Right Opinion
The best of conservative opinion and commentary, updated daily.
Wednesday, December 26, 2012
Who Is Too Unbalanced to Be Armed?
The day of Adam Lanza's murderous assault on Sandy Hook Elementary School, Mike Rogers said stricter gun control would not be an appropriate response. "The more realistic discussion," said the Republican congressman from Michigan, "is how do we target people with mental illness who use firearms?" Last week, another Republican congressman, Howard Coble of North Carolina, agreed that "it's more of a mental health problem than a gun problem right now." And last Friday, when the National Rifle Association broke its silence on the Sandy Hook massacre, the group's executive vice president, Wayne LaPierre, called for "an active national database of the mentally ill." Psychiatrically informed policies aimed at controlling people rather than weapons are popular in the wake of mass shootings, especially among those who rightly worry that gun restrictions will unfairly burden law-abiding Americans while failing to prevent future attacks. Yet treating gun violence as "a mental health problem" presents similar dangers.
Seven Things Parents Can Do Post-Newtown Without Government
These simple common-sense steps are adapted from a post I published on my blog after the horrific Newtown, Conn., massacre. Our hearts ache, but we are not completely helpless or hopeless in the face of evil and the unknown. And we are not alone. This Christmas, cherish life, keep faith and practice self-empowerment.
Tuesday, December 25, 2012
Charity Freely Given Yields Gifts Twofold
Giving benefits both benefactor and recipient
Questions the Press Doesn't Ask
Merry Christmas to the Fourth Estate! Hope you've enjoyed your goose or turkey or whatever your family tradition includes (latkes for those who are Jewish). When you return to work, there are a few loose ends on which you might want to follow up. "Follow up." It's a term that has gone out of style in the age of Obama. You members of the press have become remarkably uncurious since he's been in the White House. A blanket of benevolent uncuriousness smothers news about Obama administration wrongdoing. The Secretary of State, who took "full responsibility" for the Benghazi debacle, has not once been publicly questioned about it. Called to testify before a House committee this week, she pleaded illness -- a fall resulting in a concussion. She says she will testify in January. Perhaps members of Congress will ask what the press has not. Who made the decision to deny the requested additional security to our diplomats? Where is a copy of the order President Obama says he issued requiring that "everything possible" be done to save our personnel who were under attack? (Former Assistant Secretary of Defense Bing West notes that such orders are always written down.) Were Navy seals stationed in Benghazi told to "stand down" rather than render assistance? Who told Susan Rice to say that the attack grew out of a protest, when there was no protest?
Random Thoughts
Random thoughts on the passing scene: When I was growing up, an older member of the family used to say, "What you don't know would make a big book." Now that I am an older member of the family, I would say to anyone, "What you don't know would fill more books than the Encyclopedia Britannica." At least half of our society's troubles come from know-it-alls, in a world where nobody knows even 10 percent of all. Some people seem to think that, if life is not fair, then the answer is to turn more of the nation's resources over to politicians -- who will, of course, then spend these resources in ways that increase the politicians' chances of getting reelected. The annual outbursts of intolerance toward any display of traditional Christmas scenes, or even daring to call a Christmas tree by its name, show that today's liberals are by no means liberal. Behind the mist of their lofty words, the totalitarian mindset shows through.
The Perfect Gift
Most people who haven't finished their shopping are starting to worry about what gifts to give a friend, relative or spouse. Quick, what did you give or receive last year? How about two years ago? Most of us can't remember, unless it was a big-ticket item. What if you could give a gift that mattered; one that literally kept on giving and improved the life of another person? Would you buy that gift? Two years ago I bought two gifts for people I have never met. One was a goat and the other a sewing class. Both went to people in countries who need just a little to enable them to take care of themselves and their families.
A Yeshiva Boy and Christmas
When I was 20, I spent my junior year in college in England. When classes let out for the last two weeks of December, I traveled to Morocco, where something life-changing occurred. What happened was that I felt a longing, even an emptiness, I had never before experienced. Something was missing from my life, but I could not at first identify it. I knew it was not about being without friends or family -- after all, I hadn't been with family or friends for the previous three months. And it wasn't about being alone -- I had gotten used to traveling alone. This sense of missing something kept gnawing at me, until one day I realized what it was: I missed the Christmas season. I missed that time of year in America.
Lessons From the Bork Debacle
It's always best, I find, not to talk too rapturously about Ye Olde Days: days which, on careful inspection, yield evidence of problems aplenty. I won't assert, therefore, that no public figure ever received in earlier times a public evisceration comparable to that inflicted on the late Robert Bork, presidential nominee in 1987 to a seat on the U. S. Supreme Court. I will make just two claims: 1) The political-journalistic assault on Judge Bork was indecent, slanderous, and hysterical -- a disgrace to ethics and standards all across the board; and 2) it ought to have warned us what a mess our national life was becoming. Americans under 35 or so won't remember the scandal of the Bork hearings: the slimy attacks on a distinguished jurist, the distortions of his record, and most of all, the out-and-out lies spun by public figures unwilling to admit they knew better.
Monday, December 24, 2012
Why Kerry Remains Unfit for Command
A look back at the ugly truths the Swift Boat Vets brought to light about the senator.
A Party That Doesn't Think With Its Skin
South Carolina's conservative Republican governor, Nikki Haley, is the daughter of Sikh immigrants from Punjab. US Representative Tim Scott of Charleston, a Tea Party hero who was raised in poverty by a divorced single mother, is South Carolina's first black Republican lawmaker in more than a century. To anyone who shares the ideals that animate modern conservatism -- limited government, economic liberty, color-blind equality -- it stands to reason that Haley and Scott are conservatives. And their Republican affiliation should surprise no one familiar with the GOP's long history as the party of minority civil rights.
Quoting Voltaire, Shakespeare ... & Carville?
Voltaire, the 18th century philosopher, said, "To learn who rules over you, simply find out who you are not allowed to criticize." These days, the obvious answer would be Barack Obama. But that wouldn't even approach the correct answer. In our craven, oh so politically correct society, the right answer would include blacks -- both in and out of government -- illegal aliens, gay activists, Muslims, disability scammers, welfare recipients, teachers and other public sector union members. Shakespeare famously wrote: "This above all: to thine own self be true, and it must follow, as the night the day, thou canst not then be false to any man." To which, I say, what unmitigated poppycock! I realize that when a guy starts tossing around words like "thine," "thou" and "canst," it tends to make it sound like it's coming straight from God. But blarney is blarney even if it's attributed to the Bard of Avon. If a con man fully accepts his own corrupt nature for what it is, if, in other words, he is being true to himself, it seems to me that being false to other men is nothing more or less than his chosen vocation. It is what he evidently was born to do, much like Mozart was born to make music, Rembrandt was born to paint and Harry Reid was born to oversee funeral arrangements.
Christmas 2012 -- Six Words
**Editor's Note:** This is an edited version of the column from Christmas 2003 which was written from Tikrit and Baghdad. At the time, according to the Congressional Research Service, there were 130,600 U.S. troops in Iraq alone when this was written. This Christmas, most of them are home. But, as we close 2012 we still have American 174,000 military personnel plus tens of thousands of American civilians stationed in almost every country of the world. They won't be home for Christmas this week. Let's not forget they are still out there. On post.
Here Comes the Cliff
Last week, Republicans proved they are not a governing party. Next week we will see whether Democrats are. A governing party would have, reluctantly, passed Speaker John Boehner's Plan B, which would have preserved the current tax rates on everyone with incomes under $1 million. Passage would have put Senate Democrats on the spot, since they voted for a similar measure in 2010. They might have engaged in negotiations with Boehner that could have been more productive than his negotiations with Barack Obama this month and in the summer of 2011. Then, as Bob Woodward reports in his book "The Price of Power," Boehner and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid fashioned an agreement after Obama had broken off his grand bargain talks with Boehner by increasing his demands.
Sunday, December 23, 2012
Question John Kerry Long and Hard!
Sen. John Kerry has a long and dubious record in foreign policy. In the 1970s, he testified *against* his fellow Vietnam War veterans before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. He charged that they were violating the Geneva Conventions every day in Vietnam. Some POWs were outraged at Kerry's disloyal statements. They said they had been tortured by their Communist captors trying to force them to make such untrue statements.
The Filibuster Stalker
WASHINGTON -- Ideas are not responsible for the people who believe them, but when evaluating Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid's ideas for making the Senate more like the House of Representatives, consider the source. Reid is just a legislative mechanic trying to make Congress' machinery efficiently responsive to his party's progressivism. And proper progressives think the Constitution, understood as a charter of limited government, is unconstitutional. They think the "living" Constitution gives government powers sufficient for whatever its ambitions are, enabling it to respond quickly to clamorous majorities. Hence the progressive campaign to substantially weaken the ability of senators to use filibusters to delay action.
Saturday, December 22, 2012
The Iceman Cometh
In the spirit of the season I will limit comments on my opponents on the other side of the climate issue, except to say they probably should have kept quiet on how warm it's been. It seems like every time they use the U.S. as an example of global warming -- particularly laughable this winter when much of the land masses of the Northern Hemisphere are well below normal -- the weather turns around and silences them. Another example of that will occur over the next few weeks. The cold is not only coming, but like some other winters that started warm (meteorological winter actually starts December 5, the 3 month coldest period of the year, so we're about 20% through) it's coming with a fury that will be much more like the winters 2 and 3 years ago, than last year's blowtorch. In a classic balancing act of Mother Nature, the heat of July in the central part of the U.S. may be rivaled by the cold in January that sets in. In fact, the overall pattern looks opposite of last winter.
Don't Blame Boehner
When you lose an election, you get frustrated. When you're sitting in a subpar 2 percent economy, and are faced with tax hikes rather than marginal rate reductions, you get even more frustrated. And when you're staring at $47 trillion in spending over the next 10 years, and $8.6 trillion in deficits, your frustration levels climb even higher. These are among the frustrations that led a number of House Republicans to pull back from Speaker John Boehner's so-called Plan B.
Surprise! Surprise!
In the old days, I don't recall a lot of things surprising me. I'm not saying I could predict Kentucky Derby winners, but I don't remember saying things like "Who would have guessed?" or "Imagine that!" or even "I never saw that coming." Now that I'm an old guy, hardly a day goes by that I'm not surprised by something. And rarely, I hasten to add, in a good way. I'm not just referring to Obama's re-election, either, although that certainly knocked me for a loop. In spite of the pollsters predicting his victory, I refused to accept their conclusions. It seemed to me those guys weren't reading tea leaves; they were smoking them. To this day, I'm still asking myself what happened. In fact, if someone had assured me that Obama was going to receive some ten million fewer votes than he had scored in 2008, I not only would have been convinced that Romney was going to win, but that it would be a landslide. But who would have guessed that Romney would receive two million fewer votes than John McCain, who ran a campaign that reminded most people of the one waged by Michael ("Hey look at me, I'm sitting in a tank and looking like a major doofus") Dukakis?
From The Comedy Store
The White House allowed Susan Rice to withdraw her name from consideration for Secretary of State. No one doubts her ability. Susan Rice lied to the American people on all five Sunday talk shows, breaking Hillary Clinton's one-day record by two interviews.
Christmas 2012
EPHRATA, PA -- Five years ago, this annual Christmas column was written while our Fox News "War Stories" team was embedded with the U.S. Army's 3rd Infantry Division south of Baghdad. A year earlier, the Christmas 2006 column was written in Ramadi, Iraq, while we were embedded with 1st Battalion, 6th Marines in what was then the bloodiest place on the planet. In 2005, this column originated with 3d Battalion, 7th Marines and the 2nd Brigade of the 28th Infantry Division, Pennsylvania National Guard, in Anbar Province. In the days before Christmas that year, we were able to document the first free elections ever held in an Arab country. It's been like that for most of the last 11 years -- ever since the horrific terror attacks of 9/11. In the days before celebrating the birthday of the Prince of Peace, we have been able to keep company with America's heroes. But this year, after being embedded with U.S. special operators and the 3rd Battalion, 8th Marines in Afghanistan, we returned home in time for Thanksgiving. Instead of composing this column in an armored vehicle on the way to a dusty outpost in the shadows of the Hindu Kush, I'm doing so aboard a comfortable Premier motor coach en route to a book signing.