Right Opinion
The best of conservative opinion and commentary, updated daily.
Romney's Luck
WASHINGTON -- It's been a wild ride, but the storyline of the Republican race remains remarkably simple and constant: It's Mitt Romney and the perishable pretenders. Five have come and gone, if you count the Donald's aborted proto-candidacy. And now the sixth and most plausibly presidential challenger just had his moment -- and blew it in Michigan.
Bill Maher, Major Obama Donor
HBO has perhaps made Bill Maher America's nastiest talk show host. He's also America's most prominent, militant atheist. Now he's made himself the most prominent million-dollar donor to Barack Obama's super PAC, Priorities USA. He broke out a big check onstage in San Jose to advertise his magnanimous support. A few days ago, NBC's resident feminist Andrea Mitchell practically needed smelling salts when Santorum super-PAC backer Foster Friess repeated a very old (and equally innocent) joke about Bayer aspirin being used as birth control. This somehow became the scandal of the day for Rick Santorum.
Another Apology – Another Disaster
WASHINGTON -- On Feb. 20, a NATO-Afghan security team at the Parwan Detention Center -- adjacent to the U.S.-run Bagram Air Field, north of Kabul -- began destroying files, books and documents from the detention facility library. The printed material was being burned because it contained handwritten coded messages being passed among Taliban and al-Qaida detainees. Afghan security personnel retrieved charred pages from several copies of the Quran and other Islamic holy texts. The following day, angry crowds rioted outside NATO installations in Kabul and elsewhere around Afghanistan.
Boone-Doggle?
WASHINGTON -- The other day, the estimable Wall Street Journal editorial board took issue with the equally estimable T. Boone Pickens, the legendary oilman, over the Nat Gas Act. The Journal argued with its customary lucidity that Pickens' idea of subsidizing natural gas, even for a short period, was ill-advised. To my mind, the Journal left one argument out, to wit: national security.
'Honest' PBS Clinton Documentary Lies About the Economy
Public Television touted the Bill Clinton documentary as a long-awaited warts-and-all piece. USA Today called the two-parter a "solid and even-handed account ... of a remarkably skillful politician with an immense intellect." While calling it "tedious and predictable," The Washington Post described the documentary as "honest." In the first hour, the documentary stumbled out of the gate. If it were a racehorse, they'd have to put it down. The whopper we get hit with right away and again and again is this: Clinton inherited a recession -- not an economy that long ago came out of a recession. Never mind that 1993 -- 19 years ago -- is within the living memory of many Americans. Yet we are repeatedly told that Clinton entered office under a full-on economic meltdown.
What You're Paying for Your Child to Learn at College
As high school seniors throughout America will be receiving acceptance letters to colleges within the next month, it would be nice for parents to meditate on what they're getting for the $20,000 to 50,000 they'll pay each year. --The United States is no better than any other country, and in many areas, it's worse than many. On the world stage, America is an imperialist country, and domestically, it mistreats its minorities and neglects its poor while discriminating against non-whites.
Making Military Families Pay
The specter of the 2010 Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, aka Obamacare, now hangs over America's fighting forces. Included in President Obama's proposed cuts in defense spending is a call for military families and retirees to pay more for their health insurance, even as unionized civilian defense workers' benefits remain off limits to those same increases. According to U.S. officials, the proposal is reportedly creating a "major rift" within the Pentagon. Why the change? Several congressional aides contend the move is designed to move more soldiers into the state-run health exchanges created by the healthcare bill.
The Problem With Santorum
Even when I agree with Rick Santorum, listening to him argue the point almost makes me change my mind. I also wonder why he's running for president, rather than governor, when the issues closest to his heart are family-oriented matters about which the federal government can, and should, do very little. It's strange that Santorum doesn't seem to understand the crucial state-federal divide bequeathed to us by the framers of our Constitution, inasmuch as it is precisely that difference that underlies his own point that states could ban contraception.
'Super Tuesday'
Many people are looking to the many primary elections on March 6th -- "Super Tuesday" -- to clarify where this year's Republican nomination campaign is headed. It may clarify far more than that, including the future of this nation and of Western civilization. If a clear winner with a commanding lead emerges, the question then becomes whether that candidate is someone who is likely to defeat Barack Obama.
Super PACs Can't Crown a King
The Post, dismayed about super PACs, reports "a rarefied group of millionaires and billionaires acting as kingmakers in the GOP contest, often helping to decide, with a simple transfer of money, which candidate might survive another day." Kingmakers? Where's the king? If kingmaking refers to, say, Sheldon Adelson, the Las Vegas casino owner, keeping Newt Gingrich's candidacy afloat with large infusions to the super PAC supporting Gingrich, then kingmaking isn't what it used to be. Notice that the fellow with the most muscular super PAC, Mitt Romney, has failed to vanquish a singularly weak set of rivals. Might the power of political dollars be finite, and utility of the last dollar be less than that of the first? Who knew?
The Second Front: Reproductive Rights vs. Religious Liberty
For some time I have been warning you that the Obama administration has elevated so-called "gay rights" at the expense of religious liberty. That may sound like an extreme statement, until you remember that Secretary of State Clinton has said "gay rights are human rights, and human rights are gay rights." And she and other officials repeatedly use the term "freedom of worship" (a private act) versus "freedom of religion," (which the Constitution protects, which is the freedom to live out one's faith in public).
When Will It Stop?
When will they stop asking Republicans like me about our party's choice for vice president? In every presidential election I've been involved in, the press and ordinary people are always asking, "Who will it be? Who will the presidential nominee choose for VP?" It happened again Tuesday when I appeared on CNN's "Piers Morgan Tonight" with Morgan and Andrew Breitbart, the commentator and boss of the news aggregator Breitbart.com.
Leave Afghanistan Now
Most wars have a turning point that either signals the road to victory or the ditch of defeat. In Vietnam, the 1968 Tet Offensive by communist troops against South Vietnamese and American forces and their allies is regarded as the turning point in that conflict. Though communist forces suffered heavy losses, which would normally define defeat, CBS News anchor Walter Cronkite and others in the U.S. media, portrayed the operation as an allied loss, thus encouraging not only the anti-war movement, but North Vietnamese and Viet Cong troops who believed all they had to do was hang on until America grew tired of the war and quit.
A Potpourri for Our Times
When people insist they are turned off by negative campaigning, they lie. They can't help it. It sounds like something they're expected to say, just like they're supposed to be turned off by sex and violence in movies and TV. But without screen violence, John Wayne, Gary Cooper, Jimmy Cagney, Humphrey Bogart, Richard Widmark, Bruce Willis, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Matt Damon and Russell Crowe, would have wound up pumping gas or selling insurance for a living.
History Never Quite Ends
The European Union and the United Nations, as well as globalization and advanced technology, were all supposed to trump age-old cultural, geographical and national differences and bring people together. But for all the high-tech veneer of the 21st century, the world still looks a lot like it did during the last hundred years and well before that.
The Autoworkers Obama Left Behind
The White House fairy tale about the Happily Ever After Auto Bailout is missing a crucial, bloody page. While President Obama bragged about "standing by American workers" at a rowdy United Auto Workers meeting Tuesday, he failed to acknowledge how the Chicago-style deal threw tens of thousands of nonunion autoworkers under the bus. In a campaign pep rally/sermon billed as a "policy speech," Obama nearly broke his arm patting himself on the back for placing his "bets" (read: our money) on the $85 billion federal auto industry rescue. "Three years later," he crowed, "that bet is paying off for America." Big Labor brass cheered Obama's citation of GM's "highest profits in its 100-year history" as the room filled with militant UAW chants of "union made."
Equality or Inequality
Rick Santorum's speech at the Detroit Economic Club stirred a bit of controversy when he said: "I'm not about equality of result when it comes to income inequality. There is income inequality in America. There always has been, and hopefully -- and I do say that -- there always will be." That kind of statement, though having merit, should not be made to people who have little or no understanding. Let's look at inequality.
Why It's Great to be a Psychotic A-Hole
President Obama apologized this week for the U.S. military's accidental burning of Qurans in Afghanistan. "I wish to express my deep regret for the reported incident," said Obama. "I extend to you and the Afghan people my sincere apologies. ... We will take the appropriate steps to avoid any recurrence, to include holding accountable those responsible." The Quran burnings prompted massive riots in Afghanistan, as per the Islamist handbook, page 248, which, incidentally, may be the only book other than the Quran published in most Arabic-speaking countries. U.S. servicemen were murdered. The Qurans were only burned in the first place because terrorists were writing messages in them to their friends. None of that stopped Obama from making his apology.
Sharia Law's Day in Pennsylvania Court
Late last year, a group known as the Parading Atheists of Central Pennsylvania (PACP) won a court challenge to participate in the Millersville, PA community parade. While they were awaiting that event, they participated in a Halloween parade sponsored by the city of Mechanicsburg. Their method of expressing free speech is to dress up in costumes representing "zombie gods," figures that have risen from the dead according to various religious believers. One of those figures was a "Zombie Pope." Another was a "Zombie Mohammed," who was almost immediately assaulted by a Muslim man attending the parade. What happened in court as a result of that incident was yet another assault -- on the First Amendment.
Obama's Latino Landslide?
It seemed like someone had been inhaling something at CNN on Friday morning. They kept touting an upcoming interview: "Barack Obama could win the presidential election by a landslide. Op-ed contributor Charlie Garcia tells us how next." Garcia, a consultant to corporations on how to market to Hispanics, broke out rainbows and unicorns for Obama: "He's doing all the right things. He's basically saying, 'look guys, comprehensive immigration reform. I'm all for it. It's those Republicans that just keep getting in the way.'"