Right Opinion
The best of conservative opinion and commentary, updated daily.
Wednesday, April 20, 2011
Poker Bars: Why Should Anyone Go to Prison for Helping People Play Cards?
Preet Bharara seems to be haunted by the fear that someone, somewhere, may be playing poker. Last year, Bharara, the U.S. attorney in Manhattan, threatened an Australian payment processor with up to 75 years in prison for helping online poker companies do business with their U.S. customers. Last Friday, he announced similar charges against 11 people associated with the three leading poker sites serving American players. If you type in the Web address for PokerStars, Full Tilt Poker or Absolute Poker, you will see a notice that the domain name has been seized by the FBI. The notice cites some impressive-sounding crimes, but the statutory language cannot conceal the legal weakness and moral triviality of Bharara's charges.
Governing While Drunk on Partisanship
If future historians look back on the ruins of the American economy after a U.S. bond crisis struck in the second decade of the 21st century, many causes will be noted. Obviously, it will be seen that for decades before the catastrophe, the U.S. was spending vastly more than it could afford on government health and retirement programs. And, just as after the Great Depression, Pearl Harbor and Sept. 11, 2011, blue-ribbon commissions will be incredulous that all the telltale signs of the coming disaster were in plain view, yet were ignored.
David Brooks, You're Fired
Conservatives who really wanted to see at least a spending "haircut" for NPR or public broadcasting in the underwhelming budget deal for 2011 might have suggested at least some symbolic victory for conservatives. Here it is: Fire David Brooks as the alleged conservative or Republican "counterpoint" on PBS and NPR on Friday nights. We could hire Donald Trump to announce it from the boardroom. Or keep him, but banish forever, for once and for all, the notion that he is a man of the right.
The Bible in School: A Retort to Modern Contempt
There was a time when the Bible and Shakespeare were recognized as twin pillars of not just English literature but Western civilization. Wherever the English-speaking peoples went, these books would go, for they were compact storehouses of wisdom, strength and beauty. Even the humblest cabin along the American frontier might have a family Bible and maybe a copy of Shakespeare's plays. Those books would introduce a young Abe Lincoln to life and thought, and it showed. One day it would show in the language he would mobilize on behalf of nothing less than the American Union itself.
Caring Enough to Broadcast the Very Best
Growing up, "Hallmark Hall of Fame" represented the gold standard of what we would call today "family values" television, except that TV then rarely carried anything threatening to those values. Today, Hallmark's commitment to quality television hasn't change; it even has its own cable channel, which shows films that affirm the values most of us hold dear. This Easter Sunday, CBS will mark the 60th anniversary of the "Hallmark Hall of Fame" with a film called "Beyond the Blackboard." It's one of those "based on a true story" projects about a young woman (Stacey Bess) who desperately wants to teach, but finds there are no jobs available in her Albuquerque, N.M., school district. There is, however, an experimental program and Bess (played by Emily VanCamp), eagerly accepts the job. There's a problem, though. She is to teach homeless children in a rundown warehouse.
Why Does the Left Hate Technology?
Back in the early 19th century, as the Industrial Revolution began to take hold, a group of British laborers rebelled against the technological advances of the day. Taking their inspiration from an obscure British weaver named Ned Ludd, who had attacked and bludgeoned to death two knitting frames after being chastised for laziness, these laborers began wrecking all the new-fangled machinery they could get their hands on. By stopping the march of technology, they mistakenly believed that they could preserve their own low-level jobs. The Luddites, as they came to be known, were defeated swiftly by the British government -- and by technology, which outpaced them and caused the greatest flourishing of population growth, health and wealth the world has ever known -- but their legacy lives on in the Democratic Party. This week, Rep. Jesse Jackson Jr. (D-Ill.) announced that the Apple iPad was responsible for unemployment.
Blame It on FDR, LBJ, W and Obama
When President Barack Obama declared last week that America "would not be a great country" were it not for Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security and unemployment insurance, he committed one brief moment of partial candor. "By 2025, the amount of taxes we currently pay will only be enough to finance our health care programs -- Medicare and Medicaid -- Social Security, and the interest we owe on our debt," he said. "That's it. Every other national priority -- education, transportation, even our national security -- will have to be paid for with borrowed money."
Syria: Father-Son Dictatorship Remains in Vogue
It may rank as one of the most ill-timed feature articles ever published. Peel away the gobs of glamor lingo, and Vogue Magazine's recent article lauding Asma al-Assad, the wife of Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad, is little more than haut couture propaganda. Vogue described Mrs. Assad as "young and very chic -- the freshest and most magnetic of first ladies," who "is on a mission ... to put a modern face on her husband's regime."
Tuesday, April 19, 2011
Choosey About Choice
The Democratic mayor of Washington, D.C., Vincent Gray, distinguished himself last week by getting arrested in an act of "civil disobedience" reminiscent of the '60s. The mayor, six council members and more than 40 other protesters were detained by Capitol police for blocking the street to oppose the congressional budget deal that deprived D.C. of federal funds for abortions. They were also protesting a mandate under the same agreement that revives a popular school choice program, the "Opportunity Scholarship Program," which allows poor children in failing schools an opportunity to attend schools they and their parents believe will give them the best possible education. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan had pulled the plug on the Bush-era program after pressure from the teacher's union which, in a reversal of Bush's "No Child Left Behind," behaves as if no child in a failing school should be let out.
Government Makes a Poor Physician
Conservatives, particularly those of libertarian bent, have always bristled at government efforts to do good, believing that the state has no business performing any but essential functions. They're the ones who, when a government shutdown loomed and it was announced that only "essential" workers should report to work following a budget impasse, asked, "Why the heck do we have non-essential workers?" Neo-conservatives, at least in their early incarnation in the late '60s and '70s, tended to stress that the unintended consequences of government efforts to do good were often more important (and usually more harmful) than the intended consequences.
The War on Users of Cold, Allergy Drugs
You know the war on drugs has gone too far when politicians keep ratcheting up restrictions on cold and allergy medications in order to prevent kitchen drug labs from buying pills and converting them into methamphetamine. In 2005, Congress passed a law requiring consumers to show a driver's license or other ID in order to purchase Sudafed and 14 other over-the-counter cold and allergy medications. The buyer must register in a logbook.
Ryan 1, Obama 0
I am beginning to wonder whether President Obama is so cocky about his 2012 re-election prospects that he thinks he doesn't even have to be serious in his budget plan offerings. Unfortunately, the nation's unfunded liabilities aren't so casual as the president; they are growing by more than $10 trillion per year, which means that our looming debt crisis becomes far more problematic with each passing day.
Why Don't Christians Help ... Christians?
In 1969, at the age of 21, I was sent to the Soviet Union. I was a young American Jew who spoke Hebrew and Russian and who practiced Judaism. My task was to bring Jewish religious items into the Soviet Union and the names of Jews who wished to leave the Soviet Union out of that country. Upon returning to the United States, I became the national spokesman for the Student Struggle for Soviet Jewry, one of the most effective organizations for Soviet Jews in the world. As such, I spoke before synagogues of every denomination, Hadassah groups, Jewish federations, Jewish groups on college campuses. If there was a Jewish organization, it cared about the plight of Soviet Jews. For decades, virtually every synagogue in America had a "Save Soviet Jewry" sign in front of it.
A Cliche a Second
It had been some time since I'd stopped by to see the eminent Pierre Cliche, man of a thousand words and phrases, mostly banalities but interspersed with platitudes, shibboleths and bromides for (non)variety's sake. I understood why I had put off seeing him as soon as he greeted me at the door of his cliche factory. "Dude!" he cried out, which I take it is no longer a noun of address but the current substitute for Hello. It is not an improvement. I instinctively looked over my shoulder, but apparently M. Cliche was addressing me.
Bull About Bullying
There is a lot of talk from many people about bullying in school. The problem is that it is all talk. There is no sign that anybody is going to do anything that is likely to reduce bullying. When politicians want to do nothing, and yet look like they are doing something, they appoint a blue ribbon committee or go to the U.N. or assign some Cabinet member to look into the problem and report back to the President -- hoping that the issue will be forgotten by the time he reports back.
'Compact'? What Compact?
The editorial page of The New York Times naturally picked up on President Obama's assault on the GOP for assaulting the "social compact," a terrible thing to do, by the president's and the Times' reckoning. As Obama phrased it, the Republican goal of bringing the federal government's multi-trillion-dollar deficit into line with economic realities "is less about reducing the deficit than it is about changing the basic social compact in America." The New York Times throws the states into this dark gumbo and seconds Obama's motion in a subheadline: "From Congress to statehouses, a sweeping attempt to dismantle the social compact."
Monday, April 18, 2011
Names in the News
What, you well may ask, do Newt Gingrich, Mike Huckabee and Sheriffs Paul Babeu and Larry Deaver, have in common? On almost a daily basis, they send me or my wife letters beseeching us to send them donations. What's more, even though we ignore their pleas, their faith never wanes. Although I admire perseverance as much as the next guy, I'm going to take this opportunity to set them straight. If I had any money lying around that I didn't need for food and gasoline, there are probably about 84,000 charities I'd send it to before coughing it up for a couple of sheriffs and a couple of ex-politicians who are trying to turn some face time on TV into competition with the Red Cross and the Little Sisters of Mercy.
President Whatever Finds Things Not Going His Way
Barack Obama is a politician who likes to follow through on long-term strategies and avoid making course corrections. That's how he believes he won in 2008, and since then he's shown that he's not much into details. So he was happy to let congressional appropriators fill in the blanks in the 2009 stimulus package, and to let congressional leaders know he would be happy whether there was or wasn't a public option in the 2010 health insurance legislation. Whatever. In the long run, the big things would work out his way. Except right now they aren't. And his partisan and petulant speech last Wednesday is unlikely to move things in the direction he wants.
Sunday, April 17, 2011
Voice of a Conservative Populist
KANSAS CITY, Mo. -- The morning Tom Hoenig, president of the Federal Reserve's regional bank here, announced that he would retire Oct. 1, newspapers nationwide reported that henceforth the Fed's chairmen will hold quarterly news conferences. This is probably both regrettable and inevitable. The Fed is called "independent" because it was created to insulate monetary policy from political pressures. But it was created by Congress, which can do what it wants with the Fed. Also, for more than three decades the Fed has had a "dual mandate" -- to protect the currency as a store of value (restraining inflation) and to promote "maximum employment." The latter inserts the Fed into inherently political calculations and decisions.
Department of Obstruction of Justice
President Obama well may have begun another undeclared war -- this time on states that try to enforce their own death penalty laws -- on the dubious grounds that the Food and Drug Administration has not approved drugs intended to kill convicted killers. On March 15, the Drug Enforcement Administration seized Georgia's supply of sodium thiopental, the first drug given under the three-drug lethal injection protocol used in most of the country's 34 death-penalty states. The DEA also asked Kentucky and Tennessee for their sodium thiopental to aid its investigation. Why? The DEA referred me to the Department of Justice, which sent an e-mail declining to comment. News reports indicate that the feds had concerns that the drugs were imported improperly.