Right Opinion
The best of conservative opinion and commentary, updated daily.
The Straws in the Wind
"When sorrows come, they come not in single spies but in battalions." -- William Shakespeare The Obama campaign may not be in panic mode yet -- there's still plenty of time for that -- but they must be stooping a bit under the weight of bad news that has come their way in the past several weeks. Every month's jobs report represents a fresh wound for the Obama campaign. That's the chief sorrow for Chicago, but there are a thousand other cuts. The acutely embarrassing tale of Massachusetts senate candidate (and former Obama appointee) Elizabeth Warren's risible claim to Cherokee ancestry is a perfect encapsulation of liberal absurdity. Even if her story of 1/32nd Cherokee blood were true, how ludicrous is it to say with a straight face that it was an important part of her identity? How much more ridiculous, and frankly, corrupt, to be counted a "minority" in the great affirmative action hustle on such grounds?
The Hidden Horrors of North Korea
While much of the world's attention is focused on the Assad regime's appalling assaults against Syrian citizens, with more than a hundred dead in this week's massacre in Houla alone, another human rights atrocity occurring on a much larger scale garners far less attention. North Korea's new leader, Kim Jong-Eun, has done what few expected when he assumed power after his father's death last December. Instead of loosening control in the most totalitarian nation in the world, Kim Jong-Eun has actually expanded the number of North Koreans subject to forced labor, torture, starvation and death in the totalitarian nation's prison camps.
Barack Obama: Drone Warrior
WASHINGTON -- A very strange story, a 6,000-word front-page New York Times piece on how, every Tuesday, Barack Obama shuffles "baseball cards" with the pictures and bios of suspected terrorists from around the world and chooses who shall die by drone strike. He even reserves for himself the decision of whether to proceed when the probability of killing family members or bystanders is significant. The article could have been titled "Barack Obama: Drone Warrior." Great detail on how Obama personally runs the assassination campaign. On-the-record quotes from the highest officials. This was no leak. This was a White House press release. Why? To portray Obama as tough guy. And why now? Because in crisis after recent crisis, Obama has looked particularly weak: standing helplessly by as thousands are massacred in Syria; being played by Iran in nuclear negotiations, now reeling with the collapse of the latest round in Baghdad; being treated with contempt by Vladimir Putin, who blocks any action on Syria or Iran and adds personal insult by standing up Obama at the latter's G-8 and NATO summits.
Wisconsin Election as Test Case
The gubernatorial recall election in Wisconsin next week is important as an imperfect test case to indicate how Democratic propaganda will work against facts this election year. Liberals are usually the ones who arrogantly throw around the charge that Republicans and conservatives are fact- and science-challenged and averse to reality. But their claim itself is based on nothing but their generic, nonfactual presuppositions, whether on "climate change" or same-sex unions.
Holder's Chutzpah
Attorney General Eric Holder recently told a group of black clergymen that the right to vote was being threatened by people who are seeking to block access to the ballot box by blacks and other minorities. This is truly world-class chutzpah, by an Attorney General who stopped attorneys in his own Department of Justice from completing the prosecution of black thugs who stationed themselves outside a Philadelphia voting site to harass and intimidate white voters. This may have seemed like a small episode to some at the time, but it was only the proverbial tip of the iceberg. The U.S. Attorney who was prosecuting that case -- J. Christian Adams -- resigned from the Department of Justice in protest, and wrote a book about a whole array of similar race-based decisions on voting rights by Eric Holder and his subordinates at the Department of Justice.
Arab Summer 2012
WASHINGTON -- The once highly touted Arab Spring has become the Arab Summer -- scorching hot, unbearably dry and very brutal and bloody. Last weekend, as Americans prepared to celebrate Memorial Day and commemorated the 50th Anniversary of the Vietnam War, Bashar Assad unleashed tanks, artillery and his Quds force-trained shabiha militia to kill more than 100 Syrian civilians -- most of them women and children. Though the atrocities and carnage in Syria continue, little but bluff and bluster is produced by the United Nations and the Obama administration.
All (Green) Thumbs
It was interesting while it lasted. But it looks like the "green revolution" has entered the long slide into "What was all that about?" In January, the Spanish government removed absurdly lavish subsidies for its renewable energy industry, and the renewable energy industry all but imploded. You could say it was never a renewable energy industry at all. It was a government subsidy industry where in exchange for creating conscience-soothing but otherwise inefficient windmills and solar panels, the government gave the makers piles of cash consumers never would. "They destroyed the Spanish market overnight with the moratorium (on subsidies)," European Wind Energy Association CEO Christian Kjaer told Bloomberg News. The reason the Spanish example is so important is that it demonstrates how the whole green energy "revolution" was really an ideologically driven green boondoggle from the start.
Ed Schultz's Wisconsin Campaign
Ed Schultz is the kind of shameless liberal hack who can go on air standing in front of screaming labor-union crowds in Madison, Wisc., calling for Gov. Scott Walker's head on a platter, and then turn around and announce that "Fox News is an arm of the Republican Party." Let's put this canard to rest. In coverage of the leftist effort to drain the taxpayers of Wisconsin for an unnecessary and doomed recall election, Fox looks much more objective than Ed Schultz. There is no question about that.
Montana Bucks the Court
WASHINGTON -- Montana uses an interesting argument to justify defiance of a Supreme Court decision: Because the state is particularly prone to political corruption, it should be trusted to constrict First Amendment protections of political speech. At issue is the court's 2010 Citizens United decision, which held, unremarkably, that Americans do not forfeit their First Amendment rights when they come together in corporate entities or labor unions to speak collectively. What do liberals consider the constitutional basis for saying otherwise?
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