Right Opinion
The best of conservative opinion and commentary, updated daily.
Thursday, March 21, 2013
A Matter of Jurisprudence
"Under the Constitution, the regulation and control of marital and family relationships are reserved to the states." --U.S. Supreme Court, Sherrer v. Sherrer (1948) WASHINGTON -- The Defense of Marriage Act is an exception to the rule that a law's title is as uninformative about the law's purpose as the titles of Marx Brothers movies ("Duck Soup," "Horse Feathers," "Animal Crackers") are about those movies' contents. DOMA's purpose is precisely what its title says. Which is why many conservatives and liberals should be uneasy next Wednesday when the Supreme Court hears arguments about DOMA's constitutionality. Conservatives who supported DOMA should, after 17 years reflection, want the act overturned because its purpose is constitutionally improper. Liberals who want the act struck down should be discomfited by the reason the court should give when doing this.
Wednesday, March 20, 2013
Resetting the Middle East
President Barack Obama left last night for Israel in an attempt to "reset" the Israeli-US relationship. There are those who will say that if either side has to reset the relationship, it is the Israelis. I understand that; I don't agree with it, but I understand it. A couple of weeks ago shiny new Secretary of State John Kerry effectively presented a check to the Egyptian government -- which is now in the throes of an electoral breakdown -- for $250 million. I wondered, at the time why, when the courts had cancelled the scheduled elections for Parliament, we rewarded the government with a quarter of a billion USDs.
Penny Pritzker: A Chicago Fat Cat for Commerce Secretary?
Will President Obama really nominate billionaire Chicago gal pal Penny Pritzker to head his Commerce Department? "It's a done deal," according to a White House source close to the Chicago Tribune. As further confirmation, Pritzker resigned abruptly from the Windy City's school board late last week. The crony fix seems to be in. Taxpayers, beware. Pritzker is a deep-pocketed doyenne with a family history of dodging taxes -- or siphoning them away from the public for her own family's gargantuan private gain. If you want to see how she'll oversee a $10 billion government agency, look at her own wealth redistribution record. Most notoriously, Pritzker headed up subprime lender Superior Bank. Even after it went under in 2001 and left 1,400 mostly poor and minority customers destitute, Pritzker was pushing to expand its toxic subprime loan business. As I've reported previously, Pritzker and her family escaped accountability by forking over a discounted $460 million settlement over 15 years after the bank collapsed.
Federal Direct Student Loans Up Nearly Fivefold Under Obama
Shortly before Congress enacted the Obamacare law in March 2010, then-House Speaker Nancy Pelosi famously said, "We have to pass the bill so that you can find out what is in it." When President Obama ultimately signed the Health Care and Education Reconciliation Act -- one of the two bills comprising Obamacare -- he gave a speech celebrating one of its surprises: language that terminated the Federal Family Education Loan (FFEL) program that allowed federally guaranteed student loans to be made in the private sector with private capital, thus giving the Federal Direct Student Loan (DL) program a monopoly over these loans. As the Congressional Research Service has put it, this program makes the U.S. Treasury a "banker" for college students.
Losing Patience With the New Pope
Many millions of Catholics around the world were joyous with the naming of a new pope -- a holy man from the Third World no less. Even in choosing his name, Pope Francis is emphasizing a devotion to the poor, and humility in his clothing and manners. The liberal media should be lapping this up. There was an accurate recounting of the global rejoicing, especially in Argentina. There were hopeful words about his pastoral modesty. But as the day came for the pope to be installed, the natural secular liberal nastiness toward the oldest Christian faith bubbled up in demands for "tolerance" and women's liberation. On the March 18 "Today," co-host Matt Lauer noted the simplicity of Pope Francis -- and then tried to suggest it was extreme. "So a lot of people like this move to simplicity, a move to the poor. Is it possible to take it too far?" If Benedict enjoyed revisiting the more regal historic Vatican garb, that was extreme. More humility? Also quite possibly extreme.
The Whole Record: Rick Scott's Successful Pro-Growth Policies in FL
A stunning announcement out of Florida this week. The state that was exhibit A for economic disaster two years ago is now experiencing a tremendous rebound thanks to Gov. Rick Scott's pro-growth policies. Washington should take a page -- no several pages -- out of Scott's book. Since December 2010, one month before Scott took office, the unemployment rate in Florida has dropped from 11.1 percent to 7.8 percent -- that rate is lower than the national average. After two years of Scott's policies, 282,000 private sector jobs have been created; in the previous four years the state had lost 825,000 jobs. The past two years have set records for tourism, Florida's biggest industry. In 2012, 89.3 million people visited Florida; up 2.3 percent from the previous record-setting year.
Fusion Power on the Right
"At CPAC, the Future Looks Libertarian," read a dispatch on Time magazine's website. "CPAC: Rand Paul's Big Moment," proclaimed The Week magazine. Meanwhile, the New York Times headlined its story about the annual conservative political action conference "GOP divisions fester at conservative retreat." George Will, a man who actually knows a thing or two about conservatism, responded to the NYT's use of the word "fester" on ABC News' "This Week." "Festering: an infected wound, it's awful. I guarantee you, if there were a liberal conclave comparable to this, and there were vigorous debates going on there, the New York Times' headline would be 'Healthy diversity flourishes at the liberal conclave.'"
To Save Traditional Marriage, End State Involvement in Marriage
Within the next few months, Justice Anthony Kennedy will likely rule that same-sex marriage is mandated by the Constitution of the United States. The ruling will offend both common sense and Constitutional law. But it will nonetheless become the law of the land. With it, states will be forced to recognize same-sex marriages; same-sex marriage will enter the public school lexicon; religious institutions will be forced to recognize same-sex marriages or lose their tax-exempt status. Religious Americans will be forced into violating their beliefs or facing legal consequences by the government. The First Amendment's guarantee of religious liberty will largely become obsolete. There is only one way to stop this development: Get the government out of the business of marriage. Right now.
A Real Term Limit
The main thing wrong with the term limits movement is the "s" at the end of the word "limit." What are advocates of term limits trying to accomplish? If they are trying to keep government from being run by career politicians, whose top priority is getting themselves reelected, then term limits on given jobs fail to do that. When someone reaches the limit of how long one can spend as a county supervisor, then it is just a question of finding another political office to run for, such as a member of the state legislature. And when the limit on terms there is reached, it is time to look around for another political job -- perhaps as a mayor or a member of Congress.
Intellectuals and Race
After reading Dr. Thomas Sowell's latest book, "Intellectuals and Race," one cannot emerge with much respect for the reasoning powers of intellectuals, particularly academics, on matters of race. There's so much faulty logic and downright dishonesty. Many intellectuals attribute the behavior patterns of blacks to "a legacy of slavery" or contemporary racial discrimination. But when one observes similar behavior patterns among Britain's lower-class whites, which can't be attributed to "a legacy of slavery" or discrimination, it calls into question the explanations for black behavior. It's lamented that blacks are "the last hired" and, during an economic downturn, "the first fired," because blacks are terminated before whites. That's seen as evidence of discrimination by white employers, but white employees are terminated before Asian-American employees. Is that employer discrimination against whites? Intellectuals accept statistical data as showing discrimination when it reinforces existing preconceptions and reject or ignore it when it doesn't.
The Blob That Ate Children
Shortly after I did my first TV special on education, "Stupid in America," hundreds of union teachers showed up outside my office to yell at me. They were angry because I said union rules were a big reason American kids don't learn. The union *is* a big reason kids don't like school and learn less. Union contracts limit flexibility, limit promotion of good teachers, waste money and make it hard for principals to fire even terrible teachers. But I was wrong to imply that the union is the biggest problem. In states with weak unions, K-12 schools stagnate, too. Education reformers have a name for the resistance: the education "Blob." The Blob includes the teachers unions, but also janitors and principals unions, school boards, PTA bureaucrats, local politicians and so on.
Obama's Cloak of Invisibility
Back in 2007, when he was running for president, Barack Obama criticized George W. Bush's expansive vision of executive power, saying, "I reject the view that the president may do whatever he deems necessary to protect national security." The day after taking office in 2009, Obama declared that "my administration is committed to creating an unprecedented level of openness in government." Those two positions went together, because secrecy requires power and power thrives in secrecy, as Obama himself has been demonstrating for the last four years. Three recent cases illustrate how breaking his promise of "the most transparent administration in history" has helped Obama break his promise not to use national security as an excuse to violate civil liberties.
Tuesday, March 19, 2013
Road to Serfdom: Eurocrats to Seize Citizen Money from Bank Accounts
Residents of the welfare state system discover there's no such thing as private property in post-bailout Europe.
The Battle of the Budgets
Say you're running a business, and you find yourself awash in red ink. You realize it's time to retool your approach, and fast. So you ask two different employees each to come up with a budget. You'll go with whoever writes the best plan. What are the chances that one of them will submit a budget that never puts you in the black? One that suggests you raise prices and spend still more money? Practically nil. Yet that's exactly what the Senate expects the federal government to do. Its recent budget proposal doesn't even attempt to restore balance. Spending would go up right away. So would taxes, and it doesn't even touch entitlement programs such as Medicaid -- which, along with interest on the debt, will take up all tax revenues by 2025, when today's kindergarteners go off to college.
Reform Time in America
The Democrats have to be bent over in derisive laughter as the national Republican party flagellates itself for irrelevance, backwardness and plain old stupidity. (Ow! Ow! Hee, hee, haw, haw!) The party's Growth and Opportunity Project, in a report founded on extensive post-mortem interviews, consultations and focus group probing, says the party's image is that of a "scary," "narrow-minded" bunch, run by "stuffy old men." Accordingly, Republicans must "change course, modernize the party and learn once again how to appeal to more people, including those who share some but not all of our conservative principles." That's at the national level. At the state level, what with Republican governors and lawmakers flexing muscle, reveling in new ideas and acts of leadership, GOP prospects brighten. Those national guys, nonetheless, get the hook or else a new mode of operation.
Even if Your Child Is Gay ...
Last week, Republican Senator Rob Portman of Ohio announced that he had reversed his position on same-sex marriage. The reason was that his son had come out to him and his wife as gay. This is not the first such instance. Periodically, we hear about Republican politicians whose child announces that he or she is gay, prompting the parent to change his mind about the man-woman definition of marriage. As a parent, I understand these parents. We love our children, and we want them to love us. Nevertheless I differ with their decisions to support the redefinition of marriage.
Trouble Brewing in GOP
For the first time, I am wondering about the long-term viability of the Republican Party. I say this not as an advocate of its demise or restructuring but as an observer of troubling signs. The Republican Party is thought to be the institutional vehicle for the advancement of conservative policies, but for decades, the conservative movement has been frustrated with the party's deviation from conservative principles -- its refusal to live up to its decidedly conservative platform. I believe that the disappointing results for Republicans in the 2006 elections and probably the 2012 elections, as well, were in no small part attributable to frustrated conservatives staying at home.
Death and Life in Maryland
The Maryland legislature recently voted to abolish capital punishment in the state, making Maryland the sixth state in the last six years to eliminate the death penalty. The primary argument for repealing the law is that our justice system is imperfect and it's possible an innocent person could be condemned. Indeed, anti-death penalty activists presented Kirk Bloodsworth, a former death-row inmate, convicted of the 1984 rape and murder of a 9-year-old girl. His conviction was overturned on appeal after the court found the prosecution had withheld exculpatory evidence from the defense. However, Bloodsworth was retried and sentenced to two life terms, a conviction later upheld on appeal. In 1993, Bloodsworth was exonerated after DNA linked someone else to the crime.
Gifted Hands
A remarkable book titled "Gifted Hands" tells the personal story of Benjamin Carson, a black kid from the Detroit ghetto who went on to become a renowned neurosurgeon. At one time young Ben Carson had the lowest grades in his middle school class, and was the butt of teasing by his white classmates. Worse yet, he himself believed that he was just not smart enough to do the work. Fortunately for him, his mother, whose own education went no further than the third grade, insisted that he was smart. She cut off the television set and made him and his brother hit the books -- books that she herself could scarcely read.