Right Opinion

A Dumb and Dumber War in Libya

Almost daily over the last four months we were told that Muammar Gadhafi was about ready to throw in the towel and give up. Libya, after all, is not a distant Afghanistan or Iraq with a population of some 30 million. Yet this tiny police state of less than 7 million people, conveniently located on the Mediterranean Sea opposite nearby Europe, continues to thwart the three great powers of the NATO alliance and thousands of "Arab Spring" rebels.

Raiding an Empty Vault

Twenty-five years ago, Geraldo Rivera hosted a greatly hyped TV special called "The Mystery of Al Capone's Vaults." It still stands as one of the highest-rated programs in television history. On the ballyhooed night, cameras crept through the tunnel to the vault. There, on live TV, workers pulled down the concrete wall. The dust settled, and the cameras peered inside. And what did spellbound viewers behold? A pile of dirt, a few empty gin bottles, and a discarded stop sign. Such were the treasures in Al Capone's vault.

The Kultursmog Against Murdoch

WASHINGTON -- Do we need any other evidence that the Kultursmog exists and that it is international -- at least in the English-speaking world -- than the fact that the biggest news story in the United Kingdom today is also the biggest news story here. I have in mind the story that News of the World reporters in London listened in on private conversations and possibly bribed Scotland Yard. The Kultursmog is that set of ideas and tastes that are utterly polluted by left-wing values and carried by the liberal news media to pollute people's minds.

A Religious Test for 2012?

The Constitution is specific when it prohibits a "religious test" for "any office or public trust" -- Article VI, Paragraph III That doesn't mean that voters are prohibited from taking a person's faith (or lack thereof) into account when deciding for whom they will vote. No law could stop them. Past elections have been decided when some Catholics voted for a Catholic politician because of their shared religion and Protestants voted against a Catholic because they did not share that faith.

Hunting for Liberals

Occasionally, I find myself wondering why liberals are so terrified of the Second Amendment. After all, even though most criminals are Democrats, they don't exclusively target Republicans. Liberals are just as likely to be mugged and to have their homes invaded, so why is it that this great divide exists between the Right and the Left on the issue of gun ownership? I have come to suspect it's because liberals realize that in a saner society, we would be encouraged to hunt them for their pelts.

The Tea Party Is Ceiling the Deal

There are a lot of pieces to the debt-ceiling deal. There are the taxes upon taxes, as The Wall Street Journal editors describe it. That's the roughly $1 trillion in new Obama taxes on top of what he's already signed into law. It's an economy and jobs killer. Then there's the entitlement piece, which may be more interesting since Obama is apparently open to extending the Social Security and Medicare retirement age and using the so-called chained-Consumer Price Index, which would lower cost-of-living adjustments (and increase income-tax thresholds). Whether the president is serious about these entitlement measures, no one knows. It's noteworthy that he's at least talking about them, although he's linking them to higher taxes.

The Presidency Matters, but How Much Does Obama?

In 1994, the Republicans took back the House of Representatives for the first time in 40 years. The significance of that victory is hard for some younger people to appreciate, because we now seem to go through political leaders the way Lady Gaga goes through wardrobe changes. In the old days, it was a given that the House was the Democratic Party's fiefdom, which is why the Gingrich Revolution was such a tectonic shock. By the spring of 1995, Americans were talking as if we had suddenly adopted a parliamentary system with House Speaker Newt Gingrich as the prime minister. Really. President Clinton was asked at a news conference if he were even relevant anymore. He responded: "The Constitution gives me relevance." Critics guffawed at first, because it set such a low bar, like raving about potted meat because it complies with the minimal government standards for human consumption. Didn't the president bring anything else to the table, other than the job description?

Failing Liberty 101

The ignorance about our country is staggering. According to one survey, only 28 percent of students could identify the Constitution as the supreme law of the land. Only 26 percent of students knew that the first 10 amendments to the Constitution are called the Bill of Rights. Fewer than one-quarter of students knew that George Washington was the first president of the United States.

Plane Truth

According to the White House website, President Obama enjoys the comfort and convenience of two "highly customized" Boeing 747s with "4,000 square feet of floor space on three levels," including " a medical suite," two galleys that "can feed 100 people at a time" and "an extensive suite for the President that features a large office, lavatory, and conference room" -- all at taxpayer expense. But as he proved at his press conference on Monday, where he once again inveighed against "these egregious loopholes that are benefiting corporate jet owners," Obama cannot stop complaining about other people's fancy airplanes.

Who's Burning D.C. Down?

Political prognosticator Charlie Cook appeared on National Public Radio on July 11 and summarized perfectly the media narrative on the debt-limit battle. Speaker John Boehner, Cook said, "is not a burn-the-barn-down, break-the-china kind of guy, (and) he does not necessarily reflect the views of a majority ... of the House Republican Conference, who are of the burn-the-barn-down, break-the-china mold." Hold on here. Why is it destructive to insist on a limited government? Why is fiscal sanity equated with pyromania? Cook was brought on as a "nonpartisan" analyst, but there's nothing either civil or accurate in casting conservatives as barnburners.

Obama Plays Chicken

There is a climactic scene in the movie "Rebel Without a Cause," in which two enemies play chicken. The sullen hero, Jim (James Dean), races toward a cliff against the bully Buzz (Corey Allen). Whoever jumps out first is deemed a "chicken." This week, President Obama decided to play chicken. He's so committed to tax hikes that he's willing to drive over a political cliff to get them. Unwilling to compromise on spending and unwilling to cut his beloved stimulus to pay our creditors, President Obama threatened on Tuesday to prevent Social Security checks from going out on Aug. 3. "There may simply not be the money in the coffers to do it," Obama said. That wasn't it, Obama continued. "This is not just a matter of Social Security checks. These are veterans' checks, these are folks on disability and their checks. There are about 70 million checks that go out."

Something Is Missing

Walker Percy called it a Repetition., a re-enactment of a past event in the same setting so it can be savored for its own sake, without all that has transpired in the intervening years getting in the way. All those things that, as he put it, clog time like peanuts in peanut brittle. The hero -- well, the protagonist -- of his novel "The Moviegoer" would go back to see the same movie from time to time. The movie was the same; he wasn't. Seeing it again gave him a gauge by which to judge how much he'd changed since he first saw it.

How to Solve Our Growth and Jobs Deficit

As President Barack Obama lectured us with foolish notions -- such as attempting to reduce America's $14.4 trillion deficit by focusing carefully poll-tested, repetitive threats -- it is clear that, as the debt ceiling issue reaches a stage of urgency, the positions staked out by Republicans and Democrats are on different planets. Just as six presidential candidates, 12 U.S. senators, 26 House members and more than 100,000 citizens have signed onto a pledge requiring a debt-ceiling-increase limitation to be tied to serious budgetary cuts and a balanced budget constitutional amendment, it appears that the Republican leadership is working to undermine the proposal.

David Mamet's Conversion

Hollywood mocks capitalism, which seems odd because the people who make movies are such aggressive capitalists -- competing hard to make money. But Hollywood's message is that capitalism is shallow and cruel. Take the 1992 movie "Glengarry Glen Ross" (based on a Pulitzer Prize-winning play). It's about cutthroat real estate salesmen who work for a heartless company. It was written by the celebrated playwright David Mamet, author of "American Buffalo," "Spanish Prisoner," and more than 50 other plays and movies.

Why Bachmann Could Win in 2012

Eventually, the 2012 Republican presidential primary race will boil down to just two candidates. One will be the establishment candidate and the other will be the conservative candidate. Either would have a real chance of beating Barack Obama in the general election, but the conservative candidate would have the better chance. As early as it is, the Republican Party's internal "establishment" primary is almost over. Only two candidates are now competing for that nod: former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney and former Utah Gov. Jon Huntsman -- who most recently served as Obama's ambassador to China.

Rolling Back the Obamacare Banana Republic

A rising chorus of repeal-mongers, outraged at the Obama administration's federal health care power grab, took over Washington this week. Nope, it's not the tea party. It's Democrats Against the Independent Payment Advisory Board (IPAB). Yes, Democrats. What's IPAB? A Beltway acronym for subverting the deliberative process. The 15-member panel of government-appointed bureaucrats was slipped into Section 3403 of the Obamacare law against the objection of more than 100 House members on both sides of the aisle. IPAB's experts would wield unprecedented authority over Medicare spending -- and in time, over an expanding jurisdiction of private health care payment rates -- behind closed doors.

After the Deluge -- Restoration

Some people can spot a slight in every compliment, whereas others -- the happy ones -- find a compliment in every slight. So last week, as a free-market, low-taxes, constitutional conservative, I happily found an apparently unintended compliment from the liberal New Republic. It is not often that I agree with the central attack line of my sometimes media sparring partner, The New Republic's Ed Kilgore. But in his effort at a hit piece last week on Michele Bachmann and her stand for "constitutional conservatism," what he thinks is an effective attack on us constitutional conservatives, I take as a badge of honor.

An American Military Nightlight in Iraq?

American troops are scheduled to withdraw from Iraq by the end of 2011 --but don't bet that all of them will leave. There are several reasons to maintain a residual, combat-capable U.S. military presence in Iraq, the most obvious being the proxy war on Iraq waged by Iran's tyrannical regime. That proxy war has gone on since 2003, but within the last year, as U.S. forces have withdrawn, Iranian troublemaking has increased. The Obama administration has noticed. This week, U.S. Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta told a group of American soldiers in Iraq that Washington is "very concerned about Iran and the weapons they're providing to extremists in Iraq."

NY: Homosexuals Win but Society Loses

To the Shores of Tripoli

There is a dusty corner of a graveyard in oft-besieged Tripoli that is American soil, made so only the way the dead do. Eight American sailors lie there. Five others are buried in the little, white-walled Protestant cemetery a mile away. All were members of a daring raid during the First Barbary War against the pirate realm of a pasha long accustomed to collecting ransom from British and French ships who dared sail within his reach. But the still young American republic would prove different. As the pasha's extortionate demands increased, so did American resistance. These 13 sailors were among the early casualties of the war that would result; they were all part of a raiding party launched against the pasha's stronghold. Our contemporary SEALs are not the first Navy outfit determined to avenge American honor.