Right Opinion
The best of conservative opinion and commentary, updated daily.
Tuesday, May 21, 2013
On Using Parents of Murdered Children
The president appeared at many rallies on behalf of additional gun control laws with parents of children murdered at the Sandy Hook Elementary School in Connecticut. I have a question for those who agree with the president's use of these suffering souls. How would you react if a pro-death penalty president travelled across the country with parents of murdered children -- on behalf of capital punishment? After all, outside of strongly liberal locales, the great majority of parents whose children have been murdered support the death penalty for murder. And more than a few of these parents who do live in liberal areas feel similarly.
Gosnell and the Abortion Universe
So sad, so affecting -- the cases of various newborns whose lives a Philadelphia jury found Dr. Kermit Gosnell to have taken through quick, deft application of scissors. The district attorney called Gosnell "a monster. Any doctor who cuts into the necks, severing the spinal cords of living, breathing babies, who would survive with proper medical attention, is a murderer and a monster." He kept jars full of baby body parts around his filthy clinic. He served, if you call it serving, a clientele of poor and minority-group women -- at least two of whom died from his ministrations. A judge last week sentenced him to three life terms in prison. Yes, and so ... ? Having digested the charges and proof in a case closely watched across the land, by pro-life and pro-choice people alike, we ... what exactly? Besides tell the Gallup Poll that our views on abortion remain pretty much what they've been for years?
Tyranny Is No Longer 'Lurking'
Given last week's revelation that the IRS targeted conservative groups seeking tax-exempt status, it's worth recalling President Obama's Ohio State University commencement address. The president decried "voices" warning "that tyranny is always lurking just around the corner." It's no longer lurking. It's here. Testimony before the House Ways and Means Committee by the outgoing acting IRS commissioner, Steve Miller, as well as numerous statements by individuals claiming they have been harassed and intimidated by IRS agents, reveal a government agency out of control, or more precisely, under the control of political hacks. It's doubtful this was a freelance operation. J. Russell George, the Treasury inspector general for tax administration, testified he knew as early as June 2012 that the IRS was targeting conservatives, but did nothing to stop it during the presidential campaign. Who else knew?
Wimps Versus Barbarians
An all too familiar scene was enacted on the campus of Swarthmore College during a meeting on May 4th to discuss demands by student activists for the college to divest itself of its investments in companies that dealt in fossil fuels. As a speaker was beginning a presentation to show how many millions of dollars such a disinvestment would cost the college, student activists invaded the meeting, seized the microphone and shouted down a student who rose in the audience to object. Although there were professors and administrators in the room -- including the college president -- apparently nobody had the guts to put a stop to these storm trooper tactics. Nor is it likely that there will be any punishment of those who put their own desires above the rights of others.
Obama's Personal Diplomats?
Count me as irritable on the subject, but President Obama's imperious habit of suggesting that American diplomats work for him is offensive to democratic sensibilities. In the second presidential debate last fall, when the Benghazi matter came up, the president responded: "Well, let me ... talk about our diplomats, because they serve all around the world and do an incredible job in a very dangerous situation [sic]. And these aren't just representatives of the United States; they're my representatives. I send them there, oftentimes into harm's way. I know these folks, and I know their families. So nobody's more concerned about their safety and security than I am." (I wish Candy Crowley had asked what the names of the four dead Americans were. But, as we discovered, she had other plans that night.)
Monday, May 20, 2013
(When) Will the Press Have Their 'Benghazi' Moment on AGW?
I refuse to change battlefields on this issue. Why is anyone letting "global warming" be turned into "climate change?" The design and nature of the planet means it searches for a balance it will never find. The issue was and is that "man caused global warming." When it stopped, it was conveniently changed to "climate change." And like so many other issues today, the mainstream media -- the supposed objective guardians of freedom in this country -- marches right along with an agenda that seeks to confuse and control. Climate change? It's redundant. Scientists said the globe was going to warm; a tipping point was on the way; immediate action was needed. That was over twenty years ago. During seventeen of those years, there has been no rise and as I have shown over and over, a well predicted fall started with the turn of the Pacific to its colder cycle.
It's Not the Crime, It's the Cover-up
Having been back in the western world for about six hours, I am immersed in the growing triumvirate of scandals that are threatening to engulf President Barack Obama's second term. The three currently on the table are: Benghazi, the IRS targeting conservative taxpayers, and the Department of Justice looking at the phone records of Associate Press reporters. There is an old saying in Washington: "It's not the crime, it's the cover up" that does the damage.
More Secrets From Huma Abedin
The Muslim Brotherhood-linked Clinton aide has more than one "conflict of interest" in her closet.
A Trashy Society
There was a recent study of the 50 states that determined that the five freest were North and South Dakota, Tennessee, New Hampshire and Oklahoma; the least free were Rhode Island, Hawaii, New Jersey, California and New York. The results shouldn't be too surprising. The freest, after all, tend to be more conservative, the least free are all liberal. That stands to reason when you see how much leftists relish bureaucratic regulations and regularly elect nannies such as California's Jerry Brown and New York's Andrew Cuomo and Michael Bloomberg. It occurred to me that even though I don't watch Jay Leno, Jimmy Kimmel and David Letterman, I don't read the trashy magazines or tune in to "The View" or Ellen DeGeneres, I am all too aware of people like Paris Hilton, Justin Bieber, Lindsay Lohan, Madonna and the 4,000 women known collectively as the Kardashians. It's as if all this vile protoplasm were floating in the air, and no matter how hard you try, you can't avoid sucking them in like human smog.
The Abortion Alternative
With the convictions in the case against abortion doctor Kermit Gosnell -- three counts of murdering live babies and one count of involuntary manslaughter -- abortion is back in the national discussion. It's pretty clear from the Grand Jury report that, during Gosnell's thirty plus year career, he likely murdered hundreds, if not thousands of babies. But because of the difficulty in documenting it all, he was just convicted of three. Reports now are coming in from around the nation indicating that more Gosnells are out there.
IRS and AP Scandals Cast a Big Chill on Free Speech
Chilling effect. That's the term lawyers and judges use to describe the result of government actions that deter people from exercising their right of free speech. There have been plenty of examples in the past 10 days. The Obama administration's Justice Department issued a sweeping demand for two months of office, cellular and home telephone records from multiple Associated Press reporters and editors to investigate an alleged breach of national security.
Sunday, May 19, 2013
The Cruel Things Obama Is Doing to the Labor Market
President Obama's proposal to increase the minimum wage, combined with existing ObamaCare mandates, will destroy job opportunities for young, unskilled workers in cities and towns across the country. The minimum wage could jump to $9 an hour. ObamaCare is already the law of the land, and its effects are being felt right now, even though the employer mandate doesn't go into effect until next January. With respect to the new health law, the Congressional Budget Office estimates the cost of the minimum benefit package that everyone will be required to have will be $4,750 for individuals and $12,250 for families. That translates into a minimum health benefit of $2.28 an hour for full-time single workers and about $3 an hour for someone working 30 hours a week. For family coverage the cost is $5.89 an hour for a 40-hour-a-week employee and $7.85 an hour for a 30-hour-a-week employee.
Special Counsel Only Way to Clean Up IRS Rat's Nest
When you get right down to it, the political targeting and stalling of tax-exempt applications by the IRS was an effort to defund the tea party. Rick Santelli, one of the tea party founders and my CNBC colleague, was the first to make this point. I've taken it a step further: The IRS was taking the tea party out of play for the 2012 election, as it looked to avoid a repeat of 2010 and another tea party landslide.
Saturday, May 18, 2013
Coping Mechanisms
I will frankly admit I find it increasingly difficult to share the same planet as leftists. That's because I believe they are all insane. They say such things as "We all belong to the state" or "It takes a village to raise a child" with a straight face. One might say that a North Korean belongs to the state, but an American? To tell the truth, the only way I have found to cope with liberals is by ridiculing them every chance I get. Does anyone but an idiot believe that folks like Jefferson, Washington and Franklin, went to all that trouble to create a nation that was basically the same as the English monarchy?
From The Comedy Store
The Surgeon General advised Americans who will sunbathe on Memorial Day to use sunscreen on the beach or at the pool. She said to stay covered. When the White House heard that the Surgeon General was an expert on covering up, they put her in charge of the IRS.
Where Lawlessness Comes From
Former Education Secretary Bill Bennett said the most important thing about a school was its *ethos*. He meant the prevailing character of the school as an institution. That word also applies to the Obama administration, or any administration. We should not, therefore, be surprised by the IRS scandal. It was completely predictable. It is one of the inevitable consequences of contempt for law. President Obama gave lawlessness a spur in this State of the Union Address in 2010. This was the ethos of his administration: Mr. Obama had promised in his 2008 campaign to "fundamentally transform the United States" and he kept that promise in 2010 when he used this most august, most formal occasion of our republic to deliver a blistering denunciation of the Supreme Court's ruling in the controversial case of *Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission*.
Friday, May 17, 2013
The 97% Consensus -- A Lie of Epic Proportions
Proving that crap can flow uphill, yesterday, John Cook got what one could consider the ultimate endorsement. A tweet from the Twitter account of the Twitterer in Chief, Barack Obama, about Cook's 97% consensus lie.
Dr. Livingstone, I ...
Don't email me. It's Livingstone with an "e." And the guy who found Dr. David Livingstone in 1871 was Henry Stanley from the New York Herald. We are ending our week-long visit to Africa here, having spent the last two days in the Zambian capital of Lusaka. One of the places we visited was the U.S. embassy where we chatted with Ambassador Mark Storella. He has been very active in his nearly three years here in the area of health care generally and HIV/AIDS in particular.
Pro-Life Groups Confirm: IRS Targeting Began in 2009
While government-funded Planned Parenthood actively campaigned against Gov. Scott Walker in Wisconsin.
Formula for Abuse of Power
John F. Kennedy as a candidate liked to tweak his opponent, Richard Nixon. When the *Wall Street Journal* criticized Republican Nixon, Kennedy jumped on it. "That's like *L'Osservatore Romano* criticizing the Pope!" The press corps knew that that Italian newspaper was the house organ of the Vatican. They loved the fact that Catholic Kennedy was throwing such a witty jab at Nixon. So, we all need to pay attention when MSNBC's Chris Matthews criticizes President Obama. That's like *L'Osservatore Romano* kniocking the Pope. Matthews was the kennel master for the lapdogs of the Obama media. He said in 2008 that he "felt a thrill going up my leg" whenever Mr. Obama spoke.