Right Opinion

Reagan's Farewell Regret: Deficit He'd Put Nation on Track to Eliminate

When Ronald Reagan delivered his farewell address more than two decades ago, he cited one regret: a continuing deficit he had put the nation on track to eliminate. "I've been asked if I have any regrets. Well, I do," said Reagan. "The deficit is one. I've been talking a great deal about that lately, but tonight isn't for arguments, and I'm going to hold my tongue." In the days leading up to that speech, Reagan had indeed spoken repeatedly about the deficit, explaining its sources and how it could be eliminated with characteristic passion and analytical accuracy.

Jerry Brown, a Modern Sisyphus

California Gov. Jerry Brown must rapidly close a $25 billion budgetary shortfall. But right now it seems almost a hopeless task since the state's disastrous budget is a symptom, not the cause, of California's much larger nightmare. Take unemployment. It currently runs 12.6 percent in California, the nation's second-highest rate. Take livability. A recent Forbes magazine survey listing the most miserable 20 cities in the nation ranked four California municipalities among the index's five worst places to live.

Dear Mainstream Media Reporter Who Wasted My Time...

I've been finishing my next book and only able to catch bits and pieces of the news this month, but, based on what I've heard from the mainstream media, I'm pretty sure the conservative movement is now being led either by Jared Loughner or GOProud's president, Chris Barron. In honor of the gays who have come out of the closet as Republicans to be one of the 140 sponsors of CPAC 2011, I thought I'd run one of the interviews I gave before speaking to GOProud last September, which the reporter never ran after wasting my time.

The Super Bowl and the Ads

WASHINGTON -- The other night while watching the Super Bowl, I became increasingly aware that the Angry Left might have a point about the Giant Corporations. Not that the game was not exciting. It was. Those quarterbacks can really heave the ball. Suddenly it is in their hands, and suddenly it is in a receiver's outreached arms, having passed through a forest of opposing players' arms. Both teams were composed of players who apparently were made of rubber. They hurled themselves at one another and occasionally at the hard turf and simply bounced. Occasionally they did not. Sometimes they were injured, occasionally rather badly. But for the most part, they seemed amazingly resilient. It was a hell of a battle, and doubtless the better team won, but I cheered for both teams. They were great.

Beware What You Ask of the Genie

As I sit here, Cairo is ablaze with Molotov cocktails, and nobody knows if Hosni Mubarak has booked a flight aboard Deposed Despots Airlines. Come to think of it, perhaps the reason he wants to stay put until September is because he realizes how much cheaper airline tickets are when you can order them six or seven months ahead of time. A lot of people in America are elated by the sight of mobs gathering in the streets of Egypt. They view it as an oppressed people longing for liberty. They rejoice at the prospect of a dictator being dumped in favor of democracy. That is because a lot of people who are forever quoting Santayana's quip, "Those who can not remember the past are condemned to repeat it," have apparently remembered precious little themselves. It would seem that the extent of their historical knowledge begins and ends with the final score of the recent Super Bowl.

Told You So

One of liberalism's many problems is that once an idea or program is proved wrong and unworkable, liberals rarely acknowledge their mistake and examine the root cause of their error so they don't repeat it. Take multiculturalism ... please! In a speech to a security conference in Munich, British Prime Minister David Cameron declared state multiculturalism a failure. For good measure, Cameron said Britain also must get tougher on Islamic extremists. Predictably, this has angered Islamic extremists.

Who's Policing Amtrak Joe Biden's Rail Boondoggles?

At Philadelphia's 30th Street Station on Tuesday, lifelong government rail promoter Vice President Joe Biden unveiled a $53 billion high-speed train initiative and half-joked: "I'm like the ombudsman for Amtrak." As with most gaffetastic Biden-isms, the remark should prompt more heartburn than hilarity. Just who exactly is looking out for taxpayers when it comes to federal rail spending? Vigorous independent oversight of public infrastructure binges is especially critical given the nation's long history of mass transit slush funds, cost overruns and union-monopolized construction projects to nowhere. Among the new projects championed by the Obama administration: a $10 billion New Jersey-to-New York commuter rail tunnel pushed by Senate Democrats that state officials won't pay for but believe everyone else in the nation should be forced to subsidize. When Biden talks about "seizing the future," he's talking about seizing your wallets for his party's electoral security.

Passive Resistance

Ronald Reagan famously summarized the federal government's attitude toward the economy this way: "If it moves, tax it. If it keeps moving, regulate it. And if it stops moving, subsidize it." Last week, a federal judge added a corollary: If it doesn't move, don't regulate it. In overturning the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, U.S. District Judge Roger Vinson said the law's requirement that every American obtain government-approved health insurance exceeds Congress's power to "regulate commerce ... among the several states." While all the other regulations that the Supreme Court has upheld under the Commerce Clause have targeted some sort of activity, Vinson noted, the health insurance mandate is aimed at the failure to buy something Congress thinks everyone should have.

Egyptian Army Is West's Best Hope

Last Sunday, the media were reporting that the Muslim Brotherhood was sitting down with Egyptian Vice President Omar Suleiman, in a completely unrelated story, the BBC reported that British Prime Minster David Cameron announced that "State multiculturalism has failed": "David Cameron has criticized 'state multiculturalism' in his first speech as prime minister on radicalization and the causes of terrorism. "At a security conference in Munich, he argued the UK needed a stronger national identity to prevent people turning to all kinds of extremism. He also signaled a tougher stance on groups promoting Islamist extremism.

This One Is Egypt's to Lose

WASHINGTON -- Sixty years ago, American politics was embittered by an accusation couched as a question: "Who lost China?" The implied indictment was that America had fumbled away a possession through incompetence or sinister conniving. In 1949, when communists came to power there, America bestrode both hemispheres shattered from war. Americans thought their nation was at the wheel of the world and that whatever happened, wherever, happened at America's instigation, or at least its sufferance, or was evidence of American negligence.

The 'Judicial Activism' Ploy

Now that two different federal courts have declared ObamaCare unconstitutional, the administration's answer is to call the courts guilty of "judicial activism." Barack Obama has a rhetorical solution for every problem. Remember the repeated claims of "shovel-ready" projects that needed only federal stimulus money to get started? Last year the President quietly admitted that there were not many "shovel-ready" projects, after all.

A Tale of Two Languages

Here's a chunk of the problem with the proposed reconciliation of business and the Obama administration. "We're trying," the president said, in addressing the U.S. Chamber of Commerce this week, "to run the government like you run your businesses -- with better technology and faster services." Not that there's anything wrong with better technology and faster services. The reason for the non-crystalline ring of the presidential rhetoric is that neither advantage the president imputed to business really explains why business succeeds at business better than government does.

Planned Parenthood, Spiked

Those censorious liberals who truly hate the very existence of the Fox News Channel denounce it for being a political organization, not truly a news network. Behind that line is decades of liberals being able to strangle, smother and spike news stories they didn't like. Liberals defined what "news" was and what it wasn't. They're still at it today. Take the pro-life group Live Action. On Feb. 1, they released shocking videos showing what they found when they brought hidden cameras into Planned Parenthood clinics, with a man and woman posing as pimp and prostitute. An office manager was taped telling the "pimp" how to evade the law, such as lying about prostitutes' ages if they were children 14 or over. Any younger, and the clinic would be obligated to report to the authorities. "We want as little information as possible," she said conspiratorially.

Spontaneous Order

You are our Ruler. An entrepreneur tells you he wants to create something he calls a "skating rink." Young and old will strap blades to their feet and speed through an oval arena, weaving patterns as moods strike them. You'd probably say, "We need regulation -- skating stoplights, speed limits, turn signals -- and a rink director to police the skaters. You can't expect skaters to navigate the rink on their own." And yet they do. They spontaneously create their own order.

A Killer Agency

Sam Kazman's "Drug Approvals and Deadly Delays" article in the Journal of American Physicians and Surgeons (Winter 2010), tells a story about how the U.S. Food and Drug Administration's policies have led to the deaths of tens of thousands of Americans. Let's look at how it happens. During the FDA's drug approval process, it confronts the possibility of two errors. If the FDA approves a drug that turns out to have unanticipated, dangerous side effects, people will suffer. Similarly, if the FDA denies or delays the marketing of a perfectly safe and beneficial drug, people will also suffer. Both errors cause medical harm.

The Real 'Realism' on Israel

HERZLIYA, Israel -- Finally, I can put the rumors to rest: the land of Zion isn't merely an abstraction, it's an actual country. I am in Israel -- my first time -- to cover the Herzliya Conference, the country's premier national security forum. (Full disclosure: My trip, as well as that of several other journalists, was underwritten by the Emergency Committee for Israel, which seeks "to educate the public about the serious challenges to Israel's security." The views here are my own.)

A Costly Way to 'Help'

PC Military Fails to Detect Fort Hood Shooter

When he was in his residency, studying psychiatry at Walter Reed Army Medical Center from 2003 to 2009, Nidal Hasan gave a lecture in which he defended Osama bin Laden, justified suicide bombers and suggested that Muslim Americans in the military -- like him -- could be prone to fratricidal attacks against fellow troops. He was "a chronic poor performer," who often failed to show up for work and was often on probation. His program director considered him "very lazy" and "a religious fanatic."

The Pentagon Opts for Economy of Force

This week, the Pentagon published a national military strategy document, its first revision since 2004. "The National Military Strategy, 2011" (NMS 2011) begins with the assertion that the U.S. has reached a "strategic inflection point." Economic and information interconnectedness and what are euphemistically described as "ongoing shifts in relative power" (meaning comparative power among nation states) have produced this strategic change in direction.

Neglected Character

Culture Challenge of the Week: Neglected Character Her face looked haggard and she had aged ten years, it seemed, in the months since I last saw her. I knew "Joanna" through friends. Although was saw each other infrequently, we enjoyed sharing with each other the highs and lows of our lives and our children. This time, she looked so awful that it was clear something was not right. It was her son.