Right Opinion
The best of conservative opinion and commentary, updated daily.
Friday, May 23, 2014
End Crony Capitalism, Sell Federal Land, Limit Tax Breaks for the Rich
Gummit don't work good. That conclusion, often that inelegantly expressed, seems to be more and more common, not only in the United States but around the world. It is certainly the verdict of John Micklethwait and Adrian Wooldridge in their new book "The Fourth Revolution: The Global Race to Reinvent the State," although expressed, as you might expect from the editor and business editor of the Economist, in far more urbane language. Their thesis is that the state has been reinvented three times in the last 400 years, and needs reinvention once more. The first revolution they name after Thomas Hobbes, the 17th-century philosopher who called for a powerful dictatorial state to protect people from the horrors of all-out war.
Hillary's Dilemma: How to Distance Herself From Obama
Hillary Clinton is in a pickle. She's a shoe-in for her party's presidential nomination because of Barack Obama's failures. But those failures might keep her from getting the job. Her husband's "law of politics" is that elections are always about the future, but she's stuck in the past. In 2008, Obama pandered to liberal hopes while Clinton appealed to their good sense. Obama promised miracles and magic. Clinton promised more homework. "Cynicism" was Obama's real opponent, he explained. And he used Clinton as a stand-in for it. She played her part, pointing out that the Civil Rights Act got through Congress because of LBJ's hard work, not Martin Luther King's speeches. She insisted that politics was toil, not performance art.
President Obama, the Disengaged Scold
The wheels are coming off the bulldozer that is the Obama administration. But that's not a particularly new development. What's new is that some Democrats and liberal media figures are beginning to speak out. These groups previously have unquestioningly supported Obama. They've gone to astonishing lengths to protect him and conspired with him to deceive the American people in covering up and evading accountability for his multitudinous scandals and his rampant incompetence -- all because liberals subscribe to an end-justifies-the-means philosophy of politics and governance. But is it conceivable that with the outrageously egregious Department of Veterans Affairs scandal, Obama's chickens are finally coming home to roost?
Who Made the Pivot to Asia? Putin
On Wednesday, it finally happened -- the pivot to Asia. No, not the United States. It was Russia that turned East. In Shanghai, Russian President Vladimir Putin and Chinese President Xi Jinping signed a spectacular energy deal -- $400 billion of Siberian natural gas to be exported to China over 30 years. This is huge. By indelibly linking producer and consumer -- the pipeline alone is a $70 billion infrastructure project -- it deflates the post-Ukraine Western threat (mostly empty, but still very loud) to cut European imports of Russian gas. Putin has just defiantly demonstrated that he has other places to go.
Barbarism Is Set Back – for Now
This story has a very troubling start, but a pretty satisfying conclusion -- if it really is the conclusion. Among the contemptible episodes of student/faculty heckler's vetoes at commencement ceremonies this year (Condoleezza Rice, Ayaan Hirsi Ali, Christine Lagarde and others have been disinvited from leading universities following ignorant and aggressively intolerant protests), one of the most disturbing concerned the treatment of Robert Birgeneau by Haverford College. Birgeneau is the recently retired chancellor of the University of California, Berkeley. You don't get to be chancellor of Berkeley if you've got the political opinions of, say, Mitch McConnell, and Birgeneau is indeed a liberal in good standing. But revolutions tend to devour their own, and Birgeneau has become the Jean-Paul Marat of liberal academia.
Thursday, May 22, 2014
Amnesty by Any Means Necessary
Obama takes threats to abuse his executive powers to a new level.
Memorial Day Travel: American Families Pay at the Pump
Summer is officially upon us, and millions of American families will soon be embarking on their annual trips to the beach, the mountains, the lake, grandma's house, or any other of the fantastic destinations our country has to offer. The beginning of "summer driving season" is also a time when many Americans turn even greater attention to the price of gasoline. After all, traveling several hundred or more miles in a loaded up minivan can rack up an awfully large fuel bill. But what about this year? Everyone knows that domestic oil production has been surging, and that this has created tens of thousands of jobs and improved our balance of trade. Doesn't the Great American Oil Boom also mean that families won't have to spend as much on the Great American Road Trip? One might be inclined to think that, but summer fuel prices tell us otherwise.
White People Be Playing the Race Card
I'm old enough to remember when only black people called black people "Uncle Tom." Democrats, however, long expanded the category of who can play the race card and on whom. Call them equal opportunity race-card players. As with black race-card hustlers -- say the Revs. Jesse Jackson, Al Sharpton or any given host on MSNB-Hee-Haw -- white race-card players label others "racist" for the crime of disagreement. As with black race-card hustlers, white race-card hustlers need not name names when accusing someone of "racism." And, as with black race-card hustlers, the mainscream media will not bother to ask the white race-card hustler to *identify* said racists.
The VA, the NHS and Choice
President Obama Wednesday replayed a familiar scenario when dealing with scandal, in this case delays for treatment, deaths, alleged cover-ups and other acts of malfeasance reported at Veterans Administration hospitals in the United States: first express outrage, next announce an investigation and then say he won't comment on the scandal until the results of the investigation are in, promising people will be held "accountable," if they violated the law. Good luck with that. Meanwhile, critics are using the VA scandal to indict Obamacare. They believe what is occurring at VA hospitals is a preview of coming destruction should the U.S. government move beyond meddling in health insurance into a full-scale takeover of the entire health care system.
Truly Celebrate Memorial Day
"We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness…" Even though these truths are self-evident, it's important that we never forget that they are not self-actualizing. Man was made for freedom, but the vast majority are not born into it. As Ronald Reagan said on Memorial Day in 1983, "I don't have to tell you how fragile this precious gift of freedom is. Every time we hear, watch, or read the news, we are reminded that liberty is a rare commodity in this world."
American Silence Has Sudan Impact
The President's team can hardly afford another scandal, but that's exactly what they'll have on their hands if the U.S. State Department insists on ignoring the plight of an American family in Sudan. For three months, a young Christian wife -- now almost eight and a half months pregnant -- has been shackled in a Sudanese prison on death row. Authorities, who refuse to recognize her marriage to a Christian man, have sentenced her to 100 lashes for adultery and execution for her faith. As if that weren't horrifying enough, her stateside husband, Daniel Wani, an American citizen, says their 20-month-old toddler is behind bars with her, enduring unspeakable horrors at the hands of the oppressive Sudanese. Her frantic husband, who continues to plead with the U.S. Embassy for help, flew from New England to Khartoum to visit his wife, Meriam Ibrahim -- and was beside himself to find her bound up and swollen. For now, authorities refuse to release his son to Daniel, because of his faith. Although the court gave Meriam days to recant her Christianity, she refused, saying, "I am a Christian, and I will remain a Christian."
Innocence Stolen and Unbridled Abuse
Behind the green curtain is where my world began to end. It was where my innocence was forever washed away in a porcelain pan filled with developer. Grainy images brought into strong relief on white paper that would become forever etched on my soul. It all began at the age of eight when my mother enrolled me in an after school program. My parents were divorced at that time, both with demanding careers, and the time we spent together was subject to the requirements of their jobs. An after school counselor began to take a close interest in me, teaching me how to throw a football and providing the attention I so desperately craved. Hugs turned into long embraces, and soon the counselor began to compliment me on my body. Not long after that the sexual abuse began.
Statistical Analysis Shows 4% of NYT Reporters Are Serial Killers
The New York Times has been touting a study purporting to show that 4 percent of death row inmates have been "falsely convicted." "Falsely convicted" is not "innocent." But after being processed through the lawyer-to-journalist telephone game, "insignificant procedural errors" quickly becomes "27 guys didn't do it!" What the study actually shows is that those sentenced to death are more likely to have their convictions overturned than those sentenced to prison. Yeah, we knew that. Anti-death penalty fanatics fight every execution tooth and claw. Sometimes they get lucky. What the statisticians have proved is that it's very difficult to be executed in this country.
The Coming Nine Months: Mud in the Eye of the So-Called 'Permanent' Drought?
My last couple of posts have dealt with major weather/climate stories I think are lurking. The worry about the upcoming hurricane season is something I will have every year for the East Coast until we reverse the pattern we were in during the 1950s. I think we have another five to seven years, and I am very surprised it has not been worse. But it takes just one 1954 or a '54-'55 back-to-back season to get that score close fairly quickly. I am on this "kick" to expose before the fact some of the nonsense being spewed and accepted by what I see as an increasingly desperate AGW crowd. It's now or never for them, though to their credit, they have the political will backing their interests in the form of the EPA that could care less about the fact the department's lines of evidence have nothing to do with reality.
Islam, America's Sacred Cow
In spite of the fact that Islamists were attacking us long before 9/11, going back to 1979 when the Iranians held Americans hostage for well over a year, and including murderous attacks on American embassies, a Marine base, the USS Cole and the earlier bombing of the Twin Towers, some of us keep insisting it's a peaceful religion. Our presidents never tire of telling us that most American Muslims are peace-loving, even though it took the F.B.I. to stop those peaceniks from sending money to support jihadists even after 9/11, and a poll established that 21% of American Muslims have a soft spot in their hearts for suicide-bombers. For their part, Islamic Americans keep portraying themselves as victims of bigotry, although there has been no evidence of it over the past 13 years. These days, they are demanding that a film at the 9/11 Museum in Manhattan recounting the events on that terrible day avoid any mention of Islam and make a point of distinguishing between bad Muslims and good ones.
Politics Have Trumped Ethics in the Obama Administration
Veteran Affairs Secretary Eric Shinseki cannot get a handle on the recent scandalous treatment of veterans in VA hospitals, where more than 40 sick men were allowed to die without proper follow-up treatment. A cover-up allegedly followed. When the Walter Reed Army Medical Center scandal broke under the George W. Bush administration, heads rolled. So far, Shinseki seems immune from similar accountability. Almost nothing that former Secretary of Health and Human Services Kathleen Sebelius promised before, during or after the implementation of the ill-starred Affordable Care Act came true. She was also cited by the U.S. Office of Special Counsel for violating the Hatch Act, as she improperly campaigned for Obama's re-election while serving as a Cabinet secretary.
Will Detroit Be Healed by Searching for 'Subtle Racism'?
Just off of the James C. Lodge Freeway in Detroit is Eight Mile Road. The stretch near the freeway is just east of the famed area that provided the basis for the Eminem film of the same name. To its north lie predominantly white suburbs -- over 77 percent of those who live in Oakland County are white -- with median family income in excess of $65,000. Married couples comprise approximately half of households, with fewer than 15 percent of households led by a single female. Since 1990, the population of Oakland County has jumped from 1.083 million to 1.202 million. South of Eight Mile Road lies the city of Detroit, with a nearly 83 percent black population and a median household income of under $27,000. Almost 74 percent of households in Detroit are led by single parents, nearly all women. The population of the city has dropped from 1.027 million in that same period to approximately 713,000.
The Cost of Campaign Restrictions
Minnesota says it has 10,000 lakes. The state also has, according to Anthony Sanders, "10,000 campaign finance laws." He exaggerates, but understandably. As an attorney for Minnesota's chapter of the Institute for Justice, a libertarian public-interest law firm, Sanders represents several Minnesotans whose First Amendment rights of free speech and association are burdened by an obviously arbitrary, notably complex and certainly unconstitutional restriction. Linda Runbeck is a Republican state legislator who is allowed to spend in her campaign -- most spending finances dissemination of speech -- only $62,600. She is not challenging this speech limit, although it is so low it prevents her from advertising on this city's television stations, whose broadcasts reach many of the state's voters. Rather, she is challenging the "special sources" provision that makes even more onerous the $1,000 limit on what any person can give her.
Make Way for Hillary 2.0
As I reflect on the "inevitable" presidential candidacy of Hillary Rodham Clinton, I try to put it in historic context. She lacks the shifty eyes, darting hither and yon at her audience and the assembled press corps. Her brow betrays no beads of sweat. Nor is there any noticeable perspiration on her upper lip. She has never exactly said, "I'm not a crook." Though she has certainly slipped up with plenty of other maladroit pronunciamentos, from her famous 1992 boast, "I suppose I could have stayed home and baked cookies," to her more recent rant before a Congressional committee investigating Benghazi: "What difference at this point does it make?" Let me hasten to answer that it does indeed make a difference how violence originates in a faraway land where four Americans were about to be murdered.
Wednesday, May 21, 2014
'The Hornet's Nest': A Real Look at America's Heroes
A can't-miss film chronicling the true sacrifice of our soldiers.