Right Opinion
The best of conservative opinion and commentary, updated daily.
Tuesday, June 24, 2014
Iraq Crisis: Latest Sign of U.S. Vulnerability to Oil Price Spikes
The ongoing conflict in Iraq has serious implications for vital U.S. interests, the extent of which are difficult to decipher at this early stage. Who ends up holding the keys to power within Iraqi territory? What happens to the regional balance of power? How will Iran's pursuit of nuclear weapons -- and our efforts to stop them -- be affected? One immediate effect of the turmoil, however, is painfully obvious: oil prices have already hit a nine-month high. Brent crude reached $115 per barrel this week, a level our country has not experienced since the height of U.S. tensions with Syria in September 2013. As a result, a number of market analysts now expect U.S. gasoline prices to surpass their highest levels for the month of June since 2008, rising from today's level of $3.68 per gallon to as much as $3.80 per gallon by the end of the month.
A Lame Duck Country?
Pundits are pointing to President Barack Obama's recent decline in public opinion polls, and saying that he may now become another "lame duck" president, unable to accomplish much during his final term in office. That has happened to other presidents. But it is extremely unlikely to happen to this president. There are reasons why other presidents have become impotent during their last years in office. But those reasons do not apply to Barack Obama. The Constitution of the United States does not give presidents the power to carry out major policy changes without the cooperation of other branches of government. Once the country becomes disenchanted with a president during his second term, Congress has little incentive to cooperate with him -- and, once Congress becomes uncooperative, there is little that a president can do on his own.
Hispanics Sour on Obama as Young Illegals Surge Across Border
What should Republican lawmakers do about immigration? That's been a simmering source of controversy ever since George W. Bush's push for so-called comprehensive immigration legislation, with legalization and enforcement provisions, in 2006. Most liberals and many economic conservatives argued that support for such legislation was a political imperative for Republicans. Otherwise, they would continue to lose Hispanic voters, an inevitably increasing segment of the electorate, by 2-1 margins. That argument was bolstered by the 2004 exit poll, which showed comprehensive immigration supporter George W. Bush getting 44 percent of the Hispanic vote. That percentage may have been inflated, but if Bush had received the percentages of John McCain (31) or Mitt Romney (27), he would probably not have been re-elected.
Democrats Don't Debate; They Distort
Among Republicans, the debate over America's proper world role is vigorous. Sen. Rand Paul blames the current disarray in Iraq on George W. Bush and Dick Cheney. "Were they right in their predictions? Were there weapons of mass destruction there? Was the war won in 2005, when many of those people said it was won?" Cheney, civil but direct, defends his decisions and warns that Paul's "isolationism" is unwise. "He doesn't believe we ought to be involved in that part of the world. That didn't work in the 1930s, it sure as heck won't work in the aftermath of 9/11." That, ladies and gentlemen, is how a substantive debate about serious matters is conducted. One side makes its case; the other side responds. May the better argument win.
Hillary a Shoo-in for POTUS? Not So Fast
I'm probably in some minuscule minority, but I am just not too worried about Hillary Clinton's prospects to become our next president. I sense that people will detect her lack of authenticity and also properly associate her with Obama's failed policies. So far, many have given Hillary a pass on her enabling her husband's serial mistreatment of women in his personal life. She was complicit every step of the way, yet many view her as the victim rather than a co-conspirator. She also seems to have avoided the Obamacare taint, even though her Hillarycare was its bastard forerunner, but it's doubtful that will continue if she runs for president. Even if you buy into the false narrative -- as even many conservatives have -- that Bill Clinton was ultimately a moderate, Hillary has radical roots that remain with her today. It's doubtful she'll receive virtual immunity for those the same way Obama has.
The Difference Between Republicans and Democrats
It is a line I have used to open speeches on the lecture circuit for years and it never fails to get a laugh: "I'm happy to be here tonight from Washington, D.C., where the only politicians with convictions are in prison." That's only partially true. Democrats have convictions. They know what to do with power when they get it and how to isolate, even punish, any member of their party who dares to take a different position on an issue. Republicans seem to constantly react to the policies of Democrats or slam each other instead of making a case for the superiority of their ideas. It doesn't help Republicans that they lack the Democrats' uniformity.
Of 1914 and 2014
And there before us, b'golly, was ... the car! THE car. You know? The one positioned, in blood and early 20th-century elegance, at the center of modern history; the open car carrying the heir to the Austro-Hungarian throne, and his wife, when a teenage terrorist in Sarajevo shot them dead on St. Vitus Day -- June 28 -- 1914, setting off nearly uninterrupted shockwaves of horror. Or so we generally hear. I will come back to that point. I saw the car nearly half a century ago at the Austrian Museum of Military History in Vienna: large, dark, eerie. The sight was akin in my mind to the notion of inspecting the cutlery employed by Brutus and Cassius on mighty Caesar's carcass.
LA Mayor Exemplifies America's Decline
Last week, during the official celebration of the Los Angeles Kings winning the Stanley Cup, the mayor of Los Angeles, Eric Garcetti, told a jammed Staples Center that "there are two long-standing rules for politicians . ... They say never, ever be pictured with a drink in your hand and never swear. But this is a big f-----g day," he said, holding up a bottle of Bud Light. You read that right. In front of 18,000 people at Staples and hundreds of thousands of others watching on television -- many of them, of course, children -- the mayor of the second-largest city in America held up a beer bottle and used the F-word. This was not a whisper overheard by reporters. This was not an accidental loss of self-control. This was a planned use of obscene language in a public forum.
America: Land of the Freed?
Maya Ibrahim turns one month old this week, and a Sudanese court is giving the newborn quite a present: her freedom. After months of uncertainty, Maya's mom, Meriam, may finally be introducing her young daughter to life outside Khartoum's suffocating prison walls. The tiny family, which had been subjected to the worst of conditions inside the women's jail, got word Monday that the international pressure bearing down on the African nation was too much for Sudan to bear. Two weeks into its appeals hearing, judges reversed Meriam's execution sentence and ordered her release.
Monday, June 23, 2014
Court Decision in California Will Improve Education
Last week's California superior court decision, which struck down teacher tenure law in California public schools, is good news for everyone worried about America's future. The decision, finding these provisions unconstitutional and discriminatory against low-income and minority students, was even applauded by Education Secretary Arne Duncan. With the success of this lawsuit, similar suits can be anticipated around the country. Everyone, except the teachers unions, seems to grasp that public education in America, particularly in low-income communities, suffers because of lack of competition.
The Rudeness of Registries
I've always taken a dim view of wedding gift registries, on the principle that greed is bad and greed masquerading as courtesy is worse. But I relented, just for a moment, when I read about the public's reaction after learning that Jon Meis, the Seattle Pacific University student who disarmed a killer during a school shooting, would be getting married this month. Grateful strangers not only bought up every item for which Meis and his fiancée had registered, but also donated $50,000 to pay for their honeymoon and other expenses. The upwelling of generosity was heartwarming. Yet gift registries in general are anything but. What began in the 1920s as a way to let wedding guests discreetly find out a couple's preferred china or silver patterns has metastasized into institutionalized avarice, crass and mechanical. It may be more blessed to give than to receive, but you'd never know it from seeing affianced couples prowling through Crate & Barrel or Macy's, avidly zapping bar codes with handheld scanners while visions of high-end espresso machines and flat-screen TVs dance in their heads.
The Nattering Nabobs of the Left
Whenever I think about liberals, I feel the wires in my brain begin to sizzle. What in the world makes them say and do such absurd things? For instance, why do journalists insist on lying about their political affiliation? When half of them claim to be Independents and only 20% confess to being registered Democrats, whom do they think they're fooling? After all, their friends and relatives, as well as their colleagues, know better. But so do the rest of us. Last year, after spurning several years of invitations to attend a monthly gathering of former L.A. Times employees, I broke down and drove out to Pasadena for one of the geezer luncheons. Because even though I had written a weekly humor column for the paper for 11 years, I had always been a freelancer (no pension, no health insurance) and therefore only knew one person at the get-together. After we ate, the few of us who were first-timers were asked to stand up and describe what we had been doing since leaving the paper.
A Loss of Faith
For many years I've written about a number of different issues because that's what being a so-called political columnist is all about. Yet issues are, in effect, symptoms of the particular ethos than dominates a society at any given time. Sadly, I believe the common denominator, the one that straddles the political and cultural divide that currently afflicts this nation, can be reduced to a very simple idea: we are suffering from a collective loss of faith.
Kerry's Rainbow Connection
The problem at the U.S. Embassy in Tel Aviv wasn't that officials were saluting the flag. The problem was which flag they were saluting. "Proudly flying the colors," Ambassador Dan Shapiro posted on the embassy's Facebook page, where people were stunned to see the rainbow flag waving alongside Old Glory. For the first time in Israel, American diplomats put the controversial agenda of a sexual fringe on par with the stars and stripes millions of brave men and women have died for.
Sunday, June 22, 2014
Obama's Pentagon Bungling Shipments for Our Troops
Once again, Barack Obama is showing his lack of serious concern for the military. Instead of court martialing Bowe Bergdahl, who presumably went AWOL in Afghanistan, Obama traded five high-level Taliban terrorists from Guantanamo Bay, for his release. The President used military pay and pensions as a political football during recent budget debates. Thanks to Obama's opposition to reform, the Veterans Administration is overwhelmed with an endless backup of paperwork to process -- while veterans die on secret waiting lists at government run hospitals.
Stopping a Lawless President
What philosopher Harvey Mansfield calls "taming the prince" -- making executive power compatible with democracy's abhorrence of arbitrary power -- has been a perennial problem of modern politics. It is now more urgent in America than at any time since the Founders, having rebelled against George III's unfettered exercise of "royal prerogative," stipulated that presidents "shall take care that the laws be faithfully executed." Serious as are the policy disagreements roiling Washington, none is as important as the structural distortion threatening constitutional equilibrium. Institutional derangement driven by unchecked presidential aggrandizement did not begin with Barack Obama, but his offenses against the separation of powers have been egregious in quantity, and qualitatively different.
Saturday, June 21, 2014
Do Liberals Ever Listen to Themselves?
Seriously, is it possible that liberals actually believe the nonsense they go around spouting? I mean, I understand that as majority leader of the Senate, Harry Reid has to appear to be in sync with Barack Obama, but when in the wake of swapping five anti-American jihadists with unpronounceable names for one calling himself Bowe Bergdahl, Reid said, "I'm glad to get rid of them," did he not understand that most of us completed the thought with "and put them right back on the battlefield where they can resume killing our soldiers"? For his part, Obama, after comparing himself to such wartime presidents as Washington, Lincoln and FDR, said that an exchange of POWs is typical policy at the end of a war. That must have come as surprising news to the thousands of troops still risking life and limb in Afghanistan. As for the Taliban, they're still giggling over Obama's announcement in 2012 that Al Qaeda was decimated.
Hillary’s Jugger-Not?
"I'm ready for Hillary," read the bumper stickers in fashionable Georgetown, the swankIest part of Washington, D.C. These messages are juxtaposed with many a tattered "2012" bumper sticker with the fading Obama logo. Are these plugged-in liberals telling us their dream has faded, too? The never-quite-retiring Barbara Walters spoke to their disillusion when she whistfully sighed: "We thought he was going to be the new Messiah." So, buoyed by public opinion polls showing her the most popular politician in America, Hillary Clinton launched her latest "listening tour" with a new book. It was supposed to be a non-campaign rollout. But it turned out not so promisingly.
Steve Scalise, a Rising Conservative Star
"Reinvigorating the leadership" is how one senior House staffer described the ascendency of Steve Scalise, the Louisiana Republican who won a first-ballot victory for the position of GOP whip. The staffer went on to portray Scalise as not a member of the Washington establishment. Indeed, Scalise is a former chair of the Republican Study Committee, the conservative caucus in the U.S. House. He has had a meteoric rise, and he is someone to be reckoned with. Scalise's win follows Kevin McCarthy's first-ballot victory for the GOP majority-leader slot. And here's something I did not know: As whip, Scalise gets to appoint his chief deputy whip, a leadership position most recently held by Illinois Republican Peter Roskam (who lost out to Scalise for majority whip). So it could be, when all is said and done, that two conservative RSC members are part of the GOP leadership.