Right Opinion
The best of conservative opinion and commentary, updated daily.
Friday, June 28, 2013
A Roe by Any Other Name
Many commentators on United States v. Windsor have offered the view that the decision was not far-reaching, that it didn't enshrine same-sex marriage as a constitutional right and that therefore the struggle continues. Don't believe it for a minute. The contest is over. Windsor is a stealth Roe. It showed that five justices regard the arguments in behalf of traditional marriage to be nothing more than bigotry. It also revealed that those five will not be constrained by law or tradition from imposing their views on the nation at the next opportunity.
SCOTUS Offers Mixed Verdict
This has been a big week for the Supreme Court. In four separate cases, it applied stricter scrutiny to racial quotas and preferences in higher education, overturned part of the Voting Rights Act, ruled unconstitutional the Defense of Marriage Act and dismissed an appeal of a case overturning California voters' ban on same-sex marriage. At the same time, it pointedly declined to declare that there is a constitutional right to same-sex marriage.
Abortion Rights Not Synonymous With Women's Health
When your grandmother gets some bad news, do you tell her: "Well, at least you have your abortion rights"? Why not? Maybe it's because whatever you think of abortion, the right to have one is not synonymous with a woman's health. But don't tell that to the liberal group Think Progress. On Twitter, it recently teased some shocking news: "Why 2013 is shaping up to be the worst year for woman's [sic] health in modern history."
Thursday, June 27, 2013
Obama's Eco-Assault on America
Why the poor and middle class will suffer from Obama's sop to wealthy enviro-radicals.
The Defiance of Marriage Act
Days from now, our country will be celebrating an America that its founders would barely recognize. Freedom, Alexis de Tocqueville once said, requires virtue. Today, the U.S. Supreme Court made it clear that the pillars of both are under attack. By a single vote, five unelected justices determined that they know better than God and struck at the heart of marriage in America. It was a powerful rebuke of a law FRC helped develop, the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) -- but not the final blow. To the disappointment of many, this was not the sweeping nationwide redefinition of marriage that homosexual activists were hoping for. Instead, the Court's majority decided that the federal law is unconstitutional in states where same-sex "marriage" is legal. There, couples will have full access to the 1,100 federal benefits, rights, and protections that naturally married spouses enjoy. While it wasn't a complete dismantling of marriage, the Court's ruling paves the way for a wave of attacks on state constitutional amendments all across America, where same-sex couples will fight for the same "rights" the justices are granting elsewhere.
New GOP Strategy: Give Democrats a Big Head Start
After the bad news on gay marriage out of the Supreme Court this week, here's some good news for conservatives: Demographics are on our side! As M. Stanton Evans has recently pointed out, "Believers in religious doctrine, the traditional family and pro-life attitudes on abortion are systematically outperforming their secular-liberal opponents in the demographic sweepstakes -- having appreciably more children per couple -- resulting in a fertility gap that works against the liberals."
The Race Card
Will the left ever stop playing the race card? Not in my lifetime, it won't. The Obama left in this country acts like we're still living in 1960, when racism was legally, socially and morally sanctioned across the South and elsewhere. Here's a newsflash, folks. It's 2013.
The State v. God
On Wednesday, the Supreme Court of the United States doubled down on the newly popular perspective that same-sex marriage opponents are motivated by hate and nastiness. Making little pretense at legal reasoning, the Court declared that the Defense of Marriage Act was just a government attempt to "degrade or demean" homosexuals. While the Court ultimately declined to make same-sex marriage the law of the land, it paved the groundwork for such a decision. Meanwhile, public opinion polls now suggest that a majority of Americans support same-sex marriage. Make no mistake: Same-sex marriage will be the law of the land within the next several years.
The Untouchables
Once I thought of referring to Obama's appointees as the untouchables, I decided to check out Eliot Ness, who led the small squad of honest cops engaged in waging war on Al Capone. Although I had been a big fan of the original TV series and an even bigger fan of the movie, I really knew very little about Mr. Ness. It seems Ness and his guys had a lot to do with shutting down Capone's breweries, but very little with finally bringing "Scarface" down for tax evasion. But nobody ever suggested he was anything but a tough, honest, straight-arrow cop. Unfortunately, unlike the character portrayed by Robert Stack and, later, Kevin Costner, his life didn't end with Capone's heading off to federal prison.
How Will America Hold Together?
By A.D. 200, the Roman Republic was a distant memory. Few citizens of the global Roman Empire even knew of their illustrious ancestors like Scipio or Cicero. Millions no longer spoke Latin. Italian emperors were a rarity. There were no national elections. Yet Rome endured as a global power for three more centuries. What held it together? A stubborn common popular culture and the prosperity of Mediterranean-wide standardization kept things going. The Egyptian, the Numidian, the Iberian and the Greek assumed that everything from Roman clay lamps and glass to good roads and plentiful grain were available to millions throughout the Mediterranean.
Affirming Action
The Supreme Court's narrow 5-4 decision to strike down a central component of the 1965 Voting Rights Act, "freeing nine states, mostly in the South," writes The New York Times, "to change their election laws without advance federal approval," is a welcome recognition that times have changed and that especially Southern states must not forever bear a "mark of Cain" for past discrimination against racial minorities. Reaction from "civil rights groups" and liberal media outlets was predictable. Writing in The Washington Post, Rep. John Lewis (D-GA) accused the Court of plunging "a dagger into the heart of the Voting Rights Act." It's more like removing a dagger from the back of nine states and numerous counties, including Brooklyn, the Bronx and Manhattan.
Justice Thomas Echoes JFK
WASHINGTON -- For four decades the American people have been perplexed by "affirmative action," "quotas" and all the circumlocutions that have accumulated around them. Reading about them is painful. Living with them is worse. What has the Supreme Court trying been trying to tell us with these bewildering decisions? What are educators trying to tell us with these policies?
If Paula Deen Is Out, Please Explain Maher and Sharpton
If celebrity cook Paula Deen is out because of her decades-old private use of the "n" word, what about its public AND private use by MSNBC's Al Sharpton? What about HBO host Bill Maher's use of the "c" word? The crisis Deen must deal with confirms the observation of a former editor of the conservative magazine National Review. "White racism exists," said John O'Sullivan. "But its social power is weak; the social power against it, overwhelming." Deen has -- so far -- lost her show on the Food Network and her spokesperson gig for Smithfield Foods. QVC, Sears, Wal-Mart and others are deciding whether to continue their relationship with the embattled chef.
Wednesday, June 26, 2013
Time Caught Up With the Voting Rights Act
WASHINGTON -- Progressives resent progress when it renders anachronistic once-valid reasons for enlarging the federal government's supervisory and coercive powers. Hence they regret Tuesday's Supreme Court ruling that progress has rendered Section 4 of the 1965 Voting Rights Act unconstitutional. This section stipulates the formula by which nine states and some jurisdictions in others are brought under Section 5, which requires them to get federal permission -- "preclearance" -- for even the most minor changes in voting procedures. The 15th Amendment empowers Congress to enforce with "appropriate legislation" the right to vote. Sections 4 and 5 were appropriate 48 years ago, when the preclearance provisions were enacted for five years. They have been extended four times, most recently in 2006 for 25 years.
The Right Vote on Voting Rights
With help from the U.S. Supreme Court, America may finally be turning a page on the racial politics that have haunted our last 50 years. With the slimmest of majorities, five of the nine justices agreed to void a portion of the 1965 Voting Rights Act that inserted the federal government into state election decisions. To help protect African Americans from voting discrimination in the mid-60s, Congress passed -- and President Lyndon Johnson signed -- a law that gave Washington broad oversight in mostly Southern states, where racial prejudice was more prevalent. Under this Act, Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana, Mississippi, South Carolina, Texas, Virginia, Arizona, Alaska, and cities in six other states needed permission from the federal government (specifically the Justice Department or a panel of federal judges) to alter their voting rules.
Demography Doesn't Threaten the Jewish State
Israel is "running out of time," Secretary of State John Kerry told the American Jewish Committee in Washington this month. A two-state solution to the Palestinian conflict must be reached soon or "the insidious campaign to de-legitimize Israel will only gain steam," he warned. "Israel will be left to choose between being a Jewish state or a democratic state, but it will not be able to fulfill the founders' visions of being both at once."
The United States of ... France
It's now official. America is the France of the 21st century. France was a big power in the 18th and 19th Centuries. The French were pretty much in a constant in state of war what with everything from the Seven Years' War to the French and Indian Wars to the American Revolution to the Napoleonic Wars. Then came the 20th Century when World War I was mostly fought on French soil leading to their preemptive surrender in World War II. Since then the French still pretend to be a full-fledged member of the Planetary Cool Kids Table, but they have to sit on the end and fetch extra pints of milk for the real members.
Obama Sends U.S. Troops to Prop Up Morsi
The American military now used to empower Islamists -- and to suffocate their democratic opponents.
What if the Exchanges Aren't Ready in Time
On Oct. 1, millions of Americans are supposed to be able to go online and acquire health insurance on electronic exchanges in the states where they live. But a new GAO report is raising an issue I raised in the *Wall Street Journal* last month: What happens if the exchanges aren't ready?
Target for Surveillance: Cattle Eructation
When President Obama explained his plan to save the planetary climate in a speech delivered at Georgetown University on Tuesday, he did not mention cattle, but he did state his desire "to make sure that we're not seeing methane emissions." Some of those, the government has made clear, are of bovine origin. Back in 2007, the Environmental Protection Agency published a paper explaining its effort to develop a model "to estimate methane from enteric fermentation in cattle."