Right Opinion
The best of conservative opinion and commentary, updated daily.
Thursday, July 11, 2013
NHS Lessons for Obamacare
FT. WILLIAM, Scotland -- The power of television to shrink the world has always amazed me. Eating lunch on the road to Ft. William, a man at the next table recognizes me and introduces himself. Keith Farrington says he spent 15 years working as an assistant director of finance for the South East Thames Regional Health Authority, part of the National Health Service. He has strong warnings for the U.S. about Obamacare.
Did Zimmerman Profile Martin -- or the Other Way Around?
Why did the Trayvon Martin-George Zimmerman case become a national obsession? After all, about 14,000 murders take place every year in America. In just one city, Chicago, President Barack Obama's adopted hometown, murders are on pace to reach around 400, down 27 percent from last year but on par with 2011. In 2012, only 26 percent of homicides were "cleared," meaning the case was closed, with or without the killer being arrested or charged.
Pay Attention to Egypt
Overseas the Arab Spring is turning into the Arab Nightmare that everyone but the Obama administration always saw coming. At home the Obama Crew is fighting to socialize all of America's health care system, strangling the energy industry with new emissions regulations, and being exposed for ordering federal employees to spy on each other. And what do our mainstream media think is the most important issue of the day? The minute-by-minute play-by-play of the Zimmerman trial.
This Year's Duke Lacrosse Case
This week, instead of attacking a Hispanic senator, Marco Rubio, I will defend a Hispanic citizen, George Zimmerman, on trial for the murder of Trayvon Martin. (Zimmerman would make a better senator.) It's becoming painfully obvious why no charges were brought against Zimmerman in this case -- until Al Sharpton got involved. All the eyewitness accounts, testimony, ballistics and forensics keep backing up Zimmerman. We should send a big, fat bill for the whole thing to Sharpton, courtesy of MSNBC.
How Fed Food Assistance Fattens Corporate America
One-third of Americans dependent on aid? Big business approves.
Barack, Trayvon & Islam
Some people insist that racism no longer exists in America. Clearly, that isn't true. After all, Barack Obama once said that Trayvon Martin looked like the son he might have had. Inasmuch as Obama is half-white, can any of us imagine his making that statement if the 17-year-old who was known to be a dope-dealing thug had been a Caucasian? On the other hand, I suspect that when he gazes fondly at Eric Holder, the Attorney General who refuses to indict blacks for intimidating white voters, he sees himself with a little mustache.
Hate Thought
When do insensitive words destroy reputations? It all depends. Celebrity chef Paula Deen was dropped by her TV network, her publisher and many of her corporate partners after she testified in a legal deposition that she used the N-word some 30 years ago. The deposition was filed in a lawsuit against Deen and her brother over allegations of sexual and racial harassment.
Egypt's Preferable Tyranny
Former Egyptian President Mohamed Morsi knows neither Thomas Jefferson's advice that "great innovations should not be forced on slender majorities" nor the description of Martin Van Buren as a politician who "rowed to his object with muffled oars." Having won just 52 percent of the vote, Morsi pursued his objective -- putting Egypt irrevocably on a path away from secular politics and social modernity -- noisily and imprudently. It is difficult to welcome a military overthrow of democratic results. It is, however, more difficult to regret a prophylactic coup against the exploitation of democratic success to adopt measures inimical to the development of a democratic culture.
Snowden's Just Rewards
WASHINGTON -- Dante Alighieri was the 13th-century Florentine author whose "Inferno" apportioned his sinners' suffering in hell to their vices committed on earth with delightful affect. For instance flatterers are mired in human excrement. Traitors are frozen in a lake of ice. Now Margaret Thatcher's distinguished British biographer, Charles Moore, updates Dante by heaving the wretched Edward Snowden into hell.
Civil Libertarians' Hypocrisy
Self-proclaimed civil libertarians are up in arms over the National Security Agency's massive database containing information about whom we call and what we do on the Web. Defenders of the program say, "So what?" Unless you're a terrorist, no one in the government will ever bother to access that information. That's not good enough, say civil libertarians.
Wednesday, July 10, 2013
Reagan's Lieutenant Devine
The re-election of President Obama has left most conservatives in a very pessimistic frame of mind. How could the majority of voters not see Obama had failed to prevent ongoing economic stagnation and the threat of bankruptcy? How could they endorse additional layer upon additional layer of bureaucratic intervention when the economic results were so awful? Donald J. Devine was Ronald Reagan's pick to head the Office of Personnel Management and is today vice chair of the American Conservative Union. You might see him as the personification of the pessimistic frame of mind. Several years ago, he approached me for support for his just-announced campaign for Congress against Maryland's Steny Hoyer. When I asked him why he was running, his answer was as funny as it was honest. "I don' know ... uh...why I'm ... uh... doing this," he said almost woefully in his deep Brooklyn accent. Then he cracked his trademark smile. "Ya want to talk me out of it?" I procured for him a maximum contribution.
Taking the Military at Faith Value
There may not be a lot of atheists in foxholes, but there certainly are a lot of quiet Christians these days. Under an administration that views religion as more of a liability than an asset, more of our troops are taking the "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" approach to faith. The climate of intimidation that began in the Air Force is bleeding over into every branch -- leading even military chaplains to wonder about their security in referencing a Bible that some airmen aren't even allowed to leave on their desks. In a Pentagon where evangelical Christians are viewed by some as "extremists," the pressure to impose a secular culture on our nation's military has intensified enormously during President Obama's time as commander-in-chief. His administration, whose primary goal seems to be opposing Americans' conscience rights, is continuing that attack on a military culture defined by a long tradition of faith.
Framing Trayvon
Efforts to paint Martin as a thug imitate the worst tactics of the American Left.
SCOTUS Life Tenure Needs a Rethink
Ruth Bader Ginsburg, who turned 80 in March, is the oldest justice on the US Supreme Court. Though the high court's leading liberal says her health is fine, there are signs that age may be taking its toll. She has dozed on the bench during oral argument, and has been hospitalized after experiencing faintness and low blood pressure. In early May, for the second time in a year, she fell at home and broke two ribs, necessitating weeks of convalescence and pain medication. More seriously, Ginsburg has twice been diagnosed with cancer. She underwent surgery, followed by radiation and chemotherapy, for colon cancer in 1999; she was operated on again for early stage pancreatic cancer in 2009.
Obama's Violating Oath, Constitution in Implementing Obamacare
The Constitution requires the president to take an oath or affirmation that says: "I do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will faithfully execute the Office of President of the United States, and will to the best of my ability, preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States." Article II, Section 3 says, "He shall take care that the laws be faithfully executed." In his unequal and discriminatory implementation of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (aka Obamacare), President Barack Obama is now violating both his constitutional oath of office and his constitutional duty to faithfully execute the laws.
Let Them Starve: Gitmo Swindlers Strike Again
World Crisis Alert: Guantanamo Bay detainees don't want to eat. Muslim rapper Yasiin "Mos Def" Bey is so worked up about their appetite plight that he videotaped himself being force-fed to build support for closing Gitmo. Cry me a river. This latest round of hunger strikes isn't an international human rights tragedy. It's another manipulative act of Jihad Theater. Have you forgotten? Calculated Gitmo fabulism goes back to 2005, when Newsweek fell for false rumors that U.S. soldiers "flushed" the Koran down a toilet at the military detention facility in Cuba. Gullible media reports of "desecration" provided a handy pretext for anti-American riots across the Muslim world that resulted in nearly a dozen deaths. Detainees later 'fessed up that the conflagration stemmed from one of their own dropping the Koran in prison and blaming a guard.
Why Zimmerman Should Be Acquitted
On a rainy night in February 2012 at a gated townhouse complex in Sanford, Fla., George Zimmerman and Trayvon Martin stared at each other, and both perceived a threat. What followed is the focus of a murder trial that hinges on specific facts rather than the overarching, frequently misleading narratives that people tend to impose on this case. According to one such narrative, the case is about race, which was the reason Zimmerman, a 29-year-old neighborhood watch volunteer, thought Martin, a black teenager, looked "real suspicious" and the reason Zimmerman was not initially arrested for shooting Martin. According to another, complementary narrative, the case is about Florida's broad definition of self-defense, which gave Zimmerman license to kill Martin. But it turns out neither of these factors is relevant to Zimmerman's guilt.
Sanford Police Prepare for Zimmerman Riots
On Monday, the Broward County Sheriff's Office in Florida released a public service announcement attempting to convince young people not to riot in case George Zimmerman, the man who shot and killed Trayvon Martin, was acquitted of second-degree murder. That likelihood remains high, thanks to the fact that the prosecution itself was weak and pushed forward by a breathless media desperate for a racial hot point to drive ratings. The sheriff's office announced that it was "working closely with the Sanford Police Department and other local law enforcement agencies" on a "response plan in anticipation of the verdict." Sheriff Scott Israel appeared in a video alongside a rapping duet of two teenagers, one a Hispanic female and another a black male, who tell the public, "Raise your voice, and not your hands! We need to stand together as one, no cuffs, no guns. ... I know your patience will be tested, but law enforcement has your back!"
Obama Wings It in Egypt
Who says President Obama isn't a unifier? Last week, Edmund Sanders of the Los Angeles Times reported from Cairo: "As rival camps of Egyptians protest for and against the toppling of President Mohamed Morsi, there is a rare point of agreement: America is to blame." Both the Muslim Brotherhood and the coalition arrayed against it believe that the United States is against them. And, amazingly, both sides have a point.
Meddling Overseas
You pay taxes? You contributed to the $2 billion your government gave Egypt this year. And last year. And every year -- for 30 years. Most of it went to Egypt's military. How's that worked out? Now our government will "cautiously" support anti-government rebels in Syria, even though some are openly allied with al-Qaida. Years before, we paid to arm and train the Mujahedeen, the Islamic holy warriors battling the Russians in Afghanistan. That conflict led to the rise of al-Qaida. One of the Mujahedeen factions went on to become the Taliban, with whom we now fight.