Right Opinion
The best of conservative opinion and commentary, updated daily.
Friday, November 29, 2013
The Ugly End of the Duke Lacrosse Story
On Nov. 22, with the national media focused on the 50th anniversary of former President John F. Kennedy's death, few noticed the story of a jury in North Carolina convicting Crystal Mangum of murder in the 2011 kitchen stabbing death of her boyfriend Reginald Daye. Why should that fact fixate the national media? On its own, it shouldn't. But in 2006 and 2007, Mangum's false charges of rape against three Duke University lacrosse players caused a national tsunami of media sensation, an angry wave of prejudiced coverage presuming the guilt of rich white college boys when being accused by an African-American stripper.
Welcome to the Kludgeocracy
How is it possible that Barack Obama did not know that his beloved healthcare.gov website was a botch? That's a question many thoughtful people (including thoughtful Democrats) are asking. We heard him say that he wouldn't have boasted that it would be as easy to use as amazon.com or obitz.com had he known that it wouldn't. I'm not "stupid enough," he said at his Nov. 14 press conference. Most Americans agree that's true. One thing we do know is that this is a chief executive who does not want to hear bad news, or at least effectively discourages his subordinates from bringing it to him.
An Outbreak of Lawlessness
For all the gnashing of teeth over the lack of comity and civility in Washington, the real problem is not etiquette but the breakdown of constitutional norms. Such as the one just spectacularly blown up in the Senate. To get three judges onto a coveted circuit court, frustrated Democrats abolished the filibuster for executive appointments and (non-Supreme Court) judicial nominations.
Dr. Frankenstein, Meet Dr. Obama
A lot of people are saying that ObamaCare is dead, thanks to its disastrous rollout and the embarrassingly low number of enrollees. The line they're using is either comparing it to putting toothpaste back in the tube or getting the genie back in the bottle. But, frankly, when I look at it, the image that comes to mind has nothing to do with bottles or tubes, but, rather, involves a bodily orifice. FDR gave us the New Deal, LBJ gave us the Great Society, and BHO gave us the Dirty Deal.
Thursday, November 28, 2013
Emboldening Iran
The Islamic Republic's actions in the wake of the nuke deal show the Mullahs smell blood in the water.
Giving Thanks, Keeping Hope
It's been an up and down, rough and tumble, crazy, sad, frustrating year for America the Beautiful so far. As usual, except for the parade of hurricanes, tornados, fires and floods, most of the trouble and strife in our lives came from the professional nincompoops and evildoers in Washington. The Obama regime and its congressional flunkies and loyal bureaucrats did their best to make our lives worse while the mainstream media pretended, as usual, not to notice.
When There Was No Going Home
Thanksgiving is the quintessential American holiday. Nearly four centuries have passed since that first celebration in 1621, when, as Edward Winslow wrote in a letter to a friend back in England, the settlers of Plymouth Colony paused to "rejoice together after we had gathered the fruit of our labors" and "for three days ... entertained and feasted" with 90 of their Wampanoag neighbors. What Thanksgiving was at the outset -- part joyful harvest festival, part expression of prayerful gratitude, part occasion for games and reunions -- it remains recognizably to this day.
America's Coastal Royalty
The densely populated coastal corridors from Boston to Washington and from San Diego to Berkeley are where most of America's big decisions are made. They remind us of two quite different Americas: one country along these coasts and everything else in between. Those in Boston, New York and Washington determine how our government works; what sort of news, books, art and fashion we should consume; and whether our money and investments are worth anything.
A Gentleman's Answer to President Karzai
It appears that President Hamid Karzai of Afghanistan is acting up again. As if President Barack Obama does not have enough on his hands with HealthCare.gov and hotspots spreading around the globe, he now has Karzai, the Importunate. The Afghan prima donna is threatening our president's role as a wartime president, a role he has not been particularly comfortable in, but at least it is popular with some Americans. Now the playing of "Hail to the Chief" may become somewhat subdued all because of Karzai's demands. He is refusing to sign a status of forces agreement allowing us to leave U.S. and NATO troops in Afghanistan after the war, troops that would be used to protect Afghans!
Obama Finds a Way to Ruin Thanksgiving
For some, Thanksgiving is difficult enough with abrasive relatives gobbling up your food without a scintilla of gratitude. Now President Obama comes along with a proposal that could cause turmoil in even the happiest of homes. The president wants us to discuss politics, immigration reform and Obamacare at our holiday tables. Imagine the scene. One of your kids is home from college, having been indoctrinated by liberal-leaning professors with politics mired in the '60s, and he or she begins lecturing Grandpa Joe or Aunt Marie about the necessity of visiting the Obamacare website (if they can get on) and buying health insurance.
Is It Too Soon to Say 'I Told You So'?
Back in September, The New York Times promoted Bill de Blasio's mayoral candidacy with an editorial titled, "Don't Fear the Squeegee Man." The editorial informed readers that crime wouldn't get worse under de Blasio because "policing is far better than it used to be, *thanks to innovations by Mayor David Dinkins*." (Emphasis added -- the Times was not being sarcastic.) Under the policing "innovations" of Mayor Dinkins, the annual murder rate in New York City rose to an all-time high of 2,245 in Dinkins' first year in office. After four years of hard work, the murder rate had dropped by about 10 percent, to a merely astronomical 1,995 per year.
For These We Give Thanks?
We are tomorrow's past, so this Thanksgiving give thanks for 2013, a year the future might study more for amusement than for edification. HealthCare.gov performed the public service of defeating Barack Obama's ascription of every disagreeable effect to one of two causes -- George W. Bush or global warming. Concerning the latter, a CNN anchor wondered if an asteroid that passed by Earth on Feb. 15 was "an effect of, perhaps, global warming." The Los Angeles Times announced that it had stopped publishing letters questioning global warming caused by human activity.
Wednesday, November 27, 2013
Healthcare.gov's Date With Destiny
The deadline for fixing the broken site is looking more and more like a pipe dream.
When Football Was Not Violent Enough
God may not have invented competitive ball games, but man, endowed with a creative intellect and a passionate spirit, soon discovered such games -- and began re-shaping and refining them until a few generations of inspired collegians, in the decades between the Civil War and World War I, developed the greatest of all ball games, American tackle football. Parke H. Davis, who played at Princeton in the late 1880s, and who later chronicled the early days of college football in the United States, believed he discovered its earliest antecedent in the Old Testament.
Thank You, Hobby Lobby
Religious liberty is front and center on the nation's Thanksgiving table. On Tuesday, the Supreme Court agreed to hear Sebelius v. Hobby Lobby Stores Inc. The family-owned craft store company is intrepidly challenging the constitutionality of Obamacare's abortion coverage mandate. Hobby Lobby's faithful owners deserve our thanks and praise as they defend freedom of conscience for all Americans. The privately held retail chain's story is the quintessential American Dream. Founder David Green started out making mini picture frames in his Oklahoma garage in 1970. He recruited his two sons, Mart and Steve, to pitch in at an early age. The family's first establishment took up a tiny 300 square feet of retail space. Hobby Lobby now runs nearly 600 stores across the country, employs 13,000 people and topped $2 billion in sales in 2009.
Martin Bashir's Crude Emissions on Palin
Like most MSNBC hosts, Martin Bashir has been hypersensitive to slights aimed at President Barack Obama, real or imagined. He was shocked at a picture in January 2012 showing Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer pointing a finger at Obama on the tarmac in Phoenix. He somehow imagined the disrespect was "unprecedented!" When then-Rep. Joe Walsh decided to skip an Obama jobs speech before Congress in the fall of 2011, Bashir was shocked. "Are you able to be as disrespectful to the office of president by simply walking away from something that every member of the Congress is going to attend? Is that also" -- here it comes -- "because he's black?"
Obama Sinks Israel
This week, President Barack Obama doomed Israel to a choice between unpalatable options: either striking at Iran's nuclear facilities in its own defense and thereby internationally isolating itself, or watching as its most ardent enemy goes nuclear. The deal, put into place with Iran by the Obama administration, allows Iran to continue developing nuclear-enrichment processes, encompasses virtually no real monitoring standards and grants cash to a regime busily preparing for a second Holocaust.
Thankful for Property
Had today's politicians and opinion-makers been in power four centuries ago, Americans might celebrate "Starvation Day" this week, not Thanksgiving. The Pilgrims started out with communal property rules. When they first settled at Plymouth, they were told: "Share everything, share the work, and we'll share the harvest." The colony's contract said their new settlement was to be a "common." Everyone was to receive necessities out of the common stock. There was to be little individual property.
Raw Sewage
It has been 50 years since John F. Kennedy was assassinated and, as a result, he and his untimely death have naturally received a huge amount of media attention. The problem, as I see it, is that the entire city of Dallas, Texas, continues to be tarred all these years later. For one thing, his assassin, Lee Harvey Oswald, was born in New Orleans. For another thing, what makes Dallas a pariah when no such labeling is attached to Memphis, where Martin Luther King was killed, or Los Angeles, the scene of Robert Kennedy's murder?