Right Opinion
The best of conservative opinion and commentary, updated daily.
Mormons Have Irrational Beliefs? Who Doesn't?
Commentators on both the right and left and both secular and religious note with disdain that Mormons (Latter Day Saints, as Mormons refer to themselves) have irrational practices and beliefs. The former, we are told, includes the wearing of sacred undergarments and the latter includes posthumous baptisms and the claims by the prophet of Mormonism to have found and deciphered engraved golden plates in New York State. I read and hear these dismissals of Mormonism with some amusement -- because everyone who makes these charges holds beliefs and/or practices that outsiders consider just as irrational. Let's begin with the religious critics. There doesn't exist a religion without such beliefs. I say this as a believing and practicing (non-Orthodox) Jew, so I'll begin with my own religion.
All Hail Emperor Obama
"This notion I can somehow just change the laws unilaterally is just not true. We are doing everything we can administratively, but fact of the matter is there are laws on the books that I have to enforce. And I think there's been great disservice done to the cause of getting the DREAM Act passed and getting comprehensive immigration passed by perpetrating the notion that somehow, by myself, I can go and do these things. It's just not true." -- Barack Obama, September 2011 President Obama is no longer president in the constitutional sense. He appears to have elevated himself to the role of emperor, deciding unilaterally what should be the law and what should not, bypassing Congress and placing himself in the role of Julius Caesar. First it was the revelation that he has a "hit list" from which he alone decides who lives and who dies by drone strikes in Pakistan and Yemen.
The Immigration Ploy
President Obama's latest political ploy -- granting new "rights" out of thin air, by Executive Order, to illegal immigrants who claim that they were brought into the country when they were children -- is all too typical of his short-run approach to the country's long-run problems. Whatever the merits or demerits of the Obama immigration policy, his Executive Order is good only as long as he remains president, which may be only a matter of months after this year's election. People cannot plan their lives on the basis of laws that can suddenly appear, and then suddenly disappear, in less than a year. To come forward today and claim the protection of the Obama Executive Order is to declare publicly and officially that your parents entered the country illegally. How that may be viewed by some later administration is anybody's guess.
Obama's Power Grabs Create an Imperial Presidency
In 2010 we published a book arguing that Barack Obama was creating an imperial presidency. The past few months prove that prediction was correct. First President Obama's EPA claimed power to create cap-and-trade through new regulations, rather than Congress passing a law. Then Obama's FCC claimed the power to regulate the Internet, despite a federal appeals court ruling that only Congress could authorize such control through legislation. More recently, Obama's Department of HHS issued regulations requiring Catholic and Evangelical organizations to violate their religious conscience regarding birth control and abortion-related services. Then we got a double-whammy in just one week. First Obama flaunts the fact that he refuses to defend the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) in court, despite the fact that every administration is duty-bound to defend federal statutes, and there would be wailing and gnashing of teeth if a conservative Republican president failed to defend a liberal law in court. Afterward, Obama announces that, having failed to get the DREAM Act through Congress, he will simply accomplish its provisions by ordering the government to stop enforcing the law by not deporting certain illegal aliens, and then break the law by taking the affirmative step of actually issuing those people work visas.
Greece Not Out of the Woods
Why victory for pro-bailout forces in the Greek election merely delays the inevitable.
Obama's Backdoor Amnesty Overreach Just Par for His Course
As disturbing as was President Obama's lawless usurpation of constitutional authority in circumventing the DREAM Act to grant backdoor amnesty, this type of overreach is nothing new for him. He has frequently complained about how democracy and the Constitution are "messy" and do not permit him to exercise the authority of a Chinese president. But he nevertheless warned us that he would be pushing forward with his agenda through executive orders and administrative actions "on a wide range of fronts." But he has outdone himself this time, even going beyond limitations he freely recognized not long ago, when he complained that he didn't have the authority to impose his immigration policy wish list. Perhaps recent polling numbers showing him trailing Mitt Romney have increased his desperation. His frontal assaults on the Constitution are so brazen now it's hard not to conclude that he was willing to take a calculated risk that his excesses would offend fewer rule of law sticklers than they would attract Hispanic voters.
Obama to Main Street: Drop Dead
A Wall Street Journal story by Robin Sidel looks at a troubling trend in the banking industry. No, not the JPMorgans of the industry losing $2 billion on bad bets, but on small community banks who don't have the word "billion" anywhere on their balance sheets. According to her piece: "A growing number of tiny community banks are deciding it's time to put out the 'for sale' sign ... many executives of these small lenders are frustrated by costly, new regulations." Let's head into the Way Back Machine: In October, 1975 New York City was on the verge of bankruptcy. Sort of like California in the Summer of 2012.
The American Spirit
Are America's best days behind her? Joseph Stiglitz, a Nobel laureate in economics, seems to think so. "The American dream is a myth," he writes in a recent column. In a new USA Today/Gallup poll, nearly six in 10 disagreed with the idea that the next generation will live better than their parents do. Negative thoughts like this are nothing new. It stands to reason that tough economic times will breed pessimism. Sometimes, though, we need to remind ourselves of the principles this country was founded on, and reconnect with the genius that created the United States of America, the only country founded not on identity, but on ideas. That's what prompted my friend Brian Tracy to join me in writing a book called *The American Spirit*. As Brian explains in the introduction: "Today, millions of Americans are not clear about why the United States is the greatest country on earth and in all human history." And that's a shame.
'Angry' Money Gives Funding Edge to GOP and Romney
There has been a lot of wailing and gnashing of teeth as, in the spring, it appeared that forces supporting Mitt Romney would be able to raise about as much money as those supporting Barack Obama. There's even more now that it seems likely that the pro-Romney side will raise and spend more money than the pro-Obama side. Four years ago, the Obama forces heavily outspent those supporting John McCain. The Obama campaign had enough money to target -- and carry -- heretofore Republican states like North Carolina and Indiana. That experience made the Democrats spoiled. The prospect that the other side would have as much money as they do struck them as a cosmic injustice. The prospect that it would have more -- heaven forfend! They like to blame this situation on the Supreme Court's 2010 Citizens United decision, which allows corporations and unions to spend money on political speech. They did so even after their defeat in the June 5 Wisconsin recall election, in which Citizens United had no effect because fundraising was governed by state campaign finance laws.
The #%@*&! Problem
By a vote of 183-50, town meeting members in Middleborough, Mass., last week approved a bylaw making public cursing a civil offense and authorizing police to enforce the ban by fining offenders $20. Town Hall may find it hard to collect on those fines. Assuming *Cohen v. California* is still good law, the First Amendment's protection of free speech extends to using four-letter words in public, and as soon as the new ordinance is challenged it will almost certainly be struck down. Legally, town authorities don't have a leg to stand on. But their concern with enforcing public standards deserves better than the eye-rolling mockery it has been getting. *Cohen* was the 1971 case in which the Supreme Court overturned the conviction of a Los Angeles man arrested for disturbing the peace after he appeared in municipal court wearing a jacket with the F-word on it. (The jacket, with the word spelled out, read: "F--- the Draft.") Writing for the majority, Justice John Marshall Harlan conceded that "the particular four-letter word being litigated here is perhaps more distasteful than most." Nevertheless, he continued, "one man's vulgarity is another's lyric" -- and "it is largely because governmental officials cannot make principled distinctions in this area that the Constitution leaves matters of taste and style so largely to the individual."
Playing the Blame Game
When you look at the state of the nation, clearly someone is to blame. If you're a Democrat, you blame Republicans. If you're a Republican, you blame Democrats. If you're Barack Obama, you blame George W. Bush. If you're at least halfway sane, you blame Barack Obama and his stooges in Congress, in the EPA and the Department of Justice. If you spend any time at all on the Internet, you have probably received the electoral map of the United States that tries to convince you that Obama's re-election is a done deal. Fortunately, the map is all wet. For one thing, it concedes Missouri, Iowa, Wisconsin and Indiana, to Obama. For another, it insists that Florida, Virginia and Ohio, are toss-up states, while I'm convinced they're all going for Romney. Frankly, the question that comes to mind is whether it was drawn up by Curly, Moe or James Carville. How is it that the mapmaker manages to ignore all the elections that have taken place since Obama was elected in 2008? How is it that no consideration is given to the fact that a mere two years into his term, the Democrats lost six seats in the Senate and 60 more in the House?
Another Feckless Attempt to Change the Conversation
So, what to do when your Keynesian-cuckoo economic policies are running the country into the ground? Change the subject, certain in the knowledge that our lapdog media will more than accommodate you. And so it is that the Obama administration has announced that it will once again bypass Congress, and stop deporting illegal aliens who come to America at a young age. Make no mistake: this is classic sleight-of-hand, designed to get the country roiled up about something -- make that *anything* -- that will obscure the monumental failure best labeled Obamanomics. It is the proverbial boob bait for the masses, delivered by an administration that desperately needs Americans distracted away from the reality of a double-dip recession, record numbers of people on food stamps, millions of un- and under-employed workers, and *no plan whatsoever* for dealing with our impending fiscal Armageddon, other than blaming Republicans for their failures.
Unrestrain the Judiciary
Because judicial decisions have propelled American history, and because a long-standing judicial mistake needs to be rectified, the most compelling of the many reasons for electing Mitt Romney is that presidential elections shape two of the federal government's three branches. Conservatives, however, cannot coherently make the case for Romney as a shaper of the judicial branch until they wean themselves, and perhaps him, from excessive respect for judicial "restraint" and condemnation of "activism."
We Are All Catholics
Even though Obama promised to be a post-racial president, we all knew that to be a lie as soon as he appointed Eric Holder to be his Attorney General. Knowing what I did about Mr. Holder, it was my assumption that the only reason he got the job was because Al Sharpton had already turned it down. That being said, I was recently taken aback when I saw a video that Obama has produced for his re-election campaign. In it, he launched what he called "African Americans for Obama," essentially beseeching blacks to keep in mind he shares their pigmentation.
From The Comedy Store
Commerce Secretary John Bryson smashed his car into a Buick as the Buick was waiting for a train to go by. He got out and apologized, then smashed into the Buick again. President Obama called a press briefing Monday and said the Buick is doing just fine.
Where Is American Leadership?
Let's take a quick look at how we're doing in our place among what is poetically, if incorrectly, called "the family of nations." When Senator Barack Obama was campaigning against Hilary Clinton in the 2008 primaries, and later against Senator John McCain in the 2008 general election he, as Mark Lagon wrote in Foreign Policy Journal, "[He] came into office proposing a dramatic shift from George W. Bush's perceived unilateralism, and most of his predecessor's hard-edged counterterrorism tactics and massive deployments in wars abroad." During the primary and general election debates, Obama consistently claimed he would meet with Iranian officials "without pre-conditions."
A Change We Can Hope For
Vice President Joe Biden is almost casual about ending marriage. It's "inevitable," he says. He thinks it's not such a big deal. But it is a big deal. Recognizing same-sex couplings as marriages will mean the end of marriage. That's because saying yes to two men or two women marrying opens the door to polygamy. Those who have delved into the issue know this. George Washington University Law Professor Jonathan Turley believes that conferring legal status on same-sex couples will lead to polygamy -- and he says he's for that. When Turley told a packed house at the Newseum in 2008 that he was for polygamy, his audience cheered wildly. Those cheering for the end of marriage included federal court clerks, grad students, congressional staffers, and journalists -- the Inside-the-Beltway elite. With same-sex couplings and polygamous arrangements recognized, where would that leave marriage? Ended, that's where. When everyone can marry, no one can marry. There is no marriage left.
A Global Recession?
Is it possible that we are *already* in a global recession but just don't know it yet? And is the U.S. itself -- still the epicenter of the world economy -- standing on the front edge of another recession? I sincerely hope I'm wrong. But warning signs are everywhere. The eurozone economy is flat on its back. Greece may be headed for a political crackup and an exit from the euro and European Union. Deposit runs in Greece and elsewhere are beginning, and a credit freeze throughout the continent is not out of the question. Meanwhile, emerging economies like China, India and Brazil are slumping. Here at home, ex-Clinton strategists James Carville and Stan Greenberg sent a memo to President Obama telling him that his campaign message of slow and steady recovery progress is out of touch with Main Street America. They're right. Of course, Obama's "private sector is doing just fine" statement is part and parcel of his disconnect from economic reality.
Transparent Incompetence
WASHINGTON -- Senior members of Congress -- both Republicans and Democrats -- are reacting with shock and awe at the tsunami of national security leaks emanating from the Obama administration. Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., ranking Republican on the Senate Armed Services Committee, told Greta Van Susteren on Fox News Channel that the unauthorized disclosures of classified information are "the most egregious breach of national security" he ever has seen. Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., chairwoman of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, told reporters this week, "The accelerating pace of such disclosures, the sensitivity of the matters in question and the harm caused to our national security interests is alarming and unacceptable." McCain and Feinstein -- and others in both parties expressing dismay at the disclosures -- shouldn't be surprised. The officials in the Obama administration who tell reporters classified details about SEAL team raids, Stuxnet, "kill lists" for targeted attacks on high-value targets and ongoing covert operations in foreign countries are doing exactly what the commander in chief wants. He told us so on the day of his inauguration.
Hollywood Still Hates Bush-Cheney
Barack Obama keeps desperately pounding the entertainment industry's ATMs in Hollywood and Manhattan, while our manufacturers of make-believe have absolutely refused to expel their vicious hatred of George W. Bush and Dick Cheney. You wonder if, on any level, Obama is upset or chagrined or even embarrassed. Two examples have shown their ugly heads -- one of them severed. HBO -- with Bill Maher as the face of their political analysis is a global leader in burning Bush-Cheney hatred -- expressed surprise and embarrassment when it was discovered their violence-drenched series "Game of Thrones" included a scene with a model of Bush's disembodied head on a spike. "We were deeply dismayed to see this and find it unacceptable, disrespectful and in very bad taste," HBO said in a statement. "We made this clear to the executive producers of the series who apologized immediately for this inadvertent careless mistake. We are sorry this happened and will have it removed from any future DVD production."