Right Opinion
The best of conservative opinion and commentary, updated daily.
Thursday, May 12, 2011
NLRB vs Boeing -- Tyranny vs Freedom
One of the shameful hallmarks of a dictatorship is the restriction of movement -- telling citizens or groups they cannot travel or relocate freely. We are now witnessing a shocking example of that dictatorial practice at the hands of the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB), which is insisting that a major U.S. employer may not move some of its operations from one state to another because to do so might somehow violate workers' rights.
Keeping Hope Alive for Real
Robert Woodson would probably wince if you called him a "community organizer." That's because for the last 30 years as president of the Center for Neighborhood Enterprise, he has not spent time organizing the poor around ineffective government programs and other addictions he has been helping them become self-sufficient. "You can't learn anything by studying failure," he says. "If you want to learn anything, you must study the successful." I spent last Tuesday riding around Washington and Waldorf, Md., visiting housing projects Woodson's organization supports and studying his success. I met former drug addicts, dealers, prostitutes and pimps -- all of whom testify to having been through failed government programs -- who now say they are clean, sober and off the streets.
Bin Laden's Last Daze
WASHINGTON -- It seems to me that our government had vastly more intelligence on what was going on in Obama bin Laden's ghastly hideout before sending SEAL Team 6 in last week than they are telling us. President Barack Obama told CBS that the odds in favor of bin Laden being in the compound were "at best" 55 percent. My guess is that they were closer to 100 percent. We know that from satellites overhead, our intelligence officers thought they had bin Laden spotted in the complex. A man that they concluded was bin Laden was seen pacing regularly inside the compound grounds. Called "The Pacer," he was tall, and they figured he might very well be the 6 foot 4 terror leader. So the order was sent to our SEAL team to go in.
History Weeps at the Partition of India and Pakistan
When you get into discussions about the Middle East with certain people, you start hearing that the great mistake was the partition of Palestine and the creation of the state of Israel in 1948. If that had somehow just not happened, you hear, everything would be all right. That's not my view. I think the big mistake made in a British possession around that time was the partition of the Indian subcontinent into India and Pakistan in 1947. The British thought that Pakistan under the leadership of the secular lawyer Muhammad Ali Jinnah would turn out to be an acceptable counterbalance to an India led by Jawaharlal Nehru's Congress Party.
Obama Brings Non-White Americans Together
In the horrifyingly gruesome Robert Rodriguez movie "Machete," a white senator (Robert De Niro) guffaws as his vigilante sidekick (Don Johnson) shoots a pregnant illegal immigrant to death. Then the senator shoots a Mexican himself. "Welcome to America," he spits. "Machete" does not reflect reality. It is a vicious attack on Americans who oppose illegal immigration, portraying them as racist Nazi-types who can't wait to break out their AK-47s for the next anti-Latino pogrom. Thankfully, nobody takes the politics from "Machete" seriously. No one, that is, except President Obama.
Tough Times for Radical Islam
Osama bin Laden is dead. The Middle East is in chaos. And radical Islam is floundering. For a time after 9/11, bin Laden was riding high. Destroying 16 acres in Manhattan and hitting the Pentagon won al-Qaeda even more admiration from the Arab Street, hidden cash donations from sympathetic petrol-sheiks, and bribe and hush money from triangulating Middle East dictatorships. But now bin Laden and most of his henchmen of a decade ago are dead, like the bloodthirsty Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, killed by American forces in Iraq. Or they were captured, like the 9/11 architect Khalid Sheikh Mohammed in Pakistan. Or they are in hiding, like Dr. Ayman al-Zawahiri, the increasingly irrelevant blowhard al-Qaeda information minister.
Obama's Bin Laden Mission 'Gutsy' -- What About Bush's 'Surge'?
"When President Obama was faced with the opportunity to act upon this," said Deputy National Security Advisor John Brennan, "the President had to evaluate the strength of that information and then made what I believe was one of the most gutsiest (sic) calls of any president in recent memory." One of the gutsiest calls of any president in recent memory? On what basis, and by what measure? Americans wanted Osama bin Laden -- dead or alive, preferably dead. "How important," asked a 2006 Gallup poll, "do you think it is to the U.S. that Osama bin Laden be captured or killed?" The percentage of Americans who considered the apprehension or killing of bin Laden "somewhat important" to "extremely important" totaled an overwhelming 86 percent. Obama acted in accordance with popular opinion.
More Gutsy Calls From Obama!
Obama has been making "gutsy calls" all over the place! In full campaign mode, he's been deploying his administrative agencies to do favors for his big contributors, to the detriment of ordinary Americans. Last week, Obama made the gutsy call to threaten public schools that are asking students for proof of residency. The memorandum warned school districts that it's illegal to ask students for proof of citizenship or legal residency status.
Immigration Flight Clutters the Path
President Obama addressed an enthusiastic crowd Tuesday when he spoke in El Paso, Texas, about liberalizing federal immigration laws. Audience members exhorted the president to "tear down" the border fence and called immigration hard-liners "racist." Yet Obama acknowledged that his administration has stepped up immigration enforcement. "We are deporting those who are here illegally," he said. "And that's a tough issue. It's a source of controversy."
My Condolences to Democrats
I know that sometimes I come off as a hard-nosed, cold-hearted cynic, with nary a compassionate bone in my body. While it's not entirely a well-honed act, there are those occasions -- rare as they may be -- when even I am moved by the plight of others. For instance, there are times when I can't help thinking how difficult it must be to go through life as a liberal. Assuming they haven't undergone a lobotomy or experienced extensive shock therapy sessions, how do they get through even a single day? Are they all partaking of psychotherapy? If so, even I can't help empathizing. I can see the poor boob stretched out on the couch, venerable old Dr. Kochenlocher seated behind him, taking notes and occasionally muttering a venerable "hmmm," as the poor broken creature rambles on, giving vent to his conscious mind, his subconscious mind and his unconscious mind. At these prices, nobody wants to risk getting short-changed.
Lifetime in GOP Culminates With Gingrich Announcement on Fox
Trust me, when it comes to the 2012 race for the Republican presidential nomination, I am going to be fair in assessing the candidates. Already I have polled for NewsMax, and my early polls placed former U.S. House Speaker Newt Gingrich in fourth place among announced or potential candidates. But before I go into my harsh analyst mode -- which once in a while leads to an "I'm hurt" email from Newt -- let me share my personal feelings about the man who has just announced that he will seek the presidency.
History Lesson
WASHINGTON -- Outside the venue where Rep. Paul Ryan recently spoke in Madison, Wis., a university town never lacking protesters, one product of America's education system shouted that Ryan's budget proposal would return America to the bad old days of the "18th-century robber barons." The young man, full of zeal and destitute of information, does not know that those capitalists of whom he disapproves -- the ones who built the railroads and other sinews of the nation's industrial might -- operated in the second half of the 19th century, not in 18th-century agrarian America.
Wednesday, May 11, 2011
Where Obama's Border Lies
To President Barack Obama, securing the border is a laughing matter -- and a lying matter. When Obama spoke in El Paso, Texas, yesterday, he claimed that (1) the federal government has now "basically" completed the border fence that security minded Republicans wanted built and (2) El Paso and other border communities are "among the safest in the nation." "They wanted a fence. Well, the fence ... is now basically complete," said Obama. "Maybe they'll need a moat," he added. "Maybe they want alligators in the moat."
Why the Hurry to Gloat About Bin Laden?
For a week people have been asking, "Why won't the president release Osama bin Laden's photo?" That's the wrong question. We should be asking, "Why was Barack Obama in such a hurry to tell us bin Laden was dead?" The White House says the information in bin Laden's compound is the equivalent of a "small college library," potentially containing incalculably valuable and unique data on al-Qaeda operations, personnel and methods. "It's going to be great even if only 10 percent of it is actionable," a government official told Politico's Mike Allen.
Ron Paul: Less Lonely These Days
The man who likely has done more than anyone to put the libertarian philosophy of freedom and small government on the political agenda probably will make another run for the presidency: U.S. Rep. Ron Paul. Paul is always upbeat, but lately he's had more reason to be, as he sees libertarian ideas bubbling up from the grass roots. "People outside of Washington are waking up," he told me, "and they're getting the attention of a few in Washington."
False Forbearance: Obama Breaks His Promise to Respect Medical Marijuana Laws
Two weeks ago, Washington Gov. Christine Gregoire vetoed a bill that would have clarified the rules for supplying medical marijuana in her state. She cited an April 14 letter in which Jenny Durkan and Michael Ormsby, the U.S. attorneys for Washington, threatened to prosecute not only growers and providers but also "others who knowingly facilitate" their actions, including landlords, financiers, and even state employees who license and regulate medical marijuana suppliers. U.S. attorneys in Arizona, California, Colorado, Hawaii, Montana, Rhode Island and Vermont have sent similar letters in recent months, discouraging some jurisdictions from proceeding with plans to establish licensed medical marijuana dispensaries. These threats, which are backed by the Justice Department, kill any lingering hopes that President Obama would keep his campaign promise to respect the medical marijuana laws that have been enacted in 15 states and the District of Columbia.
Fact-Challenged Ed Schultz
As much as liberals complain about conservative "misinformation" and incivility, they never seem to find it on channels like MSNBC, and we know there are small bands of liberals that wander over there. While many were watching the first GOP presidential debate on May 5, Ed Schultz invited on left-wing bomb-thrower (and 2010 congressional-seat loser) Alan Grayson to heap mud on George W. Bush. Schultz asked if Bush failed to accept Obama's invitation to ground zero out of personal pique. Grayson replied through a smirk, "I suspect that President Bush might've been passed-out drunk the last three or four days, so I'm not sure he made any conscious decision at all."
Conditions of Anonymity
There is a particular media conceit that, in the garb of purported impeccable disclosure, is in fact a license for news sources to market talking points. A hilarious example of the breed can be found in an article by Anne E. Kornblut in the Sunday Washington Post. The article is about the White House's intended use of the bin Laden event and is titled "Bin Laden raid fits into Obama's 'big things' message." The phrase in question is the italicized words in the following quote: "A senior administration official, who spoke on the conditions of anonymity to speak freely about internal thinking, said the White House is not developing a strategy to leverage the raid in other difficult arenas, such as the budget or debt-ceiling negotiations with the Republicans. And the official insisted it would not change the overall message or approach of the 2012 campaign, which has long been described as a campaign focused on the economy.
Pact With the Devil
Why write a newspaper column when someone else has said it so much better and shorter? The someone in this case is Natan Sharansky, who went from unsuppressible Russian dissident to outspoken Israeli leader without skipping a beat. Now he's summed up the basic problem with American policy in the Middle East, which has just come a cropper again. American policy continues to flounder, he contends, because it lacks sufficient respect and appreciation for man's yearning for freedom. His own faith in freedom has never faltered, even in the darkest hours, when faith such as his was considered folly.
Time to Smash Bin Laden's Legacy
The Arab Spring popular revolts caught al-Qaida by surprise. The revolts are not al-Qaida's operational handiwork, and they certainly do not fit the ideologically driven historical narrative spun by al-Qaida elites, such as the late Osama bin Laden. Of course, militant Islamists are exploiting the revolts. Egyptian Islamist extremists have launched attacks on Coptic Christians, seeking to ignite a sectarian civil war and derail Egypt's transition process. Al-Qaida's Musab al-Zarqawi attempted the same ploy in Iraq, pitting Sunnis against Shias.