Right Opinion
The best of conservative opinion and commentary, updated daily.
Fed Hooey
I didn't want to let the latest cockamamie Fed idea for "sterilized" bond buying pass without a comment. A Wall Street Journal story explained that somehow the Fed will buy more long-term bonds, print new money and then borrow the money back so it doesn't cause inflation. It's all a lot of hooey. Typical Fed tinkering. It can't seem to help itself. The dollar has already fallen about 1 percent since this story broke. Gold has jumped.
Obama vs. Israel: Priority No. 1? Stop Israel
WASHINGTON -- It's Lucy and the football, Iran-style. After ostensibly tough talk about preventing Iran from going nuclear, the Obama administration acquiesced to yet another round of talks with the mullahs. This, 14 months after the last group-of-six negotiations collapsed in Istanbul because of blatant Iranian stalling and unseriousness. Nonetheless, the new negotiations will be both without precondition and preceded by yet more talks to decide such trivialities as venue. These negotiations don't just gain time for a nuclear program about whose military intent the IAEA is issuing alarming warnings. They make it extremely difficult for Israel to do anything about it (while it still can), lest Israel be universally condemned for having aborted a diplomatic solution.
Someone Take the Wheel
There's a great scene in the movie "The Right Stuff" where the original Mercury astronauts are checking out the capsule for their first trips to space. They're horrified to discover that the German scientists in charge of the program see the astronauts as nothing more than living props. There is no window, the scientists explain. There's no emergency hatch or even controls for the astronauts to use. It's all automated. "We want a window," the astronauts demand. The white-frocked experts reluctantly agree to give the astronauts a window and piloting controls because they know the American people would hate to see the nation's greatest pilots treated like lab monkeys with no say in their fate.
Who Is a Citizen?
Is Mitt Romney in favor of increasing the number of illegal immigrants in the United States? You might not think so, given his tough anti-illegal immigration rhetoric, but his leading immigration adviser wants to do just that. What's more, the proposal this adviser is pushing would impose a new tax -- from $1,200 to $1,600 -- on every American family for the birth of each child. These are the conclusions of a new study put out by the conservative think tank the National Foundation for American Policy. The whole study calls into question the motives behind the radical anti-immigration groups that have been trying to make illegal immigration a central issue in the campaign.
Big Lies on Big Oil
How much truth is there in President Obama's latest favorite mantra that we consume a disproportionate share of the world's oil, especially considering how little of the world's reserves we have? Recently, Obama said: "But here's the thing about oil. We have about 2, maybe 3, percent of the world's proven oil reserves. We use 25 percent of the world's oil. So think about it. Even if we doubled the amount of oil that we produce, we'd still be short by a factor of five."
Colorado's Own Green Loan Sinkhole
There's no escaping Solyndra Syndrome. Here in my home state of Colorado, citizen journalists have uncovered our own gaping government green loan sinkhole. The stench of Chicago-on-the-Potomac is fouling the fresh Rocky Mountain air. Meet Loveland-based Abound Solar, the lucky winner of a $400 million federal loan guarantee from the Obama administration. Earlier this month, the thin-film cadmium telluride solar module-maker announced layoffs of nearly 300 employees (70 percent of its workforce). In addition, the firm froze plans to build a new factory in Indiana. Abound says it will ride out bad market conditions and "hopefully" survive until the market recovers.
GCB: Good Christians Bashed
At the same time Washington was ablaze with outrage at the idea that Rush Limbaugh insulted a woman as a "slut," ABC premiered a new Sunday night show called "GCB" -- shortened from "Good Christian Bitches." Limbaugh apologized. ABC displays no such contrition. They insulted only those Christians. In the midst of this trashy debut, ABC promoted a new sitcom coming in April titled "Don't Trust The B---- in Apartment 23." ABC advertised the debut of "GCB" with a photo of actress Kristin Chenoweth in a choir robe cut way above the knee, as if such a thing exists. "Love One Another," it read, dripping in sarcasm. That's Hollywood's definition of a "good Christian."
Gender Specific Writer
Apple Inc. makes dazzling, life-enhancing products, so God bless them ... to a point. Having recently upgraded my computer to OS X 10.7.3 or Lion, I discovered that the new operating system no longer supports Microsoft Word, the word processing program I'd been dragooned into using after Microsoft muscled the far superior Word Perfect out of contention. What to do? Purchasing a new version of Word would run about $150.00. But Apple offers its own word processing program called Pages that you can have for $20.00. Trusting in the quality of all things Apple, I bought it and congratulated myself on my thrift.
Gas Pains
WASHINGTON -- One year ago this week, I wrote a column titled "Crude Cruelty," which covered a jump in the cost of motor fuel and a corresponding spike in prices for food and rising unemployment. Government "experts" attributed the bad news to "supply disruptions" and "uncertainty" caused by unrest in Libya. Today Moammar Gadhafi is gone, but the average price for a gallon of gasoline in the United States is $3.79 -- up 27 cents from a year ago. Unsurprisingly, mortgage defaults are up 22 percent, and orders for durable goods -- cars, appliances, machinery and aircraft -- are down. Our anemic economic recovery is being threatened. Gasoline prices are expected to top $4 per gallon by this summer.
Plan B vs. Religious Liberty: Not So Fast
How supremely ironic is it that at the same time the Obama Administration is seeking to force religious organizations to offer insurance coverage of abortion-inducing drugs, a federal district court in Washington State has ruled that the state cannot force pharmacies to dispense those very same drugs? That's right. And this comes close on the heels of what amounted to a 9-0 smack-down of the Administration by the Supreme Court, which insisted in the Hosanna-Tabor case that even in hiring, the First Amendment gives "special solicitude to the rights of religious organizations."
'Outrage' Over Limbaugh -- What About Left-wing Misogyny?
"A firestorm of outrage from women after a crude tirade from Rush Limbaugh," said NBC anchor Brian Williams. This was followed by a reporter who said: "In 2012, the personal is political. What began as a debate over religious freedom has devolved into what some call a 'war on women.'" The "outrage" over Rush Limbaugh's "misogyny" provides the latest examples of the liberal vs. conservative double standard and the selective indignation of the left. Limbaugh criticized the congressional appearance of Sandra Fluke, a Georgetown law student who supported requiring even religiously affiliated institutions to provide "free" contraceptives.
James Q. Wilson: Character and Criminal Justice
On March 2, James Q. Wilson, one of America's pre-eminent social scientists and conservative thinkers, died at the age of eighty. It's hard to think of anyone who had a greater impact on the way Americans think about crime and punishment than Wilson. I know he shaped my thinking on the subject and, thus, helped refine the vision for Prison Fellowship. Wilson is probably best known for a 1982 Atlantic Monthly article he co-authored with George L. Kelling, entitled "Broken Windows."
My Friend, Andrew Breitbart
I recently became editor-at-large of Andrew Breitbart's empire, but I first met Andrew when he was still the unnamed other half of Matt Drudge's monster website. The year was 2001. I'd just entered college at UCLA, and after seeing the anti-Israel bias of the student newspaper, The Daily Bruin, I had become their token conservative columnist. My specialty was throwing bombs. The reaction to my pieces was absolutely unanimous: The liberals on campus hated them. One day, I opened my email to find a missive from some guy named Andrew. No last name attached. It said that he worked with Matt Drudge. It also said he'd been sitting in a Westwood restaurant with nothing to read and picked up a copy of the Daily Bruin. He'd read my column, and he wanted to get together.
Miss Fluke's Fluke
WASHINGTON -- I like to think of Miss Sandra Fluke's contretemps with the madly admired Mr. Rush Limbaugh as, well, a fluke. She objected to his joke about her being "a slut" and "a prostitute," and hesto presto the part-time Georgetown University law student struck pay dirt. You object to my characterization of her as "part-time"? How could she be a full-time law student and still be appearing before Congress explicating the plight of coeds with $3,000 contraceptive bills or others suffering the heartbreak of being rejected publicly at the pharmacy for insurance coverage of a birth control bill? Then there was all the other media attention that came from Rush's little joke. Yes, I see it as a fluke, defined by the Dictionary of American Slang as "a fortuitous accident." Was not Miss Fluke felicitously named years ago before anyone ever thought of talk radio?
Fools, Nitwits & Dumb Bunnies
The title refers to those politicians in our nation's capital who make our laws, oversee our wars and conduct our foreign policy. If you regard Congress as a family, this one has far more than its share of black sheep. If you regard Congress as a village, this one has far more than its share of idiots. If, on the other hand, you regard Congress as a gathering of wise and benevolent public servants, I'm afraid you, too, are a fool, a nitwit or a very dumb bunny.
Another Piece of Obama's Radical Puzzle
Much remains unknown about Barack Obama's radical past -- which the president has gone to great lengths to conceal from the American people. Obama hasn't succeeded in covering every trail, of course, as works such as David Horowitz's "Barack Obama's Rules for Revolution: The Alinsky Model" and Stanley Kurtz's "Radical-in-Chief" have shown. Indeed, both those texts have powerfully exposed the deceptive nature of our current president and the socialist/Marxist associations he has managed to keep from the public. Yesterday, another window revealing the president's radical past was opened. A video released by Breitbart.com captured Obama leading a 1991 protest on behalf of Harvard Law's Derrick Bell, described by some as the "Rev. Jeremiah Wright of the academic world."
Sick and Tired of the Middle East
Americans -- left, right, Democrats and Republicans -- are all sick of thankless nation-building in the Middle East. Yet democratization was not our first choice, but rather a last resort after prior failures. The United States had long ago supplied Afghan insurgents, who expelled the Soviets after a decade of fighting. Then we left. The country descended into even worse medievalism under the Taliban. So after removing the Taliban, who had hosted the perpetrators of 9/11, we promised in 2001 to stay on.
Romney Campaign Dragged Down by Huge Haul of Delegates
Mitt Romney won more than twice as many delegates on Super Tuesday as Newt Gingrich or Rick Santorum. The Non-Fox Media's take-away is that Romney suffered a major setback Tuesday night. No matter what happens, Barack Obama's boosters in the NFM portray it as a debilitating blow to Romney. On Nov. 7, The New York Times' headline will be: "Romney ekes out narrow electoral victory, leaving race uncertain."
A Sincere Apology
The first apology by Rush Limbaugh, posted on his website over the weekend, sounded forced, qualified, almost defensive. The second, broadcast live on his Monday show, sounded sincere and heartfelt. Rush Limbaugh did something not usually associated with either himself or bombastic talk radio. He apologized for calling a woman a "slut" and a "prostitute." The woman, 30-year-old Sandra Fluke, a law student at Georgetown University, wants the Catholic school to pay for contraceptives in its insurance policy because, she says, she and her friends cannot afford the cost otherwise. Apparently Fluke is not aware that contraceptive pills, according to John McCormack of The Weekly Standard, "can be purchased for as low as $9 per month at a pharmacy near Georgetown's campus." Or that some places dispense them for free, along with condoms.
On Iran and Entitlements, Obama Kicks the Can Down the Road
Kicking the can down the road. That's been the Obama administration's response on issues from Iran's nuclear weapons program to America's entitlement systems. Start with Iran. In a statement in the Oval Office before his meeting with President Obama on Monday, Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu noted that Obama had "reiterated yesterday" the principle that "when it comes to Israel's security, Israel has the right, the sovereign right, to make its own decisions."