Right Opinion
The best of conservative opinion and commentary, updated daily.
With Democrats, You're Either All In - or All Out
On Sunday during a segment of Meet the Press, Newark, NJ Mayor Cory Booker had the "temerity" to call the Obama administration's attacks on private equity firm Bain Capital "nauseating." That was bad enough. He then had the "unmitigated gall" to suggest that private equity firms can be helpful in creating jobs and protecting public pension investments. In other words, Mr. Booker did the one thing a black Democrat can never do: take even the smallest step off the Democrat plantation of progressive orthodoxy. And though he has bought himself a world of trouble as a result, he has done the nation an enormous favor. He has proven beyond the shadow of a doubt that the Democrat party is a racist snakepit of intolerance and oppression.
The Joy of Winning
WASHINGTON -- It was our much-anticipated quarterly lunch with Tim Kurkjian, baseball analyst extraordinaire, wherein George Will and I bathe in a constant flow of obscure statistics, Kurkjian oddities and ribald anecdotes, like the one about the Red Sox beat writer who accidentally walked in on a players' prayer meeting and was greeted by the burly right fielder, newly born-again and not yet practiced in the language of Christian fellowship, bellowing "Hey! Can't you see we're having f------ chapel here?"
Memorial Day 2012
WASHINGTON -- As a crowd of high-school students offloaded from the tour bus for a visit to the Vietnam Veterans Memorial aka "The Wall," he yelled, "There are no good wars!" Hemmed in on the crowded sidewalk, I tried to ignore his rant and noted the bus had a Pennsylvania license. The shouter was far too young to have fought in Vietnam, and he was wearing a dirty T-shirt, ragged jeans -- and Gucci loafers. He held a sheet of cardboard, hand-inscribed with the words "I'm the 99 percent" on one side and "Help me, I'm Homeless" on the other. While threading my way through the throng, I heard one of the clean-cut kids from the bus say, "If he's a Vietnam War veteran, shouldn't we help him?"
Obama's Education Hypocrisy -- Again
If you were a child in the District of Columbia school system (51st in state rankings for academic achievement, first for school violence), you and your parents probably greeted the election of Barack Obama with great joy. If someone had suggested to you then that the president would attempt to torpedo the scholarship program that permits some District kids to attend the private schools of their choice, you might have thought you were hearing racist smears.
Obama and Leahy vs. Sir William Blackstone
Has President Obama's disrespectful attitude toward the United States Supreme Court caused a trickledown effect among the Democratic leadership in Congress, or was Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Patrick Leahy's recent invective against Chief Justice John Roberts self-generated? You will recall that in April, President Obama launched a salvo against the court about a pending case -- concerning Obamacare -- seeking to either intimidate the justices into upholding the law or lay a foundation for political criticism should they strike it.
Overreach by Unions in Wisconsin
The Wisconsin recall election of Republican Gov. Scott Walker is not going quite like the unions and the Democratic Party expected. Back in 2011, many pundits thought that the governor had overreached when he took on public employee unions, restricting -- though not eliminating -- collective bargaining rights. But he did so because he inherited a state in dire financial shape with a deficit of $3.6 billion and public employee pensions and benefits that threatened to bankrupt the state.
'Law of the Sea' Treaty: Sink It
Want the United States to gain legal access to the vast amount of oil and natural gas in the underwater Extended Continental Shelf? Get LOST. Specifically, the U.S. Convention on the Law of the Sea, which often goes by the acronym LOST. The Obama administration wants the Senate to act on the treaty, which has been around since 1982. Sen. John Kerry (D-Mass.) recently held a hearing to make the case for LOST.
Canada's 'Scientific' Museum of Smut
In Ottawa, the nation's capital of Canada, the Museum of Science and Technology has decided to provide school children with answers in a scientific field where "reliable and comprehensive sources of information are rare or little-known." I don't know if you're familiar with it. That field is called "sex." As always, society's experts believe parents either faint at the thought of discussing sex with their children or worse, spread ignorance based on allegedly outdated religious texts. But wait until you hear what the Canadian government's subsidized version of "science" looks like.
Obama's Land of the LOST
What's green and blue and grabby all over? President Obama's new pressure campaign for Congress to ratify the Law of the Sea Treaty (LOST). The fight over LOST goes back three decades, when it was first rejected by President Ronald Reagan. He warned that "no national interest of the United States could justify handing sovereign control of two-thirds of the Earth's surface over to the Third World." According to top Reagan officials William Clark and Ed Meese, their boss believed the "central, and abiding, defect" was "its effort to promote global government at the expense of sovereign nation states -- and most especially the United States."
Obama & Romney Tout Good News
In another sign that all is not well in Obama-land, the campaign sent its manager, Jim Messina, up to Capitol Hill to reassure Senate Democrats "who," according to Politico.com "have grown increasingly nervous about the race." According to the article, Messina described the "campaign's state-of-the-art ground game aimed at getting voters to the polls and targeting swing voters in battleground states." There is nothing wrong with sending a high-ranking campaign staffer to smooth talk high-ranking office holders during a tight re-election campaign. But, Senate Democrats are staring down the barrel of a very, very close election result themselves and don't want to be dragged down by a fumbling, faltering Obama re-election campaign.
Big Business Gets the Hollywood Treatment
Jack Andraka, a 15-year-old kid from Maryland, just won the world's largest high school science competition by creating a new test for pancreatic cancer, one of the nastiest and most lethal forms of the disease. According to various news reports, the winning submission at the Intel International Science and Engineering Fair is "28 times cheaper" than existing tests and far, far more accurate. Andraka received $75,000 for his efforts, and he's applied for a patent as well. That will probably earn him far more in the years to come.
The 'Gay Marriage' Spin
The American people are not stupid. Recently President Obama announced he'd discovered a new conviction in favor of homosexual "marriage" (conveniently timed to maximize his standing at a $15 million Hollywood fundraiser among the liberal glitterati). It was nothing more than a blatant attempt to fire up his base, particularly young liberal and independent voters: if they don't vote, Obama loses big-time.
Remarks on Religious Liberty
We tend naturally to focus on religious freedom issues that rise to the national level. Those cases that come before the Supreme Court rank high in public interest and command the attention of the Washington Post, Wall Street Journal, New York Times and other giants of the main-stream media. One of the most unprecedented and ominous assaults on religious freedom is the proposed Health and Human Services contraception mandate. As I have written in a variety of opinion pieces, there has been nothing comparable to this in 225 years in this country. There is truly no precedent for the threat embodied in the HHS Mandate.
Figures Don't Lie: Democrats Do
It's been breaking news all over MSNBC, liberal blogs, newspapers and even The Wall Street Journal: "Federal spending under Obama at historic lows ... It's clear that Obama has been the most fiscally moderate president we've had in 60 years." There's even a chart! I'll pause here to give you a moment to mop up the coffee on your keyboard. Good? OK, moving on ...
The Media's Religion Deficit
Evidence of big media's bias against religion that doesn't advance the secular and liberal agenda of the Democratic Party is beyond dispute. Any faith attached to a conservative agenda is to be ridiculed, stereotyped and misrepresented. Islam is a notable exception. The media appear to bend over backward not to offend Muslims. The Washington Post on Monday, reporting from Carrollton, Ark., uncovered an event that occurred nearly 155 years ago and then sought to link it to the presidential candidacy of Mitt Romney: "On Sept. 11, 1857, a wagon train from this part of Arkansas met with a gruesome fate in Utah, where most of the travelers were slaughtered by a Mormon militia in an episode known as the Mountain Meadows Massacre."
The Peace Process Battered Israel's Reputation
"What happened," asks Michael Oren, "to Israel's reputation?" The Israeli ambassador to the United States, a noted historian, combat veteran, and bestselling author, raised that question in a Wall Street Journal essay last week. Writing on the 64th anniversary of Israeli independence, Oren began by quoting from Life magazine's salute to the Jewish state on its 25th birthday in 1973 -- a 92-page special issue that honored the "astonishing achievement" of modern Israel, an island of enlightened democratic courage flourishing against all odds amid a sea of Arab hostility and violence. From "a tiny, parched, scarcely defensible toe-hold," Life declared, the people of Israel had forged "a new society ... in which pride and confidence have replaced the despair engendered by age-long suffering and persecution."
The Diversity of Elizabeth Warren
BOSTON -- Blond, blue-eyed Elizabeth Warren, the Senate candidate and Harvard professor who cites "family lore" that she is 1/32nd Cherokee, was inducted into Oklahoma's Hall of Fame last year. Her biography on oklahomaheritage.com says she "can track both sides of her family in Oklahoma long before statehood" (1907) and "she proudly tells everyone she encounters that she is 'an Okie to my toes.'" It does not mention any Cherokee great-great-great-grandmother. A DVD of the induction ceremony shows that neither Warren nor anyone else mentioned this.
Why Jeremiah Wright Matters -- Still
In the 1967 comedy "A Guide for the Married Man," Joey Bishop's wife catches him in bed with another woman. As his wife stands at the bedroom door screaming at the sight, Bishop and the mistress calmly get up, make the bed and get dressed. The mistress leaves. Bishop nonchalantly sits down in the living room, lights up a pipe, picks up the newspaper and casually leafs through it. "What bed? What girl?" Bishop says. The wife begins to doubt her own eyes, even her sanity. Finally, she turns to Bishop and meekly asks what he wants for dinner. The culprit convinced the victim that she must be nuts.
I'll Have Another
The owner of the Kentucky Derby and Preakness winner, I'll Have Another, named the horse for a saying in the family about grandma's cookies -- a noble sentiment. But these days, it's the government that can't keep its hand out of the cookie jar. The Federal government has fallen prey to that mantra for years now -- but the dysfunction is spreading from Washington to the capitals of cash-hungry states. On Christmas Eve last year in a decision with little fan-fare, the Obama administration capitulated to give states their next cash "fix." Reversing 50 years of precedent, President Obama's Justice Department gave states the green light to implement new taxes on the poor in the form of Internet gambling. On petition from Illinois and New York, the DOJ reinterpreted the 1951 Wire Act to allow states to move lotteries online.
The Great Debate
WASHINGTON -- Here I am on the campaign trail, frenetically promoting my book, "The Death of Liberalism." I appear on scores of radio interviews, in and out of the studio. I appear on Fox News and C-SPAN. I hardly have time for dinner, but it could be more demanding still. I could be invited to appear on mainstream media, as it is still quaintly called. Yet I am not. ABC, CBS, NBC, CNN, and MSNBC do not call. I, the editor of a major magazine from the right that has been around for 45 years, have written a book arguing that a major political ideology, Liberalism, is dead, and no one in the mainstream media seems to think it merits even a spitball. Things have changed even more than the mainstream media knows.