Right Opinion
The best of conservative opinion and commentary, updated daily.
Friday, January 11, 2013
Will Obama Follow Cuomo's Example on Guns?
A storm gathers against the Second Amendment.
Revenge of the O-Team
WASHINGTON -- Full disclosure right upfront: I'm a proud life member of the National Rifle Association. I am on the NRA's board of directors and serve as chairman of the organization's Military and Veterans' Affairs Committee. I have owned and used firearms most of my life, and I can read. Unlike some in Washington, I don't believe that the 27 words above -- the Second Amendment of our Constitution -- have anything to do with "gun rights." Guns don't have rights. I do. So do you. Fifty-two years ago, like tens of millions before and since, I raised my right hand and took an oath of enlistment in our armed forces, pledging to "support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic." I promised I would "bear true faith and allegiance to the same." Notably, the words promise loyalty not to a political party or a particular individual but to the Constitution, which enshrines our liberties and the limits and responsibilities of those who govern us like no other foundational document on earth.
Cutting Costs, Risking Lives
Obamacare promised access to health care to millions of Americans who lacked it, with the president personally promising those who had health care that they liked that they wouldn't be forced to change. Magically, all of this was supposed to be accompanied by lower premiums for those already insured and overall savings in the health care system to slow. But as the program swings into full gear, it is becoming apparent those promises can't be kept -- at least not without major intrusion into health care decisions that affect patients. One of the only ways to save money is to restrict access to more costly treatments, which is exactly what the Patient-Centered Outcomes Research Institute (PCORI), a public-private organization set up by the Affordable Care Act, is meant to do. The PCORI recommends lower reimbursement for drugs and treatments that ostensibly are not research-based.
No Oxygen, Please, for This Show
Television is getting a little unreal. First, the idea that Al Gore would sell out to Al-Jazeera sounded like an April Fools' joke. Then the Oxygen network -- that supposedly uplifting women's channel founded in 2000 by Oprah Winfrey -- announced it was producing a reality show called "All My Baby's Mamas" starring an Atlanta rapper and former drug dealer named "Shawty Lo," alongside his 11 children and their 10 different mothers. This story didn't originate on a satire site like The Onion. Oxygen promoted this videotaped puddle of stupidity with a YouTube highlight reel featuring the rapper (real name: Carlos Walker) unsuccessfully attempting to name his 11 kids as quiz-show music plays. Rush Limbaugh suggested this sounded like New York Jets football star Antonio Cromartie, who had trouble naming his nine kids by seven women on HBO's "Hard Knocks" documentary series in 2010.
Biden's Faulty Lifeguard Logic
"As the president said, if your actions result in only saving one life, they're worth taking," Vice President Joe Biden declared on Wednesday as he previewed what his commission on gun violence might actually do. "There are executive orders, there's executive action that can be taken. We haven't decided what that is yet. But we're compiling it all with the help of the attorney general and the rest of the Cabinet members as well as legislative action that we believe is required." Biden insisted that it is a moral imperative for the White House to do something: "It's critically important that we act."
The Hagel Pick Telegraphs Weakness
President Obama's choice of former Nebraska Sen. Chuck Hagel for Sec. of Defense is a dangerous choice that telegraphs weakness toward Iran. In the Senate, Mr. Hagel compiled a worrisome record toward the world's leading sponsor of terrorism. It is Iran that backs Hezbollah in Lebanon. We haven't heard much about the Cedar Revolution in that war-torn country. That's because Hezbollah murdered the democratic leaders for reform. Iran is behind Hamas in Gaza. Hamas defeated the corrupt regime of Mahmoud Abbas in elections in Gaza that soon degenerated into civil war. Abbas has papered over those differences and now seeks to present a united front to the ruling Muslim Brotherhood-backed party in Egypt and the UN.
EBT Abuse: The Cash-for-Drunkards Program
From New York to New Mexico and across the dependent plains, welfare recipients are getting sauced on the public dime. Drunk, besotted, bombed. But while politicians pay lip service to cutting government waste, fraud and abuse, they're doing very little in practice to stop the EBT party excesses. Where's the compassion for taxpayers? You see the signs everywhere: "We accept EBT." Fast-food restaurants do. Clothing retailers do. Auto repair shops, liquor stores and even sushi joints are joining the club. "EBT" stands for the federal government's electronic benefits transfer card, which is intended to provide poor people with food stamps and cash assistance for basic necessities. The two separate programs were combined into one ATM-like card designed to reduce the "stigma" attached to Nanny State dependency, and -- voila! -- an entirely new method of mooching was born.
Confessions of a Bad Woman
I suppose I'm a bad woman -- by today's standards that is. For some reason, I take absolutely no pride in the accomplishments of women per se. I am utterly uninspired by first women astronauts or Secretaries of State. It is of no consequence to me what percentage of the United States Senate or House of Representatives shares my chromosomes. I don't wait with gnawing impatience for America to pass the milestone of needing a fellow to fill the post of First Gentleman. This is not to say that I resent or disparage female accomplishment. I admire excellence wherever it is found, and many women occupy plinths in my personal pantheon, including Margaret Thatcher, Gertrude Himmelfarb, Jeane Kirkpatrick, Priscilla Buckley, Jane Austen, Joan Sutherland, Aung San Suu Kyi, George Eliot, Yelena Bonner and Golda Meir.
The Meaning of Hagel
"This is my last election. After my election, I have more flexibility." -- Barack Obama to Dmitry Medvedev, March 26, 2012 WASHINGTON -- The puzzle of the Chuck Hagel nomination for defense secretary is that you normally choose someone of the other party for your Cabinet to indicate a move to the center, but, as The Washington Post editorial board points out, Hagel's foreign policy views are to the *left* of Barack Obama's, let alone the GOP's. Indeed, they are at the fringe of the entire Senate. So what's going on? Message sending. Obama won re-election. He no longer has to trim, to appear more moderate than his true instincts. He has the "flexibility" to be authentically Obama.
Rubbing Our Noses in His Victory and Radicalism
Hey, folks, remember the good old days when candidate Barack Obama at least pretended to be bipartisan and conciliatory? Now it's as if he's on a mission to prove he was faking it. Obama is behaving like a bitter ex-spouse who knows all our hot buttons and delights in pushing them. He is governing by crisis, fear, alienation, cronyism and anti-constitutional fiat. He is openly flaunting his militant radicalism, as if he's trying to provoke us -- and his second term hasn't even begun. He is horrifying all Americans who have the slightest concern about our deficits and debt, refusing to address them, demonizing and obstructing those who are, and flagrantly lying about both by pretending he's the one tending to our national solvency.
Thursday, January 10, 2013
Obama Lurches Left With Pick of Hagel for Defense
Barack Obama, we have been told by his admirers on the left and right, is an instinctive centrist, a moderate always ready to negotiate compromises, a politician deeply interested in the nuances of public policy. His image as a centrist took hold at the 2004 Democratic National Convention, where he gave a speech hailing not the blue states or the red states but the United States of America. But over the course of Obama's first term, this analysis increasingly sounded like wishful thinking. And never more than during the past week, with the nomination of Chuck Hagel to be secretary of defense and with Speaker John Boehner's revelation that in his negotiations last month Obama repeatedly insisted that "we don't have a spending problem." Obama went ahead with the Hagel nomination even though Hagel has been greeted with sharp criticism from many of his fellow Republicans and with eloquent silence by elected Democrats.
Doing the Research The New York Times Won't Do
In Sunday's New York Times, Elisabeth Rosenthal claimed, as the title of her article put it, "More Guns = More Killing." She based this on evidence that would never be permitted in any other context at the Times: (1) anecdotal observations; and (2) bald assertions of an activist, blandly repeated with absolutely no independent fact-checking by the Times. There is an academic, peer-reviewed, long-term study of the effect of various public policies on public, multiple shootings in all 50 states over a 20-year period performed by renowned economists at the University of Chicago and Yale, William Landes and John Lott. It concluded that the only policy to reduce the incidence of, and casualties from, mass shootings are concealed-carry laws. The Times will never mention this study.
When Big Deficits Became Good
As a senator and presidential candidate, Barack Obama said that he detested budget deficits. In 2006, when the aggregate national debt was almost $8 trillion less than today, he blasted George W. Bush's chronic borrowing and refused to vote for upping the debt ceiling: "Increasing America's debt weakens us domestically and internationally. Leadership means that 'the buck stops here.'" In 2008, Obama further blasted Bush's continued Keynesian borrowing: "The problem is, is that the way Bush has done it over the last eight years is to take out a credit card from the Bank of China in the name of our children ... so that we now have over $9 trillion of debt that we are going to have to pay back -- $30,000 for every man, woman and child. That's irresponsible. It's unpatriotic."
'People's Pledge' Made the Warren-Brown Race Worse
"Civility" was a popular buzzword last year when then-Senator Scott Brown and his Democratic challenger Elizabeth Warren signed a much-hyped "People's Pledge" to keep third-party advertising out of their rapidly escalating US Senate contest. "The Senate race in Massachusetts," Fox News cheered, "is going for the civility vote." Springfield's daily paper hailed the candidates' "push for campaign civility," applauding "their efforts to reject the nasty rhetoric spewed by third party groups." A few weeks later, New York Times editorial page editor Andrew Rosenthal lauded Brown and Warren's "mutual disarmament" pact as heartening evidence that some candidates, at least, would hold themselves to a higher standard of "respect for civility, fairness, and the truth." As if.
Junk Laws
We have junk food, junk mail and junk bonds. Now, thanks to our dysfunctional and devious Congress, we have junk laws like the "Taxpayer Relief Act." Junk laws are really nothing new. The people we send to Washington to represent us have been passing legislation larded with pork or special privileges for their friends in business, agriculture and labor since the country was born. Insiders have always known how this cynical bipartisan game is played. But now, thanks to the failure of Congress to deal with the government debt crisis it in large part created, the average American is starting to become aware of these junk bills.
Has Harry Reid Committed a Felony or Just a Misdemeanor?
WASHINGTON -- I have one question about the way Majority Leader Harry Reid has been conducting the Senate. Has he committed a felony or a mere misdemeanor? The wags will say that a politician from Nevada does not commit misdemeanors, but I am in earnest. The difference between whether Dingy Harry -- as he is known by the eminent political scientist Dr. Rush Limbaugh -- shuffles off to a federal prison or merely pays a hefty fine is significant. I suppose we can leave it to the federal prosecutors to decide, but if he gets off on a misdemeanor I urge it also entail mandatory budget counseling. No one would be surprised to hear of Harry being sentenced to a stint at anger management counseling. Why not mandatory budget counseling too?
Hagel and Defense
Biography isn't policy. President Obama's choice for secretary of defense, Chuck Hagel, former Nebraska Republican senator, has a resume most politicians can envy: a clean senatorial record, no ethical lapses and two purple hearts from a war many opposed and many more tried to avoid. Some think Hagel's 2006 comment about "the Jewish lobby" should disqualify him, believing it a code word for anti-Semitic sentiments. There is nothing wrong with criticizing the policies of any Israeli government. Israelis likely do this more than foreigners. It's just that Jews are rightly sensitive to the use of words like these because it may mean the person using them wishes to put the nation and policies of Israel on an equal footing with Israel's enemies who have vowed to destroy it.
The Homeless & the Clueless
Far too many people are up in arms over the dreadful economy we are leaving for our kids and grandkids. I used to be one of them. But ever since the youth of America helped saddle us with Obama, not once, but twice, I say it serves them right. These young shmoes are not only convinced there's a free lunch, but a free breakfast, a free dinner and free healthcare. And, yet, I'm willing to bet, they were just the sort of smug eight-year-olds who delighted in telling their younger siblings that Santa Claus didn't exist. Here in California, the little elves at the Public Utility Commission are all set to green light a new left-wing program that would provide the homeless with free cell phones and free phone service so that "they can reach out to possible employment possibilities and stay connected to family." And let us not overlook those all-important calls to their drug dealers.
A Rally Cry to Tame Spending
"Even victors are by victories undone." -- John Dryden WASHINGTON -- Democrats not allergic to arithmetic must know the cost of their "fiscal cliff" victory. When they flinched from allowing all of George W. Bush's tax rates, especially those on middle-class incomes, to expire, liberalism lost its nerve and began what will be a long slide into ludicrousness. Those temporary rates were enacted in 2001, when only 28 House Democrats supported them, and in 2003, when only seven did. But with the "American Taxpayer Relief Act of 2012" -- did liberals think about that title? -- 172 House Democrats voted to make the Bush income-tax rates permanent for all but 0.7 percent of taxpayers -- individuals earning more than $400,000 and couples earning more than $450,000.