Right Opinion
The best of conservative opinion and commentary, updated daily.
Thursday, June 6, 2013
Seeking Sense on Sentencing
WASHINGTON -- Libertarians believe government should have a compelling reason before it restricts an individual's liberty. Today's liberals believe almost any reason will do, because liberty is less important than equality, fraternity, fighting obesity, and many other aspirations. Now, however, one of the most senior and liberal U.S. senators and one of the most junior and libertarian have a proposal that could slow and even repair some of the fraying of society. Seven-term Democrat Pat Leahy's 38 Senate years have made him Judiciary Committee chairman. Republican Rand Paul is in his third Senate year. They hope to reduce the cruelty, irrationality and cost of the current regime of mandatory minimum sentences for federal crimes.
Press Shield Has Holes
In response to the acknowledged abuses of his own Justice Department, President Obama has urged Sen. Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., to reintroduce legislation for a "journalist shield law." And in typical Washington fashion, the proposed act would do nothing to prevent the abuses that supposedly make the law so necessary. We saw a similar response to the horrible Connecticut school shootings last December -- a raft of laws that wouldn't have prevented the tragedy in the first place. It seems that whenever government fails to do what it is supposed to do with the laws already on the books, the answer is to give the government even more power.
The Stagnant Mediterranean
GIBRALTAR -- From the heights of Gibraltar you can see Africa about nine miles away to the south -- and gaze eastward on the seemingly endless Mediterranean that stretches 1,500 miles to Asia beyond. Mare Nostrum, "our sea," the Romans called the deep blue waters that allowed Rome to unite Asia, Africa and Europe for half a millennium under a single prosperous, globalized civilization. Yet the Mediterranean has not always proved history's incubator of great civilizations -- Greek, Roman, Byzantine, Ottoman, Florentine and Venetian. Sometimes the ancient "Pillars of Hercules" at the narrow mouth of the Mediterranean here at Gibraltar marked not so much a gateway to progress and prosperity as a cultural and commercial cul-de-sac.
Wednesday, June 5, 2013
Washington Booms -- Thanks to Other People's Money
Give Stephen Fuller credit for this much: He's willing to admit he was wrong. During the debate leading up to the federal budget sequester, Fuller was a voice of doom. An economist at George Mason University and the director of its Center for Regional Analysis, he predicted that sequestration would be especially calamitous for Washington, D.C., and its surroundings. If Congress didn't stop the automatic spending cuts from going into effect, Fuller warned last year, the Washington area was headed for a "devastating recession." Some 450,000 jobs, many of them in the private sector, would be wiped out in Virginia, Maryland, and the District of Columbia.
Protecting Chinese Oil
According to the Washington Post, 6,648 U.S. service personnel were killed in Iraq starting in April, 2003. The vast majority of those killed, 4,588 or 69 percent were young people under the age of thirty. I am not going to re-litigate the Iraq war today. Or, probably, ever. But I do want to point out an issue that has arisen over what has happened to all the oil in Iraq over which, according to many, we had gone to war to protect for our own use.
Obama's Years of Collaboration With Terror Supporters
Journalist Patrick Poole exposes the White House's ties with jihad promoters -- and how they've shaped U.S. policy.
Take a Risk for Peace: Move Our Embassy to Jerusalem!
Safely re-elected last November, President Obama waited barely a month (December 4, 2012) before suspending once again the provisions of the Jerusalem Embassy Act of 1995. That law required the United States to recognize Jerusalem as the permanent and undivided capital of Israel and to move the American Embassy there. In suspending the provisions of the act, President Obama was violating his own campaign commitments to Americans and to Israelis. As a candidate in 2008, he had said he was committed to recognizing Jerusalem as Israel's permanent capital and keeping it united under Israeli rule. Secretary of State John Kerry is now heading back to the Mideast in yet another effort to get direct talks going with Israel's Arab peace partners. The only problem this time is the problem from last time. And all the times before that. There's no peace. And there are no partners.
Schumer: Put Aliens Who Forged Documents on Path to Citizenship
Americans might generally think that if someone forges a document and uses a Social Security number that does not belong to them, they should go to jail. Sen. Charles Schumer, D-N.Y., believes if you are an illegal alien and you do these things, you should become a U.S. citizen. He made his case for this in the Senate Judiciary Committee. When the committee was considering amendments to its immigration "reform" bill on May 20, Sen. Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, pointed to a report published by The Associated Press in March.
Where's Holder on Team Obama's Leakers?
The national media have evinced some outrage over the Obama Justice Department's aggressive persecution of investigative journalists. But not enough. It is more important to help President Hope and Change overcome the legacy-strangling notion of an "atmosphere of scandal" than to investigate a scandal that is strangling their very profession. On Sunday's "Face the Nation," New York Times editor Jill Abramson claimed to be very concerned about the leak probe, but proclaimed of all these scandals that, "I'm just not sure, you know, they come together and create, you know -- quote, unquote -- 'an atmosphere of scandal.'"
Antonin Scalia, Bleeding-Heart Liberal
Antonin Scalia may be the Supreme Court justice whom progressives most love to hate. Daily Kos blogger Sylvia Moore says he is "clearly an authoritarian." A California Lawyer reader complains online that Scalia "actively promotes an authoritarian agenda in which the rights of the individual have little meaning." Even legal writer Joan Biskupic, in her relatively respectful and sympathetic biography of Scalia, refers to his "authoritarian bent" and "authoritarian instinct." The latest refutation of this caricature is Maryland v. King, a decision issued Monday in which the Supreme Court upheld DNA testing of arrestees. Scalia's dissent illustrates how his respect for the Constitution leads him to side with the individual against the government -- something that happens more often than you would expect based on his reputation.
The Most Transparent Administration Ever, LOL
Sun, sun, sun, here it comes. Welcome to the Summer of Belated Epiphanies. Media lapdogs are finally, finally arriving at the conclusion that maybe this isn't the most transparent administration in world history, after all. On Tuesday, the Associated Press reported on the Obama administration's use of secret email accounts, stonewalling on Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests and attempted shakedown of reporters seeking public information on just how widespread the disclosure evasion might be.
Understanding Liberals and Progressives
In order to understand the liberal and progressive agenda, one must know something about their world vision and values. Let's examine some of the evidence. Why the 1970s struggle to ban DDT? Alexander King, founder of the Malthusian Club of Rome, wrote in a 1990 biographical essay: "My own doubts came when DDT was introduced for civilian use. In Guyana, within two years, it had almost eliminated malaria, but at the same time the birth rate had doubled. So my chief quarrel with DDT, in hindsight, is that it has greatly added to the population problem."
Austerity Myth
Europe's struggles prove that "austerity" fails! So say the Big Spenders. With a condescending sigh, they explain that Europe made deep cuts in government spending, and the result was today's high unemployment. "With erstwhile middle-class workers reduced to picking through garbage in search of food, austerity has already gone too far," writes Paul Krugman in The New York Times.
Dems: IRS Discriminates Because It Needs More Money
It must be nice to be a leftist. The solution to every problem is more of someone else's money. That's the favored solution over on the Democratic Party side of the aisle when it comes to the IRS' targeting of conservative non-profits. In a House Appropriations Subcommittee hearing, Democratic Rep. Jose Serrano of New York suggested, "There is no clearer way to promote more scandals than by cutting funding that could be used for oversight, training and reform. At the level of this subcommittee is funded right now, we're just asking for more trouble at the IRS and elsewhere."
Historic Rescuers
It is not really news that Victor Davis Hanson has written another outstanding and eye-opening book. He has done that before and repeatedly, on a variety of subjects. The subject of his latest book, "The Savior Generals" is given in the subtitle: "How Five Great Commanders Saved Wars That Were Lost-- From Ancient Greece to Iraq." As both a military historian and a classicist scholar, Victor Davis Hanson is one of the few people qualified to cover such a wide sweep of history. As someone whose depth of knowledge and insight are already familiar to readers of his syndicated column, he is also one of the few who can discuss complex subjects in plain English.
Syria's Religious War
If there was a moment when the United States could have productively intervened in Syria, it looks like that moment has passed. Shiite militants, including Hezbollah -- partly at the behest of their paymasters in Iran -- are racing to the defense of Bashar Assad's regime. According to a witness account in the New York Times, there were some 11,000 Hezbollah fighters in the besieged town of Qusair alone. A Shiite religious student in Najaf, Iraq, told the Times that his colleagues believe the leader of Qatar, a backer of Sunni Syrian rebels, is a long-prophesied demonic figure who, it is foretold, will raise an army in Syria to wipe out Shiites in Iraq. As a result, devout Shiites are racing to defend their faith.
Tuesday, June 4, 2013
Do Blacks and the Left Really Believe This?
Here is a contemporary political truth: Every time you think that the left and its political party have hit moral bottom, they will eventually prove you wrong. The most recent example occurred last week in Louisiana. The head of the Louisiana Democratic Party, State Senator Karen Carter Peterson, D-New Orleans, stood before her colleagues in the state Senate and announced the reason people oppose Obamacare. "You ready?" she asked three times. It is President Obama's color.
Grooming the New Totalitarians
America's younger generations are being groomed for totalitarianism. We begin In Polk County, Florida, where students at an elementary school, a middle school and a high school had their irises scanned -- without parental permission -- as part of what officials are characterizing as a "student safety" program. "It simply takes a picture of the iris, which is unique to every individual," wrote Rob Davis, the school board's senior director of support services, in a letter sent to parents.
A Tax System That Plain Doesn't Work
We have a progressive income tax system in this country because ... because ... Well, why do we? The system raises, but also loses, lots of money. Nobody understands the tax code. And the code, insofar as anybody does understand it, affords unlimited latitude for abuse of the citizenry, or, rather, selected portions of the citizenry, on whom the Internal Revenue Service can lean virtually without supervision. Ask practically any 501(c)(4) official of the conservative persuasion, especially one whose organization professes kissing cousinship with the tea party. So why do we have an income tax system in this country? For two reasons, essentially.