Right Opinion

What's Your Foreign Policy, Mr. President?

President Reagan's speech to the nation 30 ago launched a major arms buildup to confront the expanding military power and political aspirations of the Soviet Union. It followed the disastrous presidency of Jimmy Carter, whose nonperformance during the Iran hostage crisis led to the perception in the Muslim world that America was weak and had lost its resolve to confront enemies. President Obama appears to believe killing Osama bin Laden, which he mentioned for the umpteenth time at his Friday news conference, and conducting drone strikes against terrorists in Yemen and elsewhere is enough to deter terrorists.

Crime Bankrupts Detroit; Public Unions Mug Two California Cities

In the Industrial Midwest, the city government of Detroit went into bankruptcy in July. Out in California, the city governments of Stockton and San Bernardino entered bankruptcy proceedings in 2012. But the Detroit and California bankruptcies, like Tolstoy's unhappy families, are not alike. They suffer from quite different ailments.

Let the National Conversation Begin

In his new book, "The Liberty Amendments," my friend Mark Levin is offering a bold plan for the re-establishment of America's founding principles and a restoration of constitutional republicanism through a series of amendments to the Constitution. I know of no one who has a greater reverence for our Constitution and for the scheme of limited government and personal liberties it established. Mark has been a student of America's founding and its constitutional history since he was a young boy, when he and his friends would visit Philadelphia, where it all started, and study the history.

A Scandal Bigger Than Benghazi?

The unanswered and troubling questions surrounding the deadly attack on SEAL Team 6.

On ObamaCare, Tea Party Is on Right Track

Vitriol has gone beyond partisan give-and-take in the nation's politics. It is now seeping into and poisoning the ranks of the Republican Party. Mainstream Republican politicians are cringing at the proposal by senators in the Tea Party movement -- Ted Cruz of Texas, Mike Lee of Utah and Marco Rubio of Florida -- that upcoming legislation to appropriate funds to operate the federal government be held hostage on condition that Obamcare funding is withheld.

Odds & Ends

I confess that there is a part of me that envies my fellow commentators their ability to focus on a single topic. I honestly don't know how they do it. I write three, sometimes four, pieces a week and I still wind up feeling like the Sorcerer's Apprentice, going nuts trying to keep up. For instance, I was watching a Yankees/Angels baseball game recently when it was announced that through the American Forces Network, the game was being watched by members of the U.S. military in 175 countries and on ships at sea. I was floored! Our military is stationed in 175 countries?! That's nearly as many countries as are represented at the U.N. Aside from propping up a large number of local economies with our tax dollars, what the heck are they doing over there? I say if we're going to have that many people in uniform, I suggest we move most of them from their foreign posts and reposition them at our southern border, where they could actually do some good.

Government Is Dangerous. Handle With Care.

There is no connection, of course, between the prosecution of notorious gangster James "Whitey" Bulger and the recent spate of scandals and revelations roiling the Obama administration. Or is there? Law enforcement and criminal justice are essential functions of government. No civilized society could survive for long if it lacked tools to combat lawlessness or make dangerous villains answer for their crimes. And Bulger was certainly dangerous -- "one of the most vicious, violent criminals ever to walk the streets of Boston," as Assistant US Attorney Fred Wyshak called him in summing up for the prosecution last week.

Is There a Republican Alternative to ObamaCare?

Republicans are virtually unanimous about one thing: They want to repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act (ObamaCare). But what would they replace it with? Actually, there is a serious GOP proposal. It's called the Patients' Choice Act, sponsored by Sen. Tom Coburn (R-Okla.) and Rep. Paul Ryan (R-Wisc.). ... The GOP proposal is actually more "progressive" than ObamaCare. And, unlike the Democratic approach, it solves problems rather than creating new ones. Yet Republican politicians almost never mention it.

Taming the Tax Code Beast

WASHINGTON -- "Colleagues," said the June 27 letter to 98 U.S. senators, "now it is your turn." The letter's authors are Max Baucus, D-Mont., and Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, the chairman and ranking Republican on the tax-writing Finance Committee, respectively. From their combined 71 years on Capitol Hill they know that their colleagues will tiptoe gingerly, if at all, onto the hazardous terrain of tax reform. Together with Chairman Dave Camp, R-Mich., of the House Ways and Means Committee, Baucus and Hatch propose a "blank slate" approach, erasing all deductions and credits -- currently worth more than $1 trillion a year -- and requiring legislators to justify reviving them. Hence the Baucus-Hatch letter, in response to which almost 70 senators sent more than 1,000 pages of suggestions. Although some often were short on specificity, the submissions were given encrypted identification numbers and locked in a safe, as befits dangerous documents.

The Gripes of Wrath

There is so much in America today that calls for ridicule and contempt, one hardly knows where to begin. But when in doubt, you can't go wrong starting with liberals. Whether they're calling themselves liberals, progressives or Democrats this week, at the top of their mission statement is the feeding and housing of the needy. But what they never do is separate the needy who are deserving from those who aren't. To them, the needy are all the same. They make no distinction between the elderly poor or severely handicapped and those who are young and able-bodied but feel themselves entitled to everything without having to work for any of it.

From The Comedy Store

Congress billed the taxpayers to fund health care insurance for themselves and their staffs. It gets them out of ObamaCare. Not only do average Americans pick up the cost of House members’ health care, all death-panel rulings apply to randomly-selected taxpayers.

Puttin' Putin in his Place

June 27, 2013 -- ABC News: >[President] Obama said has called neither Russian President Vladimir Putin nor Chinese President Xi Jinping to ask that Snowden be turned over because "I shouldn't have to" -- expelling a criminal should be a routine legal matter. > >"No, I am not going to be scrambling jets to get a 29-year-old hacker," Obama said. August 7, 2013 -- New York Times: >President Obama canceled next month's Moscow summit meeting [with Russian President Vladimir Putin], ending for now his signature effort to transform Russian-American relations. It was the first time an American leader had called off such a trip in decades. Oh, yeah. That Obama swagger is working really well everywhere outside of Chicago, New York, and Los Angeles.

GOP Ready to Cave on Amnesty

Why the Left is so optimistic.

Obama Remaking America's Image

President Obama's decision to cancel his planned trip to Moscow to meet with Russian President Vladimir Putin was the right thing to do in light of Russia's decision to grant asylum to Edward Snowden. But it also illustrates problems of the president's own making. One of Obama's chief aims upon assuming office was to remake the image of the United States in the world's eyes. And he has -- but not in the way he imagined.

Can Bezos Save The Washington Post?

The Washington Post is a legend in the minds of the Washington elite, so its financial decline has caused quiet panic. As NPR media reporter David Folkenflik put it, "You think of stories like the Pentagon Papers, Watergate, these are all stories where The Washington Post led the nation's understanding, the world's understanding of some major issues." Outside the liberal media, you wonder how long Post fans can wallow in their Nixon-crumbling polyester "glory days" in the early 1970s. But nostalgia ruled as the Graham family sold the Post to Jeff Bezos, the billionaire founder of Amazon.com. "Now he is being credited as a white knight with deep pockets helping to save one of this country's great newspapers," oozed NBC reporter Tom Costello.

The First Lexicological War: Throw the Dictionary at 'Em

WASHINGTON -- Jen Psaki, blameless State Department spokeswoman, explained that the hasty evacuation of our embassy in Yemen was not an evacuation but "a reduction in staff." This proved a problem because the Yemeni government had already announced (and denounced) the "evacuation" -- the word normal folks use for the panicky ordering of people onto planes headed out of country. Thus continues the administration's penchant for wordplay, the bending of language to fit a political need. In Janet Napolitano's famous formulation, terror attacks are now "man-caused disasters." And the "global war on terror" is no more. It's now an "overseas contingency operation."

Obamacare Is a Nuclear Missile That Must Be Shot Down

Instead of the GOP focusing all its energy on infighting over the so-called "tactical" decision of whether to defund Obamacare, how about remembering who the real enemies of freedom are and directing its energies toward the Democrats, who are propping up this monster? It is painful to witness the expenditure of so much negative energy among people who all say they oppose the law. This law is so bad and so unpopular and its negative consequences so apparent that we would have to be complete incompetents not to be able to make this case to the American people, the majority of whom already agree.

The 'Filthy Filner' Cover-Up

Yuck. Is there a woman in his sights that pervy Democratic San Diego Mayor Bob Filner *hasn't* harassed, molested, insulted, propositioned, groped, headlocked or slobbered on while holding public office? In less than a month, the number of victims and witnesses coming forward has skyrocketed from three to 13. And the details have grown even more unbelievably sordid. This isn't a local "sex scandal." It's a nationwide predator scandal.

Cheating Is Rife in Colleges -- by Admissions Officers

What is the most intellectually dishonest profession around? My nomination: the admissions officers at highly selective colleges and universities. Evidence in support of this comes from, of all places, a recent article in The New York Times. The writer is Ruth Starkman, and the subject is her experience as a reader of applications to the highly selective University of California, Berkeley.

It's Time to Cancel Martin Luther King Day