Right Opinion
The best of conservative opinion and commentary, updated daily.
Sunday, June 29, 2014
What's in a Name?
Amanda Blackhorse, a Navajo who successfully moved a federal agency to withdraw trademark protections from the Washington Redskins because it considers the team's name derogatory, lives on a reservation where Navajos root for the Red Mesa High School Redskins. She opposes this name; the Native Americans who picked and retain it evidently do not. The Patent and Trademark Office acted on a 1946 law banning trademarks that "may disparage" persons. "May" gives the agency latitude to disregard evidence regarding how many people actually feel disparaged, or feel that others should feel disparaged. Blackhorse speaks of "the majority of Native American people who have spoken out on this." This would seem implausible even if a 2004 poll had not found that 90 percent of Native Americans were not offended by the Redskins' name. A 2013 AP-GfK poll showed that 79 percent of Americans of all ethnicities opposed changing it, and just 18 percent of "nonwhite football fans" favored changing it.
Saturday, June 28, 2014
Proposals to Move Toward Energy Independence
What has suddenly become obvious is the extent to which President Barack Obama's imprudent policy-making decisions have compounded problems with unintended and unacceptable consequences. Now that Iraqi and Libyan oil may be at risk of going off-line as a result of terrorist control, Obama's recent decision to block construction of the Keystone XL pipeline, which would transport a million barrels of oil per day from friendly Alberta, Canada to the United States, seems astonishingly shortsighted.
GOP: Just Say 'No' to Ex-Im
Why in the world would Congress want to reauthorize the Export-Import Bank? Known as "Bank of Boeing," Ex-Im is the perfect example of corporate welfare, crony capitalism, fraud and corruption. Get rid of it. It's a government-sponsored menace that actually damages American business competitiveness and reduces jobs at home. Voting against Ex-Im should be a no-brainier.
Temptation of Wishful Thinking on Iran
An estimated 50,000 Iranian exiles and supporters from Europe and North America are here to remind the world that no cooperation with the brutal, expansionist regime in Tehran can possibly advance Western interests. This annual gathering of MeK (People's Mujahedin of Iran), an Iranian resistance group, was already scheduled. But it might have been called just to rebut Secretary of State John Kerry's comments about possible cooperation between the U.S. and Iran in Iraq. "I think we need to go step by step," Kerry mused, "and see what, in fact, might be a reality, but I wouldn't rule out anything that would be constructive to providing real stability, a respect for the constitution, a respect for the election process, and a respect for the ability of the Iraqi people to form a government that represents all of the interests of Iraq, not one sectarian group over another. It has to be inclusive, and that has been one of the great problems of the last few years."
From The Comedy Store
The White House refused to take sides in Iraq's civil war Thursday as government troops fell back again. The next day the advance on Baghdad miraculously halted. It turns out all those abandoned U.S. military vehicles used by al-Qaeda rebels were made by General Motors.
Friday, June 27, 2014
An Ounce of Cure Is Worth a Pound of Prevention
For close to 18 years, there has been no warming of the atmosphere. Most of the warming that occurred anyway has occurred in the polar regions during winter seasons rather than in the temperate regions and the tropics. One of the EPA lines of evidence for their endangerment findings -- the trapping hot spot theory over the tropics -- is visibly false. (As are the other two. One of them actually uses computer models that have busted horribly as "evidence" of warming). I refer the reader to something I wrote about the EPA last year and is now coming into view front and center.
Recess No Playground for Obama
President Obama may blow by Congress to get his way, but he doesn't have that luxury with the U.S. Supreme Court. That much was clear yesterday in the first of two major decisions (Hobby Lobby being the other) that could leave a lasting mark on his final term. The initial blow came earlier Thursday morning, when all nine justices blasted the White House for making a unilateral decision to seat four nominees the Senate had blocked. When the chamber wasn't rubber-stamping his agenda fast enough, the President took matters into his own hands in 2012 and filled vacancies to the National Labor Relations Board and Consumer Financial Protection Bureau without the Senate's consent. The President referred to them as "recess appointments," which would have been defensible if the Senate had actually been in recess.
Nasty Playing Cards and Apologies
There's a new card game making the rounds that's designed to offend. What does it say about our culture that this marketing strategy actually works? "Cards Against Humanity is a party game for horrible people," reads the game's website. "Unlike most of the party games you've played before, Cards Against Humanity is as despicable and awkward as you and your friends." The game's concept is simple: A dealer issues a black fill-in-the-blank card, and using their a handful of white answer cards, players try to come up with the funniest (and often most offensive-sounding) combinations. The player who accomplishes that wins the round.
Facing Tough Odds, GOP Had a Good Night in Colorado
On Tuesday night, former Rep. Bob Beauprez beat a slate of Republicans, including, most notably, former presidential candidate Tom Tancredo. Mitt Romney and other hated/beloved GOP establishment types had endorsed Beauprez, who was clearly the most electable candidate available to face John Hickenlooper. More importantly, the state GOP did not want Tancredo's tedious one-note campaign dragging down its entire ticket. Still, this wasn't -- though you may hear differently -- another Tea Party vs. Old Guard matchup. What was different in Colorado? Where it mattered, the establishment choice was as conservative on issues as any other candidate running. Actually, paleoconservative Tancredo's designation as a "tea party" favorite by the media was more a matter of perception -- or more probably lazy shorthand many journalists use to signify "crazy."
Obstructionism Is Patriotic
Three cheers for right-wing obstructionism. Can we have more, please, and louder? This week's unanimous Supreme Court ruling on President Obama's illegal recess appointments is a double smackdown. First, it's a rebuke against arrogant White House power-grabbers who thought they could act with absolute impunity and interminable immunity. Second, the ruling is a reproach of all the establishment pushovers on Capitol Hill who put comity above constitutional principle.
Obama Is Not Finished
More and more people are finally coming to the realization that President Obama is presiding over America's decline, though there are differences of opinion as to whether he's deliberately or even directly causing it. You have to admit that it's outright bizarre and alarming that people are even having this discussion, yet many of us have been warning about it for years now. It is gratifying that others -- albeit belatedly -- are waking up. There are two separate issues: Is Obama trying to bring America down, and is his presidency falling apart (and what does that mean)?
Warren Positioned to Take Advantage of Clinton's Flaws
Paging Elizabeth Warren: This is your moment. In 2007, Democrats were delirious with rage about the Iraq war. Hillary Clinton, the "inevitable" presidential front-runner, had voted for the war and refused to apologize for it. Other leading candidates, including Joe Biden, John Edwards and Chris Dodd, voted for it too. This left a huge opening for a credible antiwar candidate. Barack Obama, inexperienced and underqualified, nonetheless jumped into the vacuum. The rest, as they say, is history. Today, the issue that obsesses the base of the Democratic Party is income inequality. I think that's foolish. The underlying causes of inequality -- miserable economic growth, stagnating wages, poverty, etc. -- are vastly more worthy challenges. Though, in fairness, many people actually have those problems in mind when they talk about inequality.
Notions, Brainstorms & Epiphanies
Because of my rheumatoid arthritis, I have been seeing a certain doctor for several years. Even with ObamaCare, I can continue seeing him. What has changed is the nature of the paperwork involved. Today's visit, which would normally entail a 10-minute discussion with Dr. Ratiner, followed by a 5-minute drawing of blood, took me over an hour. That was due to all the additional forms the government is now insisting be filled out. It's my guess that even though Obama's policies have crippled just about every other area of the economy, the paper industry must be blowing him kisses. I say that because in the past I used a credit card to pay for the office visit, and received the yellow copy as a receipt, whereas today they had to run off an entire page for me. And when the receptionist gave me my notice for the next visit, instead of the usual little piece of cardboard with the time and date scrawled on it, they wasted a second sheet of computer paper to let me know I was expected back on 07/31/14 at 11:30.
Usurping Power
House Speaker John Boehner has had enough of executive usurpation of power. He announced this week that he will ask the House of Representatives to file suit against President Obama for ignoring laws the president doesn't like and for using agency rule-making, executive orders, memoranda and even simple letters to accomplish that on which the president can't get Congress to act. When our framers wrote the U.S. Constitution, they envisioned a separation of powers between the three branches of government that would prevent any one branch from becoming all-powerful. Congress enacts laws that govern the nation, with the Senate advising and consenting on presidential appointments and ratifying treaties, and the House initiating bills to raise revenues. The president faithfully executes the laws, appoints officials to serve in executive and judicial roles with the advice and consent of the Senate, negotiates treaties, and acts as commander in chief. The judiciary interprets the Constitution and the laws passed by Congress and signed by the president.
Liberals Champion Freedom of Speech – Except in Politics
I'm old enough to remember when American liberals cherished the freedom of speech guaranteed by the First Amendment. They celebrated especially the freedom accorded those with unpopular beliefs and protested attempts to squelch the expression of differing opinions. Today things are different. American liberals are not challenging the Supreme Court rulings extending First Amendment protection to nude dancers, flag burners and students wearing antiwar armbands. They are content to leave these as forms of protected free speech. But political speech is a whole other thing. Currently 43 Democratic senators are so-sponsoring the constitutional amendment introduced by New Mexico's Sen. Tom Udall to amend the First Amendment so that it no longer protects political speech.
Government by Fiat
The Supreme Court this week admonished the Environmental Protection Agency for overreaching in regulating greenhouse gases. The Clean Air Act covers polluters that emit 250 tons per year (or in some cases, 100 tons). This standard makes no sense if applied to greenhouse gases. Thousands of establishments from elementary schools to grocery stores would be, absurdly, covered. So the EPA arbitrarily chose 100,000 tons as the carbon dioxide threshold. That's not "tailoring," ruled the Supreme Court. That's rewriting. Under our Constitution, "an agency has no power to 'tailor' legislation to bureaucratic policy goals by rewriting unambiguous statutory terms." It was a welcome constitutional lesson in restraint, noted The Wall Street Journal. One would think -- hope -- that an administration so chastened might reconsider its determination to shift regulation of the nation's power generation to Washington through new CO2 rules under the Clean Air Act.
Thursday, June 26, 2014
Why Are So Many Young Adults Not Looking for Jobs?
Economists are scratching their heads trying to figure out a puzzle in this recovery: Why are young people not working? People retiring at age 60 or even 55 in a weak economy is easy to understand. But at 25? The percentage of adult Americans who are working or looking for work now stands at 62.8%, a 36-year low and down more than 3 percentage points since late 2007, according to the Labor Department's May employment report.
Fire and Issa: GOP Builds Steam in IRS Case
The IRS didn't playing in last night's congressional baseball game, which is probably a good thing since officials aren't exactly hitting it out of the park in their Hill testimony. House hearings have already gone extra innings this week, as conservatives try to get to the bottom of the 24,000 new reasons not to trust the IRS: Lois Lerner's AWOL emails. While IRS Commissioner John Koskinen insists the messages are as lost as the Malaysian airliner, tech experts disagree. In 2008, CBS reports, Anthony Verducci, a writer at Popular Mechanics, 'took two laptop drives ... beat the heck out of them until we heard the signature clicking of mechanical hard-drive failure. Then we submerged one of the drives in custom-made storm-surge floodwaters (salt water, construction debris, oil) and let it soak for four days.' He still got nearly 100 percent data recovery."
America's Favorite National Pastime: Hating Soccer
I've held off on writing about soccer for a decade -- or about the length of the average soccer game -- so as not to offend anyone. But enough is enough. Any growing interest in soccer can only be a sign of the nation's moral decay. (1) Individual achievement is not a big factor in soccer. In a real sport, players fumble passes, throw bricks and drop fly balls -- all in front of a crowd. When baseball players strike out, they're standing alone at the plate. But there's also individual glory in home runs, touchdowns and slam-dunks. In soccer, the blame is dispersed and almost no one scores anyway. There are no heroes, no losers, no accountability, and no child's fragile self-esteem is bruised. There's a reason perpetually alarmed women are called "soccer moms," not "football moms."