Right Opinion
The best of conservative opinion and commentary, updated daily.
Friday, October 18, 2013
The New Broadcast Profanity: 'Redskins'?
Conservatives begin by revering tradition; liberals often by trashing it. In fact, it doesn't bother liberals that something they found acceptable one day is declared -- by them -- repugnant the next. It's taken only a few days of liberal media agitation for MSNBC's Lawrence O'Donnell to announce that Washington Redskins owner Daniel Snyder is "the George Wallace of the NFL." Snyder saying he'll never change his team's name has somehow become historically comparable to George Wallace's "segregation forever." It's suddenly so offensive, apparently, that the leftists who have gone to court to make the airwaves safe for every profanity imaginable, in the name of free speech and tolerance, are now petitioning the Federal Communications Commission to ban "the R-word" from television.
How NOT to Argue With Parents About Common Core
As an outspoken critic of the federal academic standards scheme known as Common Core, I'd like to offer some friendly advice to opponents. Stop insulting. Stop digging. Stop projecting. Start listening. Central planners in Washington have been caught off-guard by the grassroots revolt against the national standards/testing/curriculum juggernaut. Real input from the hoi polloi was never a part of the grand implementation process. So when parents and educators in dozens of states started challenging the privacy intrusions posed by and the constitutionality, cost, quality and validity of Common Core, its architects went on the attack.
Act Now to End Racial Preferences
Like a bad penny, cases involving race keep turning up before the Supreme Court, largely because the court won't definitively make up its mind how much racial discrimination it favors. Since 1978, when the court decided race could be a factor in college admissions as long as it promoted greater racial diversity, racial preferences have become ingrained in society, from college admissions to hiring decisions and promotions to government contracting.
Cookies, Kooks & Calamities
Even being incarcerated isn't enough to make some hardened cases walk the straight and narrow. O.J. Simpson, who, among his other sins helped make household names out of creeps like Johnnie Cochran and Robert Shapiro, was recently busted by prison guards while trying to smuggle a dozen oatmeal cookies from the mess hall back to his cell. In related news, Nabisco is negotiating with Simpson's representatives to make him their corporate spokesman. And, if he gets paroled, "Sesame Street" is considering making him their Cookie Monster. After all, nobody answers the job description better.
Thursday, October 17, 2013
GOP to Obama: Keep Holding America Hostage
The GOP surrender and what it tells Dems about their crusade to take us to fiscal oblivion.
The Pickens Lines
Last night the House and Senate passed the bill to restart full government services and raise the debt limit. It was not a bright spot in American history, but it was way better than what we've been going through for the past few weeks.
It Depends on What the Meaning of 'Settled Law' Is
No major legislation has ever been passed like Obamacare -- and I'm using the word "passed" pretty loosely. It became law without both houses ever voting on the same bill. (Say, is the Constitution considered "settled law"?) Not one Republican voted for it -- and a lot of Democrats immediately wished they hadn't.
Terry McAuliffe's Extreme Agenda
Career crony turned perennial candidate Terry McAuliffe's staked his entire bid for the Virginia Governor's Mansion on demagoguing Ken Cuccinelli's stances on social issues. A recent Washington Times editorial summed up the central strategy of the Democrat's all-too predictable campaign: retread Obama's scorched earth tactics to cast Cuccinelli as anti-woman, all to cover up his glaring lack of substance.
Weaker by the Week
A lot of people are asking what the heck is wrong with the Republican Party. What isn't? That's no joke. Not for the GOP, not for the country. The party of Ronald Reagan is getting weaker by the week.
Henry Louis Gates Returns With 'The African Americans'
Can something as tragic and immoral as slavery become, if not less tragic, then noble, even righteous, in the telling? It can and it does in the capable hands of Harvard Professor Henry Louis Gates Jr., whose brilliant and compelling new six-part series for PBS called "The African Americans: Many Rivers to Cross" premieres Oct. 22 (check local listings). Gates, whose previous series, "African American Lives," chronicled the heritage of some famous and notable African Americans, takes us on a new journey that begins 500 years ago. While some of the history is familiar, Gates re-tells it in a way that will sound new to many people, especially the young. What I admire most about Gates' approach in this series and the previous one is that he is not a polemicist. He doesn't dwell on blame so much as he conveys documented history, leaving it to viewers to draw their own conclusions.
Where Do Public School Teachers Send Own Kids?
Guy walks into a restaurant. Says to the waitress, "I'd like some scrambled eggs and some kind words." She brings the eggs. The guy smiles, "Now how about the kind words?" Waitress whispers, "Don't eat the eggs." This brings us to the fact that urban public school teachers are about two times more likely than non-teachers to send their own children to private schools. In other words, many public school teachers whisper to parents, "Don't eat the eggs."
Obama Has Failed to Follow His Own Example
Republicans and Democrats are still name-calling in their arguments over the government shutdown, out-of-control federal spending and the implementation of Obamacare. Yet if both sides would agree to just follow the earlier advice of President Obama, tempers might cool and a deal could still be reached. And had President Obama himself just listened to earlier guidance from Barack Obama, his opponents might have had no cause for either a government shutdown or another debt-ceiling crisis.
The Silence Continues in Washington
So far the telephone has not rung. Last week, I suggested a way for the left and the right to get together constructively. I suggested that the Rev. Jesse Jackson and the Rev. Al Sharpton might give me a call and we might unite in demanding an investigation of the death of Miriam Carey. You may have forgotten who Carey is. After all, it has been two weeks since her death. Two weeks of thunderous silence, after she rammed a White House barricade with her car and then drove off down Pennsylvania Avenue with a posse of police speeding after her. She was shot dead in a hail of gunfire at the end of the avenue two blocks from the United States Capitol. The House of Representatives gave the police a standing ovation.
Wednesday, October 16, 2013
The Problem Is the Debt, Not the Debt Ceiling
For weeks we've been told that if Congress doesn't raise the federal debt ceiling by Thursday, the government will go into default and the world as we know it will spin out of control. The predictions of doom have been hysterical. Bloomberg reported that a US default would be the first by a major Western government "since Nazi Germany 80 years ago." Warren Buffett compared debt-ceiling politics to weapons of mass destruction -- "like nuclear bombs, basically too horrible to use.
Trick or Treat?
Early yesterday morning, members met in the Capitol basement -- where, for the last several weeks of negotiating, Congress's polling numbers have been. Two weeks and several protests into the partial government shutdown, both sides are hungry for a deal to end the standoff. So hungry, Roll Call reports, that a group of House conservatives sat down at Tortilla Coast restaurant to strategize with the defunding ObamaCare standard-bearer, Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas), to hash out next steps. Recognizing that the Senate was on the precipice of a deal that would yield virtually nothing for conservatives, a dozen Republicans talked about how to respond.
Obama's Ongoing Betrayal of America's Sacrifices in Iraq
Iraq heads toward civil war and al-Qaeda surges.
Don't Believe the Common Feminist Narrative
It's the common feminist narrative: moms want someone else to take care of their kids because child care is not nearly as rewarding as paid work. Housework and child care are mindless drudgery, and women want out. Don't you believe it.
The New Nexus: Liberal Media and Liberal Republicans
The government shutdown has made it abundantly obvious that the anti-conservative news media and the anti-conservative Republican establishment have joined together to the point where it's almost impossible to see where one ends and the other begins. Some might say they merge every day on the set of "Morning Joe." The media have designated as Public Enemy No. 1 a recalcitrant bloc of tea party stalwarts who have declared their intention to stop Barack Obama's statist juggernaut from imposing the Obamacare monstrosity, running up trillion-dollar deficits year after year and in so doing destroying the private sector. Amazingly, liberal Republicans have demonstrated the same wailing and gnashing of teeth.
Obama Tries to Lock Up Body of Christ
The Department of Defense this month took what almost certainly will be the most telling symbolic act the Obama administration ever takes. "The doors to the Kings Bay Chapel were locked on Oct. 4, 2013, with the Holy Eucharist, Holy water, Catholic hymn books and vessels all locked inside," says a lawsuit filed Monday by the Thomas More Law Center. "Father Leonard and his parishioners ... were prohibited from entering."
Homeland Insecurity Alert: Dry Ice and Dry Runs
Testing, 1, 2, 3, testing. Jihadists never go on furlough. While shutdown theater preoccupies Washington, terror plotters remain on the clock. The question is: Will America keep hitting the post-9/11 snooze button? At Los Angeles International Airport, two dry ice bombs exploded this week, and two others were found in a restricted area of the airport. According to the Los Angeles Times, the devices "appeared to be outside the terminal near planes where employees such as baggage handlers and others work on the aircraft and its cargo."