Right Opinion
The best of conservative opinion and commentary, updated daily.
Monday, January 13, 2014
On Abortion, GOP Puts Tax Dollars in Life Savings
Sending in your taxes shouldn't mean signing over your beliefs. But when it comes to issues like abortion, that's exactly what the Obama administration is asking America to do. As pro-lifers, we have fought to give the medical community a way out of procedures they object to. As taxpayers, we deserve that same protection. No one should be forced into partnership with an industry that spills the blood of innocent unborn humans. And if Congressmen Chris Smith (R-N.J.) and Dan Lipinski (D-Ill.) get their way, no one will.
Sunday, January 12, 2014
The Bully's Pulpit
I have no way of knowing all the facts regarding the New Jersey scandal swirling around Gov. Chris Christie, but I certainly have my suspicions. As the story goes, in retaliation for Fort Lee's Mayor Mark Sokolich's refusal to support Christie in his bid for re-election, Christie's deputy chief of staff Bridget Anne Kelly ordered several lanes of the George Washington Bridge shut down, allegedly for the sake of a traffic study. In his defense, Christie insisted he knew nothing about it, claiming that Ms. Kelly betrayed his trust. That would be easier to swallow if we hadn't lived through several years of Barack Obama insisting that he knew nothing about his own various scandals until he read about them in a newspaper.
A Defining Moment for the Court
Constitutional arguments that seem as dry as dust can have momentous consequences. On Monday, the Supreme Court's nine fine minds will hear oral arguments about the meaning of "the" and "happen." What they decide could advance the urgent project of reining in rampant executive power. "The president," says the Constitution, "shall have the power to fill up all vacancies that may *happen* during *the* recess of the Senate" (emphasis added). Monday's case concerns whether Barack Obama made recess appointments when the Senate was not in recess, and made them to fill vacancies that did not happen during a recess.
Saturday, January 11, 2014
The Left's Necessary Lie
The debates over Obamacare seem to be, like Ben Franklin's death & taxes, the only certainties in our lives. This has clearly been the case since Inauguration Day, 2009. Yes, President Obama called for an immediate "stimulus" of nearly $1 Trillion to prime the pump, to create shovel-ready jobs. We never heard that phrase *shovel ready* before Mr. Obama employed it. And, within the first two years after passage of the huge stimulus bill, the president himself acknowledged there was no such thing as shovel ready jobs.
From The Comedy Store
Native Americans vowed to push President Obama to back up his stated opposition to the Redskins nickname. As usual, he overspoke. It didn't advance the cause when he promised that if the Indians like their medicine man, they get to keep their medicine man.
Friday, January 10, 2014
Semper Fail
Majority of female Marine recruits fail fitness test -- will Obama rethink sending them into combat?
New Guidelines Undermine School Discipline
With much ballyhoo, the Obama administration announced this week that it will keep a close eye on school districts that discipline minority students at higher rates than whites. Attorney General Eric Holder and Education Secretary Arne Duncan held a joint press conference to release a "Dear Colleague" letter to school districts issuing guidance on school discipline that will likely encourage districts to make race a significant factor in deciding how to administer punishment. Of course, Holder and Duncan claim their intention is to ensure nondiscrimination in school disciplinary procedures -- but the guidelines they've offered will result in exactly the opposite.
Beware the Left-Wing-Funded 'Main Street' Republicans
What do George Soros, labor unions and money-grubbing former GOP Rep. Steven LaTourette all have in common? They're control freaks. They're power hounds. They're united against tea party conservatives. And they all have operated under the umbrella of D.C. groups masquerading as "Main Street" Republicans. LaTourette heads up the so-called "Main Street Partnership," which claims to represent "thoughtful," "pragmatic," "common sense" and "centrist" Republican leadership. Reality check: The pro-bailout, pro-debt, pro-amnesty, anti-drilling group founded by former liberal New York GOP Congressman Amory Houghton includes three liberal Senate Republicans (John McCain, Mark Kirk and Susan Collins) and 52 center-left House Republicans. LaTourette himself is a self-serving Beltway barnacle who held office for nearly two decades. Now he's leveraging his new tea party-bashing platform to benefit a family-operated lobbying business.
The Sleazy Scorsese of Wall Street
Inside twisted Tinseltown, Martin Scorsese has marked a new career achievement. His latest film, "The Wolf of Wall Street," includes a mighty 506 uses of the F-bomb in its three-hour running time. That's almost three curse words a minute. Someone has proclaimed this the new record for F-bombs. Another Hollywood high mark. Scorsese often has hundreds of F-bombs in his films about crooks. But this takes the cake.
Liberal Economic Mythology on Unemployment Benefits
How can we ever expect America's younger generations to preserve America's greatness when the president of this nation keeps preaching damaging economic myths and misguided moral lessons? It's one thing for our elected representatives to express compassion for those facing difficult financial circumstances. It's another for them to elevate the receipt of unemployment benefits and other forms of government dependency programs to a virtue. And it's yet another for them to justify these wrongheaded policies with false claims that they actually improve conditions when they make them worse.
Escaping the Rat Maze of the Welfare State
This week marks the 50th anniversary of Lyndon Johnson's "War on Poverty," and as the joke goes, "Poverty won." Five decades after a blizzard of programs began descending on the American people, the poverty rate remains essentially unchanged. That's a little unfair. What counts as poverty today would not have seemed so impoverished 50 years ago, when many of the poor lived without electricity and were no strangers to hunger. Today, the biggest health problems of the poor are more likely to stem from obesity than anything approaching starvation. Defenders of the war on poverty -- and the massive bureaucracy that has built up around it -- insist that underfunding is to blame.
Be for Work
John F. Kennedy broke some sort of record for stating the obvious when he noted that "life isn't fair." More evidence for the unfairness of the nation's evaluations of presidents emerged in a recent Washington Post poll showing that, five years after he returned to Texas, George W. Bush is still blamed by 50 percent of Americans for the current state of the economy. Only 38 percent hold President Barack Obama responsible. The lesson for future presidents appears to be: You may be one of the greatest humanitarians in the history of the world (as Herbert Hoover arguably was, and as was Bush in some ways), but if you're in office when a financial crisis hits, the public will blame you forever.
The Democrats' Feckless Attacks on Income Inequality
As Barack Obama scrambles to eviscerate key sections of his own signature health care law, he and other Democrats are trying to shift voters' focus to another issue -- income inequality. Unfortunately, the solutions they advocate are pitifully inadequate or painfully perverse. Start with the minimum wage, which some Democrats see as an election-winning wedge issue in 2014. True, raising the minimum wage polls well. But does anybody really care much about it? Few minimum wage earners are heads of households; many more are teenagers earning spare cash.
Wedding Bills Ring on Capitol Hill
It's been a convenient talking point of the media that Republicans haven't said much about the marriage debate since the Supreme Court's summer ruling. Thursday, they let their legislation do the talking. After a string of bad court decisions, Congress is stepping in to do the job that five justices did not: protect state marriage laws. Under the leadership of Rep. Randy Weber (R-Texas), conservatives are [making it clear](weber.house.gov/media-center/press-releases/weber-introduces-state-marriage-defense-act-of-2014) that they have no intentions of backing away from the unions that a super majority of states respect.
In Praise of Libertarian Judgmentalism
As a Denver Post columnist from 2004-11, I spent a considerable amount of time writing pieces advocating the legalization of pot. So I was happy when Colorado became one of the first to decriminalize small amounts of "recreational" marijuana. I believe that the war on drugs is a tragically misplaced use of resources -- an immoral venture that produces far more suffering than it alleviates. And on a philosophical level, I believe that adults should be permitted to ingest whatever they desire -- including, but not limited to, trans fats, tobacco, cough syrup, colossal sodas and so on -- as long as they live with the consequences.
How to Fight Academic Bigotry
For decades, the American Studies Association has labored in well-deserved obscurity. No longer. It's now made a name for itself by voting to boycott Israeli universities, accusing them of denying academic and human rights to Palestinians. Given that Israel has a profoundly democratic political system, the freest press in the Middle East, a fiercely independent judiciary, and astonishing religious and racial diversity within its universities, including affirmative action for Arab students, the charge is rather strange.
'Kumbaya' Is Not Our National Anthem
Far too often, I hear people, including Republicans, whine about gridlock in Washington. They long for compromise the way Romeo yearned for Juliet. I, on the other hand, applaud gridlock. How can I do otherwise when those on one side of the aisle are always wrong? If you disagree, tell me one time that Obama and his gang have been right. This administration was wrong about the trillion dollar Stimulus, Cash for Clunkers and shovel-ready jobs. They've been wrong about Syria, Libya, Iran, Iraq, Russia and Egypt. They have also been wrong about the national debt, illegal immigrants, defense spending, same-sex marriages, climate change, "Don't Ask, Don't Tell," military pensions and a 2.3% tax on medical devices, which will inevitably leave medical innovation entirely up to the Israelis. That's assuming that Obama's treaty with Iran doesn't lead to the mullahs nuking Israel out of existence.
Thursday, January 9, 2014
Wake Up Cold
We came out the gate with a cold winter outlook. In our forecast, the three months scored are December, January and February. We are about 50% through with winter now. The forecast that went out to clients in November followed the cold ideas we have had since last spring, and in fact the seeds for this winter were rooted in ideas about what happens when La Ninas weaken.
Robert Gates Confirms 'Party of Defeat' Narrative
David Horowitz vindicated by a series of revelations in the former defense secretary's memoir.
Gatesway to Truth
If President Obama was hoping to regain his political footing in 2014, a new "tell-all" book just made that job a lot tougher. The 594-page PR nightmare is set to hit shelves next Tuesday, but the excerpts are already sending shockwaves through D.C. The book, *Duty: Memoirs of a Secretary at War*, is a lengthy look back at Defense Secretary Robert Gates's career, which (with the exception of Bill Clinton) spanned every President since Richard Nixon. For all of the book's revelations, the stories about Gates's most recent boss, President Barack Obama, are the most explosive. Although he does manage to sprinkle in a few kind words, Gates paints the picture of a reluctant commander-in-chief who was not prepared to lead the country, let alone a war.