Right Opinion

Got Racism?

Liberal racism sightings have become like a lunatic's version of "Where's Waldo?" Kevin Baker of Harper's magazine says Romney's referring to his "five boys" in last week's debate was how he "slyly found a way" to call Obama a "boy." Says Baker: "How the right's hard-core racists must have howled at that!" MSNBC's Chris Matthews says the word "apartment" is racist because black people live in apartments. He also says the word "Chicago" is racist because -- despite its well-known reputation as the home of Al Capone and the Daley machine -- a lot of black people live there, too. (And don't get him started on "Chicago apartments"!)

Shooting Down the 2nd Amendment, One Lawsuit at a Time

It was one of those little stories that most people miss, even more so when it is released during a heated presidential election. But it is one that is critically important because it represents an unprecedented power grab by the one profession that has arguably done more damage to America than any other. If Americans don't demand an end to this nonsense, we have no one to blame but ourselves. The details of the story are both simple and infuriating: a New York appeals court in has ruled that a former high school athlete shot in 2003 can sue -- the companies that made and distributed the handgun used to shoot him.

Financial Peace Begins at Home

Humpty Dumpty Over Recess

WASHINGTON -- When on Jan. 20, 2009, Barack Obama swore to defend the Constitution, he did not mean all of it. He evidently believes that the provision quoted above merely expresses the Framers' now anachronistic anxieties about abuses of executive power. (Jefferson's lengthy catalog of George III's abuses is called the Declaration of Independence.) So on Jan. 4, 2012, Obama simply ignored the Recess Clause. He was in his "We can't wait!" -- for Congress and legality -- mode, as he was when he unilaterally rewrote laws pertaining to welfare, immigration and education. On Jan. 4, he used recess appointments to fill three seats on the National Labor Relations Board, even though the Senate said it was not in recess. Obama's cheeky Humpty Dumpty rejoinder was: *I* decide what "recess" means. Now a court must decide whether the Constitution means what it says.

Obama's Game Changes

Usually after a presidential debate, both sides spin the results. But after the first face-off between President Obama and challenger Mitt Romney, Obama's exasperated handlers made no such effort. How could they when most opinion polls revealed that two-thirds of viewers thought Obama clearly lost? Within minutes of the parting handshake, the liberal base went ballistic. Bill Maher, Chris Matthews and Michael Moore all but accused Obama of embarrassing the progressive cause. The post-debate spin focused not on whether the president had been creamed by challenger Mitt Romney, but rather on how that had been possible.

Needed: A New Foreign Policy

On Monday, Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney delivered a foreign policy speech to cadets at the Virginia Military Institute in Lexington, Va. He was correct in his indictment of the Obama administration for its numerous failures -- especially in the Middle East -- and his embrace of Ronald Reagan's "peace through strength" philosophy. A strong and respected America is less likely to be attacked. The Obama administration's approach to foreign policy has been one of apology, genuflection to dictators and inconsistency. "...it is the responsibility of our president to use America's great power to shape history," Romney told the VMI cadets. "Not to lead from behind, leaving our destiny at the mercy of events. Unfortunately, that's exactly where we find ourselves in the Middle East under President Obama."

A Lawyer by Training, Obama Ignore Rules of Law

"The Illegal-Donor Loophole" is the headline of a Daily Beast story by Peter Schweizer of the conservative Government Accountability Institute and Peter Boyer, former reporter at The New Yorker and The New York Times. The article tells how Obama.com, a website owned by an Obama fundraiser who lives in China but has visited the Obama White House 11 times, sends solicitations mostly to foreign email addresses and links to the Obama campaign website's donation page. The Obama website, unlike those of most campaigns, doesn't ask for the three- or four-digit credit card verification number. That makes it easier for donors to use fictitious names and addresses to send money in.

The Essential Obama

WASHINGTON -- Well, apparently I am not crazy after all. The polls have caught up with me, and they -- aprŠs le d‚bat -- are coming around to my point of view. Governor Mitt Romney is ahead in the race for the White House, and he will probably be residing at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue in 2013. I have been saying it for weeks, recognizing that the polls are weighted too heavily toward the Democratic candidate, employ too small a sampling -- as little as nine percent of the electorate -- and do not take into account the most important issue, the economy. Still, before the debate the polls were heavily against me, and my colleagues were beginning to question my judgment. No, make that my sanity. Now they are again reassured. I am allowed to work alone in my ninth-floor office with the window open. The polls show Romney pulling ahead even in battleground states after he demonstrated in debate last week that we need something more than a ceremonial president in the White House. It is a dangerous world that we live in.

Poll-ish Jokes

I don't believe the polls that insist that Obama is ahead of Romney. This isn't just wishful thinking on my part, either. It simply doesn't make any sense that Obama would be doing better in any state than he did in 2008, especially when you realize that he was running against McCain, one of the worst campaigners in history, and that he now has to run on his own record. I have heard a lot of questions about the polls this time around. Some people are claiming that they're heavily weighted towards Democrats and that some pollsters are even in the tank for Obama, trying to discourage Republicans from even leaving the house on Election Day because the outcome is a foregone conclusion.

The Monument Society Versus the Free Society

Last week, after the first presidential debate, I spoke at an architecture school in downtown Los Angeles. One of the questions the moderator asked was about American exceptionalism. The foam flecked to his lips at the very phrase. What, pray tell, was American exceptionalism, he asked? I answered by referencing the Founding Fathers and the freedoms they guaranteed us via the American Constitutional System of checks and balances. What makes us unique guardians of liberty, I said, is that our system is designed to counterbalance interest against interest -- we only act together with the full power of unity when we're actually unified. We prize the individual over the collective.

The Axis of Liberalism Marches to Re-elect Obama

"I just thought it's too difficult. And you're not going to like this, but my gut feeling is that all the media is against George, Republicans, any Republican." -- Former first lady Barbara Bush, who said she was surprised when her son won the presidency in 2000. The Axis of Liberalism -- the other AOL -- is the media, academia and Hollywood. First, the media.

Romney Can Close the Deal

Those were my cheers you heard coming from the Left Coast last Wednesday night. I watched the Romney-Obama debate at my home in L.A., where I could hear the gasps and sobs of the creative community get louder and louder as Mitt came out swinging and never let up. That wasn't a debate. It was "The Great Debacle" -- and everyone who watched it for three minutes knew Kid Romney was winning every round on substance and style. I kept waiting for David Axelrod to throw a towel in the ring or referee Jim Lehrer to step in, wave his arms over his head and stop the fight on a technical knockout.

Why the Debate Has Legs

The Twitterverse was all, well, a-twitter Monday afternoon when the Pew Research Center for The People & The Press released the result of its national poll that had been in the field post-debate. The poll showed that among likely voters, Mitt Romney was leading Barack Obama by four percentage points: 49-45. For the past 36 hours pundits, reporters, and analysts have been poring over the 39 page report, picking out the things that they have found most dramatic.

California's Choice: Bigger Worker Paychecks or Bigger Union Coffers?

Will the crucial Proposition 32 initiative be approved this November by Golden State voters?

Obamacare Subsidizes Abortions for Women Making $90,000

How rich do you have to be in Barack Obama's America to pay the whole tab for your own abortion? What about a divorced 38-year-old public school principal who has three children and earns $90,000 per year? Would she need to personally pay the full fair to have a doctor kill her fourth child while that child was still in her womb? Under Obamacare, the federal government will force taxpayers to help her buy insurance that pays for abortions. Back in March, the Obama administration published the 166-page regulation governing the establishment of Obamacare's state health-insurance exchanges. A few weeks later, the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) published a two-page analysis explaining what this regulation means for American taxpayers who do not want to pay for someone to kill a child.

Missing in Action: Stimulus Sheriff Joe Biden

Remember when President Obama bragged about Joe Biden's fiscal discipline cred in 2009? "To you, he's Mr. Vice President, but around the White House, we call him the Sheriff," Obama warned government employees. "Because if you're misusing taxpayer money, you'll have to answer to him." Fast-forward to 2012. Call in the search teams. Since being appointed the nation's stimulus spending cop, Sheriff Joe has taken a permanent donut break. He's AWOL on oversight. In fact, he's been bubble-wrapped, boxed and kept completely out of sight. The garrulous gaffe machine hasn't sat down for a national media interview in five months.

Transparently Biased Against Disclosure

Team Obama came out of that disastrous first debate blaming the debacle on one thing after another, finally settling on the most vicious excuse: Mitt Romney only won because he was a brazen liar. David Axelrod was obnoxious enough to cite as his moral witness one Bill Clinton, who is certainly an authority on lying with a barrel full of chutzpah. Axelrod pledged in every interview that Team Obama would be holding Romney accountable. Fine. That's political theater. But is there anyone in the media who holds Team Obama accountable? Most journalists are too busy hounding Romney. Bloomberg News is an exception. It is willing to look at how Obama's campaign promises are faring.

Race Cards

If you are sick and tired of seeing politicians and others playing the race card, or if you are just disgusted with the grossly dishonest way racial issues in general are portrayed, then you should get a copy of Ann Coulter's new book, "Mugged." Its subtitle is: "Racial Demagoguery from the Seventies to Obama." Few things are as rare as an honest book about race. This is one of the very few, and one of the very best. Many people will learn for the first time from Ann Coulter's book how a drunken hoodlum and ex-convict, who tried to attack the police, was turned into a victim and a martyr by the media, simply by editing a videotape and broadcasting that edited version, over and over, across the nation.

Romney's Middle-Class Problem

During last week's presidential debate, Mitt Romney repeatedly promised to "lower taxes on middle-income families" without reducing "the share paid by high-income individuals." But this combination will prove difficult, if not impossible, for the Republican candidate to deliver given the other elements of his tax reform plan -- especially his illogical definition of "middle-income families." Romney's basic idea, which in broad outline has bipartisan support, is to "lower tax rates" and "broaden the base" by reducing deductions, credits and exemptions. He proposes cutting individual income tax rates by 20 percent, so that the top rate would be 28 percent rather than the current 35 percent and the bottom rate would drop from 10 percent to 8 percent. He also wants to abolish the estate tax, repeal the alternative minimum tax, and eliminate taxes on interest, dividends and capital gains for taxpayers earning less than $200,000.

A Modest Proposal

California was once the land of opportunity, but it is going down the tubes. Several of California's prominent cities have declared bankruptcy, such as Vallejo, Stockton, Mammoth Lakes and San Bernardino. Others are on the precipice, and that includes Los Angeles, California's largest city. California's 2012 budget deficit is expected to top $28 billion, and its state debt is $618 billion. That's more than twice the size of New York's state debt, which itself is the second-highest in the nation. Democrats control California's Legislature, and its governor, Jerry Brown, is a Democrat. California is home to some of America's richest people and companies. It would then appear that the liberals' solution to deficit and debt would be easy. They need only to raise taxes on California's rich to balance the budget and pay down the debt -- or, as President Barack Obama would say, make the rich pay their fair share.