Right Opinion
The best of conservative opinion and commentary, updated daily.
Friday, September 6, 2013
Camp Bastion Families Still Fighting for Truth
Next week, "never forget" will resound across America as citizens mark a dozen years since the 9/11 terrorist attack and one year since the bloody disaster in Benghazi. But who will remember the American heroes who came under siege at Camp Bastion in Afghanistan on 9/14/12? Two heroic U.S. Marines -- Lt. Col. Christopher Raible and Sgt. Bradley Atwell -- perished in the monstrous battle last year, and nearly a dozen others were injured. What happened at Camp Bastion and whether the Obama administration has learned from the deadly incident are timely questions as Washington prepares for war again in a jihadi-infested region.
Purple State, Deep-Blue Media
If you think The Washington Post comes to any Virginia election with an open mind and an objective approach, I have some macaca to sell you. Anyone who runs as a Republican statewide in the Old Dominion has to prepare to be blasted as a troglodyte. And if that Republican is conservative, it's open season.
Is There More Than Madness to Obama's Methods?
"The genius of you Americans," the Arab-nationalist and one-time president of Egypt, Gamal Abdel Nasser, once explained, "is that you never make clear-cut stupid moves, only complicated stupid moves which make us wonder at the possibility that there may be something to them which we are missing." I've long taken patriotic pride in such statements of befuddlement from foreigners. America is a gloriously complicated thing. We often confuse our national creeds for universal principles. We are a Jacksonian people (that's Andrew Jackson, in case you were wondering) in love with Jeffersonian ideals and legalistically committed to Madisonian mechanisms. Like a guard dog that would rather not leave the porch, we are quick to anger but not necessarily quick to fight and we are just as eager to forgive.
On Syria, Obama Is All Over the Map
When it comes to President Obama's prowess as commander in chief, "leading from behind," at this point, would be a step up. Some believe that the United States should engage in military action in foreign countries when America's national interests or those of our allies are at stake. Some believe we should rarely do so, perhaps only when we are under attack. Some think we should actively export democracy to other nations, whether or not our national security interests are currently on the line. And some, like President Obama, are literally all over the map, a quagmire of incoherency.
Unless He's Serious, Vote No
WASHINGTON -- We have a problem. The president proposes attacking Syria, and his top military officer cannot tell you the objective. Does the commander in chief know his own objective? Why, yes. "A shot across the bow," explained Barack Obama. Now, a shot across the bow is a warning. Its purpose is to say: Cease and desist, or the next shot will sink you. But Obama has already told the world -- and Bashar al-Assad in particular -- that there will be no next shot. He has insisted time and again that the operation will be finite and highly limited. Take the shot, kill some fish, go home.
Why Miley Cyrus Matters
Some defenders of Miley Cyrus' VMA performance don't understand what all the outrage is about. Justin Timberlake tweeted, "She's young. Take it easy on her." Lena Dunham worried about "slut shaming." Russell Simmons wrote "Just saw @MileyCyrus. What did I miss. She was having fun. #twerkmileytwerk." And Adam Lambert tweeted " ... Listen if it wasn't ur cup of tea -- all good but why is everyone spazzing? Hey -- she's doin something right. We all talkin." Cyrus seemed to endorse Lambert's any-attention-is-good-attention rationale. She boasted on Twitter that "Smilers! My VMA performance had 306.000 tweets per minute. That's more than the blackout or Superbowl! #fact."
Obama's 'Red Line' Undermines U.S. Power
Blunder after blunder. That's been the story of President Barack Obama's policy toward Syria. In April 2011, Obama said dictator Bashir al-Assad "had to go." But he did little or nothing to speed him on his way. At an Aug. 20, 2012, press conference, in campaign season, he was asked about Syria's chemical weapons and said "a red line for us is we start seeing a whole bunch of chemical weapons moving around or being utilized. That would change my calculus."
Thursday, September 5, 2013
(Wedding) Bands of Brothers
While the rest of the Obama administration was cheering the Supreme Court's overreach on marriage, the IRS's celebration was a little more subdued. Like a lot of government officials, they knew the decision to strike down a section of the Defense of Marriage Act was about to unleash bureaucratic chaos, especially where the state and federal tax codes are concerned. Two months later, the IRS is proving them right. Although the justices agreed that same-sex couples were entitled to the same federal benefits as married couples, they left it to the government to sort out how. Last week, the IRS took its first stab at putting some teeth behind the Court's ruling, announcing that it would start treating legally "married" same-sex couples the same as heterosexual spouses on tax forms. If only it were that easy. Instead of clearing up confusion, Treasury officials are creating more. After all, 37 states don't recognize same-sex "marriage," and that's already triggering a filing nightmare. In places like Georgia, couples could end up filing as many as three separate tax returns -- one married federal return and two single ones for state taxes.
ObamaCare Was Sold to American Voters on Deceptive Terms
One of the strange things about the market for health insurance is that almost none of us ever sees a real price. More than 90 percent of people with private coverage get it through an employer. Employers, on the average, pay about three-fourths of the cost and the remaining share tends to be the same for every employee -- irrespective of expected health care costs. In most states, the only people who face real premiums are in the "individual market," where individuals and families pay for insurance out of their own pockets. Yet the Affordable Care Act (ObamaCare) will outlaw the pricing of individual risk (medical underwriting) by year's end. Health insurance, therefore, is very different from just about every other form of insurance.
Community Organizer Goes to War
Oh, how I long for the days when liberals wailed that "the rest of the world" hated America, rather than now, when the rest of the world laughs at us. With the vast majority of Americans opposing a strike against Syria, President Obama has requested that Congress vote on his powers as commander in chief under the Constitution. The president doesn't need congressional approval to shoot a few missiles into Syria, nor -- amazingly -- has he said he'll abide by such a vote, anyway.
Presidential Dithering
John Kerry put on quite a war dance in the Senate on Tuesday. The Secretary of State, backed up by Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel and Joint Chiefs Chairman Martin Dempsey, went before the Foreign Relations Committee to urge senators to support the newly drafted resolution giving President Obama authorization to use airstrikes in Syria. Kerry made some impressive arguments in favor of military action.
Unfair and Unjust
Before Attorney General Eric Holder and the Justice Department move forward with a lawsuit to block vouchers for thousands of low-income students trapped in failing Louisiana public schools, he ought to speak to parents whose children benefit from the statewide voucher measured called the Louisiana Scholarship Program. One of those parents is Lakisha Fuselier. Fuselier is a single mother of four. Her 8-year-old son, Albert, is a part of the voucher program. A spokeswoman in Gov. Bobby Jindal's office emailed me her story, which first appeared in The Daily Advertiser last December. "Lakisha Fuselier wanted to do something to help her son, Albert. He was struggling in public school classes," the Daily Advertiser writes. "His academic problems were compounded by a diagnosis of attention deficit hyperactivity disorder. ... She knew he needed individual attention, something he was not getting in public school."
Same Old, Same Old in Syria
President Obama's on-and-off-again planned American attack on Syria is nothing new. Besides its five declared wars, America has a habit of intervening all over the world. Even apart from clandestine CIA operations, and even after the unhappy end of the Vietnam War, we have attacked lots of countries and non-state militias. The roll call of recent American military interventions is quite astounding: Cambodia, Iran, Libya, Lebanon, Grenada, Panama, Liberia, Iraq, Haiti, Somalia, the former Yugoslavia, Zaire and Afghanistan.
Obama's Syrian 'Red Line' -- Now What?
Sen. Barack Obama snatched the 2008 democratic nomination from Sen. Hillary Clinton for many reasons, none more important than Obama's opposition to the Iraq War. All of Obama's major opponents -- Sen. Chris Dodd, D-Conn., then-Sen. Joe Biden, D-Del., former Sen. John Edwards, D-N.C. and then-Sen. Clinton, D-N.Y. -- had voted for authorization for war. Obama, then an Illinois state senator and a candidate for the U.S. Senate gave a speech in October 2002. He called it "a rash war... based not on reason but on passion, not on principle but on politics." Sen. Obama pre-emptively criticized President George W. Bush in 2007 for possibly taking military action against Iran's suspected nuclear sites -- should he do so without congressional approval. Such an action, Obama said then, would be in violation of the Constitution unless the President obtained congressional approval.
America Is on Life Alert
As I sit here, apparently everyone in Washington, D.C. is mulling over what to do about Syria. For my part, I'm mulling over what to do about Washington, D.C. It just seems to me that America has fallen and can't get up. I know that I am expected to be up in arms over chemical weapons being employed by Bashar al-Assad, assuming that the intelligence is better now than it was prior to the Iraq invasion. But I have never understood the moral outrage connected to weaponry. Neither have I ever grasped the lunacy of war being waged according to some grotesque version of Marquis of Queensbury rules. As I see it, wars are fought in order to defeat one's enemy before he has a chance to defeat you. And the faster you do it, the better.
The 45-Minute Walk as Comedy
WASHINGTON -- It was one of the most comic, presidential moments in recent American history: President Barack Obama's solitary walk across the South Lawn of the White House. Supposedly it made history. I would put it right up there with President Bill Clinton's solitary walk down Normandy beach in 1994. The sun is setting. The great man stands alone (in his baggy suit). The bluffs made historic by our soldiery in World War II are on one side of this famous draft dodger and the sea dotted with warships is on his other side. Bill becomes reflective. Then, ever so perceptibly, he *panics*. Three network cameras are whirring, dozens of photographer's cameras are click-clicking, and Bill has completely drawn a blank as to what he is to do next. He glances down in the sand and catches himself. He espies the stones that have been carefully laid in his path by his clever advance personnel and, *ah-ha*, he falls to his knees! He arranges them in a cross! He composes himself as in prayer! Perhaps he is thinking of a callipygian rump he glimpsed half an hour ago. Surely his advance men had the sense to get her name. At any rate, the columnist Maureen Dowd captured the scene for the New York Times before she too went over to the dark side.
Wednesday, September 4, 2013
Professor Tells Students Republicans 'Raped' America
Michigan State University is investigating a video that purportedly shows a professor telling his class that Republicans were a bunch of "dying white people" who "raped this country" and wanted to prevent black people from voting. "MSU is thankful we've been made aware of the situation," spokesman Kent Cassella tells me. "We will be looking into it." The video was secretly filmed Aug. 29th by a student on the first day of a creative writing class. The professor can be seen and heard railing against Republicans and disparaging former presidential candidate Mitt Romney's wife.
The Price You Pay
The heartbreak of a storm like Hurricane Sandy, or any major "unexpected" event, is enough to overwhelm even the toughest of people. Sometimes there may not be a right answer as to what to do. And sometimes realistically stating the problem can seem cruel. But realism has to take over and be dealt with. This article is a good case in point.
Darwin's Conundrum: Where Does Compassion Come From?
Altruism puzzled Charles Darwin. If evolution was propelled by natural selection -- by the gradual predominance within species, including *Homo sapiens*, of those individuals best adapted genetically for survival and reproduction -- where do generosity and compassion come from? Why don't societies grow more pitiless and cutthroat over time? How did selflessness, charity, and integrity ever establish a foothold, let alone become moral virtues that all enlightened communities esteem?