Right Opinion
The best of conservative opinion and commentary, updated daily.
Wednesday, July 9, 2014
The NSA's Online Dragnet
Warrantless Surveillance Hits the Target, Along With Many Other People
Obama's Immigration Lawyers' Enrichment Act
The American Dream is dying for tens of millions of unemployed, underemployed and long-term jobless citizens. But the White House has guaranteed that one sector of the U.S. economy will thrive for decades to come: Open-borders immigration lawyers. Don't believe the fibbing D.C. flacks. While the president's spokesman Josh Earnest promised that "most" of the illegal immigrant youths from Central America flooding across our borders will "likely" be deported, decades of reality expose the White House lie. Our deportation system is *designed* to fail. "Due process" in deportation is a euphemism for interminable delay. According to TRAC Immigration, which gathers data on the chronically backlogged immigration court system, there are currently more than 366,000 pending deportation cases with average wait times nationally of nearly 600 days. There are a measly 59 immigration courts staffed by a meager 235 judges to handle all those cases.
When Government Tries to Be Nice
Could the flood of underage, would-be immigrants over the southern border be "Obama's Katrina" as Susan Page of USA Today warned? No, it's worse. Even the most virulent George W. Bush denigrator would not suggest that the former president actually created the hurricane. This president, by contrast, bears a heavy responsibility for creating the deluge of unaccompanied minors who have recently crashed ashore. To say President Barack Obama is largely responsible is not to say that he intended this result. If this episode serves to remind people about the law of unintended consequences, we'll learn far more valuable lessons than those we drew from Hurricane Katrina.
Important Slow News
Wars, plane crashes, mass murder -- it's easy to report news that happens suddenly. Reporters do a good job covering that. But we do a bad job telling you about what's really changing in the world, because we miss the stories that happen slowly. These are usually the more important stories. Recently, President Barack Obama was mocked for saying: "The world is less violent than it has ever been. It is healthier than it has ever been. It is more tolerant than it has ever been. It is better fed than it's ever been. It is more educated than it's ever been." Although these comments received criticism, he was absolutely right. Despite the current violence in the Middle East, the world today is actually less violent than it used to be. In the 21st century, about 50,000 people a year died from war -- about a third the number who died each year during the Cold War and half the number during the 1990s, a decade thought of as a time of peace and prosperity.
Never Let a Self-Produced Horror Show Go to Waste
"You never want a serious crisis to go to waste," President Barack Obama's former chief of staff, Rahm Emanuel, once infamously stated. He never bothered to spell out the unspoken corollary to that appalling statement: And if there is no serious crisis available, manufacture one. The American left has followed that pattern for generations. The left destroyed the nuclear family by incentivizing women to give birth out of wedlock. When out-of-wedlock births exploded, they used that as an excuse to elevate federal spending, elevate taxes and disestablish marriage between a man and a woman as a moral standard. The left crafted a health care crisis by instituting price and wage controls that led to employer-sponsored insurance, and then undercut that insurance with excessive regulation and easy lawsuits. They used elevating costs as an excuse to push Obamacare and elevate taxes.
Why America Is in Jeopardy
On page 563 of his latest biography, "John Quincy Adams: American Visionary," author Fred Kaplan (biographer of Abraham Lincoln, Charles Dickens, Mark Twain and Gore Vidal among others) cites this insight of the sixth president: "Christianity had, all in all, he believed, been a civilizing force, 'checking and controlling the anti-social passions of man.'" That insight is pretty much all an American needs to know in order to understand why the American Founders considered religion -- specifically ethical monotheism rooted in the Hebrew Bible -- indispensable to the American experiment, and why the America we have known since 1776 is in jeopardy.
Hollywood, Where Liberal Values Reign – Except at the Box Office
In the film "Obvious Child," Jenny Slate plays Donna Stern, a stand-up comedian who specializes in making jokes about her private parts, with the occasional foray into fart humor. She is about to go onstage. Her friend offers her some encouragement: "You are going to kill it out there!" Donna replies: "I actually have an appointment to do that tomorrow." Donna's talking about her abortion appointment. Get it? It's funny because it's true. Or if you're like me, you think it's not funny because it's true.
Obama's Immigration Fix Borders on Absurdity
After six years of leaving America's borders wide open, a flood of migrant children are putting a face on the immigration crisis. Fifty-two thousand faces, to be exact. While kids from Mexico, El Salvador, Honduras, Guatemala stream across the border illegally, the holes aren't just apparent in our fences, but in the administration's agenda. For years, the President ignored the warnings of Governors like Rick Perry (R-Texas), who pleaded with the administration to secure the border or face the consequences. Today, those consequences are painfully clear, as tens of thousands of children sit in southern detention centers, living symbols of the administration's lax attitude on immigration. Even the President's own party can't understand his inaction. "With all due respect to the administration," said House Democrat Henry Cuellar (Texas), "they were one step behind," Cuellar told CNN. "They should have seen this coming a long time ago."
Spending and Morality
During last year's budget negotiation meetings, President Barack Obama told House Speaker John Boehner, "We don't have a spending problem." When Boehner responded with "But, Mr. President, we have a very serious spending problem," Obama replied, "I'm getting tired of hearing you say that." In one sense, the president is right. What's being called a spending problem is really a symptom of an unappreciated deep-seated national moral rot. Let's examine it with a few questions. Is it moral for Congress to forcibly use one person to serve the purposes of another? I believe that most Americans would pretend that to do so is offensive. Think about it this way. Suppose I saw a homeless, hungry elderly woman huddled on a heating grate in the dead of winter. To help the woman, I ask somebody for a $200 donation to help her out. If the person refuses, I then use intimidation, threats and coercion to take the person's money. I then purchase food and shelter for the needy woman. My question to you: Have I committed a crime? I hope that most people would answer yes. It's theft to take the property of one person to give to another.
Not Just Another Poll
I'd like to thank everyone who took the time to respond to my recent poll. As I said at the time, it was not, and was not intended, to be one of those scientific polls where people like Gallup and Zogby try to garner a cross-section of the American public. I have no idea what the racial, religious, gender or economic, make-up might be of the 265 respondents to the First Stupendous Prelutsky Poll. All I knew was that they were not typical voters. For one thing, they don't rely on the mainstream media for their news. For another, they're literate. And, finally, one of them was a Russian living in St. Petersburg.
Tuesday, July 8, 2014
The Headlines Are Screaming
Excuse me? This has been taken apart for over three months by people like me. Look at the article below, first written April 13. It was the first of many on Weatherbell.com premium dissecting the reasons for the AGW-driven hysteria of a Super Niño. And this is the fifth time I have caught someone driving this train since the 1997 Super Niño. Every time an El Niño looked like it would appear, they screamed Super Nino. But I started with this post, entitled, "SuperNINOBustalicioushypetoomuchadosis." That is Super Niño Bust a licious hype too much a dosis.
Part-Time Nation
A deceptive jobs report obscures the dark truth about the Obama economy.
How Much Should Your Health Insurer Know About Your Health?
Coordinated care, integrated care, managed care -- these are just some of the buzz words surrounding the health insurance industry these days. This is what makes modern health insurance different from the indemnity insurance of years ago, when patients went to any doctor they liked and the insurer passively paid the bills. The modern insurer wants to be involved in your health care. At a minimum they want to steer you to providers and facilities that...well, that might have higher quality care, but for sure will cost less money.
Stop Sending Taxpayer Funds to Palestinian Terrorists
On June 2, the Palestinians announced a new unity government, which included Hamas, an organization designated by the U.S. State Department as a terrorist group. American aid to the Palestinians since the mid-1990s, according to a Congressional Research Service report, has exceeded $5 billion. In recent years it has averaged $500 million per year. The report notes three major U.S. objectives of these funds: preventing terrorism against Israel from Hamas; fostering "stability, prosperity, and self-governance on the West Bank"; humanitarian aid.
Remembering Richard Scaife, a Man of Ideas
America owes a debt of gratitude to a financier of conservatism
For Wheaton, a Supremely Gratifying Decision
The Supreme Court's term may be over, but the debate certainly isn't. Four days after hanging up their robes for the summer, the justices made another splash on the HHS mandate -- this time, taking a bite out of the President's outrageous "compromise." Last year, when the backlash over the mandate was too much for the White House to handle, the President announced an "accommodation," for religious groups -- which, it turns out, only accommodates his agenda of forcing people to cover pills and procedures they morally object to.
America – Imagine the World Without Her
Do we conservatives really mean it when we say that we need to promote our ideas in the popular culture through books, movies and other media? If so, we need to support people like Dinesh D'Souza and his latest movie and book, "America: Imagine the World Without Her." I saw the movie, and I loved it. Dinesh is a passionate patriot who "chose this country" and loves it with every fiber of his being. Like many of the rest of us, he recognizes that America is under assault, and he is doing all he can to save it. In the movie, Dinesh describes how the political left has infiltrated our culture and educational institutions and presented a damning moral indictment of this nation and free market capitalism.
Constitution, Not Illegal Immigration, Is 'Central to Our Way of Life'
The cab driver taking me to the Washington Nationals baseball game on July 4 is from Bangladesh. I ask him how he got here. He said his father "won the immigration lottery" some years back, was admitted under U.S. immigration law and eventually became a citizen, as did his son. He is proud to be an American and said after he dropped me off he was going to a traditional Fourth of July party to celebrate America's independence. Those are the kinds of immigrants America should welcome. My driver -- I will call him "Yusef" (not his real name) says he works hard, supports his family and is outraged by those who break the law to cross the border and immediately begin getting free stuff that he, now a taxpayer, must subsidize.
The Cramdown Artists
What this country almost certainly doesn't need right now is more laws and regulations; but it doesn't necessarily need fewer laws and regulations, either. What we appear to need above all else is a deeper -- and that's not saying much -- understanding of the purposes for which a civilized society passes laws and enacts regulations. We need, in essence, moral instruction. Eeek! "Moral instruction"? "Right" and "wrong"? By whose lights, whose standards? The contraception debate -- to the extent you call it a debate instead of a shouting match -- brings to mind these fundamental, yet generally skirted, issues. In 21st-century America, right and wrong are matters we hand over to the big guns in politics and -- alas -- the chattering profession, my own profession: the media. He who makes the loudest noises and wins the most elections gets to cram his views down the public's throat.
Racial Differences Are Real but no Cause for Discrimination
"New analyses of the human genome establish that human evolution has been recent, copious and regional," writes Nicholas Wade in his recently published book, "A Troublesome Inheritance: Genes, Race and Human History." That sounds reasonable, and Wade, a science reporter and editor for many years at Nature and the New York Times, seems an unimpeachable source. But many well-meaning people will regard his words as provocative and even dangerous. For they fatally undermine the idea, widely shared by so-called progressives, that any apparent differences between groups of people are the product of nurture rather than nature, of social conditioning rather than Darwinian natural selection.