Right Opinion
The best of conservative opinion and commentary, updated daily.
The 'Flexibility' Doctrine
WASHINGTON -- You don't often hear an American president secretly (he thinks) assuring foreign leaders that concessions are coming their way, but they must wait because he's seeking re-election and he dare not tell his own people. Not at all, spun a White House aide in major gaffe-control mode. The president was merely explaining that arms control is too complicated to be dealt with in a year in which both Russia and the U.S. hold presidential elections.
SCOTUS Momentus
Health care and Energy were the big stories this week in Washington, DC. The three-days of arguments at the Supreme Court of the United States (which we, in the Twitter-verse, refer to as SCOTUS) appeared to have reversed the conventional wisdom of how the Court would rule. Prior to the oral arguments the media cognoscenti were pretty sure the Court would uphold the Constitutionality of the individual mandate and thus the entirety of the Affordable Care Act.
Eco-Scams Are as Easy as 'A123'
While President Obama was busy lambasting Big Oil tax breaks on Thursday, yet another one of his environmental welfare recipients (the very kind he wants to redistribute oil subsidies to) was teetering on the edge of bankruptcy. Who needs to win the Mega Millions lottery? Start a pie-in-the-sky eco-boondoggle, and a half-billion-dollar jackpot ripe for squandering is all yours!
Trayvon and the Good Victim
Just as Rahm Emmanuel didn't want to let a good crisis go to waste, the national press doesn't want to let a good victim go to waste. The death of Trayvon Martin is a terrible thing, but the usual suspects are hijacking his death to create a morality play. Whenever this happens, and it happens with some frequency in American life, truth is corrupted. About 153 young black men are killed every week in America -- 94 percent of them at the hands of other young black males. Only one of those who were murdered on Feb. 26 has dominated national news coverage -- because his killer was not black.
Diplomatic Duplicity
WASHINGTON -- In the summer of 1987, just before my "television debut," a true friend instructed me in a congressional hearing, "Remember, the microphone is always on -- even when it's not!" It's a lesson I never have forgotten. Apparently, Barack Obama doesn't have any friends to give him similar advice, or he doesn't learn well. Either way, an open mic during this week's nuclear security summit in Seoul, South Korea, has revealed our president's extraordinary hubris and his penchant for dangerous diplomatic duplicity.
Not Black and White
It may be months before we know what actually happened the night Trayvon Martin was shot in Sanford, Fla. on February 26. But many seem to have already decided that this was a brutal case of racial profiling and vigilante justice, emblematic of lingering racism in America. Martin's parents, who understandably want justice for their son, have been joined by a plethora of activists, politicians, commentators and celebrities in demanding that the shooter, George Zimmerman, be arrested and tried for murder. The Justice Department has gotten in on the act as well, investigating whether the shooting constituted a hate crime based on a an inaudible comment by Zimmerman on his 911 call that some have alleged was a racial slur. But turning this tragic incident into a symbol of racism is wrong and reeks of opportunism on the part of racial showmen like Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson.
No Longer Surprised: Prepare to Give an Answer
Kirk Cameron was once the most popular teen actor on television as the lovable Mike Seaver on "Growing Pains." But no longer. As most of you know by now, after a recent appearance on "Piers Morgan Tonight," he's been accused of intolerance, hatred, and even of being an "accomplice to murder." His sin? He expressed his personal opinion on homosexual behavior and same-sex marriage.
Shall We Be Citizens or Subjects?
In Washington this week, a rare drama is unfolding in the U.S. Supreme Court. The momentous question that is before the court is this: Shall we be Citizens or Subjects? The high court is considering a historic challenge by twenty-six states to the Affordable Care Act, otherwise known as ObamaCare. Hundreds of people have stood in line, some of them overnight in the chill March air, to get inside. Our colleague, Ken Klukowski, was one of those fortunate few. We are relying on Ken's reporting and also on the impressions of Virginia Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli.
Obama Doubling Down on His Leftist Radicalism
You can't even casually surf the Internet on any given day without numerous reminders of just how radical President Obama is -- and this is during an election year, when it should be in his political interest to mask his radicalism. Minding my own business, I happened on an article by Jacob Laksin on FrontPageMag.com, titled "Obama's Pick for World Bank Hates Capitalism." I'd heard a bit about this before but hadn't yet studied it. I'm so used to Obama's extremism that such revelations hardly move me, much less surprise me. I know where he stands; I just wish everyone else did.
The State of the States
At times, it's heartbreaking to find that some states are as inept as the federal government. Of course, living, as I do, in California, I'm in no position to throw stones. However, when I found that it took Iowa weeks to finally add up a mere 200,000 caucus votes and still not know the actual election results, I wondered once again why Iowa is allowed to be the kickoff state in presidential elections. I may have missed it, but I don't recall seeing it mentioned in the Constitution that Iowa and New Hampshire were endowed by the Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among them were life, liberty and dibs on hogging the nation's attention every four years.
Obama's Gaffe Hints at Hidden Agenda in Second Term
"I actually did vote for the $87 billion before I voted against it." So said John Kerry, in Huntington, W.V., on Tuesday, March 16, 2004, two weeks after he had clinched the Democratic presidential nomination by carrying every state but Vermont in the Super Tuesday primaries. Kerry was responding to an ad run by George W. Bush's campaign criticizing his 2003 vote against an $87 billion supplemental appropriation for the Iraq war. Two days later, the Bush campaign ran an edited version of the ad with the "actually did vote" footage added.
Jesse: Trayvon Proves 'Blacks Are Under Attack'
"Blacks are under attack," said the Rev. Jesse Jackson, irresponsibly turning the Florida shooting death of an unarmed black teenager, Trayvon Martin, at the hands of Hispanic neighborhood watch volunteer George Zimmerman into a barometer of black-white "race-relations." President Barack Obama, three years past his inauguration as American's first black president, weighed in, too. As when he accused the Cambridge police of "acting stupidly," Obama injected race, but this time a little less directly: "If I had a son, he'd look like Trayvon."
Calling George Orwell: Foolishness in Federal Prisons
During World War II, members of the British intelligentsia began to spread the idea that American troops in the country weren't there to fight the Germans. Instead, they were there to put down a possible British revolution. Well, the famous British author George Orwell's response was, "Only an intellectual could believe such stuff -- an ordinary man could not possibly be such a fool."
With Sunny Authenticity, Reagan Wooed the Young
"The oldest president in US history and the youngest members of the nation's electorate have forged one of the strongest bonds in American politics." So wrote the Philadelphia Inquirer in May 1986. Ronald Reagan was then in his sixth year as president, and his support among younger voters was stratospheric. Eighteen months earlier, a pre-election poll commissioned by Time magazine had found voters between 18 and 24 years old expressing support for Reagan over his Democratic challenger, Walter Mondale, by an amazing 45-point margin -- 63 percent to 18 percent. Now, the Inquirer noted, Reagan's support among the young was even greater: According to a new survey, voters younger than 25 were giving Reagan a 79 percent job-approval rating.
The Ryan Budget Is for Everyone
WASHINGTON -- As America rings up another $3 trillion-plus budget -- almost a historic peacetime 25 percent of gross national product -- and borrows another $1.3 trillion to pay for it, one should not be surprised that the usual mob of special pleaders is fuming at anyone who has the temerity to suggest a sane alternative. These are the new Democrats and they do not mind putting us on the road to Greece.
The Second Oil Revolution
The world was reinvented in the 1970s by soaring oil prices and massive transfers of national wealth. It could be again if the price of petroleum crashes -- a real possibility given the amazing estimates about the new gas and oil reserves on the North American continent. The Canadian tar sands, deepwater exploration in the Gulf of Mexico, horizontal drilling off the eastern and western American coastlines, fracking in once-untapped sites in North Dakota, and new pipelines from Alaska and Canada could within a decade double North American gas and oil production.
Cruising for a Showdown
NASHVILLE, Tenn. -- Ali Bokhari, now 39, emigrated from Pakistan in 2000 and eventually settled here as a taxi driver, and soon experienced a quintessentially American itch, a nagging sense that "I cannot grow." But he had an idea: "I can build a better business model for something Nashville has been missing." He built it, and now knows that no good deed goes unpunished by today's political model -- collusion between entrenched businesses and compliant government.
'Post-Racial' Lynch Mob
Even after the Duke lacrosse case, Texaco executives allegedly using the N-word in private meetings -- which turned out to be "St. Nicholas" -- the Tawana Brawley case, not to mention virtual hailstorms of racist graffiti and nooses materializing on college campuses, all of which invariably end up having been put there by the alleged victims, the Non-Fox Media (NFM) didn't even pause before conjuring a racist plot in the shooting death of Trayvon Martin in Florida last month.
Former NAACP Leader Takes on the Race Hustlers
In an interview with the Daily Caller, former NAACP leader C.L. Bryant challenged the credibility of Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton, whom he accused of "exploiting" the Trayvon Martin tragedy to "racially divide this country." He further accused the duo of being "race hustlers" and said they are "acting as though they are buzzards circling the carcass of this young boy." On Monday, Jackson and Sharpton held a protest attended by thousands in Sanford, Florida, the town where Martin was shot. Al Sharpton took the opportunity to work up a racist angle in a case where, at this juncture, such an angle is as tenuous as it gets. "We are here with two million signatures of people petitioning you to execute the immediate arrest of the killer of Trayvon Martin," said Sharpton. If the board does not act swiftly, he added, the town could become "the Birmingham of the 21st century, as a place of racial intolerance and double standards."
Obama Unleashed
Politicians and presidents of both parties have occasionally suffered from open-mic syndrome, saying something when they thought the microphone was turned off they wished had not been made public. The latest to fall prey to that amplification of the mouth is President Obama. The president told Russian President Dmitry Medvedev during their Monday meeting in Seoul, South Korea that once re-elected, he would have "more flexibility" to deal with missile defense. The president asked Medvedev to relay to incoming President Vladimir Putin his request for "patience" and "space."