Right Opinion
The best of conservative opinion and commentary, updated daily.
Tuesday, September 24, 2013
Gov't Bullies Gone Bonkers Over Bathrooms
Good people need your help, right now to fight government bullies who have gone bonkers over bathrooms. In August of this year, California Governor Jerry Brown [signed into law](http://abclocal.go.com/kgo/story?section=news/state&id=9203724) a new provision that allows 'transgender' students, from kindergarten to 12th grade, to gain access to restrooms, sports teams, and locker rooms reserved to the opposite sex.
Killers on the Loose
Those very, very, very loose cannons, known as Muslim jihadists, have been shooting off around the world -- massacring Christians in Pakistan, Africans in Nairobi and all kinds of Syrians, and in the process, reminding serious Westerners (we still have a few) of the need for clear leadership amid clear and present dangers. So far, we can be sure only of one thing: We have no line on what's happening. Accordingly, we don't know what to do.
Muslims Need to Confront Muslim Evil
With this weekend's massacre by Muslim terrorists at a mall in Nairobi, Kenya, and Muslim terrorists killing about 80 Christians at a Christian church in Pakistan, most people wonder what, if anything in addition to a continuing war on terror, can be done to minimize the scourge of Islamic terror. The answer lies with Muslims themselves. Specifically, it means that Muslim religious leaders around the world must announce that any Muslim who deliberately targets non-combatants for death goes to hell.
'Defund Now, for When Shall We Be Stronger?'
"They tell us, sir, that we are weak, unable to cope with so formidable an adversary. But when shall we be stronger? Will it be next week or the next year?" Will it be when Obamacare has metastasized into every sector of our economy? "Shall we gather strength by irresolution and inaction? Shall we acquire the means of effectual resistance by lying supinely on our backs and hugging the delusive phantom of hope? ... Sir, we are not weak if we make a proper use of those means which the God of nature hath placed in our power." We are "millions of people, armed in the holy cause of liberty."
Who's an Extortionist?
President Obama pledged to end partisanship, but instead has exacerbated it. He recently accused House Republicans of being extortionists for opposing a raise in the debt ceiling and wanting to defund Obamacare. Dictionary.com defines extortion as "the crime of obtaining money or some other thing of value by the abuse of one's office or authority." Republicans should fling the extortion label back at the president, who wants to raise the debt ceiling, threatening to curtail many government operations if the GOP doesn't surrender.
Tennis, Women and Equality
You can tell who the keepers of American culture are by, among other things, the anniversaries they mark. We're currently being invited to revel in memories of the "iconic" tennis match between Bobby Riggs and Billie Jean King, the so-called "Battle of the Sexes". Robin Roberts of ABC News recalled King's "stunning triumph". ESPN explained to younger viewers that King "won for all women". The New York Times' Gail Collins gushed that King's victory 40 years ago was a message "for any woman who had ever worried about being laughed at if she stepped out of line."
Monkey Business
The worst thing about liberals is not that they're wrong on the issues, but that they are hypocrites and liars. The basis for my claim is that the same things they thought were hanging offenses when Bush was president are perfectly okay with them so long as one of their own is the guy keeping Gitmo open, extending the Patriot Act and attacking Syria even though they haven't attacked us. I could list other acts of hypocrisy, but of course I already have in hundreds of earlier articles. The notion that Syria is really expected to hand over its chemical arsenal and that Russia is going to compel al-Assad to do so at the best of times is laughable. The idea that he's going to do so in the midst of a civil war is even more ludicrous. Combine all that with a deadline of mid-2014 and the threat of a U.N. resolution if they don't comply is proof the whole thing's a farce.
America's New Isolationism
America has gone back to isolationism, many commentators are saying. Not just the dovish Democrats, but also Republicans who were so hawkish a decade ago are turning away from the world. There is something to this, but it's more complicated than that. To understand where we are, it's helpful to put today's developments in historic perspective. One picture of American history has it that this country left the rest of the world alone through most of its history, was pulled into world politics by World War II and the Cold War and is now just reverting to its norm.
High Risk, Low Yield
This has been the worst time, politically, for President Barack Obama since he took office. Recent polls reveal that public confidence in both his domestic and foreign policies has been falling, amid revelations about their defects and dangers. Even people who once supported and defended him have now turned against him. There have even been rumblings against Barack Obama in the Congressional Black Caucus and among labor unions that were a major factor in helping him get elected and re-elected.
Monday, September 23, 2013
On ObamaCare, a Life and Debt Struggle
If you tuned into C-SPAN last week and mistook it for the Soap Opera Network, you're not alone. Friday morning, the ObamaCare-budget drama took another twist, as House conservatives accurately diagnosed one of the major problems facing America: ObamaCare dollars in the federal funding stream. With the help of two Democrats (Reps. Mike McIntyre and Jim Matheson), 230 members kept their promise to play hardball on a health care policy that could be the downfall of American society. After an hour of debate, representatives moved to pass a $986.3 billion short-term budget that keeps the lights on in Washington and fully funds the government through December 15. What it won't do is devote a single cent to ObamaCare -- ever.
Zero Chance
Here we go again. Like the Voice o' Doom during the trailer for an upcoming horror movie we are being told again and again that we are facing the end of the political, fiscal, and monetary world if we get into a government shutdown situation next week. I am not in favor of shutting down the government. I am not in favor of the government exceeding the debt limit. I am not in favor of defunding Obamacare without a fully developed replacement in the same bill.
The Frederick Douglass Free Public Library
In Washington, D.C., one of our most stately buildings is undergoing an extensive renovation. The Free Public Library, Northeast Branch is probably the library closest to Capitol Hill. And [this red brick structure](http://www.dclibrary.org/northeast), with its stylish *quoined* corners, when it reopens, promises to bring even more opportunities for study and reflection to this thriving community. We would like to suggest renaming this library after Frederick Douglass. Frederick Douglass was, with Abraham Lincoln, the greatest example of what nineteenth century Americans meant when they defended "the right to rise." Millions of Americans, native born and immigrant, free-born and emancipated slaves, committed themselves to self-government *and* self-improvement.
Ted Cruz Isn't Abnormal; Washington Is
According to a new Gallup poll, 55 percent of Americans say they have little to no confidence that they can rely on mass media to report the news "fully, accurately and fairly." Forty-six percent say the media is too liberal and just 13 percent think it's too conservative. Justification for this public sentiment is evident as the budget and debt-ceiling issues heat up and the press can hardly restrain its disdain for Tea Party Republicans and the idea that our nation may really be in crisis.
Too Much News, Too Little Time
I often feel like one of those lumberjacks we used to see in the newsreels, trying to knock a competing lumberjack off a spinning log. The foolishness comes at us so rapidly that trying to stay on top of it all before we wind up in the drink is too much for one man. That's why when the opportunity presents itself, I like to delegate responsibility. So it's with a sense of gratitude, I acknowledge that when Melanie Campbell, one of the many pinheads who was invited to speak at the Martin Luther King anniversary shindig, compared the Supreme Court to the Ku Klux Klan, comedy writer Argus Hamilton pointed out how wrong she was: "The Klan are a bunch of guys in white sheets that scare the hell out of black people, while the Court's a bunch of guys in black sheets that scare the hell out of white people."
Sunday, September 22, 2013
Young Fatherless Elephants
Thanks to the cold-blooded murders in Oklahoma and Washington, black teenage thugs have been much in the news lately. But they've been newsworthy for quite a while now. It wasn't that long ago that gangs of them ran wild in Philadelphia, forcing even the black mayor to denounce them. More recently, they ran amok here in California, looting and mugging in L.A. and in Long Beach. And we mustn't overlook the record number of people they've been gunning down in the mean streets of Chicago. What's easy to forget, especially if you're a liberal, is that it's all an inevitable consequence of Lyndon Johnson's policies. It was he and his stooges in Congress that made welfare to black women conditional on there not being a man on the premises. With a swipe of his presidential pen, Johnson ended black families as America had known them. Until he put his welfare policy in place, the rate of marriages was higher among blacks than among whites. From 1890 on, the great majority of black children were raised in two parent homes.
What We Can Learn From Singapore
In 1984, Singapore instituted a revolutionary idea: a system of compulsory saving for medical expenses. That was the same year my colleagues and I at the National Center for Policy Analysis introduced the idea of Health Savings Accounts in this country. After almost three decades, Singapore has now come to the attention of a lot others, including a book by Brookings, and a whole slew of posts by bloggers. At the risk of disappointing you, Singapore does not have a free market for health care. What it does have is an alternative to the European/American welfare state, in which private saving and private insurance do what employers and governments do in other countries.
When Isolationism Ruled the Land
WASHINGTON -- In January 1938, Rep. Louis Ludlow, an Indiana Democrat, proposed a constitutional amendment strongly supported by the public: "Except in the event of an invasion of the United States or its territorial possessions and attack upon its citizens residing therein, the authority of Congress to declare war shall not become effective until confirmed by a majority of all votes cast thereon in a nationwide referendum." Although narrowly defeated, 209-188, it might have passed without President Franklin Roosevelt's last-minute opposition. During Barack Obama's, shall we say, sinuous progress toward a Syria policy, he has suggested, without using the word, that isolationism is among his afflictions.
Saturday, September 21, 2013
Non-Germane President Obama
One of the biggest mistakes President Obama is making in the current debate over the threat of a government shutdown and the failure to raise the debt ceiling is his repeated and stubborn refusal to *negotiate*. In speech after speech, Obama crusades against negotiation. Has anyone ever seen anything like this? He's the president. Supposedly, he's the chief executive. But Obama doesn't want to dirty his hands by talking to Republican congressional leaders. Now, this is an odd paradigm given the fact that the president and his lieutenants are willing to negotiate with Russia's Vladimir Putin, Syria's Bashar al-Assad, and most recently, Iranian President Hassan Rouhani. They are a motley crew at best and a bunch of dictatorial mass-killing thugs in truth.
Facts on Arctic Ice & Colorado Floods
With Arctic ice rounding the bend and starting well above last year's level, will anyone call to account people that said the icecap will be gone by 2013 (one of them being our secretary of state)? We are actually seeing some of the same folks who in 2007 said the icecap was in a death spiral now claiming their climate models forecasted this increase. If these people want to think "globally," then let's think globally -- as in total global sea ice, which is at the same level it was when this scam began gaining steam in 1990.