Right Opinion
The best of conservative opinion and commentary, updated daily.
'Crucify Them': The Obama Way
One of President Obama's radical eco-bureaucrats has apologized for confirming an indelible truth: This White House treats politically incorrect private industries as public enemies who deserve regulatory death sentences. Environmental Protection Agency administrator Al Armendariz, an avowed greenie on leave from Southern Methodist University, gave a little-noticed speech in 2010 outlining his sadistic philosophy. "I was in a meeting once, and I gave an analogy to my staff about my philosophy of enforcement, and I think it was probably a little crude and maybe not appropriate for the meeting, but I'll go ahead and tell you what I said," he began. In a video obtained and released by Sen. James Inhofe, R-Okla., Armendariz then shared his bloody analogy:
Victory Parades
GEORGETOWN, S.C. -- Sixty-seven years ago this week, U.S. and Allied forces were racing across Germany and uncovering the deepest horrors of Adolf Hitler's Third Reich. Liberated death camps and extermination centers where millions perished were evidence of a brutal Holocaust perpetrated in the Führer's "Final Solution." On April 28, 1945, Hitler's erstwhile ally, Benito Mussolini, was captured by Italian partisans and summarily executed as he tried to flee to Switzerland. Less than 48 hours later, Hitler, cowering in his bunker beneath Berlin, committed suicide. Eight days after that, Germany surrendered -- ending the bloodiest war in European history. By the second week of May, with combat still raging in the Pacific, tens of thousands of American troops were en route home from Europe for victory parades.
My Papers? No Thank You
With the Supreme Court taking up Arizona's "show me your papers" immigration law, we're once again thrust into a useful debate over the role of the government and the obligations of the citizen -- and non-citizen. Rather than come at it from the usual angle, I thought I'd try something different. If there were one thing I could impress upon people about the nature of the state, it's that governments by their very nature want to make their citizens "legible."
Decline or Decadence?
Almost daily we read of America's "waning power" and "inevitable decline," as observers argue over the consequences of defense cuts and budget crises. Yet much of the new American "leading from behind" strategy is a matter of choice, not necessity. Apparently, both left-wing critics of U.S. foreign policy and right-wing Jacksonians are tiring of spending blood and treasure on seemingly ungrateful Middle Easterners -- after two Gulf wars, the decade in Afghanistan, and various interventions in Lebanon and Libya.
Liberal, Just Another Word for Stupid
I can't tell you how many times I've asked myself how it is that so many of my fellow Americans can actually go out and vote for people as ignorant as Patty Murray, Barbara Boxer and Hank Johnson. Rep. Johnson, in case he's slipped your mind, is the Democrat representing Georgia's 4th congressional district, whose claim to fame is that during a House Armed Services Committee hearing, he asked Admiral Robert Willard if he shared the congressman's concern that adding 8,000 servicemen and their families to the 175,000 civilians on the island could cause Guam to tip over and capsize.
Jim McGovern's War on the Constitution
US Representative Jim McGovern, a Worcester Democrat, generated some unwanted controversy two years ago when he publicly declared: "The Constitution is wrong." The context was a discussion of campaign finance during a debate between McGovern and his Republican challenger, Marty Lamb. "A lot of the campaign-finance laws we've passed have been declared unconstitutional by the Supreme Court," McGovern said. "I think the Constitution is wrong. I don't think money ... equals free speech. I don't think corporations should have the same equality as a regular voter."
The War Is Over?
"The war on terror is over," or so claims an unnamed senior State Department official, as reported by National Journal's Michael Hirsh in his recent article "The Post al-Qaida Era." Really? Well, if the war is over, I must have missed the peace treaty signing ceremony. I also haven't noticed a decline in incendiary rhetoric, or the disarmament -- or at least laying down of arms -- that usually accompanies the end of war. Does this mean we can do away with full-body scanners and TSA pat-downs?
If Mormonism Is Fair Game, so Is Jeremiah Wright
A well-regarded Republican strategist at a private gathering recently warned, "And just wait until they play that Mormon card." By "they," he meant the Obama campaign and its complicit media cheerleaders. Lawrence O'Donnell, only days later, gave his viewers a historical tutorial on the Mormon religion, darkly suggesting that we all should be afraid, very afraid. The Democratic governor of Montana, Brian Schweitzer, called Mitt Romney's grandfather a "polygamist." This is actually good news for the Romney campaign.
Romney Doing the Job Republican Establishment Just Won't Do
The actual Republican Establishment –- political consultants, The Wall Street Journal, corporate America, former Bush advisers and television pundits -- are exhorting Mitt Romney to flip-flop on his very non-Establishment position on illegal immigration. Both as governor of Massachusetts and as a presidential candidate, Romney has supported a fence on the border, E-Verify to ensure that employees are legal and allowing state police to arrest illegal aliens. He is the rare Republican who recognizes that in-state tuition, driver's licenses and amnesty are magnets for more illegal immigration.
Shrinking Problem: Illegal Immigration From Mexico
The illegal immigration problem is going away. That's the conclusion I draw from the latest report of the Pew Hispanic Center on Mexican immigration to the United States. Pew's demographers have carefully combed through statistics compiled by the U.S. Census Bureau, the Department of Homeland Security and the Mexican government, and have come up with estimates of the flow of migrants from and back to Mexico. Their work seems to be as close to definitive as possible.
For Illinois, the Bills Come Due
WASHINGTON -- After trying to tax Illinois to governmental solvency and economic dynamism, Pat Quinn, a Democrat who has been governor since 2009, now says "our rendezvous with reality has arrived." Actually, Illinois is still reality-averse, so Americans may soon learn the importance of the freedom to fail in a system of competitive federalism. Illinois was more heavily taxed than the five contiguous states (Indiana, Kentucky, Missouri, Iowa, Wisconsin) even before January 2011, when Quinn got a lame duck Legislature (its successor has fewer Democrats) to raise corporate taxes 30 percent (from 7.3 percent to 9.5 percent), giving Illinois one of the highest state corporate taxes, and the fourth highest combination of national and local corporate taxation in the industrialized world. Since 2009, Quinn has spent more than $500 million in corporate welfare to bribe companies not to flee the tax environment he has created.
I Take the Secret Service Scandal Personally
Washington -- When you have a young woman screaming in a hallway about some sort of grievance she has with you, you have a problem. Even a Secret Service agent, surrounded by his buddies, has a problem. I know about this sort of thing from my work in the archives pursuant to my researches as a presidential historian. One thinks back to the late 1940s of Elizabeth Bentley, an American spying for the Soviet Union. She raised an intolerable ruckus outside a hotel room with one, possibly two, Soviet intelligence operatives -- both male. Her involvement with one had been romantic, but the cad let her down. Possibly, he did not pay for her turkey sandwich. Possibly, he left other bills cooling on the table. At any rate, there was hell to pay. She had a set of lungs on her like a bull moose and a face to boot. When she let out a yell, it was deafening. Of course, the Russians were terrified. Shortly thereafter, she renounced Communism, and they were glad to get back to Stalin's Russia.
Death to Those Who Sell Homes to Jews
Muhammad Abu Shahala is a former Palestinian intelligence officer who, after reportedly being tortured, admitted committing a capital offense. As a result he has been sentenced to death. His "crime"? He sold his home in Hebron on the West Bank to Jews. Under Palestinian law, all that awaits Shahala's rendezvous with destiny is the approval of the sentence by Palestinian Authority (PA) president Mahmoud Abbas. Who is trying to save him? Jewish officials, who are attempting to get the international community involved.
Self-Defense Under Attack
Critics of Florida's self-defense law object to its recognition of a right to "stand your ground" in public places, which eliminated the duty to retreat from an assailant. Yet many of these critics seem to believe they have a duty to stand their ground and never retreat, using George Zimmerman's shooting of Trayvon Martin as a weapon to attack Florida's law, no matter what the evidence shows.
Obama's Tainted Bundler
Jon Corzine left Goldman Sachs with a net worth far exceeding even that of Mitt Romney today. Many accounts of his tenure at Goldman suggest he "failed up" the corporate ladder. Pushed out of Goldman in a power struggle (sparked in part by his support for a government bailout of Long-Term Capital Management), he nonetheless pocketed somewhere between $350 million and $500 million when the company went public. He used the cash to buy himself a Senate seat, spending $62 million out of his own pocket.
Conservative Consumers: Stand Your Ground
Who is Rashad Robinson? And why has his fringe, race-baiting organization been able to pressure several major corporations into abandoning a pro-limited-government legislative association -- all for a few cheap social-justice brownie points? Conservative consumers need to get informed, get active and stand their ground against free speech-squelching progressive activists who have demonized the American Legislative Exchange Council. This isn't just a battle over ALEC. It's a war against the left's shakedown artists taking aim at our freedoms of speech and association.
Motherhood vs Liberal Policies
It took some pressure, but Hilary Rosen finally apologized. The Democrat strategist displayed a tin ear to women's concerns when she snidely remarked that Ann Romney -- mother of five and wife of presidential contender Mitch Romney--had "never worked a day in her life." President Obama sought to defuse the negative impact of Rosen's remarks only by expressing dismay, through his campaign manager, that Rosen's criticism breached the unwritten rule that presidential candidate's family members should be "off-limits." Michele Obama straddled the issue with her every mom's-a-winner tweet ("Every mother works hard, and every woman deserves to be respected...").
The Assault on Food
Instinct tells us to fear poison. If our ancestors were not cautious about what they put in their mouths, they would not have survived long enough to produce us. Unfortunately, a side effect of that cautious impulse is that whenever someone claims that some chemical -- or food ingredient, like fat -- is a menace, we are primed to believe it. That makes it easy for government to leap in and play the role of protector.
Does Comedy Central Have a Right to Freedom of Speech?
Does Comedy Central have a right to free speech? Some congressional Democrats believe no association of human beings formed in the manner Comedy Central has been formed ought to have freedom of speech. Accordingly, they have sponsored constitutional amendments to incorporate this principal into our basic law. This is no joke.
Why I'm Adopting Sandra Fluke
"Government," says Rep. Barney Frank, D-Mass., "is simply the name we give to the things we choose to do together." This, of course, is eminently untrue -- we do plenty of things together that don't involve the government, thank God. One can only imagine how dull and dreary our sex lives would be if they had to run through a DMV-style bureaucracy. But this foolish liberal meme has value. It does carry a grain of truth: government represents us. Without us, there is no government. More to the point, without our money, there are no government programs.