Right Opinion
The best of conservative opinion and commentary, updated daily.
Second Terms
Now that the biggest parlor game in the world "Who will be the next President" is over, the next parlor game that has us obsessing here in Our Nation's Capital is: Who is in and who is out in President Obama's second-term Cabinet and senior White House staff? Putting together the senior team for a second terms are far different from the first term. Typically -- unless the incoming President has been the VP -- no one has a clue as to where they're going and how they're going to get there. Oh, there are professional members of the Transition Team who have served in previous Administrations, but the boss is likely to be overwhelmed with the number of decisions that have to be made in the relatively few weeks between election day in early November and Inauguration Day on January 20.
Pushing Conservatives Off the Fiscal Cliff
The conventional wisdom has emerged that in order to avoid the so-called "fiscal cliff," politicians in Washington must agree to some method of tax increases ("revenue") -- which will be real, even if low taxes are not the cause of our ills -- alongside some kind of promise of spending restraint on entitlement programs, which is our problem, and which no one believes Washington will restrain. The American left and our "objective" journalists -- same thing, I know -- are not helping the nation balance its budget. As usual, these partisan hacks are obsessed with tearing the Republican coalition apart, limb from limb. By empowering the GOP moderates, they drive the conservatives into exile. These liberals are dishonest but not dumb. They have no intention of honoring a pledge to curtail wasteful spending. What they want is GOP civil war.
Parting Company
For decades, it has been obvious that there are irreconcilable differences between Americans who want to control the lives of others and those who wish to be left alone. Which is the more peaceful solution: Americans using the brute force of government to beat liberty-minded people into submission or simply parting company? In a marriage, where vows are ignored and broken, divorce is the most peaceful solution. Similarly, our constitutional and human rights have been increasingly violated by a government instituted to protect them. Americans who support constitutional abrogation have no intention of mending their ways. Since Barack Obama's re-election, hundreds of thousands of petitions for secession have reached the White House. Some people have argued that secession is unconstitutional, but there's absolutely nothing in the Constitution that prohibits it. What stops secession is the prospect of brute force by a mighty federal government, as witnessed by the costly War of 1861. Let's look at the secession issue.
Legalize Insider Trading
Insider trading leads the news again, casting a cloud over Steven Cohen's SAC Capital Advisors $14 billion hedge fund. The SEC charged Mathew Martoma, who used to manage a SAC Capital division, with using inside information about tests on an Alzheimer's drug to trade stock of the company working on it. The media love this stuff. I imagine reporters sitting around saying: "The SEC finally will punish greedy Wall Street! These tycoons rig the game -- cheating is how they acquire $14 billion -- and now noble government prosecutors will bring justice." But this is nonsense. Government prosecutors are as ruthless and greedy as anyone.
Why Republicans Are to Blame for the Fiscal Cliff
America is about to plunge over the so-called fiscal cliff -- and Americans are fighting mad about it. According to the latest polls, 77 percent of Americans believe that the fiscal cliff -- a combination of automatic tax increases and spending cuts set to kick in at the beginning of 2013 -- will hurt them personally. A full 70 percent of Americans want a compromise solution. And 67 percent believe that political leaders will act like "spoiled children." Most important, though, Americans blame Republicans for the situation. While just 34 percent of Americans blame President Obama for the current fiscal cliff impasse, 45 percent blame Congressional Republicans. This seemingly makes no sense: it's Obama who has incentive to watch America fly off the fiscal cliff, raising taxes and slashing the military budget in his wake. Republicans would prefer to avoid both eventualities. Actually, Republicans want to avoid the fiscal cliff so much that they're talking about eliminating tax deductions, even as Democrats refuse to put a single spending cut on the table. Democrats are the roadblock to a solution here.
Egypt's 'Moderate' Despot
What do you call a leader of a theocratic and cultish movement with a deep and clear disdain for democracy who suddenly assumes dictatorial powers? A "moderate," of course. Ever since the Muslim Brotherhood broke its promise to stay out of Egypt's presidential election in the aftermath of the revolution, many Western observers have been in denial about what has been going on. In less than half a year, Mohamed Morsi has deftly built the foundation for despotism.
Obama the Job-Killing Owl-Killer
Welcome to the pretzel logic of liberal environmental protection: In order to "save" owls, the Obama administration is going to shoot them dead. This is not -- I repeat *not* -- an Onion parody. Over the Thanksgiving holiday, the White House released a big fat policy turkey: its final critical habitat rule for the endangered northern spotted owl. The Obama plan will lock up 9.6 million acres of land (mostly, but not all, federal) in Oregon, Washington and northern California. This is nearly double the acreage set aside by the Bush administration. Thousands of timber workers (along with untold thousands of related support jobs) will be threatened in the name of sparing a few thousand spotted owls from extinction.
An Overdue Book
If everyone in America had read Stephen Moore's new book, "Who's The Fairest of Them All?", Barack Obama would have lost the election in a landslide. The point here is not to say, "Where was Stephen Moore when we needed him?" A more apt question might be, "Where was the whole economics profession when we needed them?" Where were the media? For that matter, where were the Republicans? Since "Who's The Fairest of Them All?" was published in October, there was little chance that it would affect this year's election. But this little gem of a book exposes, in plain language and with easily understood facts, the whole house of cards of assumptions, fallacies and falsehoods which constitute the liberal vision of the economy.
Will John Boehner Fund Obama's Attack on Catholics?
Will House Speaker John Boehner give President Barack Obama the money he needs to implement a regulation that Boehner himself described as an unconstitutional attack on religious freedom that forces Catholics to cooperate in immoral acts? The Constitution gives the House of Representatives, which now has a Republican majority, the power to deny funding for any act by the executive branch. But does Boehner have the courage to stand up against the president and use this lawful authority to protect religious liberty? On Feb. 8, 2012, Boehner went to the well of the House and laid down a marker.
The Fine Print in the Government's Privacy Policy
In 1986, The American Banker defined email as "a trademark of CompuServe," Computerworld noted that sending a single message required a 10-minute phone call, and InfoWorld described "a pilot scheme that will allow users of one system to send messages to mailbox holders on another." That was the year Congress enacted the Electronic Communications Privacy Act (ECPA), so it is hardly surprising that the once forward-looking law seems antiquated today. In fact, ECPA is so out of date that it has left us vulnerable to government snooping in ways most Americans do not appreciate. With the Senate Judiciary Committee considering possible fixes this week, now is a good time to reflect on how technological advances and misguided legal reasoning have eroded the Fourth Amendment guarantee against unreasonable searches of our "papers and effects," which nowadays take forms the Framers could not have anticipated.
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'Pharaoh' Morsi
The diplomatic hosannas for Egyptian President Mohamed Morsi following his brokering of the recent ceasefire between Hamas and Israel were still being heard even as the former head of the Muslim Brotherhood started behaving like a pharaoh. Morsi "temporarily" seized new powers that, among other things, forbid judicial review of his policies. What ought to amaze us is how many times Western and especially U.S. diplomats have gone to the Arab-Muslim well, believing they will find something different at the bottom. Egypt, Hamas and even Iran string us along like a cad with a bevy of women in his orbit because we refuse to acknowledge their true intent.
Social Conservatives: GOP Can't Live Without Them
One of the largest elephants in the GOP's post-election room is the fate of Christian and other social conservatives. Party honchos can't just wish this problem away -- or, maybe they can. There has been increasing hostility toward Christian involvement in politics, and the animus hasn't been solely from the left. To be sure, Democrats have taken the lead, demonizing conservative Christians as science-challenged scolds who don't care about women's "reproductive rights," but there is plenty of antipathy from certain elements within the Republican Party, as well. Many establishment and some libertarian Republicans have long looked upon Christian conservatives with mild, condescending contempt. Party leaders from Barry Goldwater to Alan Simpson have openly derided Christians and lamented their negative influence on the party and on the overall political climate.
Jensen and Flynn
Anyone who has followed the decades-long controversies over the role of genes in IQ scores will recognize the names of the two leading advocates of opposite conclusions on that subject-- Professor Arthur R. Jensen of the University of California at Berkeley and Professor James R. Flynn, an American expatriate at the University of Otago in New Zealand. What is so unusual in the academic world of today is that Professor Flynn's latest book, "Are We Getting Smarter?" is dedicated to Arthur Jensen, whose integrity he praises, even as he opposes his conclusions. That is what scholarship and science are supposed to be like, but so seldom are.
Cuban-American Vote Explains Everything
If you want to understand why President Obama was re-elected despite a largely unsuccessful presidency and almost unprecedentedly high and continuous unemployment, just look at the Cuban-American vote. In fact, if you want to understand America today -- specifically, why it is in decline -- just look at the Cuban-American vote. As reported in the Wall Street Journal, "The president captured 48 percent of the Cuban-American vote in Florida -- a record high for a Democrat." Democratic presidential nominees went from 25 percent of the Cuban-American vote in 2000, to 29 percent in 2004, to 35 percent in 2008 to 48 percent on 2012.
Thoughts on Secession
Muh fellah Amurricans -- I reproduce the speech patterns our media correlate with conservative thought -- hit looks like we ain't getting out of this here Union, what with secession not legal, way them educated fellers tell it. Not legal? Rather a bold statement, I would say. Last time anyone attempted formal withdrawal from the United States, something like 125 years ago, the armaments of the United States blocked the path to independence. The Union endured. But that settled only the practical, not the theoretical, side of the question. Enough said anyway about the Late Unpleasantness of 1861-65. What about the secession movement -- if you care to call it a movement -- suddenly drawing so many gasps of horror and indignation, so many hoots at the screwballs whooping it up for flat out withdrawal from the Union, any state that might want to? More than 700,000 signatures on various secession petitions around the nation! Northwards of 100,000 in Texas alone! It's hard not to notice.
Sore Winners
Post-election season is a time for healing, for putting aside the rancor of a long campaign and rediscovering what unites us. It has not been that way this year. Prudence, one would think, if not generosity of spirit, should impel Democrats to be magnanimous in victory. Romney did receive about 48 percent of the vote. A little modesty among the winners would seem to be in order. Instead, the gloating has been extravagant. Worse, liberals have gorged themselves on the same junk food they enjoyed during the campaign and cannot seem to resist under any circumstances -- slandering their opponents. The smears are so casual and commonplace that we become weary of responding. But we must protest, or someone new to politics may assume that we concede the point.
Yes, Slash Farm Subsidies -- but Don't Stop There
Thanksgiving is behind us. The fiscal "cliff" looms ahead. And in less than six weeks, Massachusetts will have a new senator. Let's try to link them all in a single column. As a candidate for the US Senate, Elizabeth Warren showed a livelier interest in raising federal revenues than in cutting government spending. But about one spending target the senator-elect has been admirably blunt. When asked to name some items in the federal budget she'd like to see slashed, the first program she cites is one of the most indefensible: agriculture subsidies. To be sure, it's easier to oppose welfare for agribusiness when you represent Massachusetts, which ranks 44th among the 50 states in federal farm payments, and where only 7.7 percent of local farms collect subsidies. But that doesn't alter the fact that farm subsidies are egregiously bad policy in every way, and Warren will deserve hearty bipartisan applause if she leads a serious effort to eliminate them.