Right Opinion
The best of conservative opinion and commentary, updated daily.
Thursday, May 23, 2013
More Questions Than Answers
Surely I can't be the only person who has a hard time falling asleep at night, thanks to all the unanswered questions floating around in my head. For instance, after seeing Juan Williams constantly trying to pooh-pooh away questions about the Benghazi cover-up on both Bret Baier's "Special Report" and O'Reilly's "The Factor," I keep wondering if he's been required to register as a lobbyist for the Obama administration. For instance, how is it that lefties like Michael Bloomberg think that adults should have no say in the matter when it comes to sugar, salt, guns and the size of soda containers, but insist that teenagers should have free choice when it comes to purchasing the day-after pill and/or aborting their babies without parental consent or even awareness?
The Beauty of Confusion
WASHINGTON -- Where are we now in this morass of Obama administration scandals? We have the Associated Press imbroglio. We have the Benghazi imbroglio. We have the I.R.S. imbroglio. Well, a synonym for imbroglio is confusion, and in all the above cases replace the word "imbroglio" with the word "confusion" and you will get a hint of where I am going. We have one massive cloud of confusion, and that is exactly what this embattled administration wants. They think that if an event can be brought to confusion, at some point the journalists and the general public will throw up their hands and agree that it is just too difficult to penetrate. Perhaps the Nixon Administration was hoping for such an outcome back in 1972.
Low-Skilled Workers Get Raw Deal Under Obamacare
Would you like to have a "skinny" health insurance policy? Probably not. But if you're employed by a large company, you may get one, thanks to Obamacare. That's the conclusion of Wall Street Journal reporters Christopher Weaver and Anna Wilde Mathews. They report that insurance brokers are pitching and selling "low-benefit" policies across the country. You might be wondering what a "skinny" or "low-benefit" insurance plan is. The terms may vary, but the basic idea is that policies would cover preventive care, a limited number of doctor visits and perhaps generic drugs.
The NLRB's School-Door Stand
WASHINGTON -- Early in an opinion issued recently by a unanimous three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, Judge A. Raymond Randolph says: "Although the parties have not raised it, one issue needs to be resolved before we turn to the merits of the case." The issue he raised but could not resolve -- that is up to the Supreme Court -- illuminates the Obama administration's George Wallace-like lawlessness. It also demonstrates the judiciary's duty to restrain presidents who forget the oath they swear to "preserve, protect and defend the Constitution." The appeals court was deciding whether the National Labor Relations Board has the power to issue the rule requiring nearly 6 million private-sector employers to post notices informing workers of their right to join a union. Failure to post the notice would be, the NLRB says, an "unfair labor practice," equivalent to interfering with, restraining or coercing employees.
Obama's Scandals -- and His Media Co-Conspirators
How does President Barack Obama, a man of such keen intelligence, with such promise to "change" America, find himself in so much serious trouble? From the IRS targeting conservatives to the continued confusion over what happened at Benghazi to provoking a battle with The Associated Press by subpoenaing phone records that could involve as many as 100 reporters, what went wrong? The answer is simple: arrogance, aided and abetted by a compliant, adoring "news" media.
Paranoid or Prescient?
Government is now so huge, powerful and callous that citizens risk becoming proverbial serfs without the freedoms guaranteed by the Founders. Is that perennial fear an exaggeration? Survey the current news. We have just learned that the Internal Revenue Service before the 2012 election predicated its tax-exempt policies on politics. It inordinately denied tax exemption to groups considered either conservative or possibly antagonistic to the president's agenda.
The President's Morehouse Address
President Obama gave two commencement addresses in one to graduates of Morehouse College in Atlanta, Ga., last weekend. It would be easy for this conservative to critique the political and social elements of his speech. Instead, I choose to focus on the inspirational part. The president struck the right note at the historically all-male college. African-American men in America need more role models and encouragement to counter the reality, reinforced by much of the media, of too much failure, crime, imprisonment, out-of-wedlock births, a disproportionate abortion rate and other social maladies affecting many in the black community.
Obama and 'Overreach'
As the Obama scandals surround the White House, some conservatives are suggesting that -- finally -- the media are "getting tough" on Obama. Don't count on it. All our modern experience suggests tough reporting on a Democratic president is more of a temporary sensation than an ongoing trend. The news media honestly believe they were tough on Team Clinton. It is simply not true. There was a seemingly endless supply of Clinton administration (and Clinton pre-administration) scandals, yet can you name one that was resolved? The floating FBI files. The illegal fundraising. Whitewater. On and on they went, and the media response was predictable: two or three days of tough coverage -- if at all -- and then, inevitably, political spin overtaking the hunt for facts. The search for truth became a discussion about "Republican overreach."
Wednesday, May 22, 2013
It Wasn't Malaria
I don't have malaria. If you are going to spend much time in Africa, you will be taking anti-malaria pills. A common medication has the brand name Malarone. The typical course is to start the Malarone a day or two before you get to a malaria-infested area, take a pill a day while you're there, and continue for a week or so when you get back. I'm telling you all that because at about 12:15 pm on Monday -- 24 hours after I returned from my trip to Africa with the ONE campaign -- I felt chilled while sitting at my desk in downtown Washington, DC. That became modest shivering, which became intense shivering, which made me suspect I had malaria.
Progressivism: A Scandal Unto Itself
Back in 2008 and several times since, I have posited that there are two kinds of Americans. There are those who look at the totality of our history and conclude, warts and all, that we are the greatest nation on earth. Then there are those who look at the same data and conclude that America is a fundamentally damaged enterprise in need of a complete overhaul. I noted that while the latter group is as entitled to their opinion as the former group, putting them in charge of the nation would be a terrible thing to do. If there is anything that ties together the three *current* scandals afflicting the Obama administration, it is this odious -- and progressive -- worldview. We begin with Benghazi. Let's skip all the political b.s., and get down to the real issue: character. We know from testimony given by former Secretary of State Leon Panetta and Joint Chief of Staff Chairman Martin Dempsey that they met with Obama less than an hour and a half after the onset of the attack on Benghazi. Following that meeting, *they never heard from the president again*. We also know Obama flew to a fundraiser in Vegas the very next day.
The Genius of Jerry Garcia
I was sitting in a classroom in McCosh Hall at Princeton University one spring day in the late 1970s, when I learned something that helped me understand the artistic genius of Jerry Garcia. No music played in that room that day -- only the amiable voice of professor Henry Miller. I don't know if Miller had ever heard of Jerry Garcia. But he did know all about Alexander Pope, and he successfully communicated to his students in 20th century America what made Pope's poems, written in 18th century England, immortal statements of beauty and truth.
The Obama Crony in Charge of Your Medical Records
Who is Judy Faulkner? Chances are, you don't know her -- but her politically connected, taxpayer-subsidized electronic medical records company may very well know you. Top Obama donor and billionaire Faulkner is founder and CEO of Epic Systems, which will soon store almost half of all Americans' health information. If the crony odor and the potential for abuse that this "epic" arrangement poses don't chill your bones, you ain't paying attention. As I first noted last year before the IRS witch hunts and DOJ journalist snooping scandals broke out, Obama's federal electronic medical records (EMR) mandate is government malpractice at work. The stimulus law provided a whopping $19 billion in "incentives" (read: subsidies) to force hospitals and medical professionals into converting from paper to electronic record-keeping systems. Penalties kick in next year for any provider who fails to comply with the one-size-fits-all edict.
Obama's 'Idiot' Defense
Although there's still a great deal to be learned about the scandals and controversies swirling around the White House like so many ominous dorsal fins in the surf, the nature of President Obama's bind is becoming clear. The best defenses of his administration require undermining the rationale for his presidency. "We're portrayed by Republicans as either being lying or idiots. It's actually closer to us being idiots." So far, this is the administration's best defense. It was offered to CBS News' Sharyl Attkisson by an anonymous aide involved in the White House's disastrous response to the attacks in Benghazi, Libya.
Obama: America Racist, Sexist, Homophobic
America has major problems. Our economy has been stagnating for years on end, and the so-called recovery under way will have to continue at this pace for years simply to get us back to where we started. When it comes to the social ills plaguing America, the prospectus doesn't look any rosier: increased rates of unwed motherhood, continuation of vast killing of the unbor, and cycles of bad decision-making leading to generations of crushing poverty. None of the solutions to these problems can be found in greater government action. Yet the left suggests that only greater government can fix the issues that trouble Americans. That's because, according to the left, one grand, unifying problem underlies all the other problems: Americans are nasty.
Sublet My People Go
My kids moved out! I have two empty rooms in my apartment. Maybe I can rent them? A tourist visiting New York City could have a different experience, and save hotel money. I'd make money. Wouldn't it be great? No, says the government of my state. New York recently passed a law making it very difficult for people to offer short-term rentals via popular websites like Airbnb and Roomorama, which connect room-owners and room-renters. I could be fined $25,000 if I rent to tourists through those services. New York State Sen. Liz Krueger defended the law.
Advice and Consent Is Not Optional
Ed Meese, Ronald Reagan's attorney general, spoke for many Republicans when he called President Obama's 2012 appointment of four federal officials without Senate approval "a breathtaking violation of the separation of powers." But according to a recent federal appeals court decision, abuses like Obama's have been a bipartisan practice in recent decades, with Republicans, including Meese's former boss, more sinning than sinned against. The Constitution requires the Senate's "advice and consent" for all appointees aside from "inferior officers," whom Congress by law allows the president or a department head to pick on his own. There is one exception: "The President shall have power to fill up all vacancies that may happen during the recess of the Senate, by granting commissions which shall expire at the end of their next session."
We Are the Idiots
Dr. Henry Miller, senior fellow at the Hoover Institution, and Gregory Conko, senior fellow at the Competitive Enterprise Institute, in their Forbes article "Rachel Carson's Deadly Fantasies" (9/5/2012), wrote that her 1962 book, "Silent Spring," led to a world ban on DDT use. The DDT ban was responsible for the loss of "tens of millions of human lives -- mostly children in poor, tropical countries -- have been traded for the possibility of slightly improved fertility in raptors (birds). This remains one of the monumental human tragedies of the last century." DDT presents no harm to humans and, when used properly, poses no environmental threat. In 1970, a committee of the National Academy of Sciences wrote: "To only a few chemicals does man owe as great a debt as to DDT. ... In a little more than two decades, DDT has prevented 500 million human deaths, due to malaria, that otherwise would have been inevitable." Prior to the DDT ban, malaria was on the verge of extinction in some countries.
Undoing the Brainwashing
This time of year, as college students return home for the summer, many parents may notice how many politically correct ideas they have acquired on campus. Some of those parents may wonder how they can undo some of the brainwashing that has become so common in what are supposed to be institutions of higher learning. The strategy used by General Douglas MacArthur so successfully in the Pacific during World War II can be useful in this very different kind of battle. General MacArthur won his victories while minimizing his casualties -- something that is also desirable in clashes of ideas within the family.
Tuesday, May 21, 2013
Obama's War on Fox News Reporters
The DOJ targets a news corp. that won't obey the Party Line.