Right Opinion
The best of conservative opinion and commentary, updated daily.
Wednesday, July 2, 2014
Obama's Anti-Media Tantrums
President Barack Obama treats the press like a spoiled child treats his parents. Despite the pampering, he just keeps complaining about them until he gets his way. As America tires of his inflated sense of self-importance while the economy limps and his foreign policy crumbles, Obama travels around the country complaining that the mean old media aren't complimentary enough. At an event with big donors in May in Chicago, Obama lamented that he -- the very essence of reason and nonpartisanship -- is lumped in with a fanatical Congress in a tale of gridlocked Washington.
Economic Freedom
A couple of years ago, President Barack Obama, speaking on the economy, told an audience in Osawatomie, Kansas: "'The market will take care of everything,' they tell us. ... But here's the problem: It doesn't work. It has never worked. ... I mean, understand, it's not as if we haven't tried this theory." To believe what the president and many others say about the market's not working requires that one be grossly uninformed or dishonest. The key features of a free market system are private property rights and private ownership of the means of production. In addition, there's a large measure of peaceable voluntary exchange. By contrast, communist systems feature severely limited private property rights and government ownership or control of the means of production. There has never been a purely free market economic system, just as there has never been a purely communist system. However, we can rank economies and see whether ones that are closer to the free market end of the economic spectrum are better or worse than ones that are closer to the communist end. Let's try it.
Alito Agrees: Your Birth Control Is Not Your Boss' Business
Abortion-rights protesters gathered outside the Supreme Court building on Monday holding signs that read "Birth Control: Not My Boss's Business." Much to their chagrin, Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito agreed in his ruling in the Hobby Lobby case. Of course, that's not how supporters of the government's contraception mandate see it. They actually believe that birth control is their boss' business, and they want the federal government to force employers to agree. More on that later, but it's first worth noting how we got here.
The Jew-Hating Obama Administration
On Monday, three Jewish boys were found dead, murdered by the terrorist group Hamas: Eyal Yifrach, 19; Gilad Shaar, 16; and Naftali Frenkel, 16. Frenkel was an American citizen. The three were kidnapped while hitchhiking some three weeks ago. In the interim, President Barack Obama said nothing about them publicly. His wife issued no hashtags. His State Department maintained that $400 million in American taxpayer cash would continue to the Palestinian unity government, which includes Hamas. Presumably Frenkel did not look enough like Barack Obama's imaginary son for him to give a damn. Or perhaps Frenkel hadn't deserted his duty in the American military, and therefore his parents didn't deserve a White House press conference. Maybe Michelle Obama was too busy worrying about children's fat thighs to spend a moment tweeting out a selfie to raise awareness.
Tuesday, July 1, 2014
Why Not Boost Teen Employment With a Training Wage?
This is the time of year when teenagers scramble to land a summer job, but many states and cities make that search far more difficult. As a father of two teens, I know first-hand how tough that job search can be and the negative repercussions about teens staying idle -- watching TV, playing computer games, and hanging out with the wrong crowd. So why do states and localities make jobs for first-time workers even harder to find by raising the minimum wage? Earlier this month, Seattle raised its minimum wage to $15 an hour -- near the highest in the nation and double the federal rate of $7.25.
Businesses Get a Second Opinion on Health Care
The Executive Branch has plenty of powers, but picking and choosing who can exercise their faith isn't one of them. That was never clearer than Monday, when the U.S. Supreme Court delivered one of its most significant rulings upholding religious liberty in a generation. Almost two years to the day of leaving the President's health care law intact, the justices took a second crack at ObamaCare, this time toppling one of the most oppressive pieces ever implemented: the HHS mandate. With headlines full of the President's mistakes, one of his biggest was forcing American companies to either pay for pills and procedures that violate their beliefs or pay crippling fines. Of the more than 100 challenges to the mandate, the Supreme Court took two: *Hobby Lobby Stores v. Burwell* and *Burwell v. Conestoga Wood Specialties*8. Like millions of other Christians, the Green (Hobby Lobby) and Hahn (Conestoga Wood) families couldn't imagine paying for health care coverage that could end a pregnancy.
Why the Left's Preoccupation With the Redskins?
Given how much evil there is in the world; given how many signs of moral, intellectual and economic decline there are here in America; and given the increasing irrelevance of America to world events, it is fair to ask why the American Left is preoccupied with the name Washington "Redskins." The Washington Redskins have been in existence for 82 years. For about 80 of those years, virtually no one, including the vast majority of American Indians, was troubled by the name. Yet, it is now of such importance to the American left that the majority leader of the United States Senate has repeatedly demanded, from the floor of the United States Senate, that the team drop its name; 50 United States senators, all of them Democrats, have signed an open letter demanding the same; Sports Illustrated's Peter King no longer uses the name; other leading sportswriters have adopted the same practice; and the president of the United States has weighed in on the issue.
The High Court's Good Lick for Religious Liberty
The U.S. Supreme Court had a banner day, a crackerjack day, with horns and ice cream, as it trumped the federal government's brazen claim of power and authority to define which religious convictions, if any, have a proper place in the health care arena. Hooray for the Hahn and Green families for carrying to the high court their plea to be released from the duty of providing employees with contraceptive coverage under Obamacare. Never mind (as the government saw it before the court's 5-4 ruling) the two families' religiously grounded conviction that the mandate violated their religious beliefs and moral principles, potentially implicating them in the destruction of unborn life.
America's Birthday
Birthdays are supposed to be times for celebration and gift-giving. But America's upcoming birthday on the Fourth of July is a time when the gift most needed is an urgent warning about the dangers of losing the things that have made this country America -- and have long made "America" a ringing word of freedom, not only in this country but to people around the world. All is not lost. But all could be lost -- especially if too many of us take freedom for granted and focus our attention on other things, like electronic gadgets and the antics of celebrities, while ignoring such dangers as nuclear weapons in the hands of suicidal fanatics, with a track record of savagery, whom we are too squeamish to call anything stronger than "militants."
How Can Anyone Trust Obama?
Do you remember what President Obama initially said about the Internal Revenue Service scandal? Do you recall his professed outrage? Obama wanted us to know how furious he was. He said, "The misconduct that (the inspector general's report) uncovered is inexcusable." "It's inexcusable," he repeated, "and Americans are right to be angry about it, and I am angry about it. I will not tolerate this kind of behavior in any agency -- but especially in the IRS, given the power that it has and the reach that it has into all of our lives." He declared that the "responsible parties" would be held "accountable." He reported that Treasury Secretary Jack Lew "took the first step by requesting -- and accepting -- the resignation of the acting commissioner of the IRS (Steven Miller) because given the controversy surrounding this audit, it's important to institute new leadership that can help restore confidence going forward." He said he had directed the agency to implement recommendations from the inspector general to ensure that this outrageous conduct would not be repeated.
Our Arrogant President
President Obama appears to have forgotten -- or ignored -- why we have elections. One reason is to stop, or slow down, an agenda the public doesn't like. When polls began reflecting buyer's remorse about Mr. Obama in 2010, voters elected a Republican majority in the House of Representatives and might well have done the same in the Senate in 2012 were it not for some weak GOP candidates, especially in Nevada and Delaware. President Obama acts as if elections other than his own don't matter. His attitude seems to be, "I have the power and the rest of government be damned." In another speech (does he talk in his sleep?) last week in Minneapolis, the president said of House Republicans, "They don't do anything except block me and call me names." Actually, Republicans have passed scores of bills, virtually all of which have died in the Senate, because Majority Leader Harry Reid refuses to bring them up for a vote, much less debate. It is Reid who is the real obstructionist.
Scope for Conscience
The major media's account of the Supreme Court's decision in the Hobby Lobby case was typical of the way the case has been misreported from the start. The New York Times headline read, "Supreme Court Rejects Contraceptives Mandate for Some Corporations." Politico led with "SCOTUS sides with Hobby Lobby on birth control." Others were similar. That's not what the case was about, and you'd think that major news organizations might at least get the basic facts straight. The litigants -- the Green and Hahn families, owners of Hobby Lobby and Conestoga Wood Specialties respectively -- did not have religious objections to contraception. They might have if they were Catholic, but they weren't, and they didn't.
Why Gov't Isn't Working and How to Make it Better
Government just doesn't work very well. That's the persuasive thesis of three important books published this year. John Micklethwait and Adrian Wooldridge's "The Fourth Revolution" takes a historical and international (and British) perspective. They argue that the welfare state, a creation of early 20th-century Brits, has become clunky in comparison to recent reforms in Scandinavia and the Asian model most highly developed in Lee Kuan Yew's Singapore. Peter Schuck's "Why Government Fails So Often" looks at a multitude of federal programs and concludes that most, though not all, have "deep structures" which make "policy failure and mismanagement" inevitable.
The Cesspool at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue
A friend of mine, after taking note of Obama's approach to foreign affairs, has decided that his doctrine is to speak softly and carry a big grudge. But if you stop and think about it, that also sums up his domestic policies, which seem aimed at burdening the middle class with additional taxes; a health system that will be the envy of nobody on earth, including the folks in Bangladesh; and an EPA and IRS that are out to target anyone who didn't contribute to Obama's re-election campaign. In other news, John Hinckley, 58, would-be assassin and would-be swain of lesbian actress Jodie Foster, is now a free man. It's only a rumor that in his rush to appoint left-wing dingbats to the federal bench, Obama is considering appointing Mr. Hinckley to the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals, where he would be right at home with the other liberal nutburgers. After all, he established his bona fides by trying to off conservative icon Ronald Reagan.
Monday, June 30, 2014
Environmentalists Call U.S. Workers 'Collateral Damage'
One of the leading leftwing environmentalists last week described the hundreds of thousands of Americans who may lose their jobs due to the Obama administration's new anti-carbon regulations as "collateral damage" in the fight against global warming. The offensive comments were issued by William S. Becker, the head of the Climate Action Project, a well-funded environmental group. In his piece in the Huffington Post praising the new Environmental Protection Agency regulations to stop climate change, he lamented that "there is nothing explicit in the [Obama] plan to mitigate or adapt to the economic disruption the clean energy transition will cause for coal and oil-country families."
Government-Enabled Amnesty
America is being subjected to the largest extortion racket ever perpetrated on the public by the federal government, corrupt vested interests and a despicably slanted media. In short, a coordinated invasion is taking place on our southern border and an equally coordinated effort is being made to disperse the invaders throughout the nation, so that it becomes virtually impossible to deport them. Albert Spratte, the sergeant-at-arms of the National Border Patrol Council, Local 3307 in the Rio Grande Valley, puts it exactly like it is. "Even if the administration says this isn't amnesty, don't believe them," he contends.
McDaniel Blows It in Mississippi by Ignoring Blacks
Incumbent Republican Senator Thad Cochran's successful game plan, which drove his run-off victory over Tea Party challenger Chris McDaniel for Mississippi's Republican Senate nomination, was unconventional. But most incredible was the success of this game plan -- to reach out to liberal black churches and get Democrat black voters to turn out and vote for Cochran -- despite being executed in broad daylight. Soon after Cochran lost to McDaniel in the primary, necessitating a run-off because McDaniel fell short of getting 50 percent of the vote, papers reported the intent of Cochran's team to turn out black Democrats to overcome the thin margin by which Cochran lost.
It's the ENDA the Line for Contractors
After 30 days of nonstop, in-your-face celebration, the White House is capping off "gay pride" month with its biggest gift yet. Monday, the pot of gold at the end of this President's rainbow is an executive order giving special workplace benefits to the sexually confused. For the far-Left, it caps off a long fight to get the administration to do what Congress has not: order employers to put aside their profits, principles, and practices in the name of political correctness. The President's order implementing part of the Employment Non-Discrimination Act (ENDA) -- once considered "too radical" even for his own party -- forces government contractors and subcontractors to hire gays, lesbians, transvestites, and transsexuals -- regardless of their legally protected morals. This level of coercion is nothing less than viewpoint blackmail -- and from the federal government no less!
Thad Cochran's Voting-Rights Victory
Tea Party insurgent Chris McDaniel came tantalizingly close to knocking off Senator Thad Cochran in Mississippi's Republican primary runoff last week, but a surge in black voter turnout saved the six-term incumbent's bacon. Cochran's election to a seventh term in November now seems a foregone conclusion, and boy, are a lot of conservatives mad. "There is something a bit unusual about a Republican primary that's decided by liberal Democrats," McDaniel fumed on election night, slamming Cochran and the GOP establishment for "once again reaching across the aisle [and] abandoning the conservative movement."
Sunday, June 29, 2014
A Primer for GOP Candidates
I get very discouraged when I come across polls that show Barack Obama's job approval rate as high as 43.9% and a generic congressional ballot that has Democrats leading Republicans 43% to 42.3%, even though the percentage of those thinking that America is headed in the right direction stands at just 29.8%. Apparently, about 14% of us are incapable of connecting even two or three dots. So much for public education! Still, being an eternal optimist, I take some comfort from the fact that Obama is the only two-term president who ever received fewer votes the second time around, and that since 2008, the GOP has won most of the elections, whether it was Senate and House seats, or a governor's mansion, that was up for grabs.