Right Opinion
The best of conservative opinion and commentary, updated daily.
Five Myths of the 'Racist' Criminal Justice System
Calling America's criminal justice system "racist" is not confined to "civil rights leaders" like the Revs. Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton. Then-Sen. Barack Obama, during the 2008 presidential campaign, said it, too. Blacks and whites, said Obama, "are arrested at very different rates, are convicted at very different rates (and) receive very different sentences ... for the same crime." When the man who became president of the United States says this -- the No. 1 law enforcement officer -- it must, therefore, be true. Let's examine five major assumptions behind this assertion.
To Win Burbs, Romney May Pick 'Double-Vanilla' Veep
Some 20 million Americans in primaries and caucuses will take part in selecting the Republican presidential nominee. One person will choose the vice presidential nominee. This has long struck me as absurd: One person choosing someone who, as a result, might become president for as long as 10 years. But just about everyone in politics says it's the only proper way. Over the last 25 years, presidential nominees of both parties have engaged in conscientious consultation and have mostly made pretty good choices. No more picks at five o'clock in the morning to meet a convention deadline.
The Associated Press' Undeserved Pulitzer
On Monday in New York City, would-be jihadist Zarein Ahmedzay testified in Brooklyn federal court that co-conspirator Adis Medunjanin "was committed" to carrying out a wave of terrorist attacks in New York City. A third man, Najibullah Zazi, has already pleaded guilty to the plot that was unraveled by the New York Police Department (NYPD) and the FBI. On the same day, the Associated Press (AP) won a Pulitzer Prize for a series of stories "revealing the New York Police Department's widespread spying on Muslims." It was precisely such "spying" that thwarted several terrorist plots all designed to once again to kill untold numbers of innocent New Yorkers.
When Administrations Implode
Administration meltdowns are hardly novel. In almost every presidency there comes a moment when sheer chaos takes hold, whether self-induced or as a result of an outside crisis. Vietnam had effectively destroyed Lyndon Johnson by 1967. Watergate unraveled the Richard Nixon administration, as the disgraced president resigned in the face of certain impeachment. Gerald Ford could not whip inflation and was not re-elected. One-termer Jimmy Carter was undone by the Iranian hostage crisis and skyrocketing oil prices.
From Hackers to Slackers
If you are reading this column online at work, you may be committing a federal crime. Or so says the Justice Department, which reads the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act (CFAA) broadly enough to encompass personal use of company computers as well as violations of fine-print website rules that people routinely ignore. Last week, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit rightly rejected this view of the CFAA, which Chief Judge Alex Kozinski noted could make a criminal out of "everyone who uses a computer in violation of computer use restrictions -- which may well include everyone who uses a computer." Unfortunately, other appeals courts have been more receptive to the Justice Department's interpretation, which gives U.S. attorneys the power to prosecute just about anyone who offends or annoys them.
Good Economists
It's difficult to be a good economist and simultaneously be perceived as compassionate. To be a good economist, one has to deal with reality. To appear compassionate, often one has to avoid unpleasant questions, use "caring" terminology and view reality as optional. Affordable housing and health care costs are terms with considerable emotional appeal that politicians exploit but have absolutely no useful meaning or analytical worth. For example, can anyone tell me in actual dollars and cents the price of an affordable car, house or myomectomy? It's probably more pleasant to pretend that there is universal agreement about what is or is not affordable.
The Real GSA Scandal: Job-Killing Big Labor Payoffs
Stop the presses: Big-spending Democrats are finally up in arms over a federal boondoggle. Details of the U.S. General Services Administration bacchanalia get worse by the day. We've graduated from overpriced breakfasts in Vegas, friends-and-family junkets galore and in-house videos mocking their own profligacy to extravagant bonuses, alleged kickbacks, obstructionism and bribes. But the scandal is still small potatoes compared to the potential billions GSA is pouring down the Big Labor drain.
'Victims' Who Persecute
Holocaust Remembrance Day always falls during the week that follows Passover. At first glance, the two would seem to have little in common -- one memorializes the millions of European Jews annihilated by Nazi Germany; the other commemorates the deliverance of the Jews from slavery in ancient Egypt. Yet for all their obvious differences, a fundamental similarity links these two crucial chapters in Jewish history. Both were attempts at genocide, and in both cases the perpetrators justified their savageries by claiming that they were the real victims, threatened by the people they intended to wipe out.
The Economy Needs No Conductor
We spend too much time waiting for orders -- and money -- from Washington. The collapse of the housing bubble gave politicians a license to do what they wanted to do all along: spend. The usual checks on extravagance, weak as they are, were washed away. Budgets? We'll worry about that later. Inflation? We'll worry about that later. As I point out in my brand new book, "No, We Can't: Why Government Fails -- and Individuals Succeed," a true free market doesn't require much. It's not like an orchestra in need of a conductor. What it needs is property rights, so no one can take your stuff. Then people trade property to their mutual advantage. Resources move around without the need for a central, coercive government telling people which resources should go where -- or telling them that they must get permission to do what they think is advantageous.
Jane Austen's Advice: Choose the Right Man and Live Happily Ever After
Call it the lament of the young, single woman: there are no good men left. Or if there are, where are they? And how can a young woman pursue a healthy, marriage-minded relationship in a singles culture of casual sex and perpetual adolescence?
Diane Sawyer Versus 'Too Rich' Romney
Republican strategists should generally be wary of campaign advice from liberals -- and when it's from the media, generally becomes definitely. Washington Post political writer Chris Cillizza recently suggested Mitt Romney's general-election strategy should start with getting a "positive first introduction" to voters through the liberal media because "only the national media can provide that megaphone and serve as a sort of validator for him." How hard did he laugh after he wrote that?
Obama's Fraudulent Investment
President Barack Obama last week visited Palm Beach Gardens, Fla. -- a small city of 15 golf courses -- so he could preach to some of his humble campaign contributors his vision of American frugality. "So if all of you are willing to invest in the future the same way that our parents and our grandparents and our great-grandparents invested in the future, I'm confident America's best days are still ahead," Obama said. "But we're going to have to work for it. We're going to have to earn it. And that's what this election will be all about."
Blame Congress for the GSA Scandal
Who should we tar and feather for the scandalous spending spree at that General Services Administration "conference" in Nevada two years ago? Whose fault is it that a bunch of GSA bureaucrats wasted money on $44 breakfasts, a clown and a $75,000 bicycle-building exercise? Not the GSA's bosses. Not the Obama administration. I pin the blame on Watergate and Congress.
Green Rooms
Let me start by saying that I like Hillary Rosen. She's not a friend of mine, but she is an acquaintance and we have worked together on various projects over the years. Let me continue by saying, what she said about Ann Romney was just plain dumb. When the story about what she'd said on CNN broke I Tweeted that she made the rookie mistake of thinking she could repeat what she'd said in the Green Room at CNN on the air at CNN.
America Won't Get Rich by Relying on the Permanent Poor
America is a land of class mobility. That's what makes America a magnet destination for people all over the world: Come to America and make something of yourself. If you want great welfare benefits, try to bust into Europe; if you want to work for a living and get rich, come to the United States. But for some Americans, there is no class mobility. There is a permanent economic underclass, and those who inhabit it have no ability to rise above their fiscal fate. There is a reason for that: They make bad decisions.
Obama's Problem? His Record
"The choice in this election is between an economy that produces a growing middle class and that gives people a chance to get ahead and their kids a chance to get ahead, and an economy that continues down the road we are on, where a fewer and fewer number of people do very well and everybody else is running faster and faster just to keep pace." That's Obama advisor David Axelrod on "Fox News Sunday," explaining why people should vote for ... Barack Obama.
Katie Pavlich's 'Fast and Furious'
Of all the myriad scandals of the Obama administration, there is one, largely ignored by the mainstream media, that could actually be its worst. That scandal is the operation run from the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, under the Justice Department, known as "Fast and Furious," through which the federal government actually encouraged and even ordered American gun shops to sell guns -- against the store owners' better judgment -- to "straw" purchasers who were funneling guns to Mexican drug gangs while the ATF sat back and watched and did nothing.
Mixing and Matching
Apparently the soaring national debt and the threat of a nuclear Iran are not enough to occupy the government's time, because the Obama administration is pushing to force Westchester County, N.Y., to create more low-income housing, in order to mix and match classes and races to fit the government's preconceptions. Behind all this busy work for bureaucrats and ideologues is the idea that there is something wrong if a community does not have an even or random distribution of various kinds of people. This arbitrary assumption is that the absence of evenness or randomness -- whether in employment, housing or innumerable other situations -- shows a "problem" that has to be "corrected."
When It's None of the Government's Business
Most presidential-year debates turn out to be worthless, assuming they turn out to be actual debates. For which dreary datum there's an unbeatable reason. Presidential-year bombast isn't about policy, it's about positioning -- finding the most flattering camera angle from which to pose for the voters. On this account, we need not pay much attention to the non-issue that has arisen out of nowhere: Obama spokeswoman's claim that Ann Romney never worked "a day in her life." The Romney campaign's riposte was that in fact Ann Romney raised five children. Doesn't that count in an age when the government does everything but breed our children? On from there to the think pieces about "Women in the Workplace and Their Tribulations."
Why Would a Pro-Castro Sentiment Only Offend Cubans?
As all baseball fans and many other Americans know, the manager of the Miami Marlins, Ozzie Guillen, told Time magazine that he loves Fidel Castro. The news focus has been on Guillen's remarks -- for which he has profusely apologized -- and whether the Marlins were right to suspend him for five games. More important, however, have been the reactions to Guillen's comment. They sustain a thesis that I develop in my book ("Still the Best Hope: Why the World Needs American Values to Triumph") that comes out next week: Leftism poisons just about everything it touches.