Right Opinion
The best of conservative opinion and commentary, updated daily.
Thursday, October 31, 2013
Broken Promises/Broken Presidencies
When Vice President George H.W. Bush accepted the GOP nomination for president in New Orleans in 1988, he memorably said: "Read my lips, no new taxes." Too memorably, as things turned out. He won that election handily, carrying forty states against the hapless Michael Dukakis and 53% of the vote. It was the last comfortable victory the Republicans have seen.
Barneys' 'Racism' Threatens Jay-Z's Street Cred
"World War II Vets Under Attack by Blacks." Can you imagine such a headline in The New York Times -- or anywhere else, except perhaps some in underground racist tract? But for the second time in three months, an 80-plus-year-old WWII veteran was murdered by black suspects. In Washington, 88-year-old Delbert Belton, who fought and took a bullet to the leg at the Battle of Okinawa, was beaten to death by two black teen suspects. The motive? Police describe the killing as a random attack. In Mississippi, 87-year-old Lawrence E. Thornton, a WWII vet who served as a Navy fireman on a minesweeper, was beaten to death by four black suspects. The motive was robbery.
Crony Capitalism: The 1960s Generation's Legacy
The historic blunders of President Barack Obama's embarrassing health care rollout demonstrate spectacularly the utter failure of what? Let me tell you. They are the blunders of what was once called the "Brightest Generation" in American history, the 1960s generation. It did not start with Obama. His blunders were just a continuance of their blunders. By the 1960s generation, I mean the pot-smoking, war-protesting, guitar-strumming kids of the left -- not the majority from the 1960s generation, not the silent majority, but the minority. They were the miracle workers in politics: Jean-Francois Kerry, the Clintons, Al Gore, Joe Biden and all the rest. Their sages such as Saul Alinsky formalized their balderdash in learned tomes for their successors, for instance, our president. The media kept whooping it up for them. Their every pratfall was portrayed as a great success. Well, make a success of the health care rollout.
Paul Ryan: 'Obamacare Not Workable'
Obamacare's glitches are here to stay, according to House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan. In an exclusive interview with CNBC's Larry Kudlow, set to air Tuesday night on "The Kudlow Report," Ryan said the problems with the Affordable Care Act extend far beyond website malfunctions.
The Judiciary and Free Speech
Brick by brick, judges are dismantling the wall of separation that legislators have built between political activity and the First Amendment's protections of free speech and association. The latest examples, from Mississippi and Arizona, reflect the judiciary's proper engagement in defending citizens from the regulation of political speech, aka "campaign finance reform."
The Wages of Presidential Deception
By 1968, President Lyndon Baines Johnson was finally done in by his "credibility gap" -- the growing abyss between what he said about, and what was actually happening inside, Vietnam. "Modified limited hangout" and "inoperative" were infamous euphemisms that Nixon administration officials used to mask lies about the Watergate scandal. After a while, few believed any of the initial Reagan administration disavowals that it was not trading "arms for hostages" in the Iran-Contra scandal.
Wednesday, October 30, 2013
Revenge Is Tweet, Say Pro-lifers
*People* may be losing their coverage under ObamaCare, but abortion certainly isn't. For more than two million Americans, a routine trip to the mailbox is turning into a health care nightmare, as cancellation notices flood homes that took President Obama at his word that they could keep their health care plans. For as many as *16 million* people, being dropped from their policies is just the beginning of the bad news. Once they reenroll on the government's alternatives, they'll have no way of knowing what their plans include -- and whether that "coverage" funds the destruction of innocent human life.
The Affordable Care Act Isn't
So how much more is your health insurance going to cost you? That's the question, really, as Obamacare begins taking effect, and the stories pour in from around the country: how much your premiums are going up, not if they are going up.
President Lied, Media Credibility Died
On Monday evening, NBC News reported that President Obama wasn't just wrong, he was willfully lying when he said that if Americans liked their insurance plans, they could keep them under Obamacare. "(T)he administration knew that more than 40 to 67 percent of those in the individual market would not be able to keep their plans, even if they liked them," NBC News reported. To clarify, that's some 7 to 11 million Americans.
The Thuggery of O'Care Czarina Kathleen Sebelius
U.S. Secretary of Health and Human Services Kathleen Sebelius is allergic to the truth. She is the ruthless enforcer of Obamacare's Jenga tower of lies upon lies upon lies. Now that this fatally flawed government edifice is collapsing, you can expect Sebelius to do what she has done her entire career: blame, bully and pile on more lies. Three years ago, when insurers and other companies had the audacity to expose Obamacare's damage to their customers and workers, Sebelius brought out her brass knuckles. Remember? As I reported at the time, the White House coordinated a demonization campaign against Anthem Blue Cross in California for raising rates because of the new mandate's costs. Obama singled out the company in a "60 Minutes" interview, and Sebelius sent a nasty-gram demanding that Anthem "justify" its rate hikes to the federal government.
Terry McAuliffe's Anti-Catholic Campaign
There may be no more misleading newspaper sentence in the Virginia governor's race than this one from reporter Carol Morello in the Oct. 26 Washington Post: "The two major-party candidates running for governor in Virginia are both practicing Catholics." The Post did not ask McAuliffe where near his home in Fairfax County he attends church every Sunday and holy day of obligation, which is part of the definition of a "practicing Catholic." When radio show host Hugh Hewitt pressed him in 2007 about his church attendance after McAuliffe repeatedly cited his "Irish Catholic" bona fides in his autobiography "What a Party," McAuliffe shot back, "I don't pretend to be a priest, and I don't pretend to be citing ... I don't cite the Bible once in the book."
Mass Blocked by US Government
"I had to say Mass in my room," says Father Ray Leonard, recalling the years he served in the Tibetan region of the People's Republic of China. In that country, where the Communist government has created a state-sanctioned facsimile of the Catholic Church and driven faithful Catholics underground, Father Leonard saw firsthand how totalitarians approach religion.
Spying on the Line
Last Friday, the Justice Department acknowledged for the first time that it is using evidence derived from warrantless wiretapping to prosecute someone. That development sets the stage for a Fourth Amendment challenge to a law that gives the National Security Agency amazingly broad discretion to eavesdrop on Americans' phone calls and read their email. In February, the Supreme Court rejected a lawsuit brought by attorneys, journalists and human rights activists who complained that the NSA's snooping had compromised the privacy of their international communications. The court deemed that injury too speculative because the plaintiffs could not prove the government was spying on them.
Trial Balloons
Politicians are always floating trial balloons to test the winds for their various programs. I have my own balloons, and I often wish I could use them to float off to another planet For instance, I received an email from a fellow who had spent 40 years working in procurement for the U.S. military. He was calling my attention to how quickly the federal government got those signs announcing the shutdown printed and posted all across the country, at every national park and monument. As he says, it's not as if they just happened to have those thousands of 3x4-foot signs lying around since the last shutdown 17 years ago.
Obama's Big Lie
"All we've been hearing the last three years is if you like your policy you can keep it. ... I'm infuriated because I was lied to," one woman told the Los Angeles Times, as part of a story on how some middle-class Californians have been stunned to learn the real costs of Obamacare. And that lie looks like the biggest lie about domestic policy ever uttered by a U.S. president.
Is There a Way Out?
According to a recent Fox News poll, 73 percent of Americans are dissatisfied with the direction of the country, up 20 points from 2012. Americans sense that there's a lot going wrong in our nation, but most don't have a clue about the true nature of our problem. If they had a clue, most would have little stomach for what would be necessary to arrest our national decline. Let's look at it.
Throw the Rascals Out?: Part II
The public's opinion of politicians of both parties seems to have reached a new low. But no matter how much the voters detest Congress -- or how justifiably -- that does not mean that there will be radical changes at the next election. For one thing, "Congress" is not on the ballot. Only individual members of Congress are. Most voters like their own Senator or Representative, often because of special favors that these incumbents have done for their own constituency -- at the taxpayers' expense.
End the Fed
I've always avoided reporting on the Federal Reserve. I know it's more important than much of the stuff I cover, but it's so boring. How can I succeed on TV reporting on the Fed? Fed chairs even work at being dull. Alan Greenspan said he tried to be obscure because he didn't want to spook markets. He called his obfuscation "Fedspeak." It's a far cry from the clarity of his language -- and principles -- when he was young and a disciple of libertarian Ayn Rand.
Tuesday, October 29, 2013
ObamaCare: Better Never Than Late
Americans have heard a lot of excuses about why the ObamaCare website doesn't work, but Secretary Sebelius' latest takes the cake. In her desperation, the HHS chief tried to turn the tables on Republicans, suggesting that the "political atmosphere" was somehow to blame for the website's faulty infrastructure. "Frankly," [she said](http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2013/10/26/sebelius-suggests-republicans-to-blame-for-obamacare-website-woes/) during a stopover in Austin, "a political atmosphere where the majority party, at least in the House, was determined to stop this anyway they possibly could ... was not an ideal atmosphere."