Right Opinion
The best of conservative opinion and commentary, updated daily.
Wednesday, May 11, 2011
The Amnesty Bandwagon Rides Again
The public relations campaign for President Obama's latest revival of "immigration reform" makes one thing crystal clear: This is not, and never has been, about homeland security. This is not, and never has been, about economic security. It's about political security, plain and cynical. In conjunction with Tuesday's renewed White House push in Texas for a "new pathway to citizenship" for millions of illegal immigrants, disgruntled Latino activists are ratcheting up their radical anti-enforcement rhetoric. Illinois Democratic Rep. Luis Gutierrez -- a persistent critic on Obama's left flank -- lambasted federal workplace enforcement raids this weekend. On Sunday, he repeated his hyperbolic attacks on homeland security agents "terrorizing" neighborhoods and ripping babies from the breasts of nursing moms. Department of Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano made no public effort to defend her employees.
Minimum Wage's Discriminatory Effects
As if more proof were needed about the minimum wage's devastating effects, yet another study has reached the same conclusion. Last week, two labor economists, Professors William Even (Miami University of Ohio) and David Macpherson (Trinity University), released a study for the Washington, D.C.-based Employment Policies Institute titled "Unequal Harm: Racial Disparities in the Employment Consequences of Minimum Wage Increases." During the peak of what has been dubbed the Great Recession, the unemployment rate for young adults (16 to 24 years of age) as a whole rose to above 27 percent. The unemployment rate for black young adults was almost 50 percent, but for young black males, it was 55 percent.
Tuesday, May 10, 2011
Democrats' Spending and Power Addictions Prevent Debt Solutions
The Washington Examiner reports that it's been 768 days since the Democratic-controlled Senate passed a budget. What's the big deal? It's not like the nation is facing financial difficulties or anything. I realize it's convenient for President Obama to pretend he's a bystander on fiscal matters when it suits him and to pass the buck that never stops with him back to Congress, but how about a little leadership on the issue for a change?
Obama Values: Kill But Don't Waterboard
At the end of his "60 Minutes" interview, President Obama said of Osama bin Laden's death, "Justice was done. And I think that anyone who would question that the perpetrator of mass murder on American soil didn't deserve what he got needs to have their head examined." The longer he serves in office, the more Obama sounds like George W. Bush. New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd also has started to sound like Bush. In her Sunday column, "Killing Evil Doesn't Make Us Evil," Dowd writes that when Navy SEALs shot and killed bin Laden, it seemed like "the only civilized and morally sound response."
No National Curriculum, Thanks
The good old American inclination to wave a magic wand and say to an urgent problem, "Begone!" is on display in the fast-emerging movement for a national K-12 curriculum. Ah, you didn't know there was such a movement, far less that it was emerging. Here's the lowdown. Various analysts representing mostly the education establishment are pressing for a so-called "common curriculum" -- one that would supposedly engage the minds of all American students, aligning their performance with the latest thinking as to what's needed.
How Leftism Poisoned a Psychiatrist's Mind
If your sister were among the nearly 3,000 people murdered in the World Trade Center on 9/11, how would you react to Osama Bin Laden's death? More specifically, if you were to write an opinion piece on the subject for a major newspaper, what would you most want to communicate? One would think that anyone who had lost a loved one on 9/11 would write about bin Laden's guilt, about evil and about experiencing some degree of moral and emotional satisfaction that the loved one's murderer had been killed by American forces. But not Robert Klitzman, a professor of psychiatry at Columbia University. He had other, more pressing, things to say.
The 'Education' Mantra
One of the sad and dangerous signs of our times is how many people are enthralled by words, without bothering to look at the realities behind those words. One of those words that many people seldom look behind is "education." But education can cover anything from courses on nuclear physics to courses on baton twirling.
Together Counts: Let's Get Moving
What do children need most from their parents? Love, time, and direction. A recent New York Times article highlights the decline of family togetherness. Many families now spend most of their leisure time plugged in -- to separate channels, websites, or play lists -- even when they are together. It's a trend that not only deprives our children of meaningful time and guidance but also worsens their health.
N.Y.'s 26th District Republican Needs Help
The race to succeed chest-baring, Craigslist-dabbling Rep. Chris Lee in upstate New York has not received much national notice. Events in Abbottabad have crowded out other stories. But Democrats are excited by a Siena College poll suggesting the possibility of an upset in the May 24 election. New York's 26th congressional district stretches from the suburbs east of Buffalo to the suburbs west of Rochester, a mostly rural, white, and Republican part of New York. As Michael Barone notes in The Almanac of American Politics, "People speak not in the pungent accents of New York City but in flat Midwestern tones." The 26th gave 55 percent of its vote to George W. Bush in 2004, and 52 percent to McCain in 2008.
What's in a Name?
For once I find myself firmly, indignantly and thoroughly on the side of political correctness. It's a strange sensation, but a deeply satisfying one. As if something needed to be made absolutely clear, spelled out, published far and wide -- and you proceeded to do just that. Which is the purpose of my writing this column. And this is why it had to be done: It seems the historical ignoramus who devised code words for the wholly admirable -- indeed, inspiring -- operation to get Osama bin Laden came up with "Geronimo EKIA" as the message that would signal OBL's long awaited demise.
Monday, May 9, 2011
Why We All Can't Get Along
I believe it was that seer, that shaman among shamen, Rodney King, who first asked, ever so plaintively: why can't we all just get along? Unfortunately, he didn't ask me. If I recall events correctly, he was about to be handed a check for a few million dollars signed by the taxpayers of Los Angeles. It seems that after getting high on PCP and driving 100 mph through our streets in order to evade arrest, he was slightly manhandled by a bunch of cops who were nearly as high as he was, thanks to the rush of adrenaline brought on by the high-speed chase and the idiot's refusal to be handcuffed.
What the GOP Can Learn From Canada's Conservatives
Some years ago, the columnist and editor Michael Kinsley sponsored a contest to come up with the most boring headline. The winner was, "Worthwhile Canadian Initiative." Well, Canada held an election last Monday, and the result was anything but boring. It amounts to something like a revolution in Canadian politics and has lessons, I think, for those of us south of the border.
Sunday, May 8, 2011
Brown Wants to Cut Prison Population by a Fifth
How small is the California prison population likely to become if Gov. Jerry Brown has his way? In three years, California's prison population would be 20 percent smaller. When we chatted on the phone on the issue last week -- always an experience -- Brown sounded more like his old self, a left-wing talk-show host of the 1990s, than the tough-on-crime Oakland mayor and state attorney general who followed.
To Be 70
WASHINGTON -- In 1960, after the Pittsburgh Pirates defeated the New York Yankees in an electrifying seven-game World Series, the Yankees fired manager Casey Stengel, who had turned 70 in July. The Yankees said he was too old. He said, "I'll never make the mistake of being 70 again." It is, however, a coveted mistake, considering the alternative, and remembering how recently it was that passing this milestone became unremarkable. The Bible, with the thumping certitude for which it is famous and sometimes tiresome, asserts that "the days of our years are threescore years and ten." If so, after turning 70, one has, ever after, the pleasure of playing, as it were, with house money. For what, exactly, would one now give up red meat and dry martinis?
Saturday, May 7, 2011
News Briefs
Like everyone else in the civilized world, I was delighted that Osama bin Laden was killed by Navy Seals. But I must admit I regret it didn't happen under George W. Bush's watch. I just have this feeling that he would have given all the credit to the warriors who risked their lives carrying out the mission, and not kept the lion's share for himself. I am also disappointed if what I've read about bin Laden's final send-off is true. Was the creep's corpse actually washed, wrapped in a white sheet and had an Islamic prayer read over it before it was dropped into the sea? If I remember correctly, bin Laden played a major role in the murder of 3,000 Americans, forcing a number of them to leap from skyscrapers because their option was to be incinerated, and we're giving him a respectful burial? If it had been up to me, I'd have wrapped his cremated remains in a pigskin and then had a midshipman punt him off the poop deck.
And Now the Deluge
How high's the water, Mama? Two feet high and risin' How high's the water, Papa? She said, "Two feet high and risin'" It took someone with country in his bones, Arkansas-born-and-bred Johnny Cash, to tell the story in song, but it's an old saga in these drenched parts, dating back at least to the Noahide flood of 1927. That was the big one, and it inspired not just songs but a literary flood, too. Books, memoirs, historical studies ... they've washed up everywhere over the years. Not to mention those now faded photographs of hordes of folks camping out on the bridges and levees, or anywhere halfway dry. Images of the great deluge embedded themselves long ago in the South's collective memory.
From The Comedy Store
President Obama was ripped by carnival barkers after he compared Donald Trump to them. Carnival barkers lure people to come into your store and spend their cash. Leave it to Obama to be out there belittling the one talent that can save the economy.
Friday, May 6, 2011
Evil Does Not Die of Natural Causes
WASHINGTON -- Two months and a day before 9/11, terrorism expert Larry C. Johnson published "The Declining Terrorist Threat," a New York Times op-ed decrying the fact that "Americans are bedeviled by fantasies about terrorism," when, in reality, "the decade beginning in 2000 will continue the downward trend" in lethal terrorism. Not quite. A decade later, Osama bin Laden is dead and the old chorus of pre-9/11 complacency has returned. The war on terror is over -- yet again, it seems. Bin Laden was but "a distraction," writes Peter Beinart, and the war on terror "a mistake from the start." 9/11 was nothing more than "an isolated case," argues Ross Douthat. And "bin Laden was always the weak horse."
Snapshots From a Watershed Weekend
What a weekend. A wedding and a funeral. Love and war. A duchess anointed, a terrorist assassinated. It's the stuff of epics: Of arms and the lady, we sing. Of Navy SEALs and British nuptials, firefights and flower girls, warriors brave and kisses sealed. Rejoicing now takes place after nine years of courtship, 10 years of searching. Celebration follows rejuvenation. Killing Osama bin Laden is enough to make Superman take back the American citizenship he renounced. This was the week we deserved. It was demoralizing to have the terrorist of 9/11 escape for so long. Now we learn that he lived the luxurious life in hiding, not in a cave with spiders and grubs, scribbling drawings on the walls for future archeologists to decipher. Instead, he enjoyed the comfort of a million-dollar mansion. Of course, it wasn't high tech -- and what did Osama and his house party do all do day if they weren't wired?
When Money Trumps Motherhood
"But Mom, I don't wanna eat breakfast at school! Why can't I stay home and eat?" wailed Kirsten, nine-years-old. She looked plaintively at her mom and waited for her to answer. Connie was miffed. I don't need this, she thought. An engineer and mother of two, she had scaled back to part-time work when Kirsten was born. It was ideal -- professional continuity, business networks, and limited hours so she could stay involved in her children's busy lives.