Right Opinion
The best of conservative opinion and commentary, updated daily.
Thursday, August 7, 2014
WWI Demons Live
World War I started one century ago. Wait! Don't stop reading. For most Americans, the war is like algebra or frog anatomy -- something you have to study briefly in school but then never have to think about again. Unlike World War II, with its unambiguous villains, epic battles and clear victory, World War I is a hot mess. Countries and forgotten empires declared war on each other in no small part because a bunch of aristocrats in funny clothes said they had to.
The Nixon Resignation at 40
On the occasion of this week's 40th anniversary of Richard Nixon's resignation from the presidency, The Washington Post sponsored a reunion featuring Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein, the Watergate reporters who "brought down" the 37th president. In fact, Nixon committed political suicide. He thought he could get away with what other politicians had done, but forgot the rules are different for Republicans.
Will NATO End With a Whimper?
April marked the 65th birthday of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, formed at the height of the Cold War to stop the huge postwar Red Army from overrunning Western Europe. NATO in 1949 had only 12 members, comprising Western Europe, Canada and the United States. Its original mission was simple. According to the alliance's first secretary general, Lord Hastings Ismay, NATO was formed "to keep the Russians out, the Americans in, and the Germans down."
Philanthropy Over Politics
One would never guess who attended Dick Scaife's memorial service on the Pennsylvania countryside last week. Scaife has been referred to as the "father of modern conservatism." In his lifetime, he donated a fortune across a whole range of philanthropic endeavors, from the arts to medical research to politics -- conservative politics. His conservative causes were very elevated -- sophisticated thinks tanks, professorial chairs, intellectual reviews -- but also at times they were very partisan. In the 1990s, Scaife was a leading opponent of Bill Clinton, and he frequently drew blood. When Hillary Rodham Clinton spoke of the "vast right-wing conspiracy" she doubtless had him in mind.
Wednesday, August 6, 2014
More ObamaCare Chaos
Americans who automatically renew their policies are in for an unpleasant surprise.
The American Left vs. God-Given Rights
In his opinion declaring Virginia's marriage law unconstitutional, Judge Henry Floyd of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit summarized what he perceived to be the basic disagreement between the opponents and proponents of the law. "The opponents and proponents agree that marriage is a fundamental right," the judge wrote. "They strongly disagree, however, regarding whether that right encompasses the right to same-sex marriage. The opponents argue that the fundamental right to marry belongs to the individual, who enjoys the right to marry the person of his or her choice. By contrast, the proponents point out that, traditionally, states have sanctioned only man-woman marriages. They contend that, in light of this history, the right to marry does not include a right to same-sex marriage."
Obama's Rules of Enragement
When the Obama administration talks about a mandate "accommodation," you can be sure the only thing they're accommodating is their radical agenda. A month after the Supreme Court gave ObamaCare one of its biggest black eyes, the President's team is back at the drawing board, desperate to find a new way to force family businesses and nonprofits to violate their pro-life convictions.
Patrolmen Without Borders
If I drive across a U.S. border, I expect to stop at a Border Patrol checkpoint. But imagine driving to the grocery store, or Mom's house, well inside America, and being stopped by the Border Patrol. Many Americans don't have to imagine it -- it's how they live. Even as the federal government fails to control the southern border, it sends the Border Patrol farther into the interior, where Americans complain that agents harass people who are already U.S. citizens.
Liberals & Locusts
You don't hear that much about locusts today. Not unless you read the Bible or know how the Mormons came to settle in Salt Lake City. But at one time, people lived pretty much in dread of what a swarm of them could do to farmland; namely, devour everything in sight, leaving devastation and famine in their wake. These days, liberals do the same. The primary differences between the two groups is that, to their credit, locusts only showed up every seven years, and they concentrated on agriculture and didn't feel compelled to also leave an entire economy, a perfectly fine health care system and the U.S. Constitution, in tatters.
Still Kicking Around Nixon
Earlier this year, former New York Times columnist Frank Rich wrote a trash-talking article in New York Magazine begging conservatives to dig back into the Clinton scandals of the 1990s. Hillary Clinton is preparing to run for president again, and he thinks it will help. Rich delighted in "how inexorably the Clintons will seduce the GOP into another orgy of self-destruction" by focusing on Whitewater or Bill Clinton's sexual harassments, making Hillary look again like "a victim of drive-by character assassination."
Liberals Come Late to the Pot Party
With the usual fanfare and self-regard we have come to expect from the New York Times editorial board, the prestigious paper has changed its mind about pot. It now believes that the federal ban on the substance should be lifted and that the whole issue should be sent back to the states to handle. Not only did it issue a big Sunday editorial (the equivalent of a secular fatwa in my native Upper West Side of Manhattan), but it has since been flooding the zone on the issue with essays from members of the editorial board.
Murder in Rio Grande Valley: 'This Is Coming to a Town Near You'
The voice on the other end of the line is exasperated. "It's insane," he wants America to know. "We're in a war zone." And there's no room for apathy. "This is coming to a town near you," he warns. The man on the phone is a veteran of the Department of Homeland Security who works in South Texas. He reached out to me last night in the wake of an off-duty U.S. Border Patrol agent's horrific murder on Friday. The 36-year-old agent, Javier Vega Jr., was shot execution-style in front of his wife, his parents, two of his sons and another child in the Rio Grande Valley. Vega's father was also shot but survived. They were on an idyllic family fishing trip before being robbed and ambushed.
The FCC Pitchman
The Federal Communications Commission is looking to raise revenue -- and the agency is in full pitch mode. The company is injecting itself as the middlemen between buyers (wireless carriers) and sellers (TV broadcasters) of spectrum, hoping to take a large commission check as a result. The FCC is hoping to raise $20 billion by matching the broadcasters who are willing to sell at the lowest prices with the wireless carriers willing to buy at the highest. The spread between becomes the government's commission check. In typical government fashion, Congress already earmarked the funds to pay for a $7 billion nationwide network for first responders, with the additional funds going toward deficit reduction.
Why Prosecutors Love Mandatory Minimums
Seeking to Shorten 'Draconian' Sentences, the Attorney General Faces Opposition From His Underlings
How the Media Craft Victory for Hamas
On Tuesday, CNN's Wolf Blitzer hosted Hamas spokesman Osama Hamden. The week before, Hamdan labeled Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu "a new image of Hitler" on the network. But now, for some reason, Blitzer stumbled into a random act of journalism: He asked Hamdan about comments he had made suggesting that Jews used Christian blood in matza. Hamdan stumbled around and blamed the Jews for their action in Gaza. Blitzer called Hamdan's comments an "awful, awful smear."
Western Anti-Semitism
Navi Pillay, U.N. high commissioner for human rights, has accused both Israel and Hamas militants of committing war crimes in the Gaza conflict. Her harshest criticism, as well as that of most nations, has been reserved for the Israeli government, charging that it has committed war crimes in direct violation of the Geneva Conventions. In the wake of the huge difference in casualties and property destruction, many in the West have accused the Israeli government of making a grossly disproportionate response to terrorist rocket attacks. A New York Times (July 23, 2014) article titled "As Much of the World Frowns on Israel, Americans Hold Out Support" says that a number of "world leaders and demonstrators pointed to the lopsided number of Palestinian casualties -- more than 650, most of them civilians -- versus 35 on the Israeli side, 32 of them soldiers." By now, those numbers have tripled, but let's think about some of the arguments being made.
Tuesday, August 5, 2014
Lancet: A Home for Evil's Useful Idiots
Two weeks ago, the British medical journal, Lancet, considered to be one of the world's leading medical publications, published "An open letter for the people in Gaza." Signed by four European doctors on behalf of 20 others (17 from Italy and three from the United Kingdom), the letter had virtually nothing to do with medicine. Rather, it was a grotesque attack on Israel.
Natural Marriage Courts Appeal
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit in Cincinnati will hear cases on Wednesday challenging the male-female definitions of marriage found in the constitutions of Tennessee, Kentucky, Ohio and Michigan. Each of those states had defined marriage as the union of one man and one woman, and each was declared unconstitutional by federal district courts in those respective states. The four cases have been consolidated into one appeal that will be considered by a three-judge panel of the Sixth Circuit.