Right Opinion
The best of conservative opinion and commentary, updated daily.
Tuesday, May 14, 2013
The Recurring Debt-Limit Drama
This time, spending cuts and tax reform should be part of the deal
The Church of Scotland's Scandal
Earlier this month, the Church of Scotland issued a report titled "The Inheritance of Abraham? A Report on the 'Promised Land.'" The essence of the report is that according to the Bible, Jews have no more attachment to the land of Israel than anyone else. Hence "promised land" is in quotation marks in the report's title -- because there is no promised land. In the report's words: "The New Testament contains a radical re-interpretation of the concepts of 'Israel,' 'temple,' 'Jerusalem' and 'land.' When the Bible mentions 'Israel,' it does not mean Israel; when it says 'temple,' the Bible does not mean the Jewish temple; 'Jerusalem' does not mean the city of Jerusalem; and 'land' does not mean land.
The IRS and Lord Acton
"Trust us" is the mantra of Big Government. Trust us, why? Because -- the words hardly need speaking these days -- "We know what you need; we know what you want; we know how to deliver. You don't need to know our names, our faces. All you need to know is that we care." Big Government cares so deeply that it wishes to protect Americans from exhortations by suspicious groups made of suspicious people who are critical of our national direction. Maybe such groups will earn tax-exempt status, and maybe -- heh-heh -- they won't.
Partisan Obama Culture Spawned a More Abusive IRS
In case you're hiding under a rock, you should know that an audit conducted by the inspector general for the Internal Revenue Service has found that IRS officials targeted for scrutiny certain groups critical of the administration. Which groups? Well, those with "tea party" or "patriot" in their names and nonprofit groups that criticized the government and sought to educate Americans about the U.S. Constitution. It's disgraceful that government bureaucrats, whether on their own initiative or at the direction of superiors, singled out anyone for special scrutiny, but what their selection criteria were makes it even worse. Reportedly, the IRS field office in charge of evaluating applications for tax-exempt status decided to focus on groups making statements that "criticize how the country is being run" and those that are engaged in educating Americans "on the Constitution and Bill of Rights."
Benghazi, IRS: Son of Watergate?
In his defense of President Obama, Press Secretary Jay Carney is beginning to sound a lot like Ronald Zeigler, Richard Nixon's spokesman. Carney only has to use the word "inoperative," as Ziegler did when incriminating evidence surfaced that proved his previous statements untrue. Following what appears to be a cover-up in the Benghazi attack, the Washington Post has obtained documents from an audit conducted by the IRS's inspector general that indicate the agency targeted for special scrutiny conservative groups with "tea party" and "patriot" in their names, as well as "nonprofit groups that criticized the government and sought to educate Americans about the U.S. Constitution."
Obama Administration Scraps Free Speech
Two years ago, this column, along with others, raised an alarm about the Obama administration's decision radically to diminish the due process rights of those accused of sexual harassment on American campuses. There's a new outrage today, but first, a recap: In a 2011 letter to colleges, the U.S. Department of Education's Office of Civil Rights (OCR) mandated that in cases of suspected sexual harassment or sexual assault, universities were to reduce the standard of proof to a more likely than not standard. The new standard requires that fact finders believe only that there is a 50.01 chance that the charges are true.
Lies About Libya
There can be honest differences of opinion on many subjects. But there can also be dishonest differences. Last week's testimony under oath about events in Benghazi on September 11, 2012 makes painfully clear that what the Obama administration told the American people about those events were lies out of whole cloth. What we were told repeatedly last year by the President of the United States, the Secretary of State, and the American ambassador to the U.N., was that there was a protest demonstration in Benghazi against an anti-Islamic video produced by an American, and that this protest demonstration simply escalated out of control.
Monday, May 13, 2013
Forgetting Watergate's Lesson
"He has, acting personally and through his subordinates and agents, endeavored to ... cause, in violation of the constitutional rights of citizens, income tax audits or other income tax investigations to be initiated or conducted in a discriminatory manner." -- Article 2, Section 1, Articles of Impeachment. Adopted by the House Judiciary Committee, July 29, 1974. WASHINGTON -- The burglary occurred in 1972, the climax came in 1974, but 40 years ago this week -- May 17, 1973 -- the Senate Watergate hearings began exploring the nature of Richard Nixon's administration. Now the nature of Barack Obama's administration is being clarified as revelations about IRS targeting of conservative groups merge with myriad Benghazi mendacities.
The Taxman Cometh -- for Obama's Enemies
Explosive report to be released this week detailing the IRS's targeting of conservative groups.
Mark Sanford, Welcome Back to Washington
Put me down as happy to see former South Carolina Gov. Mark Sanford coming back to Washington. He handily defeated Elizabeth Colbert Busch in Tuesday's special election for a House seat he himself once held. I hope he brings his piglets with him. Once as governor, Sanford showed up at the statehouse in Columbia with two piglets -- one named "pork" and one named "barrel" -- to protest the Legislature's quick move to reject his proposed budget that included large spending cuts.
The Morphing of America
I keep hearing from older Americans that the best thing about getting closer to the end is that they got to live most of their lives in an earlier and much better version of America. A lot of that can be attributed to having lived during a time when you could trust what you read in newspapers so long as you discounted what ran on the editorial page. These days, just about every page reads like an editorial dictated by Barack Obama to his favorite ghostwriter, William Ayers. One example of journalistic bias can be found in the way that the media covered the war in Afghanistan when Bush was the president and the way they've covered it since 2009 when Obama moved into the Oval Office. Over the course of seven Bush years, 575 American soldiers were killed in that war, and another 3,000 were wounded. Under Obama, the numbers soared to nearly 1,500 dead and 15,000 wounded. But if you judged by the coverage the war has received, you would imagine those numbers were reversed.
Out of Touch
Cooper and other domestic programs, but the news inserts are for, as the name suggests, and international audience -- not for traveling Americans. In a sports break, for instance, the top news was a change in management at Manchester United. I know that's a major soccer team in the U.K. but it would be like telling a Romanian that Chip Kelly has taken over the head coaching job for the Philadelphia Eagles from Andy Reid.
Secure the Border? That's What the US Has Done
In the clamor over immigration, the demand for more border security has been unrelenting. Immigration restrictionists have dug in their heels, insisting that stronger border controls must come before any other change. The Senate's bipartisan Gang of Eight, bowing to political reality, is proposing an immigration overhaul that creates a path to citizenship for illegal immigrants living in the United States, but makes it contingent on a series of border-focused security "triggers." The bill they introduced last month is styled the "Border Security, Economic Opportunity, and Immigration Modernization Act of 2013" -- the order of those terms is not random -- yet a majority of Americans doubts the government would actually secure the border if the law is passed. Florida Senator Marco Rubio, one of the bill's sponsors, publicly invited critics to suggest ways the security triggers could be made even tougher.
Did Clinton and Obama Believe Their Benghazi Baloney?
What were Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton thinking? Why did they keep pitching the line that the 9/11/12 Benghazi attack that killed Ambassador Christopher Stevens and three other Americans started as a spontaneous protest against an anti-Muslim video? One possible explanation is confusion. There was such an attack on our embassy in Cairo earlier that day that fit that description. When Hillary Clinton on Sept. 14 talked of a "mob" and "violent attacks" over the caskets of the Americans slain in Benghazi, she could have been referring to the attacks in Cairo. In that case, she would not exactly be lying, as many have charged.
Sunday, May 12, 2013
Health Care That Is Priceless
Something is wrong in the hospital marketplace. Government data released this week show that some hospitals in Dallas charge five times as much as other hospitals for the same procedures! This follows on the heels of a Time magazine/ CNN report, showing that hospitals routinely charge ridiculous prices for items and services -- prices that bear no reasonable relationship to real costs. But then we learn that no one is actually paying these prices, except some poor sap who happens to be uninsured and has to negotiate with the hospital on his own.
On Immigration, Ghosts of Christmas Past
WASHINGTON -- Charles Dickens' "A Christmas Carol" is a gooey confection of seasonal sentiment. It also is an economic manifesto that Dickens hoped would hit with "twenty thousand times the force" of a political tract. It concerned a 19th-century debate that is pertinent to today's argument about immigration. Last week, a disagreement between two conservative think tanks erupted when the Heritage Foundation excoriated the immigration reform proposed by a bipartisan group of eight senators. Heritage's analysis argues that making 11 million illegal immigrants eligible, more than a decade from now, for welfare state entitlements would have net costs (benefits received minus taxes paid) of $6.3 trillion over the next 50 years.
Saturday, May 11, 2013
Immigration Reform Is Pro-Growth
At the end of the day, the battle over immigration reform is not about dollars and cents. It's about the soul of a nation. President Reagan reminded us that America must remain a "beacon" and a "shining city on a hill" for immigrants who renew our great country with their energy, while adding to economic growth and prosperity. And here's a quote from Jack Kemp: "Americans and immigrants share the same value of work, family and opportunity. There is no reason to fear the newcomers arriving on our shores today. If anything, they will energize what is best about our country."
The Crazies
A serial killer has been on trial in Philadelphia for several weeks and yet the TV networks that love to devote every waking hour to covering a murder trial if it involves the likes of Casey Anthony or Jodi Arias, have totally ignored it. I'm referring to the trial of a ghoul named Kermit Gosnell, who made a practice of murdering babies born alive after he botched late-term abortions. Obviously, the reason that all the TV networks other than Fox have gone out of their way to bury this story is because anything that varies from the left-wing narrative that there's no difference between a woman having an abortion and having a mole removed is seen as providing Pro-Lifers with ammunition.
From The Comedy Store
The Labor Department reported that the unemployment rate of people looking for work dropped to seven and a half percent. That's good news. President Obama called it a step in the right direction and he encouraged more Americans to give up looking for work.
Friday, May 10, 2013
Cover-Up
WASHINGTON -- We all know about the notorious Obama "kill list." CIA Director John Brennan proudly told us about that last year when he described how the O-Team decides which Americans should be executed by Hellfire missiles fired from remotely piloted aircraft. Why hasn't the White House used this capability to take out those who killed our diplomats in Benghazi, Libya, last year? Clip and save this column. Herein are some important events, names, places -- facts your children and grandchildren will need to know about these perilous times...