Right Opinion
The best of conservative opinion and commentary, updated daily.
Shut Up, Eric Fehrnstrom!
As some of you know, I tried for months to get Team Romney to put me on the writing staff. Although I saw signs of Reagan in Romney's decency and good nature, the things I didn't find were those memorable lines in his speeches that conveyed both his sense of humor and his vision for America. But that was then and this is now. I no longer want to be merely Romney's speechwriter; I want to be what is known as a senior campaign advisor. I want him to dump this guy Eric Fehrnstrom and give me the job. It's not just that I'm uncertain whether America can survive another four years of Obama, and it's not just that I have a five dollar bet on Romney, it's this gut feeling I have that Fehrnstrom is a mole working for the other side.
Iraqi Ironies
Amid all the stories about the ongoing violence in Syria, the most disturbing is the possibility that Syrian President Bashar Assad could either deploy the arsenal of chemical and biological weapons that his government claims it has, or provide it to terrorists. There are suggestions that at least some of Assad's supposed stockpile may have come from Saddam Hussein's frantic, 11th-hour efforts in 2002 to hide his own weapons of mass destruction arsenals in nearby Syria. Various retired Iraqi military officers have alleged as much. Although the story was met with general neglect or scorn from the U.S. media, the present director of national intelligence, James Clapper, long ago asserted his belief in such a weapons transfer.
Yes, Guns Kill, but How Often Are They Used in Self-Defense?
About the tragedy in Aurora, Colo., rapper/actor Ice-T made more sense -- and has a better understanding of the Second Amendment -- than gun-control proponents.
This 'n That
I just got back from Edmonton, Alberta (that's in Canada for those who are geographically challenged) doing our famous He-Said-She-Said act with Donna Brazile. We were speaking to western state (in the U.S.) and western provincial (in Canada) legislators. I started my remarks by saying if you asked 100 Canadians who Barack Obama is, 99 of them would get the answer right. One would say he only speaks French. If, on the other hand, you asked 100 Americans who Stephen Harper is, 50 would say they have no idea, 48 would say he's the 19-year-old outfielder for the Washington Nationals (that would be *Bryce* Harper), one would get it right: Stephen Harper is the Prime Minister of Canada. One would say he only speaks French.
Public Discourse, Without the 'Hard Zinger'
William Raspberry, who died of cancer last week at age 76, was a Washington Post columnist for 40 years, 35 of them on the op-ed page. It was a long a career, over the course of which, as he wrote in one of his final columns, he had lost his early appetite for "delivering the hard zinger" and come to value persuasion over polemic. "I found myself trying to write," he said, "in such a way that people who didn't agree with me might at least hear me." As public discourse grew increasingly shrill, Raspberry worked to understand the views of those he disagreed with. Fairness didn't mean humorlessness. Some of Raspberry's best -- and funniest -- columns were those recounting his arguments with an imaginary cabdriver, through whom he voiced plausible objections to his own positions.
Obama's Leaks and Their Catastrophic Consequences
How long before someone pays the ultimate price?
President Obama's 'Covert Zeal' for Abortion
Today, I face a challenge similar to the one Abraham Lincoln faced in 1854 when he spoke of the "covert zeal" of President Franklin Pierce and Sen. Steven A. Douglas for the spread of slavery. These leading Democrats never said they were in favor of slavery. They simply viewed the right of whites to choose slavery for blacks as a "sacred principle of self government."Lincoln abhorred this subterfuge. President Obama doesn't talk about abortion much. He famously tried to avoid the question in 2008 when Pastor Rick Warren asked him what rights, if any, unborn children have. "The answer to that question is above my pay grade," he said then. With his strong election victory, Barack Obama was promoted to the office where the buck stops, where such questions demand an answer. His answer has been clear: None. The unborn have no rights at any time, in any context.
DOJ: Family Can't Run Their Business as Catholics
William, Paul and James Newland and their sister, Christine Ketterhagen, who together own Hercules Industries, have no right to conduct their family business in a manner that comports with their Catholic faith. The federal government can and will compel them to either surrender their business or to engage in activities the Catholic faith teaches are intrinsically immoral. This is exactly what President Barack Obama's Justice Department told a U.S. district court in a formal filing last week. Never before has an administration taken such a bold step to strip Americans of the freedom of conscience -- a right for which, over the centuries, many Christian martyrs have laid down their lives, and which our Founding Fathers took great care to protect in a First Amendment that expressly guarantees the free exercise of religion.
The End of the American Economy
Last week, President Obama infamously said that if you built a business in America, you weren't really responsible -- the government was. You didn't get ahead because you were smart or worked hard, or a combination of the two. Only the government could allow you to rise above your station. Obama took a lot of flack from commentators for this comment. There's only one problem: He was right. He wasn't right because that's the way things *should work*. But increasingly, it's the way things *do work*. That's why, two weeks ago, Sen. Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., begged Federal Reserve chairman Ben Bernanke to do something to boost the economy prior to the 2012 election. "Despite two false starts, we're having a much rougher time than we ever imagined getting unemployment down," Schumer complained. "So get to work, Mr. Chairman." After all, there's an election coming up -- and unless Bernanke boosts President Obama, the incumbent faces trouble.
Another Tea Party Terrorist Smear
The so-called prestige media have built this arrogant sense of professionalism around themselves. They are not just fair and objective, they're also *accurate*. The great amateurish unwashed shouldn't sit at keyboards in their pajamas and attempt the marvelous feats that only they perform. But when these reporters see an opportunity to discredit conservatives, all that goes out the window. Shortly after the Batman premiere began at midnight in Aurora, Colo., (Mountain time), police say Jim Holmes opened fire in a crowded theater, killing 12 and wounding many more. Six hours later, early in the second hour of "Good Morning America" in New York, ABC host George Stephanopoulos announced that investigative reporter Brian Ross had "found something that might be significant."
Hey, Boston: Leave Chick-fil-A Alone
It's one thing for Hollywood moppets and television Muppets to protest Chick-fil-A over the fast-food chain president's support for traditional marriage. They're private citizens and entities. But when an elected public official wields the club of government against a Christian business in the name of "tolerance," it's not harmless kid stuff. It's chilling. This week, Boston Mayor Thomas Menino declared, "Chick-fil-A doesn't belong in Boston." He recklessly slandered the company by accusing it of "discriminat(ing) against the population." And he warned ominously: "If they need licenses in the city, it will be very difficult -- unless they open up their policies."
Stubborn Ignorance
Academic intelligentsia, their media, government and corporate enthusiasts worship at the altar of diversity. Despite budget squeezes, universities have created diversity positions, such as director of diversity and inclusion, manager of diversity recruitment, associate dean for diversity, vice president of diversity and perhaps minister of diversity. This is all part of a quest to get college campuses, corporate offices and government agencies to "look like America." For them, part of looking like America means race proportionality. For example, if blacks are 13 percent of the population, they should be 13 percent of college students and professors, corporate managers and government employees. Law professors, courts and social scientists have long held that gross statistical disparities are evidence of a pattern and practice of discrimination. Behind this vision is the stupid notion that but for the fact of discrimination, we'd be distributed proportionately by race across incomes, education, occupations and other outcomes. There's no evidence from anywhere on earth or any time in human history that shows that but for discrimination, there would be proportional representation and an absence of gross statistical disparities, by race, sex, height or any other human characteristic. Nonetheless, much of our thinking, legislation and public policy is based upon proportionality being the norm. Let's run a few gross disparities by you, and you decide whether they represent what the courts call a pattern and practice of discrimination and, if so, what corrective action you would propose.
Random Thoughts
Random thoughts on the passing scene: Even squirrels know enough to store nuts, so that they will have something to eat when food gets scarce. But the welfare state has spawned a whole class of people who spend everything they get when times are good, and look to others to provide for their food and other basic needs when times turn bad. The 14th Amendment to the Constitution prescribes "equal protection of the laws" to all Americans. But what does that mean, if the President of the United States can arbitrarily grant waivers, so that A, B and C have to obey the laws but X, Y and Z do not -- as with both ObamaCare and the immigration laws?
America, the Law-Crazed
Over the past few decades, America has locked up more and more people. Our prison population has tripled. Now we jail a higher percentage of people than even the most repressive countries: China locks up 121 out of every 100,000 people; Russia 511. In America? 730. "Never in the civilized world have so many been locked up for so little," The Economist says. Yet we keep adding more laws and longer jail terms. Lavrentiy Beria, head of Joseph Stalin's secret police in the old Soviet Union, supposedly said, "Show me the man, and I'll show you the crime." Stalin executed anyone he considered a threat, and it didn't take much to be considered a threat. Beria could always find some law the targeted person had broken. That's easy to do when there are tons of vague laws on the books. Stalin "legally" executed nearly a million people that way.
Outrage Is Not an Argument
Hours after last Friday's massacre in Aurora, Colo., New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg demanded that the two major parties' presidential candidates explain how they plan to prevent such senseless outbursts of violence. "No matter where you stand on the Second Amendment, no matter where you stand on guns, we have a right to hear from both of them concretely," Bloomberg said in a radio interview. "What are they going to do about guns?" Whether you accept the premise that something must be done about guns, of course, might be influenced by where you stand on the Second Amendment and where you stand on guns. But according to Bloomberg, even people who object to gun control on practical or constitutional grounds are morally obliged to support it. Such arrogant illogic may help explain why public support for new gun restrictions has been falling for two decades.
Brian Ross' Brain Cramp
If ABC News does fire Brian Ross, he could always find a job working for Aaron Sorkin. Ross, a veteran investigative reporter for ABC News, blew it Friday morning when he suggested that the Aurora, Colo., shooting suspect, James Holmes, might be connected with the Tea Party. "There is a Jim Holmes of Aurora, Colorado, page on the Colorado Tea Party site as well, talking about him joining the tea party last year. Now, we don't know if this is the same Jim Holmes," Ross ominously informed "Good Morning America" host George Stephanopoulos, who thought the news "might be significant." Or it might not.
Obama's 'You Didn't Build That' Was No Gaffe
I'm beginning to wonder if those who write about politics for a living have been worn down to the point where they can't see something, even if it's as blatantly obvious as the Hollywood sign perched high above L.A. For the past week-plus, we've been inundated by columns centered around the president's speech last week in Roanoke, Va., where he uttered the immortal words "If you've got a business, you didn't build that. Somebody else made that happen." Both Obama defenders and detractors have offered up gobs of "insight" regarding that couplet, yet I haven't seen one column that comes to correct conclusion about why he said it. Most of the columnists on the liberal side defended the president's remarks as something taken out of context, or that the second half of the couplet, "you didn't build that" didn't actually refer to businesses, but to something earlier in the speech, such as infrastructure. Yet the best someone can say about that so-called analysis is that, when you have to "re-interpret" what Obama said in order to explain it to the "benighted" masses, either the idea itself is pretty lousy, or the re-interpreter is doing his slanted best to cover his man's behind.
Why ABC Tried to Blame the Tea Party for Aurora
James Holmes is a human earthquake. We are as ill-equipped to predict the eruptions of such human beings as we are to predict the eruptions of the earth. But that doesn't mean that nothing meaningful came out of the Aurora tragedy. Something quite important did, though few Americans are aware of it because it has already entered the mainstream media's memory hole.
You Gotta be a Football Hero
*The people that once bestowed commands, consulships, legions, and all else, now concerns itself no more, and longs eagerly for just two things -- bread and circuses.* -- Juvenal, *Satires* Except that instead of circuses we call them football games -- a term linked indissolubly with the mess at Penn State: NCAA fines and penalties, disappearing statues of head coaches and all the rest. "We've had enough," said Oregon State University President Ed Ray, affirming the virility of the NCAA penalty meted out to Penn State for ignoring ex-coach Jerry Sandusky's record of child abuse, a record too well known by now to warrant rehashing. The glory and majesty of Penn State's football program had come, seemingly, to outrank common human decencies, such as justice to the victims of Sandusky's perversions. So it came to what it came to -- catastrophe for Joe Paterno and Penn State football.
The Left's Habitual and Ironic Rush to Judgment
When a radio host asked me what I thought of the massacre in Aurora, Colo., I had to ask for clarification. I said: "What do you mean? Who could deny it's an unspeakable tragedy?" What he was really asking me was to address it in a political context. The problem is that I don't believe there was any political context to the shooting; not everything is political. But unfortunately, elements of the left seemed determined to graft political implications onto the event, irrespective of the absence of any factual basis for doing so. They seized on it both to demonize grass-roots conservatives and to pump new life into their perennial campaign against the Second Amendment.