Right Opinion

Fifth Columnists Everywhere I Look

During the Spanish Civil War and, later, during World War II, there was a great deal of talk about fifth columnists. It was a reference to traitors, to those people in one's own country who provided propaganda or even more overt assistance to the enemy. It does not, but might just as well, refer to the columnists for the New York Times. I have no idea why the term has been retired. In the days of the big war, there were only a minority of German, Italian and Japanese-Americans, who were disloyal to the U.S., whereas today, motion picture and TV studios, editorial boardrooms, the halls of Congress and the Oval Office, are full of Americans who are actively working against the best interests of their country and who obviously regard the Constitution as a terrible waste of parchment.

Even Bedtime Stories Get Profane

The mass-marketing of profanity just won't stop. Now it's topping the best-selling book list -- in children's picture books. You might have heard by now that there's a "subversive" little bedtime book for adults. It should not be read to children. It's called "Go the F-- to Sleep." Anyone who's ever been up at 2 in the morning with a baby or toddler knows exactly the feeling that is being exploited here. "Total genius," says the blurb on the front cover. Genius it is not. Anybody could have written this book in 90 minutes, tops. It's just having the "bright idea" of a naughty nighty-night book that might make the get-rich-quick schemers jealous.

GOP Should Hope Primary Race Is a Marathon, Not a Sprint

Former Republican New York Gov. George Pataki personifies almost everything I dislike in politicians. He's not corrupt -- as far as I know -- in the criminal sense, but he's entirely corrupt politically and intellectually. He goes along to get along, with his colleagues and donors, with liberal pieties and the editorial boards that spew them. He was a lazy governor who often worked no more than 15 hours a week, and over his 12 years in office he held at most three cabinet meetings. He "broke virtually every political promise he ever made," according the New York Post's legendary state editor Fred Dicker, and was so shameless in his lack of principles, integrity and loyalty that former Sen. Al D'Amato -- the sort of man best pictured swimming a moat at night with a knife in his teeth -- said of his protégé: "What he did broke my heart."

Who Takes Us to War?

WASHINGTON -- Is the Libya war legal? Under the 1973 War Powers Resolution, it is not. President Obama has exceeded the 90-day period to receive retroactive authorization from Congress. But things are not so simple. No president should accept -- and no president from Nixon on has accepted -- the constitutionality of the WPR, passed unilaterally by Congress over a presidential veto. On the other hand, every president should have the constitutional decency to get some congressional approval when he takes the country to war.

How the Democrats Nearly Destroyed the Economy

History will be kind to me for I intend to write it. -- Winston Churchill There is history -- a chronicle of human events -- and then there is perceived history. So often, the two are wildly at odds. In 1963, a popular Democratic president was assassinated by a Marxist named Oswald, who had actually defected to the Soviet Union and returned to the U.S. with a Soviet wife, was an active member of the Fair Play for Cuba Committee, and had attempted to assassinate a right-wing general named Edwin Walker earlier in the year.

Don't Know Much About History

First, the good news: The nation's eighth-graders are doing better in history class. Now, the bad news: They're not doing much better. Gains in test scores are small, made by the lowest performers, and only 17 percent of those tested are "proficient," or competent. It gets worse. Only 12 percent of high-school seniors, who are getting ready to vote for the first time, have a proficient knowledge of history. If you're looking for a tinsel lining, you could point to 20 percent of fourth-graders who are described as proficient, but that means eight of 10 haven't learned very much during their tender years in the classroom

The Drawdown Begins

CAMP EGGERS, Afghanistan -- Here on this NATO base -- named in honor of Daniel W. Eggers, a U.S. Army special forces captain killed near Kandahar on May 29, 2004 -- President Barack Obama's decision to withdraw 10,000 U.S. troops from Afghanistan by the end of the year is getting mixed reviews. Reactions from scores of U.S. and NATO personnel and Afghan soldiers and police officers with whom my Fox News' "War Stories" team has spoken run the gamut from "It's a deeper, faster cut than I expected" to "I guess we all knew this day was coming." However, there is one opinion that is nearly universal: "We'd better not lose this war." Obama says we won't. He insists that we can safely "remove 10,000 of our troops from Afghanistan by the end of this year" and "bring home a total of 33,000 troops by next summer," because "in Afghanistan, the light of a secure peace can be seen in the distance." He describes his date-driven withdrawal plan as a way to bring the war here "to a responsible end."

The Reckless Folly of the 'Undocumented Immigrant'

With great fanfare and elite media sympathy, Jose Antonio Vargas publicly declared himself an "undocumented immigrant" this week. "Undocumented" my you-know-what. In the felony-friendly pages of The New York Crimes -- er, Times -- the Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist turned illegal-alien activist spilled the beans on all the illegal IDs he amassed over the years. He had documents coming out of his ears. The Times featured full-color photos of Vargas' fake document trove -- including a fake passport with a fake name, a fake green card and a Social Security card his grandfather doctored for him at a Kinko's. He committed perjury repeatedly on federal I-9 employment eligibility forms. In 2002, while pursuing his journalism career goals, an immigration lawyer told him he needed to accept the consequences of his law-breaking and return to his native Philippines.

Just When You Thought Our Fiscal Nightmare Couldn't Get Any Worse

I'll make you a deal: I'll quit accusing Democrats of obstructing spending and entitlement reform when they quit obstructing spending and entitlement reform. Now we even have the nonpartisan, sterile, unflappable Congressional Budget Office virtually predicting a "fiscal crisis," yet the Democratic Senate hasn't passed a budget for 785 days. There ought to be a law. At what point will we go into panic mode? Frankly, I can't comprehend how people are so calm now.

Did the IEA Just Deliver a QE3 Quick Fix to Save Obama's Skin?

Did the International Energy Agency (IEA) just deliver the oil equivalent of Quantitative Easing 3? The decision to release 2 million barrels per day of emergency oil reserves -- with the U.S. covering half from its strategic petroleum reserve -- is surely aimed at the sputtering economies of the U.S. and Europe following an onslaught of bad economic statistics and forecasts. This includes a gloomy Fed forecast that Ben Bernanke unveiled less than 24 hours before the energy news hit the tape. I wonder if all this was coordinated.

Wal-Mart Case Is a Victory for Consumers

The Supreme Court handed down a big win for American consumers this week, though the case had nothing to do with consumer protection. The court's decision involved the rules for determining what constitutes a proper class of plaintiffs, representing not just those individuals who have come forward to allege illegal behavior but others who have been similarly harmed. These so-called class-action lawsuits reward plaintiffs' lawyers handsomely if they succeed -- resulting in millions of dollars in attorneys' fees in some cases. What's more, the mere threat of a large class-action suit often forces a company into negotiating a generous settlement, even if it's undeserved, just to avoid the costs of having to defend itself in court. And we all end up paying for it in higher prices.

The Presidential Race Made Easy

WASHINGTON -- In the weeks ahead, I shall be in Europe to speak on American politics. What will I say to old Europe? Well, I shall give them my broad view of American politics and end with the present election cycle, in which I believe Barack Obama will be retired to private life, though he cannot really conceive of private life. He will continue his public life as he has for all his adult life. That is how Democrats live. He will be a community organizer to the world, as Bill Clinton has become, in the words of MSNBC, "president of the world." Both sound ridiculous, but do any Democrats ever retire to private life today? They always are taking on noble causes, which is to say illusory causes. Harry Truman retired to private life and Lyndon Johnson, but not Bill Clinton or Al Gore or, for that matter, Jimmy Carter. The other day, Jimmy wrote an op-ed piece in The New York Times, saying we have lost the drug war and he is now smoking while listening to the Grateful Dead onto death. Perhaps he is not listening to the Grateful Dead and possibly he is not smoking marijuana, but I lost interest at about the third sentence. He might well have said almost anything. He has been latching onto fads for 30 years, anything that will keep him in the ink. The reflective life is not for him. It might cause him to become aware of what a miserable president he was.

50 Ways to Beat the Heat

It's definitely that time of the year again. The summer heat is starting to cover the country like a horse blanket. It's time to update my annual list of heat-beaters. Feel free to clip and save, mix and match, and add your own: 1. Delete all unwanted emails without opening them. Especially if they're from types who are always a little hot under the collar anyway. If you must open any, under no circumstances reply. Soon you'll be on their heated level.

The Race for the White House

As you all know, I will support any Republican -- and I mean absolutely any Republican -- who winds up running against Obama. That even includes the mastermind who came up with RomneyCare and who subscribes to the myth of global warming. Nobody, and that probably includes any other Democrat, could be as bad for America as the guy who managed to turn "community organizer" into a term of contempt that rivals "used car salesman," "medical quack," "ambulance chaser," "hooker," "pimp" and "congressman."

Big Media Suicide Compact

Is there a profit-making business -- other than TV networks and The New York Times -- that so disrespects its audience it works overtime to offend them? What other business metaphorically flips the bird to those who don't subscribe to their social, cultural and political worldview? That is precisely what big media does to a large number of potential viewers and subscribers.

The Gospel of Jon Stewart

Jon Leibowitz -- aka Jon Stewart -- is a liar. This week, he sat down with Chris Wallace of Fox News and promptly made an ass of himself. The left cheered, as they are apt to do when they spot the Smirking Smarm-smith, but the truth is that without his trusty audience to cheer his every move, Stewart looked like what he was: a bully, a manipulator, and an intellectually dishonest partisan hack.

The Department of Food Subsidies

The Department of Agriculture no longer serves as a lifeline to millions of struggling homestead farmers. Instead, it is a vast, self-perpetuating postmodern bureaucracy with an amorphous budget of some $130 billion -- a sum far greater than the nation's net farm income this year. In fact, the more the Agriculture Department has pontificated about family farmers, the more they have vanished -- comprising now only about 1 percent of the American population. Net farm income is expected in 2011 to reach its highest levels in more than three decades, as a rapidly growing and food-short world increasingly looks to the United States to provide it everything from soybeans and wheat to beef and fruit. Somebody should explain that good news to the Department of Agriculture: This year it will give a record $20 billion in various crop "supports" to the nation's wealthiest farmers -- with the richest 10 percent receiving over 70 percent of all the redistributive payouts. If farmers on their own are making handsome profits, why, with a $1.6 trillion annual federal deficit, is the Department of Agriculture borrowing unprecedented amounts to subsidize them?

Feds Crack Down on Campus Flirting and Sex Jokes

When I was growing up, it was widely believed that colleges and universities were the part of our society with the widest scope for free expression and free speech. In the conformist America of the 1950s, the thinking ran, few people dared to say anything that went beyond a broad consensus. But on campus, anyone could say anything he liked. Today, we live in an America with enormous cultural variety in which very few things are considered universally verboten. But on campus it's different. There, saying something considerably milder than some of the double entendres you heard in cable news coverage of the Anthony Weiner scandal can get you into big trouble.

The Vice of Interventionism

WASHINGTON -- Elevating the fallacy of the false alternative to a foreign policy, John McCain and a few others believe Republicans who oppose U.S. intervention in Libya's civil war -- and who think a decade of warfare in Afghanistan is enough -- are isolationists. This is less a thought than a flight from thinking, which involves making sensible distinctions. Last Sunday on ABC's "This Week," McCain warned that the GOP has always had "an isolation strain." He calls it "the Pat Buchanan wing," which he contrasts with "the Republican Party that has been willing to stand up for freedom for people all over the world." Rather a lot turns on the meaning of "stand up for."

Jon Who?