Right Opinion
The best of conservative opinion and commentary, updated daily.
Tuesday, July 26, 2011
Norwegian Crime and Punishment
In 2007, Norwegian Justice Minister Knut Storberget proposed extending Norway's absolute maximum criminal sentence of 21 years to 30 years for genocide, crimes against humanity and terrorism. That proposal didn't go anywhere. The maximum criminal sentence in Norway is 21 years. Now 32-year-old Anders Behring Breivik stands accused of killing 76 individuals, many of them teenagers, in a vicious rampage that began with a bombing in Oslo Friday. If convicted, he can expect to be a free man in his 50s.
Congress Stands Its Ground
WASHINGTON -- Between 6 p.m. Friday and 4 p.m. Sunday, the nation began a constitutional course-correction. The current occupant's vanity and naivete -- a dangerous amalgam -- are causing the modern presidency to buckle beneath the weight of its pretenses. And Congress is reasserting its responsibilities. At his Friday news conference-cum-tantrum, President Obama imperiously summoned congressional leaders to his presence: "I've told" them "I want them here at 11 a.m." By Saturday, his administration seemed to be cultivating chaos by suddenly postulating a new deadline: The debt-ceiling impasse must end before Asian markets opened Sunday evening Eastern time, lest the heavens fall.
And Now Norway
When parents send their children off to summer camp, they reasonably expect them to return refreshed and more attuned with the world than when they left home. Even in their wildest nightmares, they don't foresee them returning in a pine box. We must now add Norway to the expanding list of unsafe places that includes Columbine, Oklahoma City, the World Trade Center, London, Madrid, Ft. Hood and Virginia Tech. The host of the 1994 Winter Olympics and home to the Nobel Peace Prize has had its sense of safety and security violated in ways it could never have imagined; shattered by a crazed gunman with an inflated sense of self, on a mission from Hell where he'll soon be sent.
The Golden Age of Clinton?
As the fight continues over whether to raise taxes to ratify the additional $3.6 trillion President Obama and the Democrats have spent in just 27 months, you hear the same refrain from Democrats: We must raise taxes to the levels of the Clinton administration. This is always followed by flights of exaggeration portraying the Clinton era economic record as "The Greatest Peacetime Expansion in American History," or in world history, or in galactic history. They seem to think it was the tax hikes that produced the prosperity.
Monday, July 25, 2011
Arguing the Case for Assassination
Assassination has unfortunately gotten a bad rap in this country, not because it is immoral or even impractical, but because our own victims have, for the most part, been popular figures, such as Abe Lincoln, Martin Luther King and the Kennedys, Jack and Bobby. But I say it's time to reassess the practice. There seems to be a gentleman's agreement not to whack someone else's national leader, and if I were a president, prime minister, emperor, king or run-of-the-mill despot, I could certainly see the attraction of such an arrangement. But, as I'm not, I think it's a pretty lousy policy.
To Get a Mandate, GOP Must Win Another Election
Those who consider themselves constitutional conservatives should take care to consider not only the powers that the Constitution confers on the different branches of government and reserves to the states and the people, but also the schedule that the Constitution sets up for sharp changes and reversals of public policy. The entire House of Representatives is elected every two years. The voters in 2010, with unusual clarity, elected a House determined to reverse the Obama Democrats' vast increase in the size and scope of government.
Sunday, July 24, 2011
Sustaining the Unsustainable
WASHINGTON -- The tea party, the most welcome political development since the Goldwater insurgency in 1964, lacks only the patience necessary when America lacks the consensus required to propel fundamental change through our constitutional system of checks and balances. If Washington's trajectory could be turned as quickly as tea partyers wish -- while conservatives control only one-half of one of the two political branches -- their movement would not be as necessary as it is. Fortunately, not much patience is required. The Goldwater impulse took 16 years to reach fruition in the election of Ronald Reagan. The tea party can succeed in 16 months by helping elect a president who will not veto necessary reforms. To achieve that, however, tea partyers must not help the incumbent achieve his objectives in the debt-ceiling dispute.
Pawlenty's Appeal to GOP: I Won't Embarrass You
Former Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty's bid to win the GOP presidential nomination hasn't exactly been catching on fire. Earlier this month, The New York Times ran a story about his candidacy under the headline "Will Republican Race's First In Be the First Out?" The RealClearPolitics poll average puts him in eighth place in the crowded GOP race. Fellow Land-o'-Laker Rep. Michele Bachmann fares better -- second place -- perhaps because she does not try to match T-Paw's mastery of "Minnesota nice." Then again, nice guys finish last. So Pawlenty has started talking tough -- about the need for a nominee with "executive experience" who "has a record of not just rhetoric but results."
Saturday, July 23, 2011
Mourning in America
We have often heard that the devil is in the details. But these days, I'm afraid he's in the Oval Office. Who else would have run on the promise to radically transform America? Who else would have thought that America, of all places, required a radical transformation? If a normal human being were asked which countries could use an overhaul, he wouldn't be thinking of the United States. Would he mention Russia and Venezuela? No doubt. Would he have China, Yemen and North Korea, on the short list?Absolutely. How about Saudi Arabia, Syria, Cuba and Iran? Indubitably.
No Time to Go Wobbly
Greece isn't the only country to try spending its way to prosperity -- only to find a sure way to poverty. The same delusion has tempted other European governments. Portugal comes readily to mind, and Italy may be next to discover that what looked like the road to Easy Street leads instead to Skid Row. The temptation to spend more than a government's got can be intoxicating. (See Washington, D.C.) But it's beginning to lose its lure. On both sides of the pond.
From The Comedy Store
The Weather Channel reported triple-digit temperatures Wednesday extending from the Midwest to the Eastern Seaboard. The heat combined with high humidity made life hard to bear. It's so hot in Washington D.C. that Congress voted to have a fan installed in the debt ceiling.
Friday, July 22, 2011
The Beltway Industry Full-Time Employment Act
Dodd-Frank, the 2,300-page financial "reform" monstrosity spearheaded by Capitol Hill corruptocrats, turned 1 this week. It made too-big banks bigger. It made too-risky incentives riskier. It made a lousy economy lousier. Billed as a "consumer protection" act, Dodd-Frank has succeeded phenomenally -- in protecting and stimulating the business-stifling business of government. Dodd-Frank is a tyrannical triumph of rule-makers, lobbyists and other non-elected spongers over taxpayers. If you don't want an unseemly glimpse into the self-serving, sausage-making process that feeds the insatiable Beltway industry, read no further. The law's implementation process is so far-reaching and Byzantine that every member of Congress should be suffering migraines from it.
Population Boon
David and Victoria Beckham were overjoyed by the birth last week of their fourth child, a baby girl they named Harper. "We all feel so blessed and the boys love their baby sister so much!!!" the former Spice Girl exulted to her vast following on Twitter. A few days later she posted a picture of her husband cradling his new daughter, with the tender comment: "Daddy's little girl!" Whose heart wouldn't be warmed by the Beckhams' delight in their newborn? The Observer's wouldn't.
Making Things Worse by Trying to Do Better
There is no question that many people who lost their jobs during the worst of the recession have been unable to find work that paid as well. Nearly one in 10 workers today is unemployed, and the economy is creating jobs at a painfully slow rate. But there are jobs available -- and not just those offered at minimum wage -- that go unfilled every day. Several studies show that about one-third of those receiving unemployment benefits get a job immediately after their eligibility expires. And a quick survey of help-wanted signs and classified ads in most areas suggest that businesses are looking for workers. In 2009, when the economy was in worse shape, 3 million jobs went begging, while 13 million Americans were unemployed.
The Half-Trillion Plan
WASHINGTON -- The debt ceiling looms. Confusion reigns. Schemes abound. We are deep in a hole with, as of now, only three ways out: the McConnell plan, the G6 plan and the Half-Trillion plan. -- The McConnell essentially punts the issue till after Election Day 2012. A good last resort if nothing else works. -- The G6, proposed by the bipartisan Gang of Six senators, reduces 10-year debt by roughly $4 trillion. It has some advantages, even larger flaws.
Never Trust Anything From a Gang
The vaunted budget plan from the "Gang of Six" is said to be growing in popularity, but all you need to know to oppose the plan is that a "gang" is behind it. Also, President Obama and Sen. Dick Durbin both support it. But let's not stop there. We all know the major drivers of this careening national debt train are entitlement programs, yet this plan proposes no real structural reforms. Now don't tell me this is rocket science. It doesn't take years to come up with a plan to restructure entitlements, yet the president and the Democratic obstructers in Congress continue to apply nonstick bandages instead of major remodeling.
Bachmann Inside the Ring at Last
Like it or not, Michele Bachmann is a contender. She triumphed over low expectations in the opening Republican debate. She advanced from flaky to crusty, from outlandish to charismatic, from beyond the fringe to inside the ring. "She doesn't seem crazy at all," observes the piously liberal New Republic magazine, with what passes for praise for a conservative woman. The Minnesota congresswoman entered the mainstream by swimming smoothly into the lane vacated by Mike Huckabee.
Ingraham vs. Cultural Blight
Laura Ingraham calls her newest book, "Of Thee I Zing," a "comedic intervention" on the sorry state of our popular culture. It begins with a declaration of independence from the moral soup in which we swim: "When in a coarse state of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the bonds between themselves and the cultural blight degrading the Republic ... they should declare the causes that impel their separation." Ingraham's willingness to mix it up on the culture is refreshing and was apparent during her book interview on NBC's "Today," where she underlined to Matt Lauer that "Today's" Summer Concert Series included vile artists like woman-battering singer Chris Brown and F-bomb-dropping "artists" Enrique Iglesias and Cee-Lo.
The Terminology of Taxation
Every political movement has its rhetorical strengths and weaknesses. The right can wax poetic about liberty and freedom, the left about the nobility of the poor and downtrodden. Nowhere do these differences come across more starkly than on the subject of taxation. (Note: This is not a column about the debt-ceiling negotiations. I would have put this warning up top, but I feared that immediately seeing the phrase "debt-ceiling negotiations" would cause many readers to face-plant into their breakfast tables or computer screens.)
It Should All Be Free
Free medicine! That's what Obamacare has brought you -- or should bring you, at least according to CNN. The story's opening sentence set the tone: "Contraceptives, sterilization and reproductive education should be covered by health insurance plans with no cost to patients under the health reform law, a new report recommends."