Right Opinion
The best of conservative opinion and commentary, updated daily.
Thursday, July 17, 2014
The Turbulent Summer of 2014
The summer of 2014 will go down in history as the season when America fell apart. Let's take a tour of the disasters. Germany in 2008 enthusiastically hosted candidate Barack Obama for his so-called Victory Column speech. Now, Germans suddenly sound as if they are near-enemies of the U.S. Chancellor Angela Merkel reportedly was furious that her cell phone was tapped by American intelligence agents. She just kicked the top CIA official out of Germany, further enraged that the U.S. had recruited at least one German official to provide intelligence on the German government. Polls show that Germans find Vladimir Putin's Russian tyranny almost as popular as Barack Obama's America.
Will Eric Holder Ever Run Out of Race Cards?
Attorney General Eric Holder, in a recent interview, reiterates the theme heard from the very beginning of President Barack Obama's administration: opposition to Obama's agenda equals racism. "There's a certain level of vehemence, it seems to me, that's directed at me (and) directed at the president." What is Holder's proof -- to the extent that any is required? After all, following his election, Obama's favorable ratings reached nearly 80 percent, higher than any president-elect since John F. Kennedy. Obama, in 2008, received a greater percentage of the "white vote" than did John Kerry.
A Few Sad Truths
Only a liberal dunce could seriously contend that the exclusion of four of 20 contraceptive options constitutes a war on women. And yet in the wake of the Supreme Court ruling in the Hobby Lobby case, that is exactly what people like Hillary Clinton, Sandra Fluke and the three politically partisan harpies on the Court, Kagan, Ginsburg and Sotomayor, would have you believe. As I see it, the fact that young women actually expect that people with whom they're not having sex should provide them with free birth control pills is clear evidence that the real war is the one being waged on the American taxpayer and commonsense.
Wednesday, July 16, 2014
Two Simple Questions for Al Gore
Al Gore is at it again. He was just in Australia (he should hire Weatherbell.com to help him avoid the "Gore effect" -- Brisbane recorded its coldest temperature in 103 years during his stay) and told [BBC](http://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-28199131), "This [climate change] is the biggest crisis our civilization faces." A statement like that, which echoes much of what State Secretary John Kerry says, is very serious indeed, so perhaps Al Gore should answer a couple of basic questions. Some points first. CO2 in the atmosphere is portrayed in proportions that distort it in the same way a picture of an ant under a microscope would distort its size in relation to the environment around it.
Needed: A Patriotic Tax Code
Anyone who supports the current tax system in America is unpatriotic. There, I said it. The current IRS tax system is anti-American. It sends jobs and factories and research facilities that should be located inside the land of the free to places like Singapore, Ireland, and Indonesia. It hurts American workers -- especially unionized blue-collar workers who see their jobs shipped overseas. And our workers' wages are lower than they would be without this perverted tax code.
SCOTUS Polls Its Weight on Mandate
The Supreme Court's mandate ruling isn't getting rave reviews from liberals, but voters certainly approve. Based on the latest Gallup numbers, the firestorm over birth control is pretty well contained to Democratic Cloakroom on Capitol Hill, where liberal leaders desperately -- and apparently, ineffectively -- fan the flames. After the justices left for summer, new polling says Americans gave them high marks for the term, which included some of the most significant religious liberty cases in a generation. More voters approve of the justices' job (47%) than disapprove (46%), hardly a sign of nationwide outrage over the Court's mandate opt-out. It seems most people don't share the Left's hysteria over the Hobby Lobby/Conestoga Wood Specialties ruling, which empowered family businesses to operate according to their religious convictions.
Uncle Sam's Unfenced Swimming Pool
Sam, the wealthiest man in his neighborhood, lives in a big beautiful house with a massive backyard punctuated by a large, deep swimming pool. While Sam is personally not very fond of children -- he supports abortion on demand and believes the government should force all employers to offer female workers free sterilizations -- he nonetheless lives in a neighborhood that teems with little ones. The children are particularly attracted to Sam's beautiful pool -- and, on those rare occasions when Sam is actually in his backyard, he frequently finds himself shooing these children away.
Jose Antonio Vargas: The Face of the Entitled Illegal Alien
They've blown it again, big time. They just can't help themselves. During the Bush years, the open-borders movement won over bleeding hearts in the White House but alienated the American public with radical displays of La Raza ("The Race") militancy, desecrated American flags and Che Guevara shirt-wearing, fist-thrusting marches across the country. Left-wing public relations consultants taught the amnesty mob to tone it down, turn the flags right-side up and stop threatening Reconquista. But the phony red-white-and-blue dye job didn't last. The movement's true extremist, entitled roots can't be concealed for long.
Eric Holder, Media-Spoiled Brat
Attorney General Eric Holder granted an exclusive interview to ABC's "This Week With George Stephanopoulos" from London, where he was portrayed by ABC as deeply concerned about the global terrorist threat. What stands out from this very rare session -- Holder hasn't been on Sunday network television in four years -- is that Holder pulled out the oldest, lamest card in the Obama political deck: President Barack Obama and he are opposed by people who should be suspected of racism. And darned if he didn't get away with it again.
A Crime No Man Can Commit
Tennessee's Law Criminalizing Drug Use During Pregnancy Heaps Punishment on Reviled Women
Attacking Israel With the Big Lie: Genocide
"Here's the difference between us," Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu explained on "Fox News Sunday." "We're using missile defense to protect our civilians, and they're using their civilians to protect their missiles." It's a classic talking point. It's also objectively true, and that truth is very frustrating for Israel's critics. All one needs to do is delve into the muck of Twitter and read the timelines for such hashtags as #GazaUnderAttack and #GenocideInGaza: "They're killing the women and children to ensure there won't be a new generation of Palestine." "One Holocaust can NEVER justify another."
Our Unwillingness to Defend Ourselves
The U.S. Justice Department's Bureau of Justice Statistics reports that 2012 losses because of personal identity theft totaled $24.7 billion. The money losses from identity theft pale in comparison with the costs of paperwork, time and inconvenience imposed on the larger society in an effort to protect ourselves. According to LifeLock, while the laws against identity theft have gotten tougher, identity theft criminal prosecution is relatively rare. Unless we develop a low tolerance and a willingness to impose harsh sentences, identity thieves will continue to impose billions of dollars of costs on society.
Who'll Build the Roads?
"Tea party members don't think there's a federal role in transportation!" complained Sen. Sherrod Brown, D-Ohio, last week, near the site of a $5.8 million highway project. If only most tea party members were that radical. While Brown and other big-government folks worry that Republicans will cut spending, Republicans debate adding another $10.5 billion to the Highway Trust Fund to keep it going another year -- without deciding how to reform it.
Bloodguilt Over Jews Leads to Blood Libels Against Jews
If there's one place on Earth that should understand the danger of Jew hatred, it is Frankfurt, Germany. In 1933, boycotts targeted Jews; by 1938, Germans were burning synagogues down. Between 1933 and 1945, the Jewish population of the city was decimated, dropping from 30,000 to 602. Few Jews, most of them Soviet expatriates, live in the city now. So Frankfurt seems an odd place for a new blood libel against the Jews. Nonetheless, this week, 2,500 protesters, including Muslims and neo-Nazis -- allied once again -- showed up downtown to scream about Israel's defensive action against Hamas in the Gaza Strip. Police reportedly helped out the protesters, allowing them to utilize a loudspeaker and a vehicle to shout anti-Israel diatribes. "You Jews Are Beasts," read one sign.
Tuesday, July 15, 2014
A Healthy Blow to Labor Overreach
Forced unionization is anathema to the First Amendment
The Senate's Weapons of Mass Distraction
There are just three weeks on the legislative calendar before November, and Democrats plan to spend all of them fixing the nonexistent "crisis of contraception." The world is literally falling to pieces, along with the U.S. economy, and liberals think *we're* obsessed with social issues? Democratic liberals think the future of the free world hinges on employers being forced -- under the threat of crippling fines -- to provide drugs that can end a pregnancy. Days after a new report showed that free birth control is being covered in record numbers, liberals are complaining that the Supreme Court won't trample the First Amendment to deliver even more. Tossing aside tax, diplomatic, ObamaCare, military, and other reforms, Senate liberals are plowing ahead with their ridiculous agenda to overrule the Supreme Court.
The Jewish State in a Morally Sick World
Let's drop the names "Hamas" and "Israel" and make a list of the characteristics of two imaginary warring entities. We'll call them Entity A and Entity B.
President Joe Biden? Hmmmm...
Sarah Palin's call for the impeachment of President Obama makes no sense. What does the lady want -- a national street fight? But a fetching question arises from her enterprise: Could we live for two years under a President Joe Biden? Would it be worse than now? Maybe not. It has come to this, in the second year of the second term of Barack Obama. Our present chief executive makes Joe Biden look good -- a prospect that once seemed as unlikely as a free Clinton speech. Joe Biden, without a fresh political perspective to his name -- but with a head of nicely transplanted hair and a mouthful of nicely capped teeth -- might lead the country more intelligently than ...
No, Mr. Holder, This Has Nothing to Do With Race
Attorney General Eric Holder once again played the race card -- this time on national television, in an interview on ABC's "This Week," claiming that he and President Obama have been targets of "a racial animus" by some of the administration's political opponents. "There's a certain level of vehemence, it seems to me, that's directed at me (and) directed at the president," said Holder. "You know, people talk about taking their country back. ... There's a certain racial component to this for some people. I don't think this is the thing that is a main driver, but for some, there's a racial animus." Reminded of his comments during Obama's first year as president that the U.S. is a "nation of cowards" on race, he refused to back down.
Don't Fence Me In
At last, an Obama administration official has come out in favor of a fence. He promises it will bring security to people on both sides of the border. Unfortunately, Philip Gordon, National Security Council coordinator for the Middle East, North Africa and the Gulf, was not speaking of a border fence between the United States and Mexico, but a fence between the West Bank and the 1967 Israeli border. That fence, he said, would be built after Israel relinquishes the territory in exchange for an empty promise of "peace" with the Palestinians. Apparently Gordon hasn't noticed that missiles fly over fences. If anyone needs more proof that the land-for-peace formula was stillborn when first proposed, Gaza is the latest example. Israel's unilateral withdrawal from Gaza in 2005 ensured Hamas would establish a terrorist base from which it now fires missiles indiscriminately at Israeli cities.