Right Opinion
The best of conservative opinion and commentary, updated daily.
Wednesday, June 26, 2013
Played Out: The Liberal Racists' 'Uncle Tom' Card
Meet Ryan Patrick Winkler. He's a 37-year-old liberal Minnesota state legislator with a B.A. in history from Harvard University and a J.D. from the University of Minnesota Law School. He's also a coward, a bigot, a liar and a textbook example of plantation progressivism. On Tuesday, Winkler took to Twitter to rant about the Supreme Court's decision to strike down an onerous section of the Voting Rights Act. The 5-4 ruling overturned an unconstitutional requirement that states win federal preclearance approval of any changes to their election laws and procedures. Winkler fumed: "VRA majority is four accomplices to race discrimination and one Uncle Thomas."
Fort Hood Justice, Delayed and Ignored
A federal judge has finally selected a trial date for accused Fort Hood mass-murderer Nidal Malik Hasan -- July 9. We'll see if it actually happens. If you've forgotten that mass shooting, then the media had scored a point for President Obama. The Pentagon dismissed the terrorist attack as "workplace violence," the Obama media nodded in agreement and the massacre vanished from public memory. Hasan went on his deadly rampage, killing 13 and wounding another 32, on Nov. 5, 2009. By the beginning of 2010, the networks were already in "sleep" mode. On the one-year anniversary, only NBC filed a story (that completely avoided the word "Obama"), while CBS had a single anchor brief. Amazingly, ABC offered nothing.
George Zimmerman's Excuse
The New York Times reports that George Zimmerman's murder trial, which began on Monday in Sanford, Fla., is "spotlighting Florida's Stand Your Ground law," even though "that law has not been invoked in this case." Writing in The Guardian two weeks ago, Sadhbh Walshe likewise claimed "the trial will shine a spotlight on Florida's controversial self-defense laws," although she also conceded that Zimmerman's defense does not depend on the right to stand your ground.
The GOP's Immigration Tussle
I don't know how Democrats do it. The immigration reform proposal wending its way through the Senate is tearing the Republican Party to pieces. Poor Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.), once the golden boy of the Tea Party and the conservative movement, is being treated like a guy who wants to leave a gang but must submit to a group beating first. But Rubio is simply the latest javelin catcher in the right's immigration Olympiad. Attention will soon shift to House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio). House conservatives are poised to block out the sun with arrows aimed at him if he moves the bill without a majority of GOP support.
Bit by Bit Strategy
There's a move on to prohibit Washington's football team from calling itself "Redskins," even though a 2009 U.S. Supreme Court decision said that it has that right. Now the name change advocates are turning to the political arena and intimidation. The NCAA has already banned the University of North Dakota from calling its football team the "Fighting Sioux." This is the classic method of busybodies and tyrants; they start out with something trivial or small and then magnify and extend it. If these people are successful in banning the use of Indian names for football teams, you can bet the rent money that won't end their agenda. Our military has a number of fighting aircraft named with what busybodies and tyrants might consider racial slights, such as the Apache, Iroquois, Kiowa, Lakota and Mescalero. We also have military aircraft named after animals, such as the Eagle, Falcon, Raptor, Cobra and Dolphin. The people fighting against the Redskins name might form a coalition with the PETA animal rights kooks to ban the use of animal names.
Puritanical Government
People say America is a free country. But what if you want to drink, have a cigarette or make a bet? Government often says "no" to protect us from ourselves. It's as if the government is still run by the Puritans who settled this land four centuries ago. They said pleasure and luxury are sinful. Today's government has a better argument when it seeks to restrict activities that might harm *others,* but I notice that even then, it often focuses more on things that upset modern-day Puritans.
Tuesday, June 25, 2013
Sending a Tex Message on Life
Everything's bigger in Texas -- including the state's abortion restrictions. If leaders can beat the clock before their legislative session expires, there's a strong chance that Governor Rick Perry (R) will have the opportunity to sign off on one of the strongest pro-life laws in America. A sleep-deprived Texas House worked through the night, putting in a grueling 15 hours of debate until Republicans finally closed the amendment process and forced a vote on a measure that would outlaw abortions at the five-month mark, when babies feel pain.
Ramming Amnesty Through the Senate
Why unelected Obama appointees will have unprecedented power to control the border.
No Reason for a Victory Lap Over the Debt
Entitlements are still racing toward a crash
Why the Waw-Uh Never Will End
The Waw-uh, as some in my neck of the woods probably still call the Late Unpleasantness of 1861 to 1865 may be over officially but depend on the federal government to keep the action going for as long as possible. The U. S. Supreme Court's decision Monday to kick a college affirmative action case back to the lower courts for more intensive review reminds us of the interminableness of the issue known roughly as what's-your-race-where-do-you-want-to-go-to-college. Neither the white student, Abigail Fisher, who filed the suit originally, nor the University of Texas, which rejected her application, finds repose in the court's 7 to 1 judgment that the same legal ground long trodden down over needs some more treading.
MP3, Camera Phones and the Price of Convenience
When I was in high school, I went without lunch for a month in order to pay for my first stereo system. When I was in college and graduate school (late '60s and early '70s), my friends and I would brag to each other about the stereo systems we had just purchased. Friends would come over to hear our latest amps, preamps, speakers, record players, and even cartridges and needles.
Republican Supporters of Immigration Bill, What Are You Smoking?
As time has passed and the immigration bill's proponents have become more breathless, my opposition to the bill has increased. Let me count the ways. Proponents tell us we have an immigration crisis. Exactly how does one define crisis? They told us we had a health care and health insurance crisis, too, and they gave us Obamacare, making matters worse on both counts. We do have a national debt crisis and the most anemic economic recovery since World War II, yet proponents ignore these genuine crises while demanding we act immediately on immigration reform. They say that this bill would not constitute amnesty, that we already have de facto amnesty today. But they also tell us that some 11 million illegals are living in the shadows. Which is it? They can't have it both ways. If they have amnesty, they're not living in the shadows.
Breakout From Politics of the Past
The "Faith and Freedom" Coalition held a gathering last week in Washington, D.C. It resembled many similar conservative assemblies: mostly white male speakers, a mostly white, middle-age audience and mostly full of attacks on President Obama, liberals, Democrats and Washington. That is not a winning strategy for political victory. Neither are appeals to a bygone era that is unlikely to return. The social, financial and governmental dysfunction we are experiencing are symptoms of something far deeper. The foundations that built and have sustained America are being destroyed. Too many Republicans and conservatives mistakenly believe what's needed is a paint job, like those false storefronts painted on closed-down businesses in some Northern Ireland towns to hide its struggling economy during the G8 summit.
Legislation by Panic
Defending the "Gang of Eight" immigration reform bill on Fox News Sunday, Senator Lindsay Graham sounded the bleat of panic: "If it fails, and we are blamed for its failure, our party is in trouble with Hispanics, not because we are conservative but because of the rhetoric and the way we handled this issue. I want to get reattached to the Hispanic community, to sell conservativism, pass comprehensive immigration reform and grow this party. The party has got to be bigger than Utah and South Carolina. The Hispanic community is close to our values, but we have driven them away over this issue." As someone who approves some provisions of the proposed legislation, it's still unsettling to see such self-delusion on the part of proponents. The laudable impulse to improve the Republican Party's standing among Hispanics should not lead to embracing a bad bill. Nor should Republicans imagine that immigration reform is a magic bullet that will initiate a flood of Hispanic voters into Republican ranks.
Dems Struggle With Scandals; GOP Can't Agree on Policy
The two political parties are in disarray. The Democrats are disheartened. The Republicans are disunited. Start with (because they're first in alphabetical order) the Democrats. The Barack Obama they were so enthusiastic about in 2008 has been disappointing many of them lately. Not many happy Obama voters envisioned last November that his presidency would be faced with multiple scandals six months later. During the campaign most of the media provided voters with little information about the murder of Ambassador Christopher Stevens and three other Americans in Benghazi.
Random Thoughts
Random thoughts on the passing scene: Edmund Burke said, "There is no safety for honest men, but by believing all possible evil of evil men." Evil men do not always snarl. Some smile charmingly. Those are the most dangerous. If you don't think the mainstream media slants the news, keep track of how often they tell you that the Arctic ice pack is shrinking and how seldom they tell you that the Antarctic ice pack is expanding. The latter news would not fit the "global warming" scenario that so many in the media are promoting.
A Web Still Tangled
WASHINGTON -- Blackmun was concurring in the Bakke decision, which created the higher education "diversity" exception to the equal protection principle: Racial preferences in admissions to a public university do not violate the principle of equal protection of the law if they serve the supposedly compelling interest of achieving the educational benefits of a diverse student body. Twenty-five years later, in a 2003 case upholding the constitutionality of racial preferences in admissions to a state law school, Justice Sandra Day O'Connor declared -- citing no data or other reasons -- that in 25 more years preferences would be unnecessary. What Blackmun did not anticipate, and O'Connor did not appreciate, is that the diversity rationale for racial preferences appeals to the diversity industry in academia precisely because it makes no reference to compensation for prior injustices. Therefore it does not aim to "get beyond" race.
Monday, June 24, 2013
No Country for Old Weathermen
The movie *No Country for Old Men* is one of my favorites as the Tommy Lee Jones character tries to cope with a a world gone mad. Here's one of my favorite passages: >"You can't help but compare yourself against the old timers. Can't help but wonder how they would've operated in these times.... I don't know what to make of that. I surely don't. .... [I]t's hard to even take its measure. It's not that I'm afraid of it. I always knew you had to be willing to die to even do this job -- not to be glorious. But I don't want to push my chips forward and go out and meet something I don't understand. You can say it's my job to fight it but I don't know what it is anymore. More than that, I don't want to know. A man would have to put his soul at hazard. He would have to say, okay, I'll be part of this world..."
Summitry
Heads of state -- presidents, prime ministers, dictators, whatever -- cannot know all the details of what is going on in their country much less in the other person's country. That's why before a modern "summit" between or among heads of state, battalions of high- mid- and low-level staffers go through every conceivable subject and produce forests of briefing papers to prepare the principal. According to the late William Safire writing in the New York Times, the word "summit" to describe a meeting of heads of state was coined by (no surprise) Winston Churchill in 1950 when he called for a "parley on the summit" of a few heads of state to chart the post-war world rather than, as Churchill put it, "'hordes of experts and officials drawn up in a vast cumbrous array.'"
Alice Walker's New Jew-Hating Lows
The Pulitzer Prize-winning author cements her anti-Semitic credentials.