Right Opinion
The best of conservative opinion and commentary, updated daily.
Tuesday, January 28, 2014
A Lackluster Year for Obama and His Would-Be Successors
Just about everyone agrees that 2013 was not a good year for President Obama. His job approval plummeted as the Obamacare rollout cratered. His oft-promised pivot to Asia was as much of a dud as his oft-promised pivot to the economy. But it must also be said that the Republican politicians who have been touted as possible successors to the 44th president didn't have sparkling years either. Each has encountered a setback to his prospects for either the Republican nomination or as a general election candidate.
Obama Needs to Do Less Finger-Wagging and More Apologizing
President Obama's policies continue to produce results that are the opposite of what he promises, yet he brazenly cites the abysmal state of *his* economy to announce -- indignantly -- that he will double down on his failures. Andrew Cloward and Frances Fox Piven -- notorious leftist professors who devised a sinister plot to overburden the American economy to the point of collapse and then replace it with a socialist system -- would be quite proud of their understudy.
The Inequality Bogeyman
During a recent lunch in a restaurant, someone complimented my wife on the perfume she was wearing. But I was wholly unaware that she was wearing perfume, even though we had been in a car together for about half an hour, driving to the restaurant. My sense of smell is very poor. But there is one thing I can smell far better than most people -- gas escaping. During my years of living on the Stanford University campus, and walking back and forth to work at my office, I more than once passed a faculty house and smelled gas escaping. When there was nobody home, I would leave a note, warning them.
What Preoccupies the Left? What Preoccupies the Right?
In both personal and public life, you can know a great deal about a person or a group if you know what most bothers them -- and what doesn't bother them. A news item this past week made this point with glaring clarity. It reported a meeting that the United Nations Assistant Secretary-General for Human Rights had on Friday. Before revealing the subject of that meeting, let's review for a moment what is happening in the world regarding human rights.
Monday, January 27, 2014
The ObamaCare Carnival of Perverse Incentives
Cities With Unfunded Health-Care Commitments Are Getting Ready to Dump Their Retirees On the State Exchanges.
Obama versus Hobby Lobby
Senior advisor to President Obama, Valerie Jarrett, wrote for the White House blog and the Huffington Post that, "A Woman's Health Care Decisions Should Be in Her Own Hands, Not Her Boss's." I couldn't agree more. Odd then that the administration is trying to insert bosses, many of them against their deeply held religious beliefs, into the private health care decisions of women. Ms. Jarrett writes that, "The ACA (Affordable Care Act) was designed to ensure that health care decisions are made between a woman and her doctor, and not by her boss, or Washington politicians."
The Court, the Buffer Zone, and the Marketplace of Ideas
For anyone having trouble understanding why the Massachusetts law requiring a 35-foot "buffer zone" at abortion clinics is so offensive to the First Amendment, there was a moment during the oral arguments in McCullen v. Coakley -- the Supreme Court case challenging the law -- that crystallized the issue perfectly. Massachusetts officials have always justified the 2007 buffer law as a narrow, impartial response to the problem of obstruction, disorder, and intimidation of women seeking abortions. That concern is understandably taken seriously in the state where John Salvi murdered two employees of Planned Parenthood clinics in 1994.
America United by a Growing Unease
I started to write a column about illegal immigration, which would have been a fairly easy task, considering the latest "up is down" remark, courtesy of Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson. He actually said people who thumbed their noses at the rule of law, even as they make a mockery of everyone who has emigrated to this country legally, have "earned the right to be citizens." I was then going to point out how the Republicans are determined to double down on the insanity, emerging from their annual retreat in Cambridge, MD with "a one-page statement of immigration principles," as if Americans are supposed to pretend every bit of what they propose isn't already the unenforced aspects of the 1986 immigration law. Easy stuff, but my heart wasn't in it.
I Got You Abe
Gary Sinise and Jon Voight have starred in plenty of dramas -- and now they're living one, courtesy of the IRS. For years, the duo (along with Kelsey Grammer) has been the face of Hollywood's conservative resistance, even going so far as to form a sort of underground support group. With people from across the entertainment industry, Sinise set out to make "conservative actors" less of an oxymoron. Although the group isn't politically-affiliated, they pride themselves on supporting our troops and traditional American values. Nine years later, the organization, Friends of Abe, is 1,500 members-strong -- and growing. Sinise has tried to keep his network under wraps, an effort to protect members in a fiercely liberal industry.
Sunday, January 26, 2014
Waving Bye-Bye to Common Sense
I happen to believe that the whole notion of man-made global warming is a load of hooey. After all, it's a matter of record that temperatures were rising and falling long before the Industrial Revolution took place, and have continued to fluctuate even after the advent of the internal combustion engine. Furthermore, I believe that Al Gore and the various grifters who have promoted the notion that we could control the weather if only we would agree to return to the Stone Age are only looking to line their pockets by scamming the rest of us. Still, I'd be lying if I said they haven't wormed their way partially into my heart by providing me with more than a few laughs.
A Simple Alternative to the ObamaCare Mandate
The health reform law is trying to force $15 an hour workers and their employers to buy more than a million dollars of coverage when they don't have anything like a million dollars in assets to protect. Further, some of these families are being forced to give up ["mini-med" plans](http://healthblog.ncpa.org/which-is-better-mini-med-plans-or-obamacare/) that paid the first $2,000 or $3,000 of medical bills and enroll in plans with deductibles of $10,000 or more. Why do we need to force a family at this income level need to pay the first $10,000 of medical costs? We don't.
Political Exhibitionism
As undignified as it is unedifying and unnecessary, the vulgar State of the Union circus is again at our throats. The document that the Constitutional Convention sent forth from Philadelphia for ratification in 1787 was just 4,543 words long, but this was 17 too many. America would be a sweeter place if the Framers had not included this laconic provision pertaining to the president: "He shall from time to time give to the Congress information of the state of the union." "Information"? Not exactly.
Saturday, January 25, 2014
The Fight for Principle in the GOP
For millions of Americans, politics has lost its meaning. There is growing dissatisfaction with both party organizations. More and more Americans tell pollsters they are Independents. The way to reclaim the Republican Party is not be seeking some illusory "middle ground" between principled conservatism and radical liberalism. The way to bring the GOP back at the national level is to hold the party leadership to the pledges it has made for generations.
From The Comedy Store
President Obama addressed a secret meeting of NSA officials about foreign and domestic spying. He told them after talking it over with advisors, he's decided to place limits on the NSA's telephone surveillance program. The NSA officials said they already knew.
Friday, January 24, 2014
Economic Mobility Tied to Family Structure
President Barack Obama and the Democrats have decided "income inequality" is the major domestic issue confronting Americans. But a new study by liberal economists challenges many of the president's and his political allies' assumptions about the growing gap between rich and poor. "Where Is the Land of Opportunity? The Geography of Intergenerational Mobility in the United States," published this week by the National Bureau of Economic Research, debunks shibboleths of both the left and the right. Conservatives often assert that economic mobility is greater in the U.S. than it is almost anywhere in the world, but the data don't support it. There is greater mobility in many other nations than there is in the U.S. -- the Scandinavian countries, Canada and Australia, for example. But liberals are wrong about whether it is more difficult now than in the past for Americans to move up the income ladder, according to the study. Moreover, there is substantial variation in economic mobility based on a variety of geographic factors.
March Madness: Media Bias Snubs Pro-Lifers
The media didn't need a sub-zero wind chill to freeze out pro-lifers. Most networks have had a lot of practice perfecting their greatest magic trick: making hundreds of thousands of pro-lifers disappear! If you weren't at Wednesday's March for Life and missed the photos from Twitter, you'd probably never know the event took place. As usual, the outlets vied to deliver the least March coverage possible -- with some refusing to acknowledge it at all. "NBC Nightly News" fared slightly better than CNN and MSNBC (who ignored the March altogether) -- but even its coverage, a whopping 22 seconds' worth, and ABC's (24 seconds) were barely a blip on the media's screen.
Unaccountable Hillary Clinton
CNN anchor Jake Tapper blandly admitted the obvious in a radio interview with conservative host Hugh Hewitt. The same reporters that insist their former Republican Party favorite Chris Christie is ruined for 2016 by traffic jams on a bridge are letting Hillary Clinton skate for embassy-security neglect that led to four dead government employees at Benghazi. Why would so-called watchdogs of government suggest Clinton is a shoo-in in 2016 as if Benghazi never happened? Tapper strangely suggested that Benghazi always seemed like more of a White House scandal than a State Department scandal, and I don't blame him, because Clinton didn't grant him an interview.
The US Chamber of Commerce Versus America
The U.S. Chamber of Commerce is a politically entrenched synod of special interests. These fat cats do not represent the best interests of American entrepreneurs, American workers, American parents and students, or Americans of any race, class or age who believe in low taxes and limited government. The chamber's business is the big business of the Beltway, not the business of mainstream America. If you are a business owner who believes your country should strictly and consistently enforce its borders and deport illegal immigrants who violate the terms of their visas, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce doesn't represent you.
America Isn't Destined to Be More Liberal
In a recent Washington Post op-ed, left-wing activist Steve Rosenthal sounds a lot like other wishful thinkers arriving at a comfortable partisan conclusion. America, he writes, is only a few years from a full-blown progressive electorate. "A close examination of U.S. attitudes in the past decade-plus," Rosenthal contends, "reveals that the United States is steadily becoming more progressive." It seems to be widely accepted by the media that demographics, GOP ineptitude and internal division, and a generational shift on social issues place the American voter on an enduring leftward course. Is this inevitable? Well, about as inevitable as Karl Rove's durable Republican majority.