Right Opinion
The best of conservative opinion and commentary, updated daily.
After Obamacare
Who should be in charge of your health care -- you, or the government? That, in a nutshell, is what the debate over Obamacare is about. True health care reform is needed. Unfortunately, the president's signature law is the wrong medicine. Which is why, if the Supreme Court affirms that the law is unconstitutional and overturns it, we shouldn't consider the problem solved. Not at all. We will simply have stopped applying a treatment that was making the problem worse.
Hollywood's Gay Marriage Thank You Card
So Barack Obama declared he's all for "gay marriage." Really, was anyone surprised? Did anyone doubt it? Still, it's official, and Obama is now the rental property of Hollywood. Obama's doing all sorts of fundraisers with Hollywood and Manhattan millionaires and billionaires to get re-elected, the latest at George Clooney's mansion. One of every 6 of his "bundlers" is openly homosexual. At the start of this drama, Vice President Joe Biden openly declared (accidentally or not) he was entirely comfortable with men marrying men and women marrying women and credited Hollywood. "When things really began to change is when the social culture changes," Biden syntax-garbled on NBC's "Meet the Press."
When General Grant Expelled the Jews
In December 1862, from his military headquarters in Mississippi, Major General Ulysses S. Grant issued a directive expelling "Jews as a class" from the immense war zone known as the Department of the Tennessee. General Orders No. 11 was the most notorious anti-Jewish edict ever issued by an official of the US government, and it was overruled by the commander-in-chief -- President Abraham Lincoln -- as soon as he learned of it in Washington.
To Bigotry No Sanction
Now that President Obama has "evolved" on the matter of same-sex marriage to the position favored by "enlightened" Americans, this would seem to be a good time for some rhetorical hygiene. There are modest and civil proponents of same-sex marriage. But the tone of many advocates has been shrill to the point of frothing. The Southern Poverty Law Center, for example, put the National Organization for Marriage and the Family Research Council on its 2010 list of "hate groups" because of their opposition to gay marriage.
A Marriage of Inconvenience
When Joe Biden was selected by Barack Obama to be his Vice Presidential running mate I was thrilled. I thought "If Obama wins, Biden's propensity to trip over his own tongue will provide enough material to write two columns a week." I would only have to earn the third column. For the most part, darn it, Biden has behaved himself and hasn't been the loose-lipped fool he has been since he was first elected to the U.S. Senate from Delaware when he was 29 years old.
'Money Primary' Pushes Obama to the Left
For most of 2012, President Obama has been running in the Democratic primary. I know that seems odd given that he's essentially running unopposed. Though don't tell that to West Virginia Democrats, who cast nearly half of their votes for Keith Judd, an inmate currently serving time in a Texarkana, Texas, prison. Judd received 41 percent of the vote. In 1968, Eugene McCarthy received 42 percent of the vote and forced incumbent Lyndon Johnson from the race.
Echoes of '67: Israel Unites
WASHINGTON -- In May 1967, in brazen violation of previous truce agreements, Egypt ordered U.N. peacekeepers out of the Sinai, marched 120,000 troops to the Israeli border, blockaded Eilat (Israel's southern outlet to the world's oceans), abruptly signed a military pact with Jordan and, together with Syria, pledged war for the final destruction of Israel. May '67 was Israel's most fearful, desperate month. The country was surrounded and alone. Previous great-power guarantees proved worthless. A plan to test the blockade with a Western flotilla failed for lack of participants. Time was running out. Forced to protect against invasion by mass mobilization -- and with a military consisting overwhelmingly of civilian reservists -- life ground to a halt. The country was dying.
Loose Lips Endanger Lives
The U.S. dodged another terrorist bullet when a would-be "underwear bomber" turned out to be a double agent. The news became public this week after rumors had circulated in April that Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP), a Yemini-based group that is now the chief terrorist threat against the U.S., had been planning a spectacular attack to coincide with the one-year anniversary of the American raid that killed Osama bin Laden last May 2.
White House Lied, Jobs Died
While the White House and its media water-carriers try to distract the American public with gay-marriage talk and half-century-old tales of Mitt Romney's prep school pranks, the inconvenient truth remains: President Obama is responsible for perpetrating jaw-dropping, job-killing scientific fraud. And his minions are still trying to cover it up. New internal e-mails disclosed by the House Natural Resources Committee this week show that a supposedly exculpatory report on the administration's doctored drilling moratorium analysis -- issued by the Department of Interior's Inspector General's office -- was itself incomplete, misleading and unsubstantiated. Even more damning, the documents reveal that the White House actively blocked investigators and refuses to comply with subpoenas.
Institutional Arrogance
WASHINGTON -- Last week, this column described a deadly suicide attack by the Haqqani network on a secure compound outside Kabul, Afghanistan, and the failure of NATO officials to heed human intelligence that might have saved lives. I wrote, "The intel provided included information on how to precisely locate the terrorists. When I asked why the attack wasn't prevented, I was told: 'It was HUMINT. Nobody pays attention to HUMINT.'" Shortly after the column appeared, a senior U.S. intelligence officer -- and a friend -- admonished me, "It's not just HUMINT." He described the problem as "institutional arrogance" and a failure to give credence "to information from outside the system."
Time for Republicans to Take the Offensive
Two very important things happened in politics this week. First, the elections underscored just how fed up mainstream America is with extreme liberalism. Second, President Obama, with his formal endorsement of same-sex marriage, is openly casting his lot with his extremist base. The question is: How will putative GOP presidential nominee Mitt Romney interpret and respond to these events? Will he fall into the usual Republican trap of thinking he has to follow his Democratic opponent leftward to appear more moderate? Or will he show his confidence in the reasonableness of conservatism and in the American people to embrace him if he clearly articulates it?
Obama's Soros-Controlled Energy Council
When politicians want to look busy while avoiding tough decisions during an election year, what do they do? They form commissions and councils. And when President Barack Obama saw Americans struggling with higher gasoline and home energy prices, did he encourage more domestic oil exploration, off-shore drilling, or coal production, while lowering taxes on energy? Of course not. After all, with political observers expecting a close presidential race this year, Obama needs the financial and institutional support far-left environmental groups. The result has been the President anointing certain energy sources - such as wind and natural gas - as energies of the future, while implementing regulatory hurdles for more dependable fuels like oil and coal.
Elizabeth Warren Dances With Lies
Elizabeth Warren, who also goes by her Indian name, "Lies on Race Box," is in big heap-um trouble. The earnest, reform-minded liberal running for Senate against Scott Brown, R-Mass., lied about being part-Cherokee to get a job at Harvard. Harvard took full advantage of Warren's lie, bragging to The Harvard Crimson about her minority status during one of the near-constant student protests over insufficient "diversity" in the faculty. Warren also listed herself as an Indian in law school faculty directories and, just last month, said, "I am very proud of my Native American heritage."
Marriage and Political Expedience
Former NPR and current Fox News political analyst Juan Williams made an excellent point Monday night on "The O'Reilly Factor." Williams said the major reason President Obama had not endorsed same-sex marriage is because of the strong opposition to it in the black and Hispanic communities. Who could have doubted, though, that the president favors expanding the definition of marriage to include gays and lesbians? Vice President Joe Biden brought this divisive social issue to the forefront of the presidential campaign with his comments Sunday on "Meet the Press." Biden said he is "absolutely comfortable with the fact that men marrying men, women marrying women and heterosexual men and women marrying one another are entitled to the same exact rights, all the civil rights, all the civil liberties."
Obama-Loving Media Spin the Economy
National Public Radio's Kai Ryssdal recently talked about the weak economy. His guests, two reporters from The Washington Post and The New York Times, acknowledged the obvious -- that the economy is underperforming. Yet, in the 20 minutes of my sitting and listening in the car in bad Los Angeles traffic, I heard no one mention the words "President Barack Obama."
Long, Hard Slog Ahead in Presidential Race
Just as the political air is filled with talk of the inevitability of Barack Obama's re-election -- we are told that the kids at his Chicago headquarters are brimming with confidence -- in come some poll numbers showing him behind. Not by anything statistically significant, mind you. But when you get the Gallup and Rasmussen tracking polls and the Politico/George Washington University Battleground poll all showing Mitt Romney leading Obama by 1 point, an Obama victory seems far from inevitable.
Obama Evolves, Politics Devolves
This week, Vice President Joe Biden and Secretary of Education Arne Duncan essentially endorsed same-sex marriage. The Obama campaign, however, wary of minority and blue-collar voters, promptly announced that President Obama was against same-sex marriage -- sort of -- but that his position was "evolving." Like a flower waiting to bloom, eventually Obama?s support for same-sex marriage would spring full-fledged into existence.
Conrad Black's Example
WASHINGTON -- Conrad Black is back in Canada. He controlled the third-largest string of English-language newspapers in the world before he became entoiled with the Unites States Department of Justice. For his friends, it was a terrible loss. We missed him, and we have missed his newspapers. He made the Telegraph papers in London a beacon of civilized discourse and a sound source of news. They provided better information on the high-jinks of Bill Clinton than any news source here, save the Wall Street Journal, the Washington Times, and, ahem, The American Spectator. The Telegraph papers were great newspapers and his other publications, for instance, Spectator of London, were eminently civilized too. They still are, though they miss Conrad's journalistic touch.
Evangelicals Will Rally for Romney
Elections are about choices, and 2012's pivotal election showcases two very different visions for America's future. Governor Mitt Romney is quickly consolidating the Republican base to enthusiastically support him this November. His speech this weekend at Liberty University illustrates these efforts, providing an opportunity to underscore Romney's embrace of American exceptionalism in both his public and private life.
Taxing Jobs Out of Existence
BLOOMINGTON, Ind. -- Bill Hewlett and David Packard, tinkering in a California garage, began what became Hewlett-Packard. Steve Jobs and a friend built a computer in the California garage that became Apple's birthplace. Bill Cook had no garage, so he launched Cook Medical in a spare bedroom in an apartment in this university town. Half a century ago, in flight from Chicago's winters, he settled here and began making cardiovascular catheters and other medical instruments. One thing led to another, as things have a way of doing when the government stays out of the way, and although Cook died last year, Cook Medical, with its subsidiaries, is the world's largest family-owned medical devices company.