Right Opinion
The best of conservative opinion and commentary, updated daily.
Monday, June 17, 2013
Two Black Democrats Become Republicans in Louisiana
Anyone who doubts that the Republican Party can attract black voters needs only look south to Louisiana.
Employers Are Not Immigration Officers
Immigration reform is notoriously contentious. Yet it's hard to find anyone who doesn't think employers should be barred from hiring illegal immigrants -- and sharply penalized if they do so. When President Obama last week endorsed what he called the "common-sense, bipartisan" immigration package now before the Senate, he praised it for getting tough on "shady employers" who "knowingly hire undocumented workers." The White House website devotes an entire page to workplace enforcement of immigration restrictions. It leads off with the president's call for "cracking down more forcefully" on companies that employ undocumented aliens, and boasts that his administration has imposed more than $100 million in employer sanctions since January 2009.
A Libertarian Turn
Are Americans becoming more libertarian on cultural issues? I see evidence that they are, in poll findings and election results on three unrelated issues -- marijuana legalization, same-sex marriage and gun rights. Start with pot. Last November voters in the states of Colorado and Washington voted to legalize marijuana, by a 55 to 45 percent margin in Colorado (more than Barack Obama's margin in the state) and by 56 to 44 percent in Washington. In contrast, California voters rejected legalization 53 to 47 percent in 2010. These results and poll data suggest a general movement toward legal marijuana.
Coolidge & Cuckoos
I always knew I liked Calvin Coolidge, but I thought perhaps it was merely because he was a quiet man who, unlike most of our presidents, wasn't infatuated with the sound of his own voice. I also liked the fact that he was apparently devoid of that thing called charisma, which is generally what politicians have in place of character. But, thanks to economist/historian Amity Shlaes, who proved in her book, "The Forgotten Man: A New History of the Great Depression," that although FDR didn't create the Depression, he did a great deal to prolong the agony until World War II finally brought it to an end, Coolidge emerges as a heroic figure.
Sunday, June 16, 2013
Liberals and Spying
On the right, we have Sen. Lindsay Graham (R-SC) ardently defending the NSA's intelligence gathering practices. This is the same senator who opposed background checks for firearms on the theory that such intrusiveness would create a "slippery slope." On the left, we have the New York Times outraged that its editorial board declared that President Obama has "lost all credibility" on the issue. This is the same newspaper that is perfectly willing to give the government complete control over your health insurance, your retirement pension, and many other aspects of your personal life.
Slipping the Constitutional Leash
WASHINGTON -- In May 1918, with America embroiled in the First World War, Iowa's Gov. William Lloyd Harding dealt a blow against Germany. His Babel Proclamation -- that was its title; you cannot make this stuff up -- decreed: "Conversation in public places, on trains and over the telephone should be in the English language." The proscription included church services, funerals and pretty much everything else. Iowa's immigrant communities that spoke Danish, Dutch, Norwegian and French objected to this censorship of languages of America's wartime allies. Harding, however, said speaking any foreign language was an "opportunity [for] the enemy to scatter propaganda." Conversations on street corners and over telephone party lines -- Iowa telephone operators did the metadata-gathering that today's National Security Agency does -- resulted in arrests. Harding was ridiculed but Germany lost the war, so there.
Saturday, June 15, 2013
A Few Glad Tidings
I don't mind admitting I'm relieved that the Boston bombers were Muslims. While I regret the murders and mutilations committed by the Chechen brothers, I admit I was worried that the mayhem had been perpetrated by native-born Americans. That's because I am so sick and tired of the politically correct crowd countering legitimate attacks on radical Islam by playing the moral equivalence game every chance they get. You can bet that if they had been Americans, the liberal pinheads would have immediately identified them as conservative ideologues who were card-carrying members of the Sarah Palin Fan Club. Then they would have quickly dragged Timothy McVeigh and the Tea Party into the mix. The way some people insist on providing cover for Muslim jihadists, you would think that Islam was a major religion in America, when in reality there are only about two million followers of Allah in the entire country.
Broadcast Nets: Ailes Is What's Good for You
The Bradley Foundation, a private, independent grant-making organization based in Milwaukee, recently handed out its annual Bradley Prize to four men who have, in the words of the organization's mission statement, "(preserved and defended) the tradition of free representative government and private enterprise that has enabled the American nation and, in a larger sense, the entire Western world to flourish intellectually and economically." Among the winners at the Kennedy Center event in Washington, D.C., was Roger Ailes, chairman of Fox News, the bete noire to the broadcast networks and other media elites.
From The Comedy Store
The Pentagon acknowledged a U.S. missle drone attack took out the Taliban's number-two commander. He's the fourth number-two leader of the Taliban the U.S. has assassinated by drones in four years. Who says the administration isn't creating new jobs?
Friday, June 14, 2013
What Krugman and the NYT Don’t Know About Healthcare Reform
Civilization as we know it is coming apart according to the editorial board of *The New York Times*. This is how last Thursday's lead editorial addressed the failure of the states to expand Medicaid, even though the federal government is willing to pick up 100 percent of the costs of the expansion for the next few years...
Rumbles on the Left
The hard Left and the hard Right -- who sometimes share seats in black helicopters -- are among the groups most upset by the recent disclosures of NSA, DoJ, and CIA snooping on Americans. President Barack Obama promised to shut down Guantanamo; but it remains open these five years later. Obama promised to reverse, or at least cut down, on the activities of the NSA and CIA against Americans, but that has not happened either.
NYU Throws Out Blind Chinese Human Rights Activist
The hammer of China's financial might comes down -- and the campus liberals obey.
Obama and the Callous Kanye Culture
Egotistical musicians often exaggerate their political influence, none more than the nattering, narcissistic rapper Kanye West. He has compared himself in global stature to Apple founder Steve Jobs and has titled his latest album "Yeesus." Rolling Stone magazine has posted part of a West song titled "I Am a God," where West raps that Jesus is the "Most High," but he's a "close high." Now it's The New York Times pandering to West's colossal self-regard -- and it's downright embarrassing. Mouth-breathing Times writer/superfan Jon Caramonica stooped to telling West that "what I find probably the most moving thing that you've ever done, which is calling out President Bush at the Hurricane Katrina telethon. To me, that moment is actually the peak of putting a message in a pop format." West agreed, designating it as "a very pop moment of a lifetime or generation."
Barack Obama's 'Social Innovation' Slush Fund
We all know now what the vengeful Obama IRS has been doing to conservative nonprofits the past four years: strangling them in the crib. But do you know how much pampering and largesse far-left welfare-state charities have received while limited-government groups suffered? You don't know the half of it. Before President Obama took office, I warned that Democrats planned to steer untold amounts of taxpayer dollars to his shady community-organizing pals. The Dems' 2008 party platform proposed the creation of a "Social Investment Fund Network" to subsidize "social entrepreneurs and leading nonprofit organizations (that) are assisting schools, lifting families out of poverty, filling health care gaps and inspiring others to lead change in their own communities."
The Buck Never Reaches Obama
The Obama administration's handling of its multiple scandals paints a picture of those who believe they are above the law. There's a pattern of arrogance, dismissiveness, denial, scapegoating, stonewalling, lying, false professions of ignorance, assurances of accountability and punishing whistle-blowers. The numerous parallels in the administration's handling of the Fast and Furious and Internal Revenue Service scandals alone are too striking to be coincidental. The recurring theme is that the buck never stops at the Obama White House.
Real Change for Iran
Like most people who live in democratic countries, Americans believe elections matter. But elections alone don't define democracy. Elections are simply the mechanism by which free people choose the leaders who will uphold the rule of law and protect basic human rights, including the rights of those who did not vote for them. This week's Iranian elections are a case in point. Despite comments to the contrary by Secretary of State John Kerry and Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel, Iran does not have an "elected" government, regardless of what happens on June 14th when Iranians go to the polls.
Subsidizing Disaster
The New York Times is pleased with Mayor Michael Bloomberg's 438-page, $20 billion plan to protect New York from the effects of future hurricanes. It notes benignly that the cost is probably an underestimate but agrees with the mayor, "Whether you believe climate change is real or not is beside the point; the bottom line is we can't run the risk." Really? Imagine the argument: "Whether you believe zombies are real or not is beside the point. ... We can't run the risk." Clearly one's willingness to undertake these sorts of preparations depends completely on whether the perceived danger is real.
Freedom: The Unfolding Revolution
"Why are there no libertarian countries?" In a much-discussed essay for Salon magazine, Michael Lind asks: "If libertarians are correct in claiming that they understand how best to organize a modern society, how is it that not a single country in the world in the early twenty-first century is organized along libertarian lines?" Such is the philosophical poverty of liberalism today that this stands as a profound question.
Pushing the Envelope, NSA-Style
WASHINGTON -- Thirty-five years ago in United States v. Choate, the courts ruled that the Postal Service may record "mail cover," i.e., what's written on the outside of an envelope -- the addresses of sender and receiver. The National Security Agency's recording of U.S. phone data does basically that with the telephone. It records who is calling whom -- the outside of the envelope, as it were. The content of the conversation, however, is like the letter inside the envelope. It may not be opened without a court order.
Thursday, June 13, 2013
The Rise of the Peccatogenesists
The peccatogenesists want us to believe that our supposed "misconduct" against Gaia, such as emitting to much CO2 over an imaginary "safe" level of 350 parts per million, or failing to care enough about an imaginary temperature target of 2°C which climatologist Phil Jones says was plucked out of thin air is the cause of bad weather.