Right Opinion
The best of conservative opinion and commentary, updated daily.
Monday, April 1, 2013
Apocalypse Now?
I know that Obama said that his primary concerns for his second term were major immigration reform and gun control. It's probably just a coincidence, but despots often feel compelled to deal with those two issues. They usually deal with guns by confiscating them, while their immigration policy generally involves box cars headed off to Siberia or Auschwitz. But, now, thanks to sequestration, he has to put those plans on the backburner so he can terrify Americans into believing that a tiny reduction in rising expenditures will lengthen the lines at airports, reduce the ranks of air traffic controllers, and turn teachers, cops and firemen, into sidewalk apple vendors.
Opening Day 2013
September 6, 1995 I flew to Austin, Texas to watch a baseball game on TV with The Lad who was then an undergrad at the University of Texas. The occasion was Cal Ripken's 2,131st consecutive Major League game, breaking Lou Gehrig's record. Baseball has been a bond between us. When the Lad played Little League I rarely missed a game. In McLean, Virginia it was not at all noteworthy to see national leaders -- Administration and Congressional, Democrat and Republican -- working in the snack bar or helping prepare one of the fields.
Why Freight Rail Pays and Passenger Trains Flunk
Forty years ago, American railroads were in trouble. The Penn Central, the largest railroad, had recently gone bankrupt. American freight rail was technologically obsolescent and hamstrung by union rules and government rate regulation. American passenger rail was unprofitable and unreliable. Freight rail was losing business to trucking firms. Passenger rail was losing out to cars on the new interstate highways and airplanes on long routes.
Sunday, March 31, 2013
Report Card on ObamaCare
Over the next 10 years health reform will impose upon us about $1 trillion in new taxes and it will take another $716 billion out of Medicare, imperiling access to care for the elderly and the disabled according to Medicare's Office of the Actuaries. It will impose a mandate to buy health insurance on most people and fine us if we don't comply. It will compel all but the smallest employers to provide insurance to their employees and fine them if they don't. ... The federal government will regulate the kind of insurance we must have, tell us where we must get it and regulate how much we pay for it as well. Many will ask, "What are we getting in return for all this?" I would like to turn that question around. After doing all these things, "What problems will be left unsolved?"
Take a Swing at These
As the unendurable monotony of the offseason ends, celebrate baseball's return with mental calisthenics. Everyone knows it was former Atlanta Manager Dave Bristol who said, "Only trouble I ever had with chewing tobacco was that the orthodontist said my daughter was going to have to give it up because of her braces." But do you know...
Saturday, March 30, 2013
Higher (Cost) Education
Mark Twain observed that everyone complains about the weather, but nobody does anything about it. He was of course making a typically wry comment, but leave it to liberals to take it to heart. First to jump on the let's-try-to-monkey-with-the weather bandwagon was Al Gore, who has since made millions off the hoax known as "global warming," but which sometimes goes by the alias of "climate change." More recently, we had the Con Man-in-Chief mention it in his State of the Union address, promising to domesticate Mother Nature with the same ease with which he has cowed the media. The real problem isn't that corrupt politicians lie to their own advantage, which is a given, but that most liberal voters are so gullible that fooling them is the equivalent of shooting fish in a barrel.
From The Comedy Store
President Obama spoke at a naturalization ceremony in Washington which included U.S. service members and civilians. It was emotional. The president got a huge round of applause and then everyone congratulated him on becoming an American citizen.
Friday, March 29, 2013
The Obamas' Unending Summer Vacation
Four lavish vacations in three months -- while Americans suffer.
The Bloody Company Hollywood Keeps
Bleeding-heart liberal Robert Redford is already the subject of early Oscar buzz. His much-hyped new film glamorizing the lives of Weather Underground domestic terrorists, "The Company You Keep," will be released in the U.S. next week. But peace-loving moviegoers should save their money and take a stand. Hollywood's romanticizing of murderous radicals is an affront to decency. Redford and Company's rose-colored hagiography of bloodstained killers defiles the memory of all those victimized by leftwing militants on American soil. Tinseltown cheerleaders can't stop gushing about Redford's paean to gun-toting progressives, of course. Variety called the flick an "unabashedly heartfelt but competent tribute to 1960s idealism." The entertainment daily effused: "There is something undeniably compelling, perhaps even romantic, about America's '60s radicals and the compromises they did or didn't make." One of the film executives promoting the Weather Underground movie slavered: "This is an edge-of-your-seat thriller about real Americans who stood for their beliefs, thinking they were patriots and defending their country's ideals against their government."
Politics Ain't Beanbag
Among the many very nice comments I got for Wednesday's MULLINGS (Our Talking Points Society) was a reader who asked (in essence), "If Fox News Channel is so far ahead of MSNBC and CNN why did the GOP lose the Presidential election last Fall?" The answer is: The number of people who watch cable news is a tiny percentage of the voting population. According to TVNewser.com the total number of people who tuned into any of the four major cable news channels (CNN, CNN Headline, Fox, or MSNBC) at any point between 4 PM and 11 PM totaled 23,430,000 viewers.
Another Round Goes to Bernanke
Apropos of my column of a week ago -- "Has Bernanke Gotten the Story Right?" -- this week's paltry gross domestic product revision again backs up the actions of the Federal Reserve chairman and his market-monetarist supporters. Real GDP was a miniscule 0.4 percent at an annual rate for last year's fourth quarter, up from an earlier estimate of 0.1 percent. Perhaps more to the point, the year-on-year GDP change is only 1.7 percent, less than the 2 percent average growth of the Obama recovery, which is still the weakest in modern times going back to 1947. Inside the report, there was good strength in housing investment (17.6 percent), business equipment (11.8 percent), and business structures like factories and warehouses (16.7 percent), all in annual rates for last year's fourth quarter. Consumer spending, however, was a rather soft 1.8 percent.
It's Not Cool to Cherry Pick Scripture
With Easter approaching and the Astroturf groundswell for same-sex marriage at its apex, I thought I'd put in a plug for the Bible, whose integrity and timeless principles are under increasing assault in our culture. In fact, what sparked this column was a warning by a nationally prominent Republican to his party that it ought not go "Old Testament" and oppose same-sex marriage. I don't want to turn this column into a rant about same-sex marriage, but I cite this example to illustrate a common tendency to bifurcate the Old Testament and the New Testament and to paint Jesus Christ as a figure of unqualified, open-armed tolerance and non-judgmentalism.
Can GOP Reverse the Damage Done by Iraq?
Is the Iraq war to blame for the mess we are in? Now, I should qualify that question by explaining "mess" and "we." By "mess," I mean the dawn of Barack Obama's second term, the predictably catastrophic rollout of Obamacare, the exploding debt and deficit, the stimulus boondoggles, etc. By "we," I mean conservatives (particularly those, like me, who supported the war), but also anyone else who doesn't think Obama has done a bang-up job. There seems to be a growing consensus that the answer to that question is "yes." In a recent column, the Washington Examiner's Philip Klein writes, "It's hard to see how Obamacare would have become law if Bush had never invaded Iraq." New York Times columnist Ross Douthat says the war is "responsible for liberalism's current political and cultural ascendance." In The Wall Street Journal, Peggy Noonan laments that the war "muddied up the meaning of conservatism and bloodied up its reputation." She even goes so far as to assert that the war "ended the Republican political ascendance that had begun in 1980."
Our Black-Robed Rulers
The farce that is the Supreme Court of the United States has now taken up a new cause: same-sex marriage. To push that cause, the anti-Constitutional members of the Supreme Court prepared to declare that the federal government cannot define marriage for the purpose of federal benefits under the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA). This is the same Supreme Court that declared last year that the federal government *can* force individuals to buy health insurance. To simplify, then: The federal government can't define how federal cash gets spent, but it can define how *your* cash gets spent. There is no logical principle that undergirds any of this. Little or no legal argument took place at the Supreme Court this week. Justice Elena Kagan instead made a moral argument, stating that it was unthinkable for anyone to consider homosexuality immoral, and adding that morality could not be the basis for law (which should come as a shock to every major political philosopher for the last several millennia). Justice Anthony Kennedy made the argument that marriage has traditionally been the purview of the states, even though he argued just a decade ago that homosexual sodomy could not be regulated by the states based on tradition.
Gay and Godless on the Public-School Stage
Liberals who demand church-state separation would pitch a fit if a public school decided to perform a play that reverently told stories of the Old Testament, whether it was the story of creation, the story of Noah, or Moses or Joseph and his brothers. But somehow, if a public school decides to put on a play mocking God and the Old Testament, that is not a church-state violation. The separation police don't want religious (or atheist) minorities to face religious indoctrination in a public school. But anti-religious indoctrination mocking the Judeo-Christian majority is a glorious festival of free speech. Take, for example, the taxpayer-funded Pioneer Valley Performing Arts Charter School in the People's Republic of Massachusetts. The school is in South Hadley, part of the same community of Northampton which was happily nicknamed "Lesbianville, USA" after the 2000 census showed more lesbians live there per capita than anywhere in the country. MSNBC host Rachel Maddow has a house there.
No Greater Friend ...
WASHINGTON -- On the eve of Operation Iraqi Freedom, the commanding general of the 1st Marine Division distributed a one-page "Message to All Hands." It was a succinct warning to those going into battle about what to expect from the enemy and his expectations for them. His instructions and encouragement on deportment, skill, courage and compassion harkened back to Shakespeare's rendition of Henry V on St. Crispin's Day and Eisenhower's guidance to his troops going ashore at Normandy. The close, an admonition paraphrasing Roman General Lucius Sulla: "Demonstrate to the world there is 'No better friend, no worse enemy' than a U.S. Marine" is now an axiom in the Marine Corps. Some members of the media who read the letter expressed amazement that a Marine Division Commander -- about to go into combat -- could be so eloquent. Those of us who have known Jim Mattis a very long time weren't surprised at all.
Let the People Decide
The arguments on gay marriage before the Supreme Court this week pose the most momentous questions the court has faced in the past 50 years -- and perhaps in its history. At stake is the definition of an institution that has been the bedrock of civilization from time immemorial. For at least the past 2,000 years, marriage has been defined as the union of one man and one woman in Christian cultures. But the definition has not been universal in all cultures or at all times. Islam allows polygamy. Historically, Jewish men were allowed to have more than one wife -- as Abraham, Jacob, David and Solomon did -- though the practice was banned among Ashkenazi Jews a thousand years ago and is not practiced today even among Sephardim. And in the American context, Mormons practiced polygamy until giving it up in order for Utah to be admitted as a state.
What Really Happened in Jerusalem
"I honestly believe that if any Israeli parent sat down with those [Palestinian] kids, they'd say I want these kids to succeed." -- Barack Obama, in Jerusalem, March 21 WASHINGTON -- Very true. But how does the other side feel about Israeli kids? Consider that the most revered parent in Palestinian society is Mariam Farhat of Gaza. Her distinction? Three of her sons died in various stages of trying to kill Israelis -- one in a suicide attack, shooting up and hurling grenades in a room full of Jewish students. She gloried in her "martyr" sons, wishing only that she had 100 boys like her schoolroom suicide attacker to "sacrifice ... for the sake of God." And for that she was venerated as "mother of the struggle," elected to parliament and widely mourned upon her recent passing.
Why We Are Losing Debate Over Same-Sex Marriage
Same-sex marriage is probably inevitable in America whatever the Supreme Court decides. That's because the public is clearly leaning that way. That the court is even being asked to impose a sweeping social change on the nation is illustrative of another lost battle -- the idea that the Supreme Court is not a super-legislature and that nine robed lawyers ought to refrain from imposing their policy preferences on the whole nation. Even two liberal justices, Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Stephen Breyer, have from time to time expressed caution about the Court imposing its will on matters better left up to the people and their elected representatives. It will be interesting to see whether those prudential considerations come into play in their decisions in these cases or whether the desire for a particular outcome overwhelms concerns about the Court's proper role. Too few Americans recognize this for what it is -- a loss of sovereignty.
Thursday, March 28, 2013
A Bipartisan Abdication
"President Obama has arguably established the authority of the president to intervene militarily virtually anywhere without the consent or the approval of Congress, at his own discretion and for as long as he wishes." -- Jim Webb WASHINGTON -- As America tiptoes toward a fourth intervention in an opaque and uncontrollable conflict -- now Syria, after Iraq, Afghanistan and Libya -- Webb's words require two minor modifications: Obama has demonstrated a *power*, not an *authority*; only the Constitution authorizes. And as Webb understands, Obama has been able to do so only because Congress, over many years, has become too supine to wield its constitutional powers.