphasis on more outreach to minority voters. Democrats and their media enablers painted a picture of demographic doom for an aging white Republican base. Two years later, Republicans made dramatic gains among minority voters. In House races across America, Republicans won 50 percent of the Asian vote to 49 percent for Democrats. Republicans won 38 percent of the Hispanic vote in House races. Gov. Sam Brownback drew 47 percent of Hispanics in Kansas, and Gov-elect Greg Abbott pulled in 44 percent of Hispanics in Texas. Support for Obama among Hispanics has been cut in half.
Just Don't Call It Islamic
The Islamic State beheaded another American this week. The Obama administration's response revealed its stubborn determination to deny reality. Peter Kassig was a former Army Ranger and emergency medical technician who was moved by the suffering of Syria's civilians and returned to the region after his discharge to provide aid. He helped some of the one million Syrian refugees who have fled into Lebanon, using his own funds to buy supplies like diapers and other necessities and driving an ambulance into Syria. He was kidnapped in October of 2013.