Right Opinion
The best of conservative opinion and commentary, updated daily.
Thursday, June 13, 2013
Obama Derangement Syndrome
The dangerous push among conservatives to portray traitor Edward Snowden as a hero.
Father's Day Message
It's no news to anyone that I disagree strongly with President Obama on just about any issue or policy position you can name. But I'm not the least bit uncomfortable saying I admire something about the president that transcends politics and makes him a role model for every man in America. President Obama is a good father.
If the GOP Is This Stupid, It Deserves to Die
Democrats terrify Hispanics into thinking they'll be lynched if they vote for Republicans, and then turn around and taunt Republicans for not winning a majority of the Hispanic vote. This line of attack has real resonance with our stupidest Republicans. (Proposed Republican primary targets: Sens. Kelly Ayotte, Jeff Flake, Lindsey Graham and Marco Rubio.) Which explains why Republicans are devoting all their energy to slightly increasing their share of the Hispanic vote while alienating everyone else in America.
The Left's Phony Defense of Freedom
There are many idealistic progressives who've remained opposed to the National Security Agency's data mining programs regardless of who is in the White House. (We can't surrender our freedom for safety, you know!) It's only a shame that these same people have such little reverence for constitutional liberties in other areas of public life. Really, it's worse than that. Consider the central case of the left these days: "Unfettered" freedom is a tragedy -- decadent, unfair and un-American. So if, as liberals like to argue, it's a moral imperative for Americans to scale back personal liberty to build a cleaner, fairer and healthier world, shouldn't we be willing to do the same to protect the nation from terrorists? Why one and not the other? If Washington can shield you from the vagaries of economic life, why can't it do the same with terrorists?
Throw the Book at Him
WASHINGTON -- I depart America for two blissful weeks in Italy and return to find that my country has been transformed, rather rudely, into a totalitarian state on the order of Iran, possibly even North Korea. My telephone is directly plugged into something called PRISM. Big Brother hounds my email, even when I am only viewing the weather. Soon I shall be wearing a Mao jacket -- or perhaps not. Possibly my fears are overheated. Yet President Barack Obama got us into this mess, and it is unlikely that he will get us out. He seems smugly unconcerned about the fears of almost 50 percent of the American people who, I adjudge, are almost as worried as I am.
Obama Demonstrates the Evil of Big Government
The scandals surrounding the Obama administration come down to one common theme -- that the ever-growing size and scope of our federal government gives it enormous power over virtually every aspect of our lives, power that in the wrong hands can be used to reward supporters, exact revenge and punish enemies. In education, health care, transportation, energy, disaster relief, welfare, commerce, work and salary rules, and on and on, the federal government plays an outsized role completely inconsistent with the Founding Fathers' notion of a limited government that allows maximum personal liberty. In 1900, government at all three levels -- federal, state and local -- took about 10 percent of the people's money. It now takes nearly 50 percent.
Foreign Affairs
Ever since President Clinton "did not have sexual relations with that woman, Miss Lewinsky," whatever remains of standards seem to have fallen even lower among people who hold offices and positions once thought to require good behavior and strong moral character. Last year, several Secret Service agents left the agency amid scandal after allegedly engaging the services of prostitutes while advancing a trip to Cartagena, Colombia, for President Obama. A side note: One of the prostitutes, Dania Londono Suarez, wrote a tell-all book about the incident titled "Room Service." According to the Huffington Post's Latinovoices, she's s also opening a nonprofit to "help hookers" and "has a modeling contract plus a deal to bring her story to television." Of course, she does.
Money, Money, Money & Other Matters
Money has no morality, but that doesn't mean it should be dispensed by those who share that failing. That is particularly the case when it's the people's money, our tax dollars, which are being dispensed. For instance, since going on a murderous rampage at Fort Hood, Muslim jihadist Major Nidal Hasan has collected $278,000 in salary from the Army. Meanwhile, because his crime was designated "workplace violence," his surviving victims have been denied various benefits, including Purple Hearts, which would have increased their disability pensions.
NSA Surveillance, if Ungentlemanly, Is Not Illegal
"Gentlemen do not read each other's mail." That's what Secretary of State Henry Stimson said to explain why he shut down the government's cryptanalysis operations in 1929. Edward Snowden, who leaked National Security Agency surveillance projects to Britain's Guardian, evidently feels the same way. "I can't in good conscience allow the U.S. government," he explained, less succinctly than Stimson, "to destroy privacy, Internet freedom and basic liberties for people around the world with this massive surveillance machine they're secretly building."
Scowling Face of the State
WASHINGTON -- As soon as the Constitution permitted him to run for Congress, Al Salvi did. In 1986, just 26 and fresh from the University of Illinois law school, he sank $1,000 of his own money, which was most of his money, into his campaign to unseat an incumbent Democratic congressman. Salvi studied for the bar exam during meals at campaign dinners. He lost his campaign. Today, however, he should be invited to Congress to testify about what happened 10 years later when he was a prosperous lawyer and won the Republican Senate nomination to run against a Democratic congressman named Dick Durbin.
America's Vast Margin of Error
The Obama administration is facing scandals everywhere -- using the IRS to punish political enemies, seizing the phone records of Associated Press and Fox News reporters, monitoring phone and email accounts of millions, and making up stories about what happened in Benghazi. In other words, the sort of government overreach that hardly raises eyebrows in Russia, China and most of Africa and Latin America is felonious here in the freest society in the world. Because of America's unique Constitution, and especially the Bill of Rights, for over two centuries Americans have taken as their birthright privacy and free expression, so that even the slightest infringement becomes cause for outrage -- and correction.
Wednesday, June 12, 2013
Are Dads Clueless?
As Father's Day approaches I've got a special message for all dads: Your children need you. In the 2003 movie Daddy Day Care, Eddie Murphy stars as Charlie Hinton, an out-of-work dad who starts a day care business as a last-ditch attempt to make ends meet. With his longtime friends Phil and Marvin, Hinton bumbles his way, eventually turning Daddy Day Care into a wildly successful enterprise where kids experience new-found freedom. Despite the happy ending, Daddy Day Care captures much about how modern media culture portrays fathers: well-intentioned, but dense, clueless, and mostly inept.
A Conservative's Case for Confirming Samantha Power
"Samantha Power and the UN are a perfect match," observed the British journalist Melanie Phillips last week after President Obama nominated Power to be the next US ambassador to the United Nations. She didn't mean it as a compliment. Phillips, a conservative lionheart, regards the UN as a cynical institution that long ago dissipated its moral legitimacy. It is a place where the language of human rights is routinely hijacked by the enemies of human rights, and where democracies like America and Israel are reviled while the world's most odious regimes are indulged. In nominating Power, says Phillips, Obama has picked a nominee with views much the same as those that prevail at the UN.
State Department Acting Undiplomatically
As if President Barack Obama didn't have any embarrassing issues to deal with, now come the reports -- not proof -- of some really ugly allegations. The original reporting came from CBS which came into possession of a memo from the Diplomatic Security Service alleging wrongdoing and possible interference in at least eight investigations.
Radical Environmentalism and Second Thoughts
Some of the movement's main leaders say sorry -- but is an apology really enough?
Fewer Visas or More Surveillance?
On Sept. 11, 2001, 19 people hijacked four U.S. commercial airliners after those airliners took off from airports inside the United States. They then flew those airliners into the World Trade Center towers, the Pentagon and a field outside Shanksville, Pa. The hijackers had certain characteristics in common. All were young males from regions of the world that in recent decades had produced radicalized Muslims -- and the U.S. government had given all of them visas to enter the United States. The oldest of the hijackers was 33; the youngest was 20; their average age was about 24. One came from Egypt, one from Lebanon, two from the United Arab Emirates, and 15 from Saudi Arabia.
7 Reasons to Worry About Federal Surveillance
With leaker Edward Snowden revealing to the world that the National Security Agency has been both monitoring phone records for all Americans and obtaining emails, videos, voice chats and other private communications between American citizens and those outside the United States under the so-called PRISM program, controversy has broken out over the scope of government surveillance. Many on the right and the left have argued that these programs are necessary to curb terrorism. Both Democratic Senator Dianne Feinstein of California and Republican Speaker of the House John Boehner of Ohio have proclaimed that Snowden is a traitor for revealing the existence of the programs. Both Republican House Intelligence Committee Chair Mike Rogers of Illinois and President Barack Obama say that the programs have stopped terrorist attacks.
Obama Less Tyrannical Than Bush?
The unfolding story of the Obama administration monitoring not just telephone records but Internet usage has drawn media coverage with adjectives like "astonishing." No doubt about it, even the pro-Obama press acknowledges it is a scandal. Still, it is laughable that the media would label him a "dictator" or discuss the "I word." That's not what greeted George W. Bush at the end of 2005. Just eight years ago, journalists openly discussed tyranny and the possibility of impeachment.
We're Only Spying on Ourselves
Last week President Obama claimed he welcomed the public debate over recently revealed government surveillance programs that track personal information about millions of innocent Americans. But if it were up to him, the debate never would have happened, since the programs would have remained secret. And if his administration is true to form, it will treat the whistleblower who made the debate possible as a criminal. The truth is that Obama does not think a debate is necessary, because top government officials have already considered all the relevant points behind closed doors and arrived at the perfect formula for sacrificing privacy in the name of security. You will have to take his word for it, however, because the formula is classified. This is Obama's idea of open and transparent government.
Terror and Safety
This week, Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., said the National Security Agency's data mining violates our Fourth Amendment right to be "secure in their persons, houses, papers" and is "tyranny that our founders rebelled against." Good for him. In an op-ed, he adds, "We fought a revolution over issues like generalized warrants, where soldiers would go from house to house, searching anything they liked," and wonders "which parts of the Constitution this government will next consider negotiable." Good for him. I'm glad at least one senator reminds Big Government that our Constitution *limits* federal power.