Right Opinion
The best of conservative opinion and commentary, updated daily.
Thursday, August 15, 2013
CNN Never Mentions 'Obama' in Article on Joblessness
The headline at CNN Money was, "Why America's Youth Aren't Finding Jobs." If you expected an analysis of how and why President Barack Obama's policies hurt the job market for the young, think again. Believe it or not, CNN wrote a piece, supposedly explaining the tight job market, without using the following words: Obama, Obama administration, taxes, regulations, "stimulus" program or, of course, ObamaCare. Stunning.
A Constitutional Cure for What Ails Us
When I studied the U.S. Constitution in school, I learned that for a bill to become law it first had to be introduced in either the House or the Senate. Today, a cynic might say for a bill to become law a member of Congress must first be introduced to a lobbyist. Much of government's dysfunction, cost and overreach can be traced to the abandonment of the constitutional boundaries the Founders put in place for the purpose of controlling the lust for power.
The Place I Live, the Books I Read
My neighborhood in the San Fernando Valley is diverse. In fact, it's more diverse than the typical college campus and light years more diverse than the typical college faculty. On my single block, we have blacks, whites and Latinos. The age range runs from about 13 to mid-80s. Across the street is an orthodox Jewish family; next door are Armenian Christians from Constantinople. Next door to them, the house is for sale because the elderly Hawaiian couple died in recent years. We also have a married couple in their 30s, a retired Marine and his wife, a middle-aged son living with his mother who suffers from Alzheimer's, a multi-generational family of Hispanics and a woman who shares her home with four cats who have somehow survived sharing space with two pit bulls. For the most part, my neighbors, both the Democrats and the Republicans, are apolitical.
Don't Know Much About Geography
In Sam Cooke's classic 1959 hit "Wonderful World," the lyrics downplayed formal learning with lines like, "Don't know much about history ... Don't know much about geography." Over a half-century after Cooke wrote that lighthearted song, such ignorance is now all too real. Even our best and brightest -- or rather our elites especially -- are not too familiar with history or geography.
Atmosphere of Unconstitutionality
WASHINGTON -- Barack Obama's increasingly grandiose claims for presidential power are inversely proportional to his shriveling presidency. Desperation fuels arrogance as, barely 200 days into the 1,462 days of his second term, his pantry of excuses for failure is bare, his domestic agenda is nonexistent and his foreign policy of empty rhetorical deadlines and redlines is floundering. And at last week's news conference he offered inconvenience as a justification for illegality.
Wednesday, August 14, 2013
Ft. Hood's Casualties Have Earned the Purple Heart
When the US government's National Counterterrorism Center compiled its annual report for 2009, it didn't overlook the deadliest terror attack on American soil since 9/11. "On 5 November 2009, at 1:30 PM, in Fort Hood, Texas," the report notes in its chronology of "high-fatality terrorist attacks" -- those that took at least 10 lives -- "an armed assailant entered the Fort Hood Soldier Readiness Processing Center and opened fire, killing one civilian and 12 soldiers, wounding seven civilians, 17 soldiers, and 18 [other] people, and damaging the facility.... No group claimed responsibility, although authorities believed an unaffiliated Sunni extremist was responsible."
Judge Throws Out Discrimination Charges Against Paula Deen
But the civil rights lynch mob achieves its damage.
Janet Napolitano's New Gig
The head of one of the most prestigious state university systems in America should have one chief qualification: She should be ideologically inclined toward openness in education for the benefit of the students. Political bias permeates the higher education system throughout the United States, indoctrinating students into the canon of leftism. A huge number of students emerge with degrees in useless political correctness, an inability to think about the world without an emotional lens, and few job skills. The right person at the head of the University of California could bring some much-needed reform.
Levin to the Rescue
Only those happily trampling on the last vestiges of freedom will deny that our federal government as a constitutional republic has ceased to function. The president can no longer control (nor does this one want to control) the enormous and ever-expanding bureaucracy functioning as a government by fiat. The legislative branch, so corrupted, so drunk by the allure of power, so disdainful of its constituents, is unable to stop its bankrupting ways. The judiciary is perhaps the worst. The Supreme Court is openly rejecting the authority of the Constitution itself.
The Illegal Alien Murderer of Vanessa Pham
Why is gun control the only policy we're allowed to discuss when horrific murders occur? In the liberal mindset, "root causes" of crime begin and end with the Second Amendment. But who pays the price when our public guardians fail to secure our borders, refuse to deport serial criminal offenders, and enable drug-crazed menaces to prey upon innocent citizens? Meet 27-year-old Julio Miguel Blanco-Garcia. An illegal alien from Guatemala, he has lived and worked in Fairfax County, Va., for at least 11 years. The region is a notorious "sanctuary" for immigration law-breakers where elected officials and big business look the other way for cheap labor and cheap votes.
Eric Holder's Prison Break
Two years ago, while researching a story about drug policy reformers' disenchantment with Barack Obama, I interviewed Eric Sterling, who as a lawyer for the House Judiciary Committee in the 1980s had a hand in creating the mandatory minimum sentences he would later decry as an activist. Sterling was aghast at the penny-ante crack cases that federal prosecutors across the country were pursuing, sending overwhelmingly black defendants to prison for years over mixtures of cocaine and baking soda weighing less than an ounce.
Battle of the Sexes
Women make only 77 cents per each dollar made by males. Outrageous! Sex discrimination! So say advocates of government-enforced "equality." But they are wrong. Women today are rarely victims of salary discrimination.
Energy Manipulation
Why is it that natural gas sells in the U.S. for $3.94 per 1,000 cubic feet and in Europe and Japan for $11.60 and $17, respectively? Part of the answer is our huge supply. With high-tech methods of extraction and with discovery of vast gas-rich shale deposits, estimated reserves are about 2.4 quadrillion cubic feet. That translates into more than a 100-year supply of natural gas at current usage rates. What partially explains the high European and Japanese prices is the fact that global natural gas markets are not integrated. Washington has stringent export restrictions on natural gas.
Tuesday, August 13, 2013
Time for Third Party
Last week I wrote a column about the reality that House Republicans are ready to cave on so-called comprehensive immigration reform. There was a final paragraph in that column my editor decided not to use. That is the editor's right for two reasons: one, every site has a voice they wish to adhere to interns of form and content; and two, he who pays, gets the final say.
MEGO
A hundred years ago, when I was the news director at WMOA Radio, 1490 on your AM dial in Marietta, Ohio 45750; I read that there was an editor -- probably in New York -- who would mark up copy with the letters M.E.G.O. The acronym meant: My Eyes Glaze Over -- the piece was so boring as to make him enter alpha wave mode such as I go into when I'm behind a high school class trying to get through the TSA security area. Living in Our Nation's Capital we have many opportunities to be bored by long explanations by powerful people telling us why something can't get done -- that it's too complicated for mere mortals such as myself to understand.
'The Trial,' American-Style
Who can avoid running afoul of overcriminalization? At one time in history, there was a general belief in the Divine Right of Kings. Whatever the king or ruler decided at that moment was the law. Thus, standards were constantly changing. Because "power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely," in the immortal words of Lord Acton, laws handed down by kings were often arbitrary, unfair, unjust and cruel.
Voting Rights -- and Wrongs
Donna Brazile, the Democrats' all-purpose spokeswoman for civil rights, was at it again the other day, flaying "Republicans" for conspiring to suppress the voting rights of black and minorities. "Republicans," as she put it in a USA Today column, "are pushing restrictive voter ID legislation in states around the country that will make it more difficult for people to make their voices heard." She singled out North Carolina for "an extreme law" requiring students attending college outside their home counties to tender government-issued identification -- e.g., drivers' licenses -- instead of student ID cards.
The Left vs. the Redskins
The online magazine Slate announced last week that it will never again refer to the Washington's National Football League team, the Redskins, by its name. The name, according to Slate, offends American Indians, and therefore should be dropped. And until such time, Slate will never mention it. It will become, in effect, the R-word.
The Hook-Up Culture: Risk It or Resist It?
The day is fast approaching when you'll drop your little girl off at her freshmen dorm. After lugging her "stuff" to her new room, meeting the roommate, and exchanging hugs all around, the hours will speed by and you'll be driving away, alone, all too soon. For her, it's the beginning of a brand new world of lectures, libraries, meal cards, parties, and guys. Unfortunately, it's a world that's increasingly likely to include sex, but not dating, relationships, or even healthy male-female friendships.
Are We Serious About Education?
Two recent events -- one on the east coast and one on the west coast -- raise painful questions about whether we are really serious when we say that we want better education for minority children. One of these events was an announcement by Dunbar High School in Washington, D.C., that it plans on August 19th to begin "an entire week of activities to celebrate the grand opening of our new $160 million state-of-the-art school building."