Right Opinion
The best of conservative opinion and commentary, updated daily.
HBO's Arrogant 'Newsroom'
HBO should really try a new slogan for its original programming. Indeed they already had one courtesy of Aaron Sorkin's acid pen in the debut of his ridiculous new series "The Newsroom." That slogan is "Speaking Truth to Stupid." It's an appropriate slogan for a pay-cable channel that insists only the really smart people pay the extra fee to join the television elite. But do Sorkin and HBO really deserve their lofty, arrogant position as the smart people? Let's count the ways this new show demolishes that proposition: 1. It's preposterous that this "Newsroom" is realistic. The first glaring indicator was disgraced CBS anchor Dan Rather insisting on his accuracy. He said the large number of TV critics who panned the show were wrong. "They've somehow missed the breadth, depth and 'got it right' qualities -- and importance - of Newsroom." Real news junkies had to laugh at the idea that this fictional news crew from "ACN" handling real-life stories managed to figure out within a couple of hours that the Deepwater Horizon oil platform explosion in the Gulf of Mexico was going to lead to a massive oil spill. In real life, the networks took about four days to figure out the emerging story was a voluminous spill.
Obamacare Ruling a Dark Day for America - but With a Major Upside
The Supreme Court's ruling in Obamacare v. the United States of America is yet another body blow to the U.S. Constitution's principle of limited government and the freedom tradition, but there is a major upside. Despite President Obama's opposition to an individual mandate when he was debating Hillary Clinton during the Democratic presidential primaries and despite his postelection insistence that Obamacare's mandate does not constitute a tax, his lawyers insisted otherwise, and the Supreme Court bought it. So we have a law with enormous reach -- one-seventh to one-sixth of the economy -- having been fundamentally misrepresented to the American people from the beginning. Conservatives who believe that the Constitution should be interpreted according to the plain meaning of its language and the original intent of the Framers have long been troubled by the court's decisions expanding the commerce clause to authorize Congress to regulate the most local of matters within a state's borders.
Why Roberts Did It
WASHINGTON -- It's the judiciary's Nixon-to-China: Chief Justice John Roberts joins the liberal wing of the Supreme Court and upholds the constitutionality of Obamacare. How? By pulling off one of the great constitutional finesses of all time. He managed to uphold the central conservative argument against Obamacare, while at the same time finding a narrow definitional dodge to uphold the law -- and thus prevented the court from being seen as having overturned, presumably on political grounds, the signature legislation of this administration. Why did he do it? Because he carries two identities. Jurisprudentially, he is a constitutional conservative. Institutionally, he is chief justice and sees himself as uniquely entrusted with the custodianship of the court’s legitimacy, reputation and stature. As a conservative, he is as appalled as his conservative colleagues by the administration's central argument that Obamacare's individual mandate is a proper exercise of its authority to regulate commerce. That makes congressional power effectively unlimited. Mr. Jones is not a purchaser of health insurance. Mr. Jones has therefore manifestly not entered into any commerce. Yet Congress tells him he must buy health insurance -- on the grounds that it is *regulating* commerce. If government can do that under the Commerce Clause, what can it not do?
Roberts' Ruling Took Guts
Why not just cut open a goat and be done with it? In ancient Rome, a special kind of priest called a haruspex would "read" the entrails of sheep to divine the will of the gods, the health of the growing season, or whatever else was weighing on the minds of men. Because animal guts don't, in fact, impart that much information about, say, next year's wheat harvest, the haruspices (called "auspices" in Latin -- from which we get the English word) could pretty much make it up as they went along. The same went for the auguries (priests who studied the flight of birds). Ultimately, the auspices and auguries made their decisions based upon the whims, vicissitudes and demands of politics in one form or another. If the rulers were happy with the result, they didn't much care what the guts actually said. Fast-forward to chief haruspex John Roberts.
Silver Lining in Court Decisions
The U.S. Supreme Court handed down two decisions this week that cry out for Congressional action. In upholding the constitutionality of most aspects of President Obama's health care reform legislation and in reaffirming the federal government's role in immigration policy, the Court's decisions should be a call to action for Congress to pass new legislation on these two vital issues. It's important to recognize that the decisions were narrowly tailored to deal only with constitutionality of the two laws at issue: the federal Affordable Care Act and Arizona's S.B. 1070. Neither decision spoke to the wisdom of existing policy in either area. In fact, both health care and immigration laws are in desperate need of major revisions. The health care decision, announced Thursday, affirmed the constitutionality of the major provisions of the law. While striking down one provision having to do with Medicaid, the Court upheld the most controversial part of the law, which mandates that individuals buy health insurance or pay a penalty to the federal government.
Conservatives and the Court
It has traditionally been liberals, not conservatives, who have looked to the courts to implement their policy preferences. Whether it was racial and sex preferences, abortion, gay marriage, capital punishment or the "rights" of illegal aliens, liberals have attempted to move the country left by judicial fiat. Judges, after all, are highly educated elites. The political views of people with advanced degrees tend to be liberal. It's far easier to seduce a few robed lawyers to issue congenial rulings than it is to undertake the hard and lengthy work of persuading millions of voters to elect people who agree with you. Conservatives have been so battered by adverse court decisions over the years that we'd become anti-courtists -- toying with ideas to reduce the judiciary's scope (as Newt Gingrich mentioned during the primaries), emphasizing the antidemocratic nature of judicial usurpation of legislative functions and stressing the importance of judicial restraint.
A Political Glossary: Part IV
Nowhere is political rhetoric more shameless -- or more dangerous -- than in the pious names that politicians give to the legislation they pass. Perhaps the most egregious example is the so-called "Indian Child Welfare Act," which callously sacrifices the welfare of Indian children. Time and again, children with some American Indian ancestry, who have been adopted by families that are not of that ancestry, have been suddenly taken by law from the only parents they have ever known and transferred to some distant Indian reservation, to live among strangers in a world they know nothing about. You might think that the sight of bewildered, desperate and weeping children in court, crying out for mommy and daddy as they are forcibly removed from people who have cared for them for years, might cause those who are seizing them to relent. But no! Such children are routinely sacrificed on the altar to the Indian Child Welfare Act. The child might be two years old or twelve. But the legal rights of a biological relative and tribal authorities trump the well being of the child, even if that biological relative has been a complete stranger to the child.
Rubio's Time Will Come
"Rubio, Rubio, Rubio." You hear the chants all across the country. On talk shows, on cable TV, on blogs and in op-ed columns, everyone with a conservative bone in his body is urging presumptive GOP nominee Mitt Romney to choose the smart and dashing Marco Rubio as his vice president. The conservative crowd's clamor for Rubio is beginning to worry me. It could backfire. For one thing, it's setting up Romney for a disaster. If he doesn't choose Rubio -- and I would agree with that decision -- it's going to disappoint a lot of Republican voters who think Rubio is the key to de-electing President Obama. And when voters are disappointed, they don't show up to vote. Don't get me wrong. Rubio is great, maybe the best young talent in the Republican draft pool. The first-term Florida senator is already a superstar and ready for the big leagues -- and that's the biggest problem I have with picking him.
Another Olympic Blah
Washington -- The summer Olympics are upon us, and already they are spoiling things for those of us who like our summers restful and given over to reasonable pageantry, particularly pageantry in London. For those of you who have not been made aware of it, the Olympics are in London this summer, which is about as appropriate as holding the world gun fight championships in Rome just across the palazzo from the Vatican, if there are world gunfight championships. The gunfight championships should be held in an appropriate setting like Kabul or some Middle Eastern metropolis along with the world car bombing championships. London should be off limits for tasteless vulgarity. In summer, London is one of the loveliest cities on earth, and certainly among the most sophisticated. But how will we enjoy Shakespeare in the park or great concerts, or the British "Spectator's" annual summer party, when thousands of athletes are being offloaded from airplanes and preparing for their multitudinous over-hyped contests? There will be media and of course idiotic sports writers. There will be purveyors of sports equipment and even more egregious commercial interests. The Giant Corporations will be on hand to sell automobiles, perhaps even agricultural equipment and maybe gigantic land movers. Can you see Mark Phelps wearing a high tech swimsuit driving up in a John Deere e-series Wheeled Harvester and saying, "I go everywhere in my John Deere"? There will be ads for junk foods, nutritional foods, beer, and countless other products -- all proud sponsors of the Olympics and the "Olympic Spirit."
The Biggest Scandal in U.S. History
Forget executive privilege, contempt of Congress, "fast and furious," how many documents the government has produced and who said what to whom on which date. The Obama administration has almost certainly engaged in the most shockingly vile corruption scandal in the history of the country, not counting the results of Season Eight on "American Idol." Administration officials intentionally put guns into the hands of Mexican drug cartels, so that when the guns taken from Mexican crime scenes turned out to be American guns, Democrats would have a reason to crack down on gun sellers in the United States. Democrats will never stop trying to take our guns away. They see something more lethal than a salad shooter and wet themselves.
Don't Send Your Kids to College
There are a few decent colleges in America, including Hillsdale and Liberty, where conservatives can safely ensconce their offspring. But if they pony up the dough to send them to Harvard, Yale, Berkeley or even the University of Michigan, they've really got no business griping if the kids return home convinced that Obama is the messiah, that Israel is on the wrong side of the Middle East conflict and that socialism is the most wonderful economic system ever devised by the mind of man. If the kids parrot Joe Biden's insistence that ordering the execution of Osama bin Laden was a gutsy decision or Bill Maher's claim that Mitt Romney is a plutocrat who is "this close to lighting his cigars with $100 bills," their parents better not come complaining to me.
Supreme Court Sets Stage for Immigration Reform
The Supreme Court's decision announced Monday in the Arizona v. United States case opens the way for sensible reform of our immigration laws. Barack Obama and his administration have taken heart that the court overturned Arizona's state penalties for illegal immigrants. The idea is that states can't pile higher penalties on top of those voted by Congress, just as states can't deport people who Congress allowed into the country. But the much more significant part of the case was the unanimous 8-0 (Justice Kagan not voting) ruling upholding the Arizona provision authorizing state and local law enforcement personnel to help enforce federal law by asking those stopped for other reasons to show that they are citizens or legal immigrants. This has been derided as a "where are your papers?" provision redolent of an authoritarian regime. But federal law has long required legal immigrants to carry their papers. And just about every adult carries a driver's license or equivalent without feeling oppressed.
We're Going to Do What We Want, and We Dare You to Stop Us
Two separate issues today, but both related if we take the long way around. First the Arizona decision. I'll spare you all of the analysis that will have been disseminated by the time you read this, save for a couple of observations. First, the political class, and thus in turn the overwhelming majority of the American people, are being held hostage and subjected to extortion by illegal aliens and their open border crowd enablers. The Democrats, in all the Stockholm Syndrome glory, welcome that extortion with open arms, confident that a viable tradeoff exists between selling out American citizens who will subsequently abandon their party, and the influx of new voters, legal and otherwise, who will replace the disaffected. Thus for Democrats, the more illegals, the merrier.
Barack Hollande
Did the French just elect a self-described socialist who wants to raise taxes on the rich? Yes, they did. Is President Barack Obama asking for four more years with an economic philosophy similar to that of the new French president? Yes, he is. In France, those earning over a million euros would face a tax rate of 75 percent. And one of Francois Hollande's first acts as new president of France was to reverse his predecessor's course and *lower* the retirement age from 62 to 60 -- this in a country whose projected unfunded pension liabilities for its living citizens are about $8.37 trillion, or 300 percent of its $2.774 trillion gross domestic product. The United States' unfunded Social Security, Medicare and prescription drug benefits liability for its living citizens is about $50 trillion, or 333 percent of our current $15 trillion GDP.
Should the West Believe Egypt's New President?
Throughout America's history, there have been people who denied threats from our enemies. During the Revolutionary War, significant numbers sided with the British monarchy. Enablers in politics, the media and even religion helped Communism remain in power for seven decades in the Soviet Union. German Nazis had their U.S. apologists. The presidential election in Egypt, won by the Muslim Brotherhood's Mohammed Morsi in a race where three-quarters of Egyptians voted for someone else, challenges contemporary deniers and enablers who refuse to acknowledge the threat advancing Islamism poses to Israel and the West. Enough Egyptians voted for Morsi to allow Islamists to achieve greater political power than at any time since the Brotherhood's 1928 founding. Morsi mouths the words the West wants to hear (he was educated in America). He speaks of being president of "all Egyptians," promising to honor all international agreements made by the Hosni Mubarek regime.
Legal Illegal Immigration
President Obama recently issued an edict exempting an estimated 800,000 to 1 million illegal aliens from the consequences of federal immigration law. Ostensibly that blanket amnesty applies to those who arrived before the age of 16 and are younger than 30; who are in, or graduated from, high school or have served in the military; and who have not been convicted of a felony or multiple misdemeanors. And while most Americans sympathize with helping those who were brought into the United States as toddlers, raised as de facto Americans and followed the rules, the policy of exempting hundreds of thousands en masse in the long run may create far more problems than it solves. First was the cynical timing. In 2009 and 2010, Democrats had a supermajority in the Senate and a majority in the House and could easily have enacted such a law over all opposition. So why was the edict handed down in a tough campaign year?
A Political Glossary: Part III
If there were a Hall of Fame for political rhetoric, the phrase "social justice" would deserve a prominent place there. It has the prime virtue of political catchwords: It means many different things to many different people. In other words, if you are a politician, you can get lots of people, with different concrete ideas, to agree with you when you come out boldly for the vague generality of "social justice." Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes said that a good catchword can stop thought for 50 years. The phrase "social justice" has stopped many people from thinking, for at least a century -- and counting. If someone told you that Country A had more "social justice" than Country B, and you had all the statistics in the world available to you, how would you go about determining whether Country A or Country B had more "social justice"? In short, what does the phrase mean in practice -- if it has any concrete meaning? In political and ideological discussions, the issue is usually whether there is some social injustice. Even if we can agree that there is some injustice, what makes it social?
An Arrow Gone From Obama's Quiver
The Supreme Court decision on the Arizona immigration law was not the victory for President Obama the White House would have you believe. The Arizona ruling -- which included Chief Justice John Roberts voting with the majority -- was certainly not a Conservative v. Liberal decision. It was based upon what Supreme Court Justices are supposed to do: Look at the law, weigh it against precedents and the Constitution, and decide whether it meets the test of Constitutionality. But, that's not the big thing. The big thing is: If, as expected, the Court knocks down some or all of Obamacare it is going to be very difficult for the President and his political allies to claim the Roberts Court is only interested in partisan politics, not the law. If that were the case, then it would have upheld the Arizona immigration law. That is not to say the Obamas won't wring their hands and whine but I wouldn't look for too much support from Democrats on the Hill save for House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-San Francisco) and Senate Majority Leader Harry Read (D-I-Don't-Run-Again-Until-2016).
America the Non-Racist
I have a dream, said Martin Luther King in 1963, that someday "on the red hills of Georgia, the sons of former slaves and the sons of former slave owners will be able to sit down together at the table of brotherhood." King was a prodigious dreamer, but even he might have found it hard to imagine that thousands of those listening to him that day would live to see a black pastor elected -- unanimously and enthusiastically -- to lead the Southern Baptist Convention. It was in Georgia before the Civil War that the Southern Baptist Convention had been born, in large part to ensure that black and white would never sit down together, at the table of brotherhood or anywhere else. Beginning in 1845 as a breakaway from the anti-slavery Baptist churches in the North, the Southern Baptist Convention would grow into the nation's foremost Protestant denomination -- and one of its most racist. Well into the second half of the 20th century, Southern Baptist preachers defended Jim Crow and preached white supremacy. In a notorious 1956 address, the renowned Dallas pastor W.A. Criswell condemned the Supreme Court's ruling in *Brown v. Board of Education* as "idiocy," "foolishness," and "a denial of all that we believe in." After he was elected SBC president in 1968 Criswell renounced segregation. But most Southern Baptist churches remained all-white, and it wasn't until 1995 that the denomination publicly resolved to "unwaveringly denounce racism, in all its forms, as deplorable sin" and to "apologize to all African-Americans for condoning and/or perpetuating individual and systemic racism in our lifetime."
What Does Obama's 'Marriage Equality' Mean for Bisexuals?
President Barack Obama, occupant of the bully pulpit, set aside the past month to celebrate a most peculiar thing. "Now, each June since I took office," Obama said in a June 15 speech at the White House, "we have gathered to pay tribute to the generations of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender Americans who devoted their lives to our most basic of ideals -- equality not just for some, but for all." Among the places our president said he wanted "equality not just for some, but for all" -- that is, presumably, including "bisexuals" -- is in the institution of marriage. "We've supported efforts in Congress to end the so-called Defense of Marriage Act," Obama said. "And as we wait for that law to be cast aside, we've stopped defending its constitutionality in the courts." "And Americans may be still evolving when it comes to marriage equality," Obama said, "but as I've indicated personally, Michelle and I have made up our minds on this issue." So, what does Obama's "marriage equality" mean for bisexuals?