Right Opinion
The best of conservative opinion and commentary, updated daily.
Friday, January 31, 2014
School Choice and Common Core: Mortal Enemies
The freedom-enhancing, life-improving power of school choice is more than a theory for me. It's more than a talking points memo or teleprompter speech. Unlike many of the politicians paying lip service to National School Choice Week this week, the issue of expanding educational opportunity and freedom for all is something I live, breathe, practice and witness every day. My mother was a public school teacher who taught in a majority-minority district in New Jersey for more than two decades. She and my father worked hard to put their own children in a mix of public and private Catholic schools. My own two children have been enrolled in private schools, religious schools and public schools. After a great deal of research, we moved from the East Coast to Colorado to escape the corrupted, dumbed-down curriculum of an overpriced private girls' school.
Overestimating 'Inequality'
Some Democrats seem to think that the very fact "inequality" even exists should be enough to lure the entire nation to the progressive cause. New York Times columnist Paul Krugman, in a recent piece imploring President Barack Obama to put emphasis on social justice in his State of the Union speech, argued as much, writing that "to focus on inequality is political realism. Like it or not, the simple fact is that Americans 'get' inequality; macroeconomics, not so much." They may "get" it, but the message is probably a lot less powerful than Krugman imagines.
The Little Victims of the State
An administration as image-conscious as this one should have been more careful in its choice of antagonists. The Little Sisters of the Poor is a Catholic charity providing care to the poorest elderly in a hospice-like setting. They serve 13,000 people in 31 countries, and operate 30 homes in the United States. Their faith calls them to treat every person, no matter how old, disabled or poor as if he or she were "Jesus himself." There is no religious test for admission, only that you be poor and in need of care at the end of life. Think thousands of Mother Teresas. Today, they are facing harassment from the Obama administration.
The Man Who Would Be King
Other than his fundamental dishonesty about certain conditions in America, what he stands for, his record, his failure to accept responsibility for his actions, his demonization, his divisive rhetoric, his arrogant promise to double down on his unconstitutional unilateral executive actions, his calls for yet more government instead of less, his foreign policy distortions and his diminution of the presidential office, President Obama's State of the Union address was pretty good. President Obama remains on his high horse about minimum wage, but he conveniently ignores that only 1 percent of the people in the U.S. labor force earn minimum wage, that the largest group among them is teenagers, that most are younger than 25, that most work less than 30 hours a week and that there are more than six times more minimum wage workers now than there were in 2007, shortly before he took office. More importantly, he doesn't admit that increases to minimum wage invariably lead to increased unemployment.
Davis, Demos Sneak Past Realities of Abortion
Wendy Davis, a Democratic state senator running to replace Rick Perry as governor of Texas, owes her political stardom to two things: a pair of pink sneakers and her unstinting support for a woman's right to terminate a late-term pregnancy in a substandard clinic. Yay Feminism! Last year, Davis led an 11-hour filibuster -- that's where the sneakers came in handy -- to block legislation that would ban abortion after 20 weeks and require abortion clinics to meet the same standards that hospital-style surgical centers do.
A Chastened and Weary Obama Reports on SOTU
Not as bad as expected. That's my verdict on President Obama's fifth State of the Union address. With his approval running well under 50 percent, Obama was not quite so confrontational as he has been in the past. He conceded that in the last four years, wages "have barely budged," that inequality "has deepened" and upward mobility "has stalled." No more blaming everything on George W. Bush. He noted obliquely that "last year the Voting Rights Act was weakened" without explicitly attacking the Supreme Court for its ruling that states could not be singled out for heightened scrutiny based on low voter turnout in the years from 1964 to 1972.
How to Debunk the 'War on Women'
What is it about women that causes leading Republicans to grow clumsy, if not stupid? When even savvy, fluent, attractively populist Mike Huckabee stumbles, you know you've got trouble. Having already thrown away eminently winnable Senate seats in Missouri and Indiana because of moronic talk about rape, the GOP might have learned. You'd think. Huckabee wasn't quite as egregious, just puzzling and a bit weird. Trying to make a point about Obamacare mandating free contraceptives, he inexplicably began speculating that the reason behind the freebie was the Democrats' belief that women need the federal government to protect them from their own libidos.
Thursday, January 30, 2014
A Crisis of Cold
I have stated often that *knowing climate* is huge in being able to accurately forecast the weather. I want to show an example. Back in the spring of 2008 I got a chance to talk to a science class at my old high school, Mainland Regional, in Linwood, New Jersey. One of my dearest friends had a son that was interested in weather, so we were very close. His other son is now a budding TV journalist in Little Rock, Arkansas (perhaps I will get a chance to do a global warming interview with him if I play my cards right). I jumped at the chance to talk to them. It was kind of funny because one of the teachers was the captain of my high school's cheerleading team when I was a 5' 2", 160 lb. freshman weather geek and my crushes at the time alternated between the caption and her sister. But she was in the audience and I guess she probably thought,"Wow, this guy is still a weather geek" -- or perhaps not since she probably was not aware I was alive when I was a freshman in high school.
Amnesty: A Disaster for the American Worker
The threat of the immigration reform push underway in Congress.
President Obama: Mr. Inequality
No one in modern America has done more than President Obama to bring about *in*equality. His modern utopia is turning into a *queuetopia*. Under ObamaCare, Americans have to queue up even to sign up for health care. We will of course have to stand in ever lengthening lines to get his "navigators" to direct us to a real physician. It's a *queuetopia* when the best he can offer in his State of the Union Address is a longer period of time to stand in the *unemployment lines*. Few of those who have to wait in those lines would prefer a government check to a real job.
State of Exclusion
When President Obama mapped out his agenda Tuesday night, there was one thing missing: Congress. "I'm eager to work with all of you," he told a full chamber, only to spend the next hour explaining how he planned to avoid them. "America does not stand still -- and neither will I," the President vowed. "So wherever and whenever I can take steps without legislation to expand opportunity for more American families, that's what I'm going to do." Even to this, some of the same leaders the President had just declared irrelevant stood and cheered.
Lots of Laughs but Sad Commentary
I admit I dozed off once or twice. And for the first half-hour I thought I was watching a rerun of last year's State of the Union address. But I hung in there and Tuesday night turned out to be one of President Obama's funniest addresses yet. He didn't tell any jokes, not on purpose anyway.
GOP Crafts Plan to Wreck the Country, Lose Voters
As House Republicans prepare to sell out the country on immigration this week, Phyllis Schlafly has produced a stunning report on how immigration is changing the country. The report is still embargoed, but someone slipped me a copy, and it's too important to wait. Leave aside the harm cheap labor being dumped on the country does to the millions of unemployed Americans. What does it mean for the Republican Party? Citing surveys from the Pew Research Center, the Pew Hispanic Center, Gallup, NBC News, Harris polling, the Annenberg Policy Center, Latino Decisions, the Center for Immigration Studies and the Hudson Institute, Schlafly's report overwhelmingly demonstrates that merely continuing our current immigration policies spells doom for the Republican Party.
Politics Double Standard
Events of this past week have lent credence to one of my most dearly held beliefs. A double standard in political life is better than no standard at all. The Democrats have -- as to their behavior in politics -- almost no standards at all. The stuffy Republicans have -- as to their behavior in politics -- a pretty hard and fast set of standards and they stick by them. When the Hon. Trey Radel, a freshman congressman from southwest Florida, was arrested last October for trying to purchase cocaine from an undercover police officer at Washington's DuPont Circle, I figured his goose was cooked. Surely the Democrats would be against him. After all, he is a Republican. A more serious problem was his fellow Republicans. They would not stand by him. They almost never do stand by a Republican caught in flagrante delicto. Remember if you will the late Richard Milhous Nixon. Contrast his dark fate with the Democrats' national treasure, Bill Clinton, who committed perjury and obstructed justice. House Republicans found him guilty as charged, but in the Senate both Democrats and Republicans let him off easy, and he has been having a jolly time of it for years while Nixon's reputation has only darkened.
State of the Union 2014
Suppose a president of the United States delivered a State of the Union address and nobody cared? Isn't that what happened Tuesday night when the increasingly irrelevant -- and, yes, boring Barack Obama -- droned on about predictable things in a predictable way? We have been forced to listen to him so many times (often several times in a single day) that it could qualify as cruel and unusual punishment in violation of the Constitution. One of the problems with political speech is that it exists in its own world and creates its own standards. Politicians measure their policies according to their own "facts," ignoring outcomes that don't fit their beliefs.
Ben Affleck: 'Big Republican' Actors Are Hard to Watch
Democratic fundraiser/actor Ben Affleck -- and the next big-screen "Batman" -- recently gave an interview to Playboy. His own bias against Republicans, he admits, prevents him from fully enjoying a Republican actor's performance. "It's ... hard," said Affleck, "to get people to suspend disbelief." Affleck said: "When I watch a guy I know is a big Republican, part of me thinks, I probably wouldn't like this person if I met him, or we would have different opinions. That (bleep) fogs the mind when you should be paying attention and be swept into the illusion." Fair enough. But how do you think conservatives feel?
Do You Know What They're Teaching Your Kids?
Imagine your sweet daughter, barely into puberty, coming home from school and showing you a photograph she took with her phone of a sex poster at school; a poster that lists the many ways people "express their sexual feelings," including "grinding," "anal sex", "oral sex", and just about everything else you can think of. And imagine, even further, that the school district representative, when asked about the poster, shrugs and says it is part of a health and science curriculum that "aligns with national standards" of sexuality education.
Left Turn in the Emerging Markets
There's a new cynical perception among international investors that Brazil is becoming Argentina, and Argentina is becoming Venezuela. But these investors are starting to boycott all the so-called emerging markets, since nearly all of them are moving to the left, abandoning free-market principles, reverting to the bad old days of higher spending and taxing, inflating the money supply, accumulating large trade deficits and letting their currencies go to hell in a hand basket. In other words, the emerging-market investment paradigm, or the BRIC model, may be over.
The Poison of Postmodern Lying
All presidents at one time have fudged on the truth. Most politicians pad their resumes and airbrush away their sins. But what is new about political lying is the present notion that lies are not necessarily lies anymore -- a reflection of the relativism that infects our entire culture. Postmodernism (the cultural fad "after modernism") went well beyond questioning norms and rules. It attacked the very idea of having any rules at all. Postmodernist relativists claimed that things like "truth" were mere fictions to preserve elite privilege. Unfortunately, bad ideas like that have a habit of poisoning an entire society -- and now they have.