Right Opinion
The best of conservative opinion and commentary, updated daily.
Tuesday, September 23, 2014
A Groundhog Day Repeat for the GOP
Congress has returned to the campaign trail and like a scene from the movie "Groundhog Day," the consultant class is once again advising Republicans to support "moderate" policies. You can queue the liberal media's applause as if this is somehow sage advice. Whether on contraceptives, abortion, marriage, or minimum wage and marijuana, tacking towards the middle does not gain support for the GOP. As FRC Action PAC President Connie Mackey told the Washington Post, "Those in the Republican Party who have stepped away (from conservative positions) thinking that's an answer to beat the Democrats are going to put themselves in some unnecessary danger in losing some people going to the polls."
Who Wants War?
Some pundits are saying that President Obama has been floundering in his response to the ISIS crisis because public opinion polls show most Americans don't want another war. In all my 84 years, I cannot recall a time when most Americans wanted war. That is something we should be proud of. But wars are not always optional. Even World War II -- which some have called "the good war" -- was not something that most Americans wanted. But the Japanese took that decision out of our hands when they bombed Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941. And Hitler removed any possible doubt when he declared war on us shortly afterward, making sure that we were in the war all over the world.
What Jack Ma Can Re-Teach America
In the fairy tale "Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves," Ali Baba, a poor woodcutter, is in the forest when he hears a group of robbers approaching on horseback. Afraid, he climbs a tree and hears one of the men say, "open sesame." A door opens in a rock and the men go in, the door shutting behind them when another says, "close sesame." When they leave, Ali Baba climbs down and approaches the rock. He says, "open sesame" and it opens for him. Inside he discovers jewels and gold, which he takes, becoming rich himself.
The Case for Negative Campaigning
Next to having pundits and politicians urging uninformed, uninterested, couch potatoes to get out and vote, nothing during election years ticks me off quite as much as listening to birdbrains groan on about negative campaigning. I have no idea how it got started or who started it, but I suspect it was some political weasel who had mastered the art of taking and concealing bribes, and who resented the opposition candidate going public with the news. After all, none of us can keep track of everything our representatives do or even how they vote. The one good thing about elections is that the people who have the most to gain by filling in the blank spots finally have our undivided attention.
Why Has Immigration Shifted?
What should we do about immigration policy? It's a question many are asking, and some useful perspective comes from an article in Foreign Affairs by British-born, California-based historian Gregory Clark, unhelpfully titled, "The American Dream Is an Illusion." The dream to which Clark refers is the idea, promoted by Emma Lazarus's poem at the Statue of Liberty, that this is "a country of opportunity for all, a country that invites in the world's tired, its poor and its huddled masses." The problem, says Clark, is that upward mobility is something of a myth, in America and elsewhere. In his recent book, "The Son Also Rises: Surnames and the History of Social Mobility," he shows that advantages that some families have over others -- in social position, genetic endowment, traditions of literacy and numeracy -- tend to be passed on, not inevitably from parent to child, but persistently and to a considerable extent to descendants for seven and 10 generations.
Monday, September 22, 2014
Why Beheading?
Islamic State has made the beheading of victims a key element in its campaign of terror and conquest. Most conspicuous in recent weeks have been the murders of Westerners James Foley, Steven Sotloff, and David Haines, whose severed heads and decapitated bodies have been shown in threatening videos produced by the jihadists. In the years since 9/11, other Islamist terrorist groups have circulated equally ghastly beheading videos. Among the earlier victims were journalist Daniel Pearl, businessman Nicholas Berg, and construction contractors Jack Hensley and Eugene Armstrong -- all Americans beheaded by Al Qaeda. Last week, meanwhile, Australian police arrested 15 suspects allegedly linked to Islamic State; they are accused of plotting to publicly behead a victim abducted at random.
Obama DOJ Refuses to Release Fast and Furious Docs
Will the administration be able to run out the clock?
Sorry, Unions: Franchises Are Real Small Businesses, Too
If the Obama Administration has its way, Ronald McDonald may soon have to wipe that grin off his face as he stands beneath the Golden Arches. One of the most successful models for expanding small-business ownership in America is under full-scale attack from unions and the White House. The political strategy is to fundamentally change the legal relationship between locally owned stores like McDonald's, Popeyes, Taco Bell and their multibillion-dollar parent companies. No longer would franchisees be legally classified as independent contractors to the parent company. The left wants the employees of each of the hundreds of thousands of independently owned franchise restaurants, hotels, retail stores and others to be considered jointly employed by both the independent franchisee and parent.
Republicans Shouldn’t Pander to Hispanic Voters
Our national debate on immigration policy centers on a paradox. We must become aware of it and deal with it. The United States needs an immigration policy because a lot of people want to come here. If that weren't the case, we wouldn't need an immigration policy. Why do they want to come? For freedom. And because there is freedom, there is opportunity. The immigration issue is now a political football because of the political baggage it carries. Both parties want the votes of the Hispanic population, the most rapidly growing demographic in the country. And this is the same population most sensitive to the immigration issue because most of the illegals within our borders are from Latin American countries.
Not Their END-A Game
The end goal for supporters of the Employment Non-Discrimination Act (ENDA) has never been about respecting religious beliefs. It has been about stomping out religious employers' ability to take into consideration actual or perceived sexual orientation or gender identity when making employment decisions consistent with their faith. [Last] week, 190 Democrats signed onto a discharge petition to force a House vote on a version of ENDA that removes any doubt that the proposed bill will afford any actual exemptions for religious organizations. The resolution to be discharged, introduced by Rep. Jared Polis (D-Colo.), strikes already inadequate exemption language. Instead, it states that religious schools, associations, and non-profits must also comply with ENDA, even though such compliance means they will no longer be able to ensure that employees share their faith commitments in full.
Meriam Ibrahim and Faith McDonnell
The "War on Women" theme has become a campaign perennial in the U.S. We hear it charged that anyone who does not support sex selection abortions is somehow engaged in a war against women. No matter that the vast majority of those "selected" for death in these horrific procedures are female, that is, little women. In a similar vein, many of us who speak out for women shockingly abused in Muslim lands are accused of being *Islamophobes* and culturally insensitive. The simple fact is that the fate of women in these lands is grim. In not one of the Muslim majority lands are basic human rights respected.
Sunday, September 21, 2014
Cultists & Other Creeps
Why is it that one administration after another insists on carrying on an unseemly love affair with Islam? For several years, George W. Bush kept telling us that Islam was a religion of peace when, clearly, it was the one religion in the entire world that wasn't. These days, we have Obama curtsying to sheiks, imans and ayatollahs, every chance he gets. For good measure, the eminent theologian, John Kerry, who merely moonlights as the secretary of state, claimed, at a ceremony to appoint Texas lawyer Shaarik Zafer to be special representative to Muslim communities, that it was America's biblical responsibility to confront climate change and to protect vulnerable Muslim majority countries. "It's a responsibility that comes from God," he insisted, without clarifying whether or not he was referring to Obama.
Cashing in on Voting
The pursuit of perfection is usually foredoomed, but the Los Angeles City Ethics Commission, which has a latitudinarian understanding of ethical behavior, has a perfectly awful idea. It is urging the City Council to consider ways of paying -- starchier ethicists might call it bribing -- people to vote. Some ideas are so loopy that they could only be conceived by governments, which are insulated from marketplace competition that is a constant reminder of reality. And governments are generally confident that their constituents need to be improved by spending the constituents' money. The supposed problem for which the "pay the voters" idea purports to be a solution is this: Few Los Angeles residents are voting.
Saturday, September 20, 2014
The Return of King Dollar
Maybe the U.S. economy, a weakling for the last six years, is finally starting to flex some muscle. We're referring to the return of King Dollar.
DA's Abuse of Discretion Should be Condemned, Not Cheered
Prosecutors routinely reduce criminal charges or waive them altogether. They agree to plea bargains. They settle misdemeanor cases in exchange for compensation to the victim. Under our legal system, the government's prosecuting attorneys have extraordinary leeway in deciding whom to prosecute, and for which offenses, and what punishment to seek. So when Sam Sutter, the district attorney for Bristol County, announced last week that he would drop the criminal charges pending against two global-warming activists for illegally blocking a shipment of coal to a power plant in Somerset, Mass., he was exercising prosecutorial discretion -- something DAs do every day.
From The Comedy Store
Barack Obama laid out his ISIS strategy to the nation. So far he's vowed to make ISIS more manageable, he's threatened to degrade ISIS, he's promised to destroy ISIS. When asked if Obama was sending mixed messages to ISIS, the White House replied, yes and no.
Friday, September 19, 2014
Feminists Demand TV Agitprop
Indian-American actress Mindy Kaling not only stars in her own sitcom on Fox called "The Mindy Project," she's in charge of it. You might think that feminists would celebrate that achievement, but that would show that you don't know about feminists. Apparently, nothing satisfies them. Instead, they are demanding she use her program to sell feminism, and its crowning joy, abortion. Kaling committed a gaffe among the Hollywood left by telling a Flare magazine interviewer she had no plans to address what the magazine called "the American right's current war on abortion." Kaling said "It would be demeaning to the topic to talk about it in a half-hour sitcom."
Letting in the Wrong Refugees
Fresh terror busts in Australia expose a common Achilles' heel of the West: Indiscriminate refugee policies turn free countries into breeding grounds for jihad. It's the same game in America. Soldiers of Islam have weaponized our blind generosity against us. In Sydney this week, authorities detained a half-dozen Muslim plotters and arrested a top collaborator in an alleged conspiracy to kidnap and behead a random Australian citizen. The accused mastermind? Afghan refugee turned Aussie Islamic State recruiter Mohammad Ali Baryalei. He and his aristocratic family were welcomed Down Under decades ago. Baryalei returned the favor by taking to the streets of Sydney to recruit and radicalize dozens of fellow Muslim immigrants or their children.
Memorial to Waste
The long-running debacle over the Eisenhower Memorial in Washington, D.C., is a textbook case of corruption. A great deal of money sloshes around without any accountability, pocketed by those with connections and without scruples, in the name of doing good. It's a sucker's game, at which taxpayers always lose. The Eisenhower Memorial travesty is more offensive than the usual palm greasing, because the greatness of an American hero is being lost. "You like Ike. I like Ike. Everybody likes Ike for president." So ran the campaign ditty from 1952. It was pretty well true. The former 5-star general won 39 states to Adlai Stevenson's nine in the election of 1952. Even among those who voted Democrat, most probably would agree that they liked Ike. Both parties had courted him to run. He was the most admired man in the nation for more years than any other figure since Gallup began asking the question.