Right Opinion
The best of conservative opinion and commentary, updated daily.
Tuesday, March 25, 2014
Pope Francis Threatens Hell – Hooray!
Last week, Pope Francis warned Italy's Mafia leaders that if they continue their evil ways, they will go to hell. Hooray for the pope. More power to him for threatening evil people with hell. I had begun to despair that in my lifetime I would hear such talk from mainstream Christian or Jewish leaders. For the past two generations, God has rarely been depicted as judging and punishing. Instead all we have heard is the phrase, "God Is Love," which, when offered as the one description of God, is morally meaningless -- and even morally dangerous.
There's Nothing Live-and-Let-Live About the Orwellian Pro-Abortion Left
It's fitting that the pro-abortion crowd dominating the Obama executive branch is not about to adopt a "live and let live" attitude toward its opponents in litigation concerning the government's effort to force corporations to subsidize the killing of human beings. The Affordable Care Act, an Orwellian title for a statute if there ever was one, requires employers to provide health care coverage for their employees that fully covers all forms of "contraception." Let's stop right there. Do you get the idea that the pro-abortion left is trying to force its ideology down our throats as much as it's trying to coerce its policy agenda upon us? These liberals want to not just have their way -- to force every last objecting employer to subsidize a procedure it morally opposes -- but lord it over us, as well, in a punitive, bullying way. It's not enough that the employee has a right to use the drugs; the employer must be forced to pay for it. In your face, again.
Fred Phelps: Satan's Servant
My parents taught me never to speak ill of the dead, but in the case of Fred Phelps, who died last week at the age of 84, I think they would have made an exception. The man, who will be referred to in this column without the modifier "reverend," because there was nothing reverent about him, defined the word "odious." He and some of his family members constituted the entire membership of the Westboro Baptist Church in Topeka, Kan. It was BINO, Baptist in name only. Phelps and some members of his family (though not all) picketed military funerals with signs that read, "God hates fags," "God hates Jews," and "thank God for dead soldiers." Phelps was an equal opportunity bigot.
Republicans and Blacks
Recently former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice added her voice to those who have long been urging the Republican Party to reach out to black voters. Not only is that long overdue, what is also long overdue is putting some time -- and, above all, some serious thought -- into how to go about doing it. Too many Republicans seem to think that the way to "reach out" is to offer blacks and other minorities what the Democrats are offering them. Some have even suggested that the channels to use are organizations like the NAACP and black "leaders" like Jesse Jackson -- that is, people tied irrevocably to the Democrats.
At University, Charges of Religious Prof-iling
At the University of North Carolina Wilmington, Dr. Mike Adams teaches crime -- but he never dreamed he'd be the victim of one. Unfortunately for the assistant professor, that all changed when his ideology did. When he was hired as a criminology expert 21 years ago, Adams was an avowed and outspoken atheist -- a worldview that was shaken to the core when Mike went to visit a prisoner on death row in 2000. The convict, a mentally handicapped man, had read the entire Bible -- something Adams had never done. He resolved then and there to change that -- and when he did, Mike was completely transformed.
Twilight of the Gods
What a joy to find the New York Times editorial page staff on duty whenever a tough moral question arises, such as, "Can the U.S. government require business owners claiming religious liberty privileges to fund contraceptive care for employees?" Sure, natch, you bet, returns the Times, doubtless to the relief of the U.S. Supreme Court, which takes up the question formally this week in yet another suit stemming from Obamacare. Owners who "personally disapprove of certain contraceptives ... are wrong," asserts the Times, "and the Supreme Court's task is to issue a decisive ruling saying so. The real threat to religious liberty comes from the owners trying to impose their religious beliefs on thousands of employees." Get those employers and their stale convictions outta here!
Hillary Clinton Won't Have an Easy Ride to Presidency
Will Hillary Clinton be elected America's next president? The polls suggest she will. Recent polls compiled by Real Clear Politics show her winning 67 percent of the vote in Democratic primaries, with no other candidate above 11 percent. General election polling shows Clinton with an average lead over various possible Republican nominees of 51 to 39 percent. But an election isn't over until it is over, and this one hasn't started. For one thing, no one is sure whether Clinton will actually run. She turns 69 in 2016 (the same age as Ronald Reagan when he was first elected in 1980) and she may consider that her achievements in eight years as first lady and U.S. senator, and four years as secretary of state are enough for one lifetime.
Let's Give War a Chance
I am not a warmonger, but isn't Vladimir Putin just begging for a major slap-down? He has said that the worst event of the 20th century was the breakup of the Soviet Union, and he has done everything in his power to restore it to its former, let us say, gory. He longs for the empire that had half of Europe under its heel and he yearns to be another Stalin, who was every bit a match for Hitler when it came to spilling human blood. Putin invades Ukraine, and Barack Obama says "There will be costs." Heck, Putin knows that there will be costs. It's not cheap, after all, to invade another country. But it is clearly a price he is willing to pay, knowing full well that neither Obama nor any of the European pipsqueaks is likely to challenge him. But, then, neither are the Ukrainians. He sent a force of 2,000 Russian soldiers in to take control of two Ukrainian airports and the local radio and TV stations, and nobody even booed them.
Monday, March 24, 2014
Despite Big Challenges, Conservatives Will Continue to Fight
The recent upset victory by Republican candidate David Jolly for the open seat in Florida's 13th congressional district, a district carried by Barack Obama in 2008 and 2012, has produced a rush of excitement in Republican circles. This coupled with polling data - Americans are increasingly unhappy with our president, with his signature health care law, with an economy still far from recovery, and with perceived weak American leadership on the international stage -- is producing Republican optimism about 2014 mid-term election prospects and about 2016.
On ObamaCare's Birthday, Ballooning Problems
The President can blow out the candles on ObamaCare's birthday, but he can't put out the fire over his signature policy. ObamaCare turned four over the weekend, and White House officials have blown through $52 million of advertising propaganda to promote the policy -- but with little to show for it, pollsters say. According to the latest Pew Research Survey, ObamaCare may be older, but Americans don't believe it's wiser. Despite a 48-month adjustment perior, the toll on families' wallets, lives, jobs, and freedom remains a major drag on the President's health care law.
Selfie Society
In a Sunday column, Dr. Keith Ablow sounded the alarm about a Twitter feed, @LI PartyStories, where teenage kids posted explicit photos of themselves touching each other intimately, urinating on houseplants, lying dead drunk on a stairway, and several other "noble" pursuits. The account has since been suspended, a development that will no doubt elicit severe disappointment -- among its more than 22,000 followers. "It is no longer news that narcissism stoked by the Internet can dissolve anything left of the modesty of American teenagers, who already fancy themselves worthy of posting hundreds or thousands of photographs of themselves on Facebook and having their egos pumped up by equally deluded 'followers' on Twitter," writes Ablow, who suggests how parents should respond.
Back in the USSR?
How did our relations with Russia go so far wrong so quickly? The Obama administration hoped to have a "reset" of our bilateral ties by wiping the slate clean. In giving the Russians a *reset*, we were showing a willingness to let bygones be bygones. Or, in their case, let Putin's 2008 invasion of neighboring Republic of Georgia be forgotten. It was exactly the wrong thing to do. But the trouble with our Russian relations goes further back. After the collapse of Communism and the largely peaceful dissolution of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR) in 1991, it seemed we were headed for a new era of liberal democracy in Russia. Boris Yeltsin was the brave, bluff, buoyant President of the Russian Federation who had boldly stood atop a tank in Moscow when the Communist Party made its last-ditch effort to seize power and depose the feckless Mikhail Gorbachev. Yeltsin was courageous, to be sure. He might easily have been killed.
Public-Sector Pensions Eating Taxpayers Alive
Some of my best friends, to coin a phrase, are lifetime government employees. When they stop working, their pensions will put them among the highest-earning retirees in the country. On a personal level, I'm glad my friends' retirement will be so comfortable. But as a taxpayer, I know that their good fortune, multiplied by hundreds of thousands of government workers like them, will only worsen a swelling political and fiscal crisis. Around the country governments are facing a tidal wave of pension obligations that they haven't figured out how to pay for. By some estimates, the states' long-term unfunded pension liabilities add up to more than $4 trillion.
Sunday, March 23, 2014
A Half-Century in Denial
Critics of Rep. Paul Ryan's remarks about cultural factors in the persistence of poverty are simultaneously shrill and boring. Their predictable minuet of synthetic indignation demonstrates how little liberals have learned about poverty or changed their rhetorical repertoire in the last 49 years. Ryan spoke of a "tailspin of culture, in our inner cities in particular, of men not working and just generations of men not even thinking about working or learning the value and the culture of work," adding: "There's a real culture problem here." This brought down upon Ryan the usual acid rain of accusations -- racism, blaming the victims, etc. He had sauntered into the minefield that a more experienced Daniel Patrick Moynihan -- a liberal scholar who knew the taboos of his tribe -- had tiptoed into five years before Ryan was born.
Republicans Against Democrats
In the ongoing battle between those on the right and those on the left, the big difference is that the former approach it with one hand tied behind their back and the other hand clutching the Marquis of Queensbury rulebook, while those on the left will knee, gouge and use blackjacks whenever necessary. All things considered, when liberals merely settle for lying, they're being on their best behavior. That's why when it was discovered that Obama had been lying for three years when he repeatedly told us that we would all be able to keep our medical insurance and our doctors, he wasn't compelled to say, "That being the case, let's toss out the Affordable Care Act and start over. After all, its passage was based entirely on fraud, and that's just not the way we do things in America."
Saturday, March 22, 2014
Deflating Russia Can Be Done
President Obama has ramped up his second round of economic and financial sanctions on Russia, and on Vladimir Putin in particular. Some of this is already working. But if anybody believes it will be easy to financially deflate Russia, they better think again. Russia holds $132 billion of U.S. Treasury securities. That's a big number, and it could be sold in the event of financial warfare. That won't kill the United States. But it will undoubtedly cause interest rates to rise. Would Putin spend it all? Who knows? His central bank just spent $50 billion to defend a sinking ruble, which is off about 10 percent year to date. But that still leaves about $400 billion in foreign-exchange reserves that could be called upon to defend the Russian homeland in an emergency.
Conservatives and the Minimum Wage
Conservatives traditionally have regarded minimum-wage laws with skepticism -- and for good reason. Attempts by government to interfere with market forces in setting wages rarely work out as intended. But a group of conservative pundits and activists recently joined President Obama and others on the left in calling for hefty increases for low-wage workers. Have they all gone mad? Not exactly -- though the motives and tactics of some of the new minimum-wage proponents may surprise their allies on the left. Some conservatives, including activist Phyllis Schlafly, actually have endorsed increasing the federal minimum wage. Ron Unz, a onetime GOP gubernatorial candidate and former publisher of The American Conservative, favors a state hike. He tried to put an initiative on the California ballot this fall that would raise the California minimum wage to $12 an hour but backed off this week when he failed to entice others to help fund the campaign. Still others, such as columnists Ann Coulter and Laura Ingraham, want federal intervention of a different sort, which they claim would raise pay for millions of low-wage workers.
Reassure the Poles? Send Biden!
With Vladimir Putin's seeming success in rolling over Crimea and pushing aside the Ukrainians, President Obama is talking tough. And, though Ukraine is not a member of NATO, Poland, the Baltic states, Hungary and the Czech Republic are. They need some shoring up. So Mr. Obama has sent Vice President Joe Biden to reassure the Poles. This makes sense to President Obama because Joe Biden sat on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee for nearly forty years. Sending Joe Biden to Warsaw will impress the Russians, the president believes. Now, they will surely know that Obama means business. The president famously said of his veep: "nobody messes with Joe."
From The Comedy Store
Speaker John Boehner invited Pope Francis to address Congress in June. The pope got rid of his limousine, he turned down living in his palace for a one-bedroom apartment and he lives a life of celibacy. A member of the Kennedy family will be on hand to deliver the rebuttal.
Friday, March 21, 2014
State ID-ology Wins Big in Court
There are plenty of threats to democracy, but what happens in the voting booth shouldn't be one of them. In the wild west of polling stations, voter fraud has never been easier to commit -- and with Left's all-out war on proof-of-citizenship laws, never harder to stop. Even with 70% of Americans on their side, states that try to enact even the mildest forms of election accountability -- like voter ID laws -- run into the brick wall of the Obama administration. Like most liberals, this White House's most reliable supporters are the ones who aren't even eligible to vote: the dead, illegal, or relocated.