Right Opinion
The best of conservative opinion and commentary, updated daily.
Thursday, February 21, 2013
On Guns, Obama Finally Talks About the Culture of Fatherlessness
Dads matter. President Barack Obama said it recently in Chicago, a city on track for 600 murders this year, the equivalent of two Sandy Hooks per month. Too bad he still does not understand that his left-wing ideology is the problem. After the Sandy Hook tragedy, Obama, much of his party and much of the media have been calling for further gun control and advocating "common sense" measures such as limiting the number of rounds in a magazine, "universal" background checks and restrictions on "assault weapons." But there is an 800-pound politically incorrect elephant in the room.
Gilded Class Warriors
In his first term President Obama was criticized for trash-talking the one-percenters while enjoying the aristocracy of Martha's Vineyard and the nation's most exclusive golf courses. Obama never quite squared his accusations that "millionaires and billionaires" had not paid their fair share with his own obvious enjoyment of the perks of "corporate jet owners," "fat cat bankers" and Las Vegas junketeers. Now, that paradox has continued right off the bat in the second term. In the State of the Union, Obama once more went after "the few," and "the wealthiest and the most powerful," whom he blasted as the "well-off and the well-connected" and the "billionaires with high-powered accountants."
GOP Has Trouble Settling on Candidates Who Can Win
One of the interesting things about recent elections is that Republicans have tended to do better the farther you go down the ballot. They've lost the presidency twice in a row, and in four of the last six contests. They've failed to win a majority in the U.S. Senate, something they accomplished in five election cycles between 1994 and 2006. But they have won control of the House of Representatives in the last two elections, and in eight of the last 10 cycles. And they've been doing better in elections to state legislatures than at any time since the 1920s. One reason for this is that, as I have written, Democratic voters are clustered in large metropolitan areas, which helps them in the Electoral College but hurts in legislatures with equal-population districts.
Extortionist in Chief
At the end of 1995 and stretching into January 1996, the federal government "shut down" because of an impasse between President Bill Clinton and House Republicans led by then-House Speaker Newt Gingrich. The issue was increased taxes vs. less spending. Sound familiar? The government re-opened when a bipartisan agreement was reached to balance the budget by 2003. It wasn't for reasons that included, but were not limited to, two wars. Now the national debt is racing toward an unsustainable $17 trillion. This time around it isn't about closing government. It's about "sequestration," which President Obama, the Democrats and their big media toadies are styling as economic Armageddon.
End of the Coolidge Joke
WASHINGTON -- I am indebted to Amity Shlaes for gently correcting a joke of mine that dates back to July 8, 1972. On that date in the New York Times, I joshed that President Calvin Coolidge "probably spent more time napping than any president in the nation's history" and therefore was a successful president. My joke was a play on an earlier joke by H. L. Mencken, and now Shlaes has corrected both of us. She has written a very impressive biography titled simply "Coolidge," wherein she never mentions Cal's naps but rather what made him the most successful president of the 1920s. He reversed the economic insolvency of President Woodrow Wilson, and set the economy on the road to growth, a road made rocky by Cal's successor, President Herbert Hoover, and rockier still by Hoover's successor, Franklin Roosevelt.
Above & Beyond
I actually watched Obama's entire State of the Union address. I would like to think I was merely doing my duty as a citizen and as a political observer, but I'm beginning to worry that there is simply a streak of masochism that runs through me. After all, that's an hour of my life I'll never get back, and God knows I'm not getting any younger. If anything, just listening to and looking at His Arrogance has aged me considerably over the past five years. I can't even boast that I have cracked his code. A child of six could have figured out a long time ago that when he says "fees" and "revenue," he means "taxes;" when he says "investing," he means "spending;" and when he says "folks," he means "suckers." Furthermore, when he says "Let me make this perfectly clear," he means "Abracadabra, now you see it, now you don't." And, finally, when he refers to "God," he means himself.
Solitary Confinement's Toll
WASHINGTON -- "Zero Dark Thirty," a nominee for Sunday's Oscar as Best Picture, reignited debate about whether the waterboarding of terrorism suspects was torture. This practice, which ended in 2003, was used on only three suspects. Meanwhile, tens of thousands of American prison inmates are kept in protracted solitary confinement that arguably constitutes torture and probably violates the Eighth Amendment prohibition of "cruel and unusual punishments." Noting that half of all prison suicides are committed by prisoners held in isolation, Sen. Richard Durbin, D-Ill., has prompted an independent assessment of solitary confinement in federal prisons. State prisons are equally vulnerable to Eighth Amendment challenges concerning whether inmates are subjected to "substantial risk of serious harm."
Wednesday, February 20, 2013
See - Seekwes - Sequestration
The latest projectile-sweat-producing event in Our Nation's Capital is the looming automatic cuts in the federal budget known as "sequestration." Sequestration is not a word we get to use every day in a sentence, most of us, but it is fun to say because we get to use the tip and the back of our tongues to say it. According to Webster's, sequestration is a 14th century word from the Latin *sequesrare* - to hand over to a trustee or some other third party. Today it is an intransitive verb meaning to segregate (as a jury), to seclude, or to seize (via a writ of sequestration).
Conservative Think Tanks on Health Care
Why have the Republicans been unable to propose an alternative to ObamaCare? Anyone can criticize. Where is the Republican alternative? Okay, I'll grant some exceptions. Newt Gingrich had a comprehensive health plan in last year's Republican primary. It was my plan. Four years ago John McCain had a comprehensive health reform. That was also basically my plan. Mitt Romney oversaw health reform in Massachusetts. That was a Heritage Foundation plan. Yet none of these ideas has garnered the support of the Republican rank and file. Why not?
Commander in Chief Wages War on the Moral Law
The ultimate purpose of the U.S. military is simple: Defend the God-given liberty of Americans. Yet today we have a president who is using his power as commander in chief to wage war against the moral truth that makes liberty possible. Last week, outgoing Defense Secretary Leon Panetta executed a directive from President Obama that requires the military to treat cohabitating homosexuals as if they were married couples. Panetta did so in a memorandum he sent to the secretaries of the military departments and to the undersecretary of defense for personnel and readiness.
The Anti-Choice Left's Disarming of the American Woman
If radical gun-grabbers have their way, your daughters, mothers and grandmothers will have nothing but whistles, pens and bodily fluids to defend themselves against violent attackers and sexual predators. Women of all ages, races and political backgrounds should be up in arms over the coordinated attack on their right to bear arms. In Colorado this week, male Democratic legislators assailed concealed-carry supporters and disparaged female students who refuse to depend on the government for protection. The Democrat-controlled House passed a statewide ban on concealed-carry weapons on college campuses, along with several other extreme gun-control measures that will undermine citizen safety and drive dozens of businesses out of the state.
The Media's Republican Latinophobia
At what point will the public tire of liberal journalists lamenting that the Republican Party is overwhelmingly white and thrilled about it? They've been drawing that cartoon so long surely they'll eventually run out of ink. They love their 2012 narrative that every non-white group is rushing to Obama and the left, and they want to keep it that way. So what do you do when the GOP elects or nominates a black or Hispanic (as they've done constantly)? You rip them personally, mercilessly. Ask Justice Thomas. This is why everyone should have expected something absurd from the media when Sen. Marco Rubio was picked to give the response to President Obama's State of the Union address. But this year perhaps they went too far. They made utter, complete fools -- of themselves.
The Curious Case of the Uncurious Media
Over President's Day weekend, President Barack Obama took off for a mini-vacation in Florida. There, he participated in golf lessons with professional coach Butch Harmon -- Harmon normally charges $1,000 per hour, and Obama spent 8 hours with him -- and then he took to the links with disgraced golf icon Tiger Woods. The press was not allowed to cover any of this first-hand. And that made them fighting mad. Politico's Jim VandeHei and Mike Allen commented, "Barack Obama is a master at limiting, shaping and manipulating media coverage of himself and his White House." But VandeHei and Allen said that Obama's media mastery had nothing to do with the drool-cup-carrying media itself. Instead, Obama's *just that good*: "The mastery mostly flows from a White House that has taken old tricks for shaping coverage (staged leaks, friendly interviews) and put them on steroids using new ones (social media, content creation, precision targeting)..."
Abraham Lincoln
Steven Spielberg's "Lincoln" has been a box-office hit and nominated for 12 Academy Awards, including best picture, best director and best actor for Daniel Day-Lewis, who portrayed our 16th president. I haven't seen the movie; therefore, this column is not about the movie but about a man deified by many. My colleague Thomas DiLorenzo, economics professor at Loyola University Maryland, exposed some of the Lincoln myth in his 2006 book, "Lincoln Unmasked." Now comes Joseph Fallon, cultural intelligence analyst and former U.S. Army Intelligence Center instructor, with his new e-book, "Lincoln Uncensored." Fallon's book examines 10 volumes of collected writings and speeches of Lincoln's, which include passages on slavery, secession, equality of blacks and emancipation. We don't have to rely upon anyone's interpretation. Just read his words to see what you make of them.
To Government, Every Penny Is Sacred
President Obama has new priorities. That means new spending. In his State of the Union, he said, "The American people don't expect government to solve every problem." But then he went on to list how, under his guidance, government will solve a thousand problems, including some (like climate change and a loss of manufacturing jobs) that are probably not even problems. The president bragged about creating "our first manufacturing innovation institute" in Ohio and says that he will create 15 more. Politicians claim actions like this are needed to solve the "decline of manufacturing" in America. John McCain, Mike Huckabee and Pat Buchanan also fret about this. But what they call "decline" is myth. There is no decline in manufacturing.
Leave Liberal Hollywood to the Liberals
"We need to buy a movie studio." Amid the umpteen conferences, panels, meetings and informal conversations in the wake of the presidential election, this idea has been a near constant among conservatives who feel like the country is slipping through their fingers. Mitt Romney and the Republican National Committee combined raised just more than $1 billion, and all we got are these lousy T-shirts. Since conservatives are losing the culture, goes the argument, which in turn leads to losing at politics, maybe that money could be better spent on producing some cultural ammo of our own? It's a bad idea.
Tuesday, February 19, 2013
Sequester Hysteria
Obama and Democrats resort to denial, fear-mongering and extortion to avoid any spending cuts.
Cruzin' for a Bruisin'
If political success equates with how often you drive The New York Times nuts, the freshly minted junior senator from Texas could be bound for some conservative Rushmore. "The GOP's Nasty Newcomer" is how a Times headline characterizes Sen. Ted Cruz on the basis of his performance since January: voting against John Kerry's confirmation as secretary of state, questioning Chuck Hagel's to head the defense department, voting against raising the debt ceiling, opposing renewal of the Violence Against Women Act, saying no to the barrel of congressional pork wherein aid for the victims of Hurricane Sandy was encased.