Right Opinion
The best of conservative opinion and commentary, updated daily.
A Vast Moral Difference
Palestinians have a fierce new song to accompany their intensified conflict with Israel. "Strike a Blow at Tel Aviv," recorded by Shadi al-Bourini and Qassem al-Najjar, was posted last week on various Palestinian websites, including the Facebook page of the TV show Fenjan Al-Balad, which describes its mission as "trying to influence young Palestinian society for the better."
Will Obama Allow Americans to Practice Catholicism? No!
"Catholicism teaches that it is a sin to use, provide, or otherwise support contraception." These words are not from the Catholic Catechism or a sermon by a Catholic bishop. They are excerpted from the preliminary injunction U.S. District Judge Robert H. Cleland issued last month temporarily stopping the Obama administration from forcing a family-owned outdoor-power-equipment company to comply with an Obamacare regulation that requires virtually all health care plans to provide women (but not men) with co-pay-free coverage for sterilizations, contraceptives and abortion-inducing drugs. The judge stated the Catholic teaching on contraception as an undisputed fact of the case. He could have made similar statements about sterilization and abortion.
Drug Dealing and Legal Stealing
At the Cosmopolitan, a luxury hotel and casino in Las Vegas, "just the right amount of wrong" is the naughty fun you get for $200 a night. At the $57-a-night Motel Caswell in Tewksbury, Mass., just the right amount of wrong is what the federal government says it needs to take the business from the family that has operated it for 57 years. That amount, it turns out, is tiny. During a recent trial before a U.S. magistrate judge in Boston, a federal prosecutor cited one heroin overdose and 14 incidents in which guests or visitors were arrested for drug crimes at the motel from 1994 through 2008 -- a minuscule percentage of the 200,000 or so room rentals during that period -- to show the business is a "dangerous property" ripe for seizure.
The Message Romney Missed
The post mortems on the presidential campaign continue to pour in, the ones on the botched Romney effort the more interesting (and more depressing for those of us who supported him). President Obama was clearly vulnerable, and Mitt Romney clearly positioned to defeat him. So what went wrong? Let me add my analysis. Three words: Message. Messenger. Messaging. The messenger was flawed, unwilling to take risks, unprepared for the Obama political wrecking machine, left dazed and confused Election Night. If inept messaging could be deemed a felony, this campaign was a crime against humanity. I've never seen worse commercials more badly placed on the wrong media than this. In Virginia, we had to suffer through 10 gazillion TV ads attacking China for stealing American technology. *China?*
The Death of American Religion
In the aftermath of the re-election of President Barack Obama, conservatives searched the heavens and the earth for answers. Some suggested that Mitt Romney lost because Republicans didn't reach out more to Latino voters; some suggested that Romney lost because his "get out the vote" system fell apart on Election Day. Romney himself said that he lost because President Obama separated voting groups with particularly calibrated "gifts" designed to curry their favor. In truth, Mitt Romney lost for the same reason that traditional marriage lost on Election Day: America is becoming a less religious country. And that bodes ill for the future of the United States. It's not that religious voters didn't turn out for Romney. They did in droves. Fully 26 percent of voters -- 3 percent more than in 2004 -- were white evangelicals who supported Romney 79 to 21. Fifty-three percent of the electorate identified as Protestant; another 25 percent identified as Catholic.
About That Fiscal Cliff
Yikes, we're headed toward a fiscal cliff! It will crush the economy! Or so the media and politicians tell us. The "cliff" is a series of tax increases and budget cuts that automatically go into effect Jan. 1 unless Congress acts. Will Congress act? It will! I see the future: The politicians will meet and fret and hold press conferences and predict disaster. Then they'll reach a deal. It will just postpone the reckoning, but they'll congratulate themselves, and the media will move on. America, however, continues to go broke.
The Israel/Hamas Endgame: An 'Acceptable' Number of Missile
There was a political cartoon published a few years ago that neatly summed up the expectations of the so-called International Community with respect to Islamic terror. It showed two prize fighters and a referee. One of the fighters represented the United States, and the other represented al-Qaeda. In the first frame of the cartoon, the referee is going over a long a list of rules that the American fighter must abide by during the match. In the second frame, the ref turns to the al-Qaeda fighter. "You can do anything you want," he says. As the latest Israeli-Hamas confrontation looks on the verge of ramping up, absolutely nothing has changed.
Obama Needs a Family Plan
President Obama has several stated ambitions for his presidency. He wants it to be "transformative." He wants to unite Americans of all parties. He wants to build an economy from the middle class out (whatever that means), and he wants to help what you might call the domestic refugees of America's economic transformation. Given the principled disagreements dividing left and right in America, it's hard to see how he can accomplish these goals when it comes to conventional economic policy. But there is one area where Obama could be transformative and bipartisan while helping both the middle class and the poor. He could show some leadership on the state of the black family, and the American family in general.
Democracy and Majority Rule
President Barack Obama narrowly defeated Gov. Mitt Romney in the popular vote 51 percent to 48 percent. In the all-important Electoral College, the difference was larger, with Obama winning 303 electoral votes and Romney 206. Let's not think so much about the election's outcome but instead ask: What's so good about democracy and majority rule? How many decisions in our day-to-day lives would we like to be made through majority rule or the democratic process? How about the decision to watch a football game or "Law and Order"? What about whether to purchase a Chevrolet Volt or a Toyota Prius? Would you like the decision of whether to have turkey or ham for Thanksgiving dinner to be made through the democratic process? Were such decisions made in the political arena, most of us would deem it tyranny.
Hotels and Hassles
Few things can make you appreciate home like staying in a hotel. This includes not only low-budget, bare bones hotels but also sweepingly large and ornate luxury hotels. What many hotels seem to have in common are needless hassles. Since most people who stay in hotels do so while traveling, and stay only a few days in a given hotel, you might think that those who run hotels would want to make it easy for someone who arrives a little tired (or a lot tired) from traveling to use the various devices they find in their hotel room. But you would be wrong. That thought never seems to have crossed their minds. Recently, at a well-known luxury hotel in Los Angeles, I found that something as simple as turning on a television set can require a phone call to the front desk, and then waiting for the arrival of a technician. Then it took another phone call to get a list of which of the dozens of channels were for which networks.
Giving Thanks for America's Givers
Chandler Osborn, 14, watched Fox News coverage of Hurricane Sandy last week and decided to take action. "Last weekend, me and my younger brother, Cooper, 7, did a fundraiser in Colorado Springs to help the people" affected by the storm, he told me. The siblings set up a table at the Colorado Springs Sugar Plum Festival, gave away patriotic car magnets and pins for any donations, and collected signatures on a giant banner of support for the victims. "We raised $612 in one weekend." The Osborns joined countless Americans across the country who stepped up, in small and large ways, to help their fellow citizens in need. While this election season was a contentious battle between makers and takers, this Thanksgiving season is a time to honor the givers who keep the nation's private philanthropic spirit alive.
So the Voters Think This Is Paradise
Our country has faced many problems and gone through many changes, but finally Americans have come together and said, *Yes! Right here -- this is exactly where we want America.* At least, that's what the recent election tells us -- the American people resoundingly said, "Don't change a thing." They chose Barack Obama as president to propose bold, new ideas to control the economy, a Republican House to stop most of that, and a Democratic Senate to refrain from passing one of those pesky, restrictive budgets.
Another Palestinian Fraud Exposed
The pro-Hamas media feed the terrorists' propaganda machine.
Americans Are Pro-Israel: Obama's Party? Not So Much!
It seems every time the Republicans lose a presidential election, white board-toting architects and backroom strategists descend on the Sunday talk shows. Republicans must dump the social issues. Defending the right to life of unborn children and upholding the civil right of marriage is just costing too much support with the voters. We have to *moderate* our positions, they say. It's as if the Second Officer on the *Titanic* were to run down six flights of stairs and yell at the grimy, coal dust covered sweating stokers shoveling coal in the engine rooms: *This is all your fault!* What we saw on Election Day was a strong turnout among Evangelicals and Catholics for Mitt Romney. Evangelicals backed the former governor even more strongly than his fellow Mormons did. Catholics who attend Mass regularly were also strong backers of the GOP nominee.
Taking Down Twinkies
Twinkies are selling for hundreds of dollars on eBay. Union membership has been dropping steadily over the past decade. Sound unrelated? They aren't. The fate of the popular spongecake was in the hands of the unionized men and women who work for Hostess Brands Inc. Or perhaps I should say "worked" -- past tense. A union-backed strike has killed what the Great Depression couldn't. Hostess announced last week that it was suspending operations and would be laying off more than 18,000 employees. (News came late Monday that both sides had agreed to a mediation.)
Why Conservatives Should Cheer Up
"Barack Obama won because he recognized a new America." Or maybe an America more fluid, more insubstantial than post-election wisdom is ready to grant. You can't always tell about "new" -- a truth the human race rarely acknowledges. We'll see whether James Carville's and Stan Greenberg's words from a Democracy Corps survey stand up better than the consensus of November 1965, following the Lyndon Johnson-led slaughter of almost every Republican downwind from Barry Goldwater. Johnson, father of the Great Society, was all but run out of Washington on a rail after mucking up the Vietnam War.
How the New York Times Covers Evil
The way in which the New York Times reports good vs. evil is one of the most important stories of our time. Take the war between Israel and Hamas that is taking place right now. This war is as morally clear as wars get. Hamas is a terrorist organization dedicated to annihilating the Jewish state. It runs a theocratic totalitarian state in Gaza, with no individual liberty and no freedom of speech or press. In a nutshell, Hamas is a violent, fascist organization. Israel, meanwhile, is one the world's most humane states, not to mention a democracy that is so tolerant that Arab members of its parliament are free to express admiration for Hamas.
The GOP: A Most Unpopular Majority Party
Isn't it tragically ironic that the man who rode the perfect storm into public office on the horse of national unity has now perfected the politics of division so spectacularly that he won re-election despite the worst record in decades? For when you sift through the rubble from the Republican Party's 2012 nuclear catastrophe, you find consistent clues pointing to a simple explanation: We lost because Barack Obama convinced enough voters that he cares more about people than Mitt Romney, a rich white guy who is contemptuous of the poor, women, blacks and seniors. Never mind results; Obama cares and Republicans don't. In his fundamentally transformed America, Obama has replaced "e pluribus unum" with "us against them."
Groundhog Day: Middle East Version
In the film "Groundhog Day," Bill Murray wakes up each morning and relives the previous day. A similar scenario is playing out in the Middle East between Israel and her enemies. The deadly "movie" always goes like this: Israel is shelled or attacked by terrorists groups, often called "militants" by the media, each one with the same goal: Israel's elimination. After demonstrating considerable restraint of the kind that would never be tolerated by any other nation, Israel fires back. Suddenly, the world awakens from its indifference. World leaders, who said little when Israeli civilians were wounded and killed, now urge "restraint" by "both sides," as if a moral equivalency exists between victim and predator.
What Price 'Fairness'?
Realistic Republicans understand that President Obama and the Democrats head into fiscal cliff negotiations in a far stronger bargaining position now than in 2011. When voters were asked on Nov. 6 whether they favored raising taxes to reduce the deficit, a total of 60 percent said yes (47 percent favored increasing taxes for those who earn $250,000 or more, and 13 percent approved tax increases for all). So taxes will be going up. As a matter of political strategy -- not to say survival -- Republicans will have to agree to raise taxes on those defined as rich. It's more than just the exit poll on support for tax increases. Republicans must also contend with the Pew poll that asked who would be more to blame if a fiscal cliff deal were not reached. Before a single meeting has been held or talking point fed to the press, 29 percent said they'd blame President Obama, while 53 percent said they'd blame Republicans in Congress.