Right Opinion
The best of conservative opinion and commentary, updated daily.
Prohibition
Unlike Bill Clinton, President Obama admits he inhaled!. "Frequently," he said. "That was the point." People laugh when politicians talk about their drug use. The audience laughed during a 2003 CNN Democratic presidential primary debate when John Kerry, John Edwards and Howard Dean admitted smoking weed. Yet those same politicians oversee a cruel system that now stages SWAT raids on people's homes more than 100 times a day. People die in these raids -- some weren't even the intended targets of the police.
The Spy Who Hated Me
The day Tyler Clementi discovered that his roommate at Rutgers University had used a webcam to spy on him as he kissed another man, he described the incident to a friend during an instant-message chat. "It could be interpreted as a hate crime," the friend suggested, according to a recent New Yorker article by Ian Parker. Clementi's reply: "hahaha a hate crime lol." That risible possibility has become a reality because Clementi, an 18-year-old freshman, jumped off the George Washington Bridge two days later for reasons that remain unclear. The New Jersey trial of Clementi's roommate, Dharun Ravi, illustrates the dangers posed by hate crime statutes, which enhance the penalties for existing offenses based on bigoted motives and therefore punish people for their opinions.
Would Suicide-Bomb Suspect Have Won 'Prosecutorial Discretion'?
The would-be suicide bomber who allegedly tried to attack the U.S. Capitol two weeks ago is living proof the people who run our government are not serious about enforcing our immigration laws. Amine El Khalifi was born in 1983. According to the Federal Bureau of Investigation, he had been in the United States illegally for more than a decade when he attended an inopportune meeting in the presence of someone the FBI would later describe as a "confidential human source." This meeting convened in the same town in which the Pentagon is located and could not have been more than several miles from the Capitol itself.
Outraged by Mormon Proxy Baptism? Not This Jew
In a column many years ago, I described how I once attempted to chart a family tree. Most of my father's family had been killed in Auschwitz and my efforts to trace their genealogy left me, I wrote, with a family tree that "has stumps where branches ought to be" and "gets narrower, not wider, as it grows." A woman phoned me the morning that column appeared. She said she was a Mormon, and wanted to add the names of my father's massacred relatives -- the column had mentioned about 18 of them by name -- to the Mormon Church's vast genealogical archives. I told her that I certainly had no objection; indeed, I was grateful for any gesture that might help preserve some remembrance of these family members whose lives had been so cruelly cut short.
By, of, and for Whom? The People and the Ruling Class
How is it that the American people want smaller government and less government spending, but the government is growing and spending faster than ever? That's one of the questions pollster Scott Rasmussen is asking in his new book, The Peoples' Money. Or take health care. As a Weekly Standard review of Rasmussen's book points out, Americans believe the solution to the health care problem "is to shift power away from politicians and bureaucrats so that individuals can have more control over their own lives."
An Anti-Worker Union
While refinery workers of the United Steelworkers held demonstrations in Washington Feb. 15 to protest the closure of two Philadelphia area refineries and the likely closure of a third in June, their leader continued his support of policies that might lead more refineries to cut back operations or shut down -- costing even more of his own members their jobs. The Keystone XL pipeline, the bane of radical environmentalists throughout the country, would bring oil from Canada to U.S. refineries on the Gulf Coast creating jobs and stimulating local economies and industries along the way. Unfortunately, President Obama figures he needs radical environmentalists more than instead of middle class workers for his re-election orts so he's denying permits for the pipeline's construction.
Christian Conservatives Guard Religious Liberty
The First Amendment to the United States Constitution contains two clauses addressing religious liberty: "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof." It's a shame that in their modern misguided zeal to read the first clause as mandating a complete separation of church and state, liberals do great damage to the second clause and defeat the overarching purpose of both: ensuring religious liberty.
Mr. Obama's 'Grovel-Ready' Foreign Policy
President Obama began badly. He went to London and bowed low before King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia. The famous red "reset" button he had Hillary present to the Russian Foreign Minister, Sergei Lavrov, was intended to give Moscow a pass for its aggression against the neighboring Republic of Georgia. The button was even spelled wrong. How do you spell "appeasement" in Russian?
Pettiness and Mud
The only good news for the Republicans coming out of the seemingly endless presidential candidate "debates" is that some Republican leaders are now belatedly thinking about how they can avoid a repetition of this debacle in future elections. What could they possibly have been thinking about, in the first place, when they agreed to a format based on short sound bites for dealing with major complex issues, and with media journalists -- 90 percent of them Democrats -- picking the topics?
Those 'Social' Issues
The "social issues" have popped up in the Republican presidential campaign, courtesy of Rick Santorum, causing Democrats to drool, left-wing pundits to twirl their broadswords in the air and various Republicans to turn green, fearful of alienating key voting blocs. The horror, the horror -- can't the party's candidates just keep their searchlight trained on the economy? Probably not. The task of governing the United States of America seems not to accommodate that strategy any more. Current screeching about Santorum's introduction of religion into the campaign calculus reinforces that point.
Lying to Ourselves: America's Welfare State
In Hamlet, Polonius, the Chamberlain to the King, gives his son what is probably the most famous piece of fatherly counsel in all of literature: "This above all: to thine own self be true." Polonius's exhortation is one that Americans should take to heart -- and his famous words came to mind while reading a recent New York Times article. The article was about the residents of Chisago County, Minnesota, who, according to the Times, "describe themselves as self-sufficient members of the American middle class and as opponents of government largess."
The God Gap
There have been many "gaps" in modern politics. There is the gender gap, the generation gap and now the God gap, which is the gulf between people who take God's instructions seriously and those who don't. Which side of the gap you're on could influence your vote. The God gap is growing wider.
Assad's Useful Idiots
Secretary of State Hillary Clinton issued a firm statement to the Syrian elite this week, urging them to overthrow the regime of Bashar al-Assad. "The longer you support the regime's campaign of violence against your brothers and sisters, the more it will stain your honor," she advised. Only now? Only after thousands of men, women and children have been murdered, tens of thousands wounded, and countless homes destroyed by artillery shells has the Obama team finally shed its illusions about the Syrian regime?
The Great American News Quiz
It is obvious that when it comes to elections, the Democrats are always looking to game the system. That is why they are always campaigning to give voting privileges to prison inmates and illegal aliens. It also explains why people like Eric Holder make themselves look so foolish when they insist that the use of photo IDs on Election Day discriminates against young people and members of racial minority groups. You know, those very same folks who never seem to have a problem coming up with photo IDs when it comes to buying cigarettes and beer or getting on airplanes.
Debasing Our Military, One Politically Correct Moment After Another
For many years, the military was the last bastion of resistance against the bankruptcy of progressive thinking. No longer. Three vivid illustrations of what those who volunteer to defend this nation must now endure, stand as a beacon to the corruption that political correctness brings wherever it is unleashed. I could not be sadder for those who put themselves in harm's way. They deserve far better.
Culture Wars: The Winning Side
"The culture wars are over, and the Republicans lost." So says liberal columnist John Alter. He's not the only one declaring victory. Over at the Daily Beast, one columnist judged the Republican Party as "flat-out nuts" for taking on social issues and mocked Rick Santorum as "a refugee from the 16th century." And Andrew Sullivan takes things a step further, saying that "Republicans are losing the pop culture wars" played out in music, movies, and art. And Salon, the predictable liberal voice, shrills about "the Right's lost causes" and claims victory.
Underdogs: 'Linsanity' and Chinese Christians
I suppose there may be a village in Kazakhstan whose inhabitants don't know who Jeremy Lin is, although I doubt it. I am sure there are very few Americans who aren't familiar with what the Wall Street Journal called Lin's "quintessential underdog story." It has something for almost everyone: Lin's off-the-bench heroics with the NBA's New York Knicks, his Asian-American roots, Christian faith, and Ivy League background.
Romney, Santorum Represent Different White Americas
If you were listening reasonably carefully to last Wednesday's Republican presidential candidate debate, you heard Rick Santorum say, "Charles Murray just wrote a book about this." The question was about Santorum's remarks on contraception, but his answer addressed the broader issue of "the increasing number of children being born out of wedlock in America." That is indeed one of the subjects -- but only one -- of Murray's new book "Coming Apart: The State of White America, 1960 to 2010."
The Onerous Effects of Over-Regulation
We keep hearing that the economy is in a "jobless recovery." What's holding American companies back? Why aren't they hiring more people? High taxes draw a lot of attention, and rightly so. They depress investment and discourage innovation. But escalating regulatory costs also undermine our economy. And small businesses, which fuel so much economic growth and hire so many people, often wind up particularly hard hit by them.
The Ghosts of Watergate
In 1960, when Thomas Mallon was in the fourth grade, he wore his Nixon-Lodge button to school and warned classmates that John Kennedy was too inexperienced to be president. Mallon was crushed when Richard Nixon lost, but things worked out well. He is a novelist for whom Nixon eventually provided interesting characters. They're back.