Right Opinion
The best of conservative opinion and commentary, updated daily.
Wednesday, April 9, 2014
'Gender Gap' Fraud Backfires on Obama
The Radical-in-Chief and Democrats are getting desperate.
Free Speech vs. the Collective
Last week, the Supreme Court overturned federal limits on the total amounts that one person may contribute to candidates and political committees during a single election cycle. "The government may no more restrict how many candidates or causes a donor may support than it may tell a newspaper how many candidates it may endorse," the court declared in an opinion by Chief Justice John Roberts. But according to Justice Stephen Breyer, who wrote a dissenting opinion that was joined by three of his colleagues, the restrictions challenged in McCutcheon v. FEC are perfectly compatible with the First Amendment, which "advances not only the individual's right to engage in political speech, but also the public's interest in preserving a democratic order in which collective speech matters." The idea that individual rights must be sacrificed for the sake of a vaguely defined collective interest reflects the dangerously broad agenda of campaign finance "reformers," who seek to shape the political debate so that it comports with their own notion of the public good.
The Meltdown of the Obama Genderhawks
I have created a new species designation for the female Democrats who play hypocritical gender politics on behalf of Barack Obama. They're genderhawks. You remember the term "chickenhawk," don't you? During the Bush years, anti-war activists and journalists hurled the ad hominem epithet at anyone who supported military action against our enemies but hadn't personally served. I say let's give 'em a dose of their own tactical medicine.
How TV Censorship Works for Democrats
On April 1, Washington Mayor Vincent Gray was denied a second term, defeated in the primary by upstart city councilwoman Muriel Bowser. The beginning of the end came on March 10, when U.S. Attorney Ronald Machen struck a plea bargain with a wealthy businessman who confessed he'd spent $668,000 on an illegal "shadow campaign" to fund get-out-the-vote efforts that helped Gray win the mayoral office in 2010. So the corrupt mayor of America's most important city is thrown out. A political scandal? The same networks that were utterly breathless over the local story of Gov. Chris Christie's aides slowing traffic on a bridge into New York City didn't breathe a word about corruption in the nation's capital. Unlike Christie, the mayor is a Democrat.
Will 'Health Care' Kill American Medicine?
My mother, a doctor's daughter who became a doctor herself, sometimes accompanied her father when he made house calls in the Livermore Valley of California during the Great Depression. Her job was to open and close the gates at the ranches and farms they visited. In those tenuous times, as she later recalled, her father occasionally provided his services without a fee or in return for whatever unsolicited payment-in-kind the rancher or farmer produced.
Taxing Life Away
It's tax time. I'm too scared to do my taxes. I'm sure I'll get something wrong and my enemies in government will persecute -- no, I mean prosecute -- me. So I hired Bob. Bob's my accountant. I like Bob, but I don't like that I have to have an accountant. I don't want to spend time keeping records and talking to Bob about boring things I don't understand, and I really don't want to pay Bob. But I have to. What a waste. Once, I calculated what I could do with the money I give Bob. I could have a fancy dinner out 200 times. I could buy a motorcycle. I could take a cruise ship all the way from New York to Venice, Italy, and back.
What Principles Rule the GOP?
For years, Republicans benefited from economic growth. So did pretty much everyone else, of course. But I have something specific in mind. Politically, when the economy is booming -- or merely improving at a satisfactory clip -- the distinction between being pro-business and pro-market is blurry. The distinction is also fuzzy when the economy is shrinking or imploding. But when the economy is simply limping along -- not good, not disastrous -- like it is now, the line is easier to see. And GOP politicians typically don't want to admit they see it. Just to clarify, the difference between being pro-business and pro-market is categorical. A politician who is a "friend of business" is exactly that, a guy who does favors for his friends. A politician who is pro-market is a referee who will refuse to help protect his friends (or anyone else) from competition unless the competitors have broken the rules. The friend of business supports industry-specific or even business-specific loans, grants, tariffs or tax breaks. The pro-market referee opposes special treatment for anyone.
How to Assist Evil
"Engineering Evil" is a documentary recently shown on the Military History channel. It's a story of Nazi Germany's murder campaign before and during World War II. According to some estimates, 16 million Jews and other people [died](http://tinyurl.com/6duny) at the hands of Nazis. Though the Holocaust ranks high among the great human tragedies, most people never consider the most important question: How did Adolf Hitler and the Nazis gain the power that they needed to commit such horror? Focusing solely on the evil of the Holocaust won't get us very far toward the goal of the Jewish slogan "Never Again."
The Rise of American Totalitarianism
Last Thursday, Mozilla, the company that's home to the web browser Firefox, forced the resignation of CEO Brendan Eich. What, precisely, had Eich done wrong? Back in 2008, Eich had donated $1,000 to the Proposition 8 effort backing traditional marriage in California. Dating website OKCupid posted a ban on Firefox traffic, issuing a message to Firefox users instead: "Those who seek to deny love and instead enforce misery, shame, and frustration are our enemies, and we wish them nothing but failure." That ban reportedly prompted the action at Mozilla. Of course, it was the people pushing for Eich's ouster who were enforcing "misery, shame, and frustration." Eich had never brought his politics into the workplace. Mozilla had no history of treating homosexuals differently, and no single instance of Eich doing so could be documented. Nonetheless, he had violated the dictates of the Thought Police. And thus he was ousted.
Ukrainians, and Americans, are the Children of History
If you've been following events in Ukraine closely, you may have seen maps, available at electoralgeography.com, showing how the ethnic Russian areas voted heavily for one candidate and the ethnic Ukrainian areas for another. However, as the eminent historians of Eastern Europe Timothy Snyder and Anne Applebaum have written, the division is not simply based on ethnicity or language. Almost all Ukrainians can speak Russian and most can speak or at least understand the closely related Ukrainian. The maps suggest a different story. This division of Ukraine is based, most of all, on history. Consider the far western part of Ukraine around Lviv. In the 2010 presidential election, only about 10 percent there voted for the pro-Russia and now ousted Viktor Yanukovych.
Tuesday, April 8, 2014
Issa Report Slams Dem Collaboration With IRS
How leftist lawmakers are helping the corrupt government agency evade justice.
Focus on What Works
The Fiscal Times reported last week that the State Department has missing files or incomplete files for more than $6 billion in State Department contracts. Steve Linick, State's inspector general, issued a "management alert" warning that "significant financial risk and a lack of internal control at the department has led to billions of unaccounted for dollars over the last six years." "For instance," writes the FT, "a recent investigation of the closeout process for contracts supporting the mission in Iraq, showed that auditors couldn't find 33 of the 115 contract files totaling about $2.1 billion. Of the remaining 82 files, auditors said 48 contained insufficient documents required by federal law." State Department spokeswoman Marie Harf says the $6 billion isn't missing, but that State is merely experiencing "bureaucratic issues," which it's addressing.
Uninstall Firefox
In 31 years of broadcasting, and 40 years of writing, I have never advocated a boycott of a product. Quite the opposite, in fact. During the 2012 presidential campaign, when the left attempted to destroy Chick-Fil-A for its owner's views on same-sex marriage, I suggested on my radio show that the Republican candidate, Mitt Romney, stand in front of a Chick-Fil-A restaurant while enjoying some Ben and Jerry's ice cream. In that way, I argued, he could show one of the great moral differences between the right and the left. Though Ben and Jerry are leftists, we conservatives do not believe that company owners' views should matter to consumers. We believe that products should speak for themselves. If the ice cream is good, despite whatever repugnance we might feel regarding the views of the makers of that ice cream, we will still purchase it.
Anti-Liberal Liberals
"Lib-er-al *adj.* 1. a. Not limited to or by ... authoritarian attitudes, views, or dogmas ... b. tolerant of the ideas and behaviors of others; broadminded ... " May I amend that definition from "The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language"? " ... c. except where necessary to show non-liberals their proper place. See 'Mozilla.' See also: 'Eich, Brenda, ex-Mozilla CEO." A certain amount of satisfaction -- I'd hate to say pleasure -- accrues to non-liberals watching liberals fall all over themselves trying to explain why certain beliefs and convictions just can't be expressed in Today's Society. The reason (in Liberalspeak) that Mozilla forced out Brendan Eich, the inventor of JavaScript, last week is that no good liberal is going to put up with non-liberal thinking! Non-liberal thinking isn't thinking! It's bigotry!
Photography Case Another Snapshot of Intolerance
The First Amendment guarantees more than the freedom to speak. It also protects the freedom *not* to speak -- a right the U.S. Supreme Court just denied Elaine Huguenin. For the photographer and her husband, this latest development was a crushing one, especially as Christian business owners continue to find themselves on the losing side of the clash between political correctness and the marketplace. Unfortunately, the Huguenins, who turned down a job to take pictures of a lesbian commitment ceremony, aren't the only victims of this suit -- so are hundreds of other wedding vendors who had hoped the Court would finally provide some clarity in the chaos their own June marriage ruling helped create. Instead, the justices ignored an opportunity to reaffirm the basic principle that the government can't trample on fundamental rights of free speech and religion.
Remembering Margaret Thatcher a Year After Her Death
The Iron Lady had the courage to speak her mind
The Magical, Mythical, Seven Million
We have heard Obama blathering for so long about seven million sign-ups to the Affordable Care Act being a sure sign of success that, like the audience at a magic show, we have fallen for the misdirection that is the secret of every magician's sleight-of-hand. To begin with, we are being asked to ignore the fact that millions who have signed up used to pay for their own health insurance before ObamaCare forced their policies to be ruled null and void. Next, we are asked to ignore the fact that a large percentage of those people being counted haven't even made their first payment and, therefore, aren't actually enrolled. And, finally, we are asked to overlook the fact that, initially, we were told that 40% of the new sign-ups had to be young and healthy -- the so-called "invincibles" -- the latest estimate is that the number is closer to 25%.
A Halo for Selfishness
The recent Supreme Court decision over-ruling some Federal Election Commission restrictions on political campaign contributions has provoked angry reactions on the left. That is what often happens whenever the High Court rules that the First Amendment means what it says -- free speech for everybody. When the Supreme Court declared in 2010 that both unions and corporations had a right to buy political ads, that was considered outrageous by the left. President Obama called the decision "devastating" and said it "will open the floodgates for special interests." Those unfamiliar with political rhetoric may not know that "special interests" mean people who support your opponents. One's own organized supporters -- such as labor unions supporting President Obama -- are never called "special interests."
Leftist Thought-Gangsters Strike Again
Let me see whether I have this right. Brendan Eich was forced to step down as CEO of Mozilla because it became public that he opposed same-sex marriage, the same position that President Barack Obama, darling of the LGBT community, held prior to his phony conversion. Why didn't the left demand that President Obama resign as president of the United States prior to the consummation of his "evolution" on the issue in favor of same-sex marriage? Was it because liberals knew he was never actually opposed to same-sex marriage and that his stated opposition was an opportunistic ruse to make him electable? It wasn't that long ago when support of traditional marriage was the majority position in this country. I imagine that it still is in reality, though fewer and fewer people have the courage to stand up for their convictions these days, even to the extent of admitting their honest feelings in response to polling surveys.
Press Gets It Wrong Again on Mass Shooting
In the aftermath of the mass shootings in Aurora, Colo.; Newtown, Conn.; Tucson, Ariz.; Virginia Tech; the Washington Navy Yard; and sadly, other locales, conventional wisdom held that the epidemic of mass shootings was a problem of gun control. I wrote columns attempting to draw attention to the mental health system in America that so wrongheadedly fails to treat the dangerous mentally ill. Now, at last, the mental health angle on mass shootings has become conventional wisdom -- just in time, perhaps, to be wrong again. "Fort Hood shooter had mental problems" headlined USA Today. "Fort Hood shooter was Iraq vet being treated for mental health issues," announced CNN. A number of stories mentioned post-traumatic stress disorder as the possible culprit for Spc. Ivan Lopez's awful crime, and most discussions of the attack have sought answers in psychiatry.