Right Opinion
The best of conservative opinion and commentary, updated daily.
Put Constitutional Cap on Federal Spending
If anything good came out of the deal House Speaker John Boehner cut with President Barack Obama to increase the limit on the federal debt by as much as $2.4 trillion, it was that the legislation enacting that increase also provided that by the end of this year both houses of Congress must vote on a balanced budget amendment to the Constitution. However, Boehner may now turn that good thing bad.
From Arab Spring to Springtime for Hitler
There are reports out of Washington, D.C., this week that the Obama administration is in a regular tizzy about the possibility that Israel will strike Iran's nuclear facilities without U.S. help or permission. According to a senior State Department official, the Obama administration is so worried that Israel will go it alone that they are finally placing pressure on China and Russia to sanction Iran more strictly. Such pressure will accomplish precisely nothing, just as it has since the ascendancy of the ayatollahs. Iran does not care about economic pressure. As a fascist religious state, their concern is strictly with fulfillment of their cataclysmic destiny -- in short, with the mass genocide of the Jews in Israel. Benjamin Netanyahu knows that, which is why he has been bringing home hostages such as Gilad Shalit in anticipation of an attack on Iran. When that attack takes place, Netanyahu knows, every Jew in Muslim territory will be endangered.
Democracy Is Impossible
After Moammar Gadhafi's downfall as Libya's tyrannical ruler, politicians and "experts" in the U.S. and elsewhere, including French Foreign Minister Alain Juppe, are saying that his death marked the end of 42 years of tyranny and the beginning of democracy in Libya. Sen. Chris Coons, D-Del., said Gadhafi's death represented an opportunity for Libya to make a peaceful and responsible transition to democracy. House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio, said, "Now it is time for Libya's Transitional National Council to show the world that it will respect the rights of all Libyans (and) guide the nation to democracy." German Chancellor Angela Merkel said that "Libya must now quickly make further determined steps in the direction of democracy." It's good to see the removal of a tyrant, but if we're going to be realistic, there's little hope for the emergence of what we in the West call a democracy. Let's look at it.
Payday Loans
California is a great place for studying the thinking -- or lack of thinking -- on the political left. The mindset of the left was recently displayed in a big, front-page story in the October 30th issue of the San Mateo County Times. It was an investigative reporter's expose of the "payday loan" business and its lobbyists. According to the reporter: "In California lenders charge up to $45 in fees on a maximum $300 loan. This amounts to an interest rate of 460 percent, trapping some borrowers into a never-ending cycle of debt."
A Time for Statesmen
Now is a particularly dangerous moment for American national security interests. Not just because threats are growing. Not just because the current administration is making a historic bungle from China to Iraq to Iran to Russia to Europe to Mexico to our historic allies in the Middle East -- both Jewish and Muslim. All that would be bad enough. But the greatest threat to our national security, at the moment, is the manifest indifference of the voting public to these foreign threats -- and the silence on them from our alleged leaders. It's understandable.
Tim Pawlenty's Lost Chance
Looking back on the events of 2011, who do you think has more regrets for his bad decisions, Hosni Mubarak or former Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty? I guess you have to give it to Mubarak. After all, the guy gave up a cushy gig ruling Egypt just so he could be (justifiably) prosecuted from a sickbed while his cronies retained power. All Pawlenty did was blow his entirely plausible shot at the presidency.
File Not Found
When he took office, Barack Obama promised "an unprecedented level of openness in government." As a major part of that commitment, he pledged fidelity to the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA), which he called "the most prominent expression of a profound national commitment to ensuring an open government." It is hard to reconcile these lofty memos with the Justice Department's proposed rule instructing federal agencies to falsely deny the existence of records sought under FOIA. But at least the Obama administration is open about its desire to mislead us.
Greece's Papandreou Gambles on Democracy
To the chagrin of European Union negotiators, the Greek government of Prime Minister George Papandreou decided to ask the Greek public to give its yea or nay regarding the terms of the European Union's latest bailout agreement. Three days later, under intense political pressure, he canceled the referendum.
The Stupidity of 'Buy American'
One sign of economic ignorance is the faith that "Buy American" is the path to prosperity. My former employer, ABC News, did a week's worth of stories claiming that "buying American" would put Americans back to work. I'm glad I don't work there anymore. "Buy American" is a dumb idea. It would not only not create prosperity, it would cost jobs and make us all poorer. David R. Henderson, an economist at the Hoover Institution, explained why.
Protests Go Violent, but Media Stay Syrupy
NBC anchor Brian Williams, in the argot of the moment, certainly belongs to "The One Percent." He lives in the glass-encased Bloomberg Tower in mid-town Manhattan, 34 stories above the tony restaurant Le Cirque at 58th Street and Lexington Avenue. For years, he has lived up in the luxury apartment heavens with Beyonce and General Electric chieftains past and present (both Jack Welch and Jeffrey Immelt). He's earned it. Yet night after night on the news, Williams and the other 1 percent multi-millionaire anchors dutifully chronicle every new publicity line from the people who "occupy" parks, often public, to claim to represent the other 99 percent. It's liberal guilt in motion. The anchors lovingly cite old sixties leftist slogans like "The whole world is watching," which is nonsense if you look at their ratings, but they sure do wish the whole world would watch. To the liberal media, these protests are a story of populist heroes bravely standing against what Teddy Roosevelt called "the malefactors of great wealth."
Cain and the Liberals
Republicans by the boxcar load adore him. You know what that means if you're a certain kind of Democrat, and the "him" in question is Herman Cain. It means Cain lovers -- even or perhaps especially, folks in Dixie, who might have lynched him 80 or 90 years ago for his uppity ways -- are playing a dark, devious game. They're using a black man to: 1) show how non-racist they are, 2) stick a thumb in Barack Obama's eye, or 3) control the candidate, like in the old, old days.
Oakland Drowning in Social Justice
Occupy Oakland has scheduled a general strike throughout the California city for Wednesday. What does that mean? "No work. No school. Occupy everywhere," the group's website explains. "Shut down the city." And: "All banks and corporations should close down for the day or we will march on them." "Blockade everything." Occupy Oakland activists have not only free speech rights but also the power to stomp on other people's rights.
Democracy Versus Mob Rule
Members of the mobs apparently believe that other people, who are working while they are out trashing the streets, should be forced to subsidize their college education -- and apparently the President of the United States thinks so too. But if these loud mouths' inability to put together a coherent line of thought is any indication of their education, the taxpayers should demand their money back for having that money wasted on them for years in the public schools.
Picture This!
CHARLOTTE, N.C. -- U.S. District Court Judge Catherine Eagles last Tuesday granted a request for a preliminary injunction that temporarily blocks a provision in North Carolina's new abortion-restriction law that would require women seeking an abortion to view an ultrasound image of their womb within four hours of the procedure. In her decision to suspend this one requirement, while upholding other provisions in the law pending resolution of the lawsuit by several plaintiffs, Judge Eagles said the ultrasound requirement likely violates patients' First Amendment rights. Come again?
Arab Spring/Islamist Fall
Reuters' Paul Chapman has filed a report from Tunis. There have been elections there, less than one year after an uprising ousted dictator Zine al Abidine Ben Ali. The former Tunisian strongman is said to be enjoying his retirement in Saudi Arabia. There, Ben Ali doubtless has seen news coverage of the bloody end of his neighboring desert despot, Muammar Gaddafi. Ben Ali is probably offering prayers of thanks that he got out of Dodge in time. Election returns from Tunis show that the Ennahda party is the big winner. Ennahda won 90 of 217 seats in the country's new legislative assembly. It's not an outright majority, but it may prove sufficient for the Islamist party to form coalitions and rule the country.
Remember Lockerbie
Moammar Gadhafi is dead. Abdelbaset al-Megrahi isn't. Despite his being convicted of planting the bomb that brought down Pan Am Flight 103 on the night of December 21, 1988, killing all 259 people aboard and 11 others on the ground when it crashed in the vicinity of Lockerbie, Scotland, scattering debris and bodies in its wake. Mr. Megrahi was duly tried and convicted of murder, and sentenced to life imprisonment.
Obama's Class Warfare: It's All He's Got Left
There he goes again. President Obama, on the campaign stump, rails against the "rich," saying our "wealth gap" shows a need for a "fairer approach." Does he really believe our economic problems have been caused by insufficient taxes on the rich? Insufficient taxes overall? If not, then what can we conclude about his insistence on hammering this point rather than addressing the real causes and real solutions? Obama's ceaseless attack on the "rich" and his effort to divide Americans on the basis of their income and wealth can best be seen as a diversion, an attempt to distract Americans' attention from his failure to address our interrelated economic malaise and fiscal crises.
Another 'Borking?'
It has the feel of an ambush -- this sexual harassment story involving Herman Cain. Some conservatives are responding in familiar ways. "They are terrified of strong, conservative black men," one commentator explained. "It's another high-tech lynching." The emotional response is understandable. Ever since the orchestrated, scurrilous character assassination aimed at Judge Robert Bork, conservatives have been perpetually on edge, waiting for the next slander of public figures who represent a threat to liberal power. In a remarkable (and frankly, brave) acknowledgement of this history, liberal New York Times columnist Joe Nocera wrote recently that Judge Bork was a "legal intellectual" and that "whatever you think of (his) views, they cannot be fairly characterized as extreme . . . The Bork fight, in some ways, was the beginning of the end of civil discourse in politics."
Four Legacies of Feminism
As we approach the 50th anniversary of the publication of Betty Friedan's feminist magnum opus, "The Feminine Mystique," we can have a perspective on feminism that was largely unavailable heretofore. And that perspective doesn't make feminism look good. Yes, women have more opportunities to achieve career success; they are now members of most Jewish and Christian clergy; women's college sports teams are given huge amounts of money; and there are far more women in political positions of power. But the prices paid for these changes -- four in particular -- have been great, and they outweigh the gains for women, let alone for men and for society.
Defending RINOs and Mormons
I must confess that I've been getting a kick out of Democrats trying to align themselves with the Occupy Wall Street mob. If ever a political stratagem was destined to blow up in their face, this is it. For folks who like to brag about their knowledge of history, it's amazing that they've already forgotten what the Yuppies demonstrating in the streets of Chicago did to enhance Hubert Humphrey's chances of defeating Richard Nixon in 1968. And at least those chowderheads could claim that they were demonstrating against the Vietnam War. Ask these baboons what they're demonstrating against and, depending on whom you speak to, you might be told Goldman Sachs, banks in general, George Bush, the Tea Party, oil companies, the U.S. military, Fox News or Martians.