Right Opinion

Black Education Tragedy

As if more evidence were needed about the tragedy of black education, Rachel Jeantel, a witness for the prosecution in the George Zimmerman murder trial, put a face on it for the nation to see. Some of that evidence unfolded when Zimmerman's defense attorney asked 19-year-old Jeantel to read a letter that she allegedly had written to Trayvon Martin's mother. She responded that she doesn't read cursive, and that's in addition to her poor grammar, syntax and communication skills. Jeantel is a senior at Miami Norland Senior High School. How in the world did she manage to become a 12th-grader without being able to read cursive writing? That's a skill one would expect from a fourth-grader. Jeantel is by no means an exception at her school. Here are a few achievement scores from her school: Thirty-nine percent of the students score basic for reading, and 38 percent score below basic. In math, 37 percent score basic, and 50 percent score below basic. Below basic is the score when a student is unable to demonstrate even partial mastery of knowledge and skills fundamental for proficient work at his grade level. Basic indicates only partial mastery.

Delayed Ratification? Obama Shelves Mandate -- for Now

Back in May, House Republicans started a Twitter contest to see who could describe ObamaCare in three words. The White House silenced everyone by tweeting: "It's. The. Law." Well, somebody ought to remind the administration of that, as the President's team announced at the beginning of a holiday week that it was putting the brakes on another key component of his signature policy. With Congress already home firing up the barbeque, the two agencies most central to ObamaCare's implementation dropped the bombshell that the President was pushing off the employer mandate until 2015. One of the most controversial parts of the health care law, this mandate slaps businesses with 50 or more employees with a $2,000 fine for every full-time employee that it doesn't insure with a government-approved plan.

Forging a More Perfect Union

The American social pact still endures

The Second Coming of Ann Richards

Gone is Ann Richards, the late, leathery, white-haired feminist champion whose life was celebrated in a Broadway play -- "Ann," starring Holland Taylor. The play is closing prematurely since there is insufficient demand for white-haired feminist champions. Never mind that for now. We've got a second Ann, it would appear. She is a fellow Texan, to boot: State Sen. Wendy Davis, who just talked to death a bill meant to tighten abortion restrictions. The betting around the nation has been that Wendy Davis was sure looking like a prospective governor, if not, according to some of the more excited acolytes, a president of the United States.

Egypt's Coup ... and Ours

Here is what Shadi Hamid of the Brookings Institution had to say about Egypt's coup in a New York Times op-ed: "Now supporters of the Brotherhood will ask, with good reason, whether democracy still has anything to offer them." As much as I loathe the Muslim Brotherhood and the whole Islamist enterprise, it is difficult to imagine any other response among Islamists than this: Our votes don't count. They were voted into office; many Egyptians and the army didn't like the results, so the vote was overthrown.

Islamists Not Ready for Democracy

The military coup that ousted Egyptian President Mohamed Morsi marks another failure in U.S. foreign policy over several administrations, which have erroneously promoted the notion that American-style democracy in Islamic lands will produce a nation more like ours. The Founders wrote a Constitution. When properly read and obeyed, it guards against pure democracy and makes "we the people" subject to laws that cannot be abolished by popular vote. Benjamin Franklin properly called what the Founders wrought a "Republic." Representative government would guard against the passions of a majority. No such safeguards apply in Egypt, or for that matter throughout most of the Islamic world.

Good People Make America Great

A recent Gallup poll, timed for the Fourth of July, found that while most Americans (85%) are "proud to be an American," most (71%) also believe that our Founding Fathers would be "disappointed" in the America of today. The numbers highlight the difference between our regard for our Constitution and for the people who make America great, on the one hand, and our collective distrust of government over-reach on the other. The daily news is a patchwork story of America's great people -- and I'll share one touching example in a moment -- as well as our very real political troubles.

Who Is Racist?

I am so old that I can remember when most of the people promoting race hate were white. Apparently other Americans also recognize that the sources of racism are different today from what they were in the past. According to a recent Rasmussen poll, 31 percent of blacks think that most blacks are racists, while 24 percent of blacks think that most whites are racist. The difference between these percentages is not great, but it is remarkable nevertheless. After all, generations of blacks fought the white racism from which they suffered for so long. If many blacks themselves now think that most other blacks are racist, that is startling.

Racial Morality Play

There is nothing the cable channels love more than a good murder trial, especially if the violence is spiced with the irresistible seasoning of race. But you don't understand much about America if you don't know that only some racial recipes are newsworthy. If the victim is white and the killer is black, it's not interesting (unless the killer is a celebrity). If the victims are both white, it's only interesting if the victim or the murderer is a comely blond female (preferably a nymphomaniac). If the victim and killer are both black, it's a yawn. If the victim is black and the killer is white -- make way for sweeps week!

Obamacare: A Law Born and Remaining in Hell

Could the boondoggle we call "Obamacare" be a bigger disaster? Is there any better example of the arrogance, incompetence and remorselessness of top-down central planning? The very name of the law, the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, is a deceptive euphemism, as it neither protects patients nor makes health care more affordable. The law was born in hell. The premises upon which the bill was based, the promises its proponents made and the corruption and high-handedness in its legislative process tainted it from the outset.

GOP Has Chance to Recapture Senate

What's the outlook for the 2014 Senate elections? The Republicans once again have a chance to overturn the Democrats' majority, as they did in 2010 and 2012. Much attention has been focused on whether Republicans this time will nominate candidates capable of winning key races, as they failed to do in those two elections. But another interesting question is how Democrats will try to hold onto seats in Republican-leaning states even as Barack Obama maintains his strong tilt to the political left.

Politics Is Easy; Governing Is Hard

This has to have been the longest yet least relaxing Independence Day ever. As you know, the 4th was on a Thursday so here, in Our Nation's Capital, almost everyone I know pretended they had been sequestered out of having to work on Friday and made it a four day weekend.

Mr. President: 'Talk Turkey' to Egypt

A New Birth of American Freedom, Again

A Fourth of July Gallup poll presented an interesting picture about our country. Americans overwhelmingly express pride in being American, yet the division is wide and deep about what being an American means. Eighty-five percent of respondents say they are "extremely" or "very" proud to be an American. Yet, 71 percent say they think the signers of the Declaration of Independence would be "disappointed" how the country has turned out.

What Is Islam?

For years, terrible and violent crimes have been committed in the name of Islam. Does that mean Islam is inherently a religion of terrible violence? The scholar Daniel Pipes has long argued that it is a mistake to attribute the evils committed by Muslim supremacists and jihadist killers to Islam itself, or to the text of the Koran and the hadith, the religion's sacred scriptures. Like every great faith, Islam is what its adherents make of it. Today, many of those adherents are influenced by Islamism, the militant totalitarian version of Islam that emerged in the 20th century. The Islamist ascendancy is reflected in the savageries of al-Qaeda, the brutal misogyny of the Taliban, the apocalyptic hostility of the regime in Iran.

Unfair and Unbalanced

When Jack Finney's book, "Invasion of the Body Snatchers," was made into a movie in 1956, a lot of people insisted that it was an attack on McCarthyism. I don't know. I was a fan of the late Mr. Finney's novels, but I know nothing about his politics. To my mind, the pods were Communists. To me, the book and the movie both foreshadowed the way that leftists move from place to place, tainting the political landscape as they go. For instance, Californians moved north and, as a result, today Oregon and Washington are as far to the left politically as they are geographically. In the East, Manhattanites migrated, and as a result New England might as well call itself Upper New York.

What ObamaCare Is Going to Do to Your Doctor

You should care a lot about how health reform will affect your doctor. The reason: it will also affect you. Here's what's happening: hospitals are merging and they are acquiring doctors. In the process, they are making the market less competitive, gaming third-party payment formulas and doing other things that make our health insurance premiums and our taxes higher than they otherwise would be.

The Never-Mind Presidency

WASHINGTON -- At this intermission in the immigration debate, with House Republicans preparing to look askance at the Senate's handiwork, the argument is becoming ever stranger. It has reached a boil, especially concerning border security, at a moment when illegal entries are at a 40-year low and net immigration from Mexico has recently been approximately zero, largely because enforcement efficiency has already been substantially improved and because America's economic growth is inferior to Mexico's. Yet some Senate Republicans support spending $46 billion over 10 years to, among other things, double the number of border agents.

Scorn on the Fourth of July

Looking back at some of the Left's worst examples of Independence Day hatred.

There's Something Worse Than Lawyers

I confess that's a somewhat misleading title because there are lots of things worse than lawyers. But, in addition to cold sores, computer breakdowns and a flare-up of my rheumatoid arthritis, they tend to be actual criminals. The folks I have in mind are academics, those escapees from college campuses who tend to congregate around Barack Obama. It's almost as if Obama has made a pledge, vowing never to allow a person who has been actively engaged in, say, commerce into his inner circle.