Right Opinion
The best of conservative opinion and commentary, updated daily.
Thursday, May 2, 2013
Economic Misery: The New Normal
How the Obama administration is fudging the numbers on our economic decline.
Out of the Closet and into Identity Politics
I've never sought the spotlight. Though I'm coming out to the world, I intend to guard my privacy. I'm making this blanket statement in part to keep rumors and misunderstandings at bay. I'm not just a white, Catholic Republican. I'm not just a Reagan conservative. I'm a heterosexual. Like Jason Collins of the Washington Wizards, I just want everyone in America to know my sexual orientation.
America's Most Feared Economist
You can tell the conservatives liberals fear most because they start being automatically referred to as "discredited." Ask Sen. Ted Cruz. But no one is called "discredited" by liberals more often than the inestimable economist John Lott, author of the groundbreaking book More Guns, Less Crime: Understanding Crime and Gun Control Laws. Lott's economic analysis of the effect of concealed-carry laws on violent crime is the most thoroughly vetted study in the history of economics, perhaps in the history of the world.
NBA Player 'Comes Out' -- but Tolerance Cuts Both Ways
Compared to the hell Jackie Robinson went through, Jason Collins is getting a ticker tape parade. Collins, a 12-year National Basketball Association player, recently wrote a column in which he announced that he is gay: "I didn't set out to be the first openly gay (male) athlete playing in a major American team sport. But since I am, I'm happy to start the conversation." When comedian Ellen DeGeneres came out in 1997, she appeared on the cover of Time magazine with the earth-shattering headline, 'Yep, I'm Gay.' With a general population that surveys put at about 4 percent homosexual (although estimates run as high as 5 to 10 percent), is anyone surprised that, in a country of 10,000 or so pro athletes, gay male athletes exist? After all, the WNBA, the NBA's sister league, features several openly gay players. When the league's top draft pick, Phoenix Mercury center Brittney Griner, recently "came out," the media and fans said "ho-hum." But when Collins came out, he became front-page news as the first male to do so.
Immigration Deformed
There's the story of a woman with five kids who was asked if she had to do it all over again would she have five children? "Yes," she said, "just not these five." That's the way I feel about the immigration "reform" bill introduced by the Senate's bipartisan "Gang of 8." I'm all for an immigration bill, just not this immigration bill -- at least in its present form. One of the "gang" members, Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL.), indicated the bill has problems that need fixing when he said in a recent interview: "Let's try to fix it. Let's try to change it, but to just say let's defeat the whole thing; I don't think that's a productive approach either. I think this is a starting point that obviously we can and should improve."
Allah Not So Akbar!
In the aftermath of the Boston bombings, we hear that the FBI was informed by Russia that Tamerlan Tsarnaev was a Muslim radical, but even after he spent six months in Chechen, the FBI decided he wasn't worth a second look. As a result, the FBI has come in for a great deal of criticism. I'm not saying it's not warranted, but I suspect there's a lot of blame to spread around. And, at the risk of sounding like Obama, some of it can be laid at the feet of George W. Bush. It wasn't long after 9/11 that we started hearing Bush and Condoleezza Rice parroting the line that Islam was a religion of peace. I don't recall any president reminding us that Christianity, Judaism or Buddhism, was a peaceful religion. Well, considering that in the name of Islam, 3,000 Americans had just been killed, and that in the subsequent years innocent people have been killed and maimed in countries ranging from Russia to the Philippines, Spain to India, all in the name of Allah, it's obvious that Bush and Rice were lying.
Obama's Blink on Syria Could Bring Peril to Allies
"We're eyeball to eyeball, and I think the other fellow just blinked," Secretary of State Dean Rusk famously said during the Cuban missile crisis. Barack Obama has been doing a lot of blinking lately. On Syria especially. "There would be enormous consequences if we start seeing movements on the chemical weapons front or the use of chemical weapons," he said back in August 2012. Chemical weapons were a "red line." Presumably the president hoped that his statement would deter Bashar Assad's embattled regime from using chemical weapons. And presumably he hoped that his demand in 2011 for Assad to relinquish power would be obeyed.
The Monotonous Middle East
Since antiquity, the Middle East has been the trading nexus of three continents -- Asia, Europe and Africa -- and vibrant birthplace to three of the world's great religions. Middle Eastern influence rose again in the 19th century when the Suez Canal turned the once dead-end Eastern Mediterranean Sea into a sea highway from Europe to Asia. With the 20th century development of large gas and oil supplies in the Persian Gulf and North Africa, an Arab-led OPEC more or less dictated the foreign policy of thirsty oil importers like United States and Europe. No wonder Centcom has remained America's military command hot spot.
Why 2016 Already
WASHINGTON -- It has happened again! Our gaffe-prone president has filed another blunder on his presidential record. At the dedication of George W. Bush's presidential library he invoked history with his usual mastery of detail. He placed President John F. Kennedy in Air Force One, "On the flight back from Russia, after negotiating with Nikita Khrushchev at the height of the Cold War." Actually the flight was returning from Vienna, not "Russia," and not much "negotiating" had been done. Truth be known, it was one of the lowest points in JFK's presidency. As Kennedy himself recalled, "He [Khrushchev] treated me like a little boy." And more: "Worst thing in my life. He savaged me," said our 35th president. Well, at least President Obama did not claim anyone at the Kennedy-Khrushchev summit spoke "Austrian." That was the language our learned president attributed to the citizens of Vienna back on April 6, 2009. No philologist has ever heard of it.
A Sensible Caution, Poorly Stated
WASHINGTON -- People who talk incessantly often talk imprecisely, and Barack Obama, who is as loquacious as he is impressed with his verbal dexterity, has talked himself into a corner concerning Syria and chemical weapons. This is condign punishment for his rhetorical carelessness, but the nation's credibility, not just his, will suffer. His policy is better than his description of it, and his description is convoluted because he lacks the courage of his sensible conviction that entanglement in Syria would be unwise. Nine months ago, Obama said: "We have been very clear to the Assad regime ... that a red line for us is we start seeing a whole bunch of chemical weapons moving around or being utilized. That would change my calculus." This is less a policy than a large loophole masquerading as a policy.
Wednesday, May 1, 2013
The Day Distance Disappeared
Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Heart's Club Band lyrics notwithstanding, yesterday was the 20th anniversary of the birth of the World Wide Web. The Web was invented in Switzerland. At the CERN laboratory near Geneva. The acronym CERN originally stood in French for *Conseil Européen pour la Recherche Nucléaire* (European Council for Nuclear Research). The name has since changed, but the acronym has stuck. On April 30, 1993, CERN published a paper essentially giving the World Wide Web to ... the world. For free. Everything you do on your desktop, your laptop, your tablet, or your smartphone is only possible because that happened 20 years ago.
Obama Vacations While Economy Tanks
The cold, hard figures showing the president's lack of concern for suffering Americans.
Boehner Must Impanel Special Committee to Investigate Benghazi
When Ambassador Chris Stevens was planning to visit Benghazi last September, the February 17 Martyrs Brigade, which the State Department had hired to help protect Americans there, delivered a message: They were no longer going to support the movement of U.S. personnel in the city -- including the movement of Stevens. "In addition," said a report released last week by the chairmen of the House committees on Foreign Relations, Oversight, Armed Services, Judiciary, and Intelligence, "on Sept. 8, 2012, just days before Ambassador Stevens arrived in Benghazi, the February 17 Martyrs Brigade told State Department officials that the group would no longer support U.S. movements in the city, including the ambassador's visit."
Are Online Sales Taxes Only Fair?
At a 2008 shareholders meeting, Amazon founder and CEO Jeff Bezos explained why he opposed requiring businesses like his to collect state and local taxes on their interstate sales. "We're not actually benefiting from any services that those states provide locally," Bezos said, "so it's not fair that we should be obligated to be their tax collection agent." Last year, Paul Misener, Amazon's vice president for global public policy, testified in favor of a bill allowing states to demand sales tax from online merchants, saying Congress should "level the playing field for all sellers." As that switcheroo suggests, there are plausible fairness arguments on both sides of this issue. And although there is a way to bridge the gap, it is not the route Congress seems intent on taking.
The Camp Bastion Cover-Up
Do you remember what happened last year on 9/14? Where are the White House phone calls for the families who continue to grieve? What is being done to prevent another fatal attack like the one on 9/14? And why is the full truth being withheld from the American public? Benghazi isn't the only bloody disaster being covered up by the Obama administration. As I reported in a series of columns and blog posts last fall, three days after the deadly siege on our consulate in Libya, the Taliban waged an intricately coordinated, brutal attack on Camp Bastion in Afghanistan. Two heroic U.S. Marines -- Lt. Col. Christopher Raible and Sgt. Bradley Atwell -- were killed in the battle. Many surviving Marines have been honored for their brave, quick-thinking actions to save their comrades and civilians caught in the crossfire.
Skipping 'Controversial Stings' of the Left
The Washington Post reported something surprising on April 29 -- a hidden-camera expose by pro-life advocates. On the front page of the Metro section, the Post reported how a veteran D.C. abortion doctor named Cesare Santangelo told a 24-week pregnant woman that in the unlikely event that an abortion resulted in a live birth, "we would not help it." "(T)echnically, you know, legally, we would be obligated to help it, you know, to survive, but it probably wouldn't," he said in a way to reassure the woman who was working for the undercover group Live Action.
Is Thinking Obsolete?
While it is not possible to answer all the e-mails and letters from readers, many are thought-provoking, whether those thoughts are positive or negative. An e-mail from one young man simply asked for the sources of some facts about gun control that were mentioned in a recent column. It is good to check out the facts -- especially if you check out the facts on both sides of an issue. By contrast, another man simply denounced me because of what was said in that column. He did not ask for my sources but simply made contrary assertions, as if his assertions must be correct and therefore mine must be wrong.
Train Wreck Ahead
Most Americans -- even those who are legislators -- know very little about the details of President Obama's Affordable Care Act, so-called Obamacare. Next year, when it goes into effect, we will learn the hard way. Many people lazily assume that the law will do roughly what it promises: give insurance to the uninsured and lower the cost of health care by limiting spending on dubious procedures. Don't count on it.
Liberal Suffering and Confusion
The liberal world vision and reality are often at variance, for example, with equal pay for equal work. I've often watched "Lockup," a show that features California supermax prisons, including Pelican Bay and Corcoran. Often, a recalcitrant prisoner must be extracted from his cell through brute force. I've never seen female guards remove a prisoner. If they are part of the process at all, it's to videotape the extraction for legal purposes. It's my bet that female guards receive the same salaries as male guards while not having to risk injury. Along the same lines, women on aircraft carriers earn as much as their male counterparts, but I have yet to see women hefting a hernia bar to attach a 500- or 1,000-pound bomb to a fighter jet wing. All of this suggests that liberals are for equal pay for unequal work. Or could it be sex discrimination whereby equally qualified women are denied the opportunity to extract beastly inmates from their cells and load heavy bombs on fighter planes?
Is America Nasty and Homophobic?
On Monday, former Washington Wizards center Jason Collins revealed to the world that he is gay, prompting a complete media meltdown. Collins appeared on Good Morning America; he made the cover of Sports Illustrated; he became the lead on Huffington Post. The president of the United States congratulated him at a press conference, and the former president of the United States congratulated him via Twitter. So did the first lady, the commissioner of the National Basketball Association and a bevy of pundits and athletes across the spectrum. Which leaves one question: What's the big deal? Tennis star Martina Navratilova, the best player of her era, came out in 1981. Ellen Degeneres came out on national television in 1997. The president and CEO of the Golden State Warriors, Rick Welts, is openly gay. Top politicians, rock stars, athletes, movie and television stars and business moguls are gay. Gay Americans have been announcing their sexual orientation for decades. Why the hubbub?