Right Opinion
The best of conservative opinion and commentary, updated daily.
Electronic Liberation?
Years ago, the monks at Saint Catherine's Monastery, which sits at the foot of Mount Sinai, maintained a dormitory for visitors. It was a rustic place, where a noisy, gas-powered generator provided the only electricity. Not long after nightfall, the monks would shut the generator down, converting the Sinai desert into the darkest place on Earth. Yet it was a different sort of darkness that enveloped that monastery and that mountain. When the moon was down, the stars shone as brightly at the horizon as they did at the top of the sky. With no light seeping up from any city, and no clouds drifting by, it seemed as if the atmosphere itself had slipped away. No discernible barrier stood between earth and the infinite space above.
Can Government Do Anything Well?
I'm suspicious of superstitions, like astrology or the belief that "green jobs will fix the environment and the economy." I understand the appeal of such beliefs. People crave simple answers and want to believe that some higher power determines our fates. The most socially destructive superstition of all is the intuitively appealing belief that problems are best solved by government. Opinion polls suggest that Americans are dissatisfied with government. Yet whenever another crisis hits, the natural human instinct is to say, "Why doesn't the government do something?"
Don't Do Business with Progressive Appeasers
Let's stipulate: Activists on the left are free to exercise their rights of speech and assembly to boycott businesses whose politics they oppose. Conversely, activists on the right are free to exercise the power of their pocketbooks and refrain from supporting businesses that shun their values. So, what are you waiting for, conservatives? There are coordinated shakedowns taking place right now that involve some of America's most prominent companies who've chosen to surrender to progressive bullying and race-card opportunism. Silence is complicity.
'Radical' Republicans: Unfortunately, No Basis for Obama's Claims About the GOP's Extremism
Last week, President Obama warned that if the Supreme Court stops Congress from forcing Americans to buy government-approved health insurance, it will be imposing restrictions on federal power of a sort not seen since the early 1930s, the late 1920s, 1905 or 1789. You can take your pick, since the president or his press secretary made all four of those assertions in the space of three days.
Mitt, Rick, & Newt
Rick Santorum called it a day yesterday afternoon. In one of those weird campaign events, Santorum's folks tried to keep what the event was to be under wraps until about 2 pm Eastern. But, the staff got buffaloed into giving up the fact that Santorum would be "suspending" his campaign so, by the time the event started at about 2:20, every person on the planet with a Twitter account was writing about it. Santorum's withdrawal from the campaign was a paradox: He had done too well to stay in any longer.
Obama's Contempt for Law (Chavismo Comes to Washington)
Last month the Obamas hosted a White House conference on bullying. It was intended as a show of support for victims, but watching this president in action, it might just as easily have been a tutorial. We've gotten glimpses of Obama's intimidating instincts from the beginning. Now as his administration flounders, his aggressiveness is becoming less and less veiled.
Random Thoughts
Random thoughts on the passing scene: How long do politicians have to keep on promising heaven and delivering hell before people catch on, and stop getting swept away by rhetoric? Why should being in a professional sport exempt anyone from prosecution for advocating deliberate violence? Recent revelations of such advocacy of violence by an NFL coach should lead to his banishment for life by the NFL, and criminal prosecution by the authorities. If you are serious about reducing violence, you have to be serious about punishing those who advocate it.
Still the Least Racist Country in the World
In light of the tragic killing of black teenager Trayvon Martin -- and the manufactured hysteria surrounding it -- one thing needs to be stated as clearly and as often as possible: The United States is the least racist and least xenophobic country in the world. Foreigners of every race, ethnicity, and religion know this. Most Americans suspect this. Most black Americans and the entire left deny this.
Holder's Corrupt Opposition to Voter ID Laws
Can anyone think of an innocuous reason that President Barack Obama and Attorney General Eric Holder oppose state voter ID laws? Obama and Holder appear to view almost everything through the prism of race or, at the very least, use race as an excuse to justify otherwise very dubious policies, from immigration enforcement to voter intimidation actions to strong-arming banks to make loans via allegations of racism. In December, along these lines, Holder criticized redistricting maps that had been drawn by the Texas Legislature and used the opportunity to call for an aggressive federal review of voter identification laws in not just Texas but other states.
Survival of the Fittest and Other Barackian Myths
As the current president of the United States tells it, his Republican adversaries are launched on a crusade to revive the dog-eat-dog economic philosophy known to our great grandparents as "social Darwinism." Horrors! Loosen dependence on government and there's no restraining the ferocity of the marketplace -- "nature red in tooth and claw," survival of the fittest, cutthroat capitalism, the only kind of capitalism Barack Obama seems ever to have heard of. The dynamics of free choice in the marketplace don't much engage the interest of a president with few, if any, contemporary rivals as to aptitude for ham-fisted political intervention.
Should Prof. Obama Flunk His Own Course?
We are often reminded that President Obama is the smartest man ever to occupy the White House. That's how Prof. Michael Beschloss, presidential historian, described him. Of course, Mr. Obama was editor of Harvard Law Review. Most of all, we are informed regularly that Barack Obama taught constitutional law at University of Chicago. That's no mean accomplishment. So, it's really curious how Professor Obama defines constitutional issues. Last week, he told a Rose Garden audience that the U.S. Supreme Court would be engaging in "judicial activism" if it rules his health care takeover unconstitutional.
Titanic: The Reality
BELFAST, Northern Ireland -- Here, where Titanic, the massive White Star Line luxury liner, was built -- the joke for years has been, "It was fine when it left here." This year marks the 100th anniversary of the sinking of the ship "Not even God himself could sink...." and the centenary is being observed in diverse ways. There are solemn remembrances. A "Requiem for the Lost Souls of the Titanic" is scheduled for St. Anne's Cathedral and there's a Titanic Commemoration Service and Unveiling of the Titanic Memorial Gardens at City Hall.
Justice Kagan's Ineligibility to Rule on ObamaCare
It is no secret that whatever ruling the United States Supreme Court reaches on the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA), the decision will have monumental repercussions for the nation and the Obama administration. Critical to that ruling is the ability by individual justices to render an impartial decision on the issue. Considering her history regarding healthcare reform previous to her court appointment, Justice Elena Kagan's ability to be impartial is highly questionable.
Can Romney Show Voters That Obama Is Out of Date?
Time for a postmortem on the race for the Republican presidential nomination. Yes, I know Ron Paul and Newt Gingrich are still out there saying interesting things. And that Rick Santorum says it's only halftime and argues he can somehow overtake Mitt Romney by carrying his home state of Pennsylvania. But polls there show a close race. And the idea that, if Romney falls short of a delegate majority, superdelegates will throng to a proudly unscripted, shoot-from-the-lip alternative is delusional.
Odes to Joy
I didn't pay much attention to the Masters golf tournament this weekend. On the religious front, the Mullings Director of Standards & Practices and I drove to Long Island Friday for the first night of Passover at my aunt and uncle's home; then, after a night in New York City, drove down to New Jersey for the second night at my younger brother's house. We got home after midnight Saturday night and I slept in on Sunday.
Beer Summit, Anyone?
As I sit here, it has not yet been determined what actually took place in Sanford, Florida, and whether George Zimmerman will be arrested and tried for shooting Trayvon Martin. Except for Mr. Zimmerman and his friends and family, that will be of little concern. What really matters is that America's leading racists, Barack Obama, Al Sharpton, Jesse Jackson and the Black Panthers, have all had the opportunity to showboat and to show their true colors.
Wrongful Birth? Loving Disabled Children
Doctors and hospitals are regularly held accountable for failing to prevent patients from dying. But if the precedent set by an Oregon couple's recent legal victory stands, doctors can now be held accountable for failing to prevent patients from living! Ariel and Deborah Levy of Portland were awarded $2.9 million this month because doctors didn't anticipate their four-year-old daughter's Down syndrome. The Levys said if they had known about the disability while their daughter was still in utero, they would have terminated the pregnancy.
Romney Veep Pick? A Heavy Hitter
WASHINGTON -- Barack Obama's intellectual sociopathy -- his often breezy and sometimes loutish indifference to truth -- should no longer startle. It should, however, influence Mitt Romney's choice of a running mate. In his 2010 State of the Union address, Obama flagrantly misrepresented the Supreme Court's Citizens United decision, which did not "open the floodgates" for foreign corporations "to spend without limit in our elections" (the law prohibiting foreign money was untouched by Citizens United) and did not reverse "a century of law." Although Obama is not nearly as well educated as many thought, and he thinks, he surely knows he was absurd when he said last Monday, regarding Obamacare, that it would be "unprecedented" for the Supreme Court to overturn a "passed law."
Obama's Own War on Women
Anti-war presidential candidate Gene McCarthy once described reporters as being like blackbirds on the telephone lines: One lands, they all land; one flies off, they all fly off. We're seeing those media blackbirds again. They're going on and on about conservatives and their so-called war on women. It seems if you don't think religious institutions -- hospitals, soup kitchens, universities -- should be forced to provide coverage for drugs that can cause abortions, then you are making "war" on women.
Just How Dumb Are Republicans?
Someone once observed that Democrats are evil, whereas Republicans are stupid. As a Republican, I really wish I didn't have to acknowledge the truth of that statement. But after suffering through the GOP primaries thus far, what choice do I have? Frankly, I don't object to the contenders going after each other with axe handles. That's what primaries are for. ... The bone I have to pick with the RNC concerns the way they conduct primaries.