Right Opinion

Hollywood's Matrimonial Blues

It recently dawned on me that even though Hollywood couples often avoid marriage even when they have children together, while others are often married for embarrassingly short periods of time, the movies continue to promote the old-fashioned notion that marriage constitutes a happy ending in every romantic comedy they churn out. They do this because they realize that even though shacking-up and one-night stands are typical for them, it does not constitute the norm or the ideal for most people in the audience.

The Single Goal Post Theory

WASHINGTON -- What America needs, says one American parent, is more parents who resemble South Korean parents. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan, 46, a father of a third-grader and a first-grader, recalls the answer Barack Obama got when he asked South Korean President Lee Myung-bak, "What is the biggest education challenge you have?" Lee answered: "Parents are too demanding." They want their children to start learning English in first rather than second grade. Only 25 percent of U.S. elementary schools offer any foreign-language instruction. Too many American parents, Duncan says, have "cognitive dissonance" concerning primary and secondary schools: They think their children's schools are fine, and that schools that are not fine are irredeemable. This, Duncan says, is a recipe for "stasis" and "insidious paralysis." He attempts to impart motion by puncturing complacency and picturing the payoff from excellence.

Olbermann's Last Supper at MSNBC -- What Happened?

"This will be the last edition of your show," MSNBC's Keith Olbermann, on the air, claimed he was told by management. What to make of Olbermann's abrupt departure, an apparent firing? Did post-Tucson concern over "vitriolic rhetoric" cause Comcast, MSNBC's new owner, to recoil at Olbermann's greatest hits? They include, but are by no means limited to: Calling opposition to ObamaCare the equivalent of "terrorists ... killing 45,000 people every year"; blaming Rush Limbaugh for the Oklahoma City bombing; calling the tea party-backed Republicans racists who would bring back "Jim Crow ... bread lines ... robber barons" and "hanging union organizers"; calling now-Sen. Scott Brown, R-Mass., a "homophobic, racist, reactionary ... teabagging supporter of violence against women"; accusing columnist and Fox News contributor Michelle Malkin of engaging in "morally bankrupt, knee-jerk, fascistic hatred without which (she) would just be a big mashed-up bag of meat with lipstick on it"; accusing President George W. Bush of "urinating on the Constitution" and of committing "panoramic and murderous deceit"; exclaiming about Bush, "You're a fascist!"; asserting that Bush "lied us into a war and, in so doing, needlessly killed 3,584"; calling Fox News' Chris Wallace "a monkey posing as a newscaster"; and saying of the then-Whitewater prosecutor, "It finally dawned on me that the person Ken Starr has reminded me of facially all this time was Heinrich Himmler ... a persecutor as opposed to a prosecutor."

Old Rules Won't Determine GOP Presidential Candidate

The weakest part of our political system, by a considerable margin, is the presidential nominating process. It tends to exclude from consideration those with the greatest experience in what is uniquely the president's responsibility, foreign policy and military strategy. It tends less strongly to exclude members of Congress, particularly House members but also senators, whose extensive voting records inevitably contain material that is politically damaging at some point in the process. The process has become so lengthy that candidates often come up with strategies and programs that are rendered obsolete by the time of the next presidential inauguration.

Hope, Change and 'Invest'

I missed the middle section of Obama's State of the Union address when I took a break to read "War and Peace," but I gather he never got around to what I was hoping he'd say, which is: "What was I thinking?" The national debt is $14 trillion, the Democrats won't stop spending, and President Nero gave us a long gaseous speech about his Stradivarius. I feel so Southern whenever I watch a Democrat give a State of the Union address -- and not just because it makes me want to secede. Consternating the rest of the family, my Kentucky mother always talked back to the TV. I do it only when a Democrat is giving a speech.

The 'HealthStat' Seduction

If professional writing were the guild it often appears to be, Atul Gawande would be a scab. A surgeon and professor, Gawande also writes beautifully for the New Yorker about health care. His latest article, "The Hot Spotters," focuses on what Gawande claims is a revolutionary approach to health care. In Camden, N.J. -- hardly a garden spot in the Garden State -- just 1 percent of the people who used the city's medical facilities accounted for 30 percent of the costs. One patient had 324 hospital admissions in five years, costing insurers $3.5 million.

Moscow's Silent War Explodes

When Numbers Get Unserious: Are Substantial Budget Cuts Automatically 'Untenable'?

"The challenge for the president," The New York Times reported before Tuesday's State of the Union address, "is to convince independents and centrists of his fiscal responsibility without further alienating his base." President Obama tried to accomplish this feat by calling the spending he favors an "investment" and portraying its opponents as shortsighted misers. Obama depicts budget cutters as panicky passengers "trying to reduce the weight of an overloaded aircraft by removing its engine," a metaphor that transforms frugality into a vice and makes continuing to spend money we don't have seem like the only responsible course. This inversion of values is facilitated by the self-fulfilling conventional wisdom that serious spending cuts are unserious because no one will take them seriously.

Avoiding Dr. Kermit Gosnell

Once again, the "news" media yawned as tens of thousands of Americans clogged the streets of Washington on Jan. 24 for the annual "March for Life." This year's protests should have gained more attention since they came in the wake of absolutely vomit-inducing news from Philadelphia that an abortionist named Kermit Gosnell was charged by the District Attorney with a series of murders. In a horrific 261-page report, Gosnell is accused of delivering seven babies alive and then killing them with scissors. He also allowed a woman who had survived 20 years in a refugee camp in Nepal to be incompetently overmedicated on Demerol and die at his clinic.

My State of the Union Address

President Obama fulfilled his constitutional duty and gave his report on the state of the union last night. Here's mine: We're in deep trouble. You know why. Our debt has passed $14 trillion, and yet our current spending plans will make that worse. The U.S. debt will reach Greek levels in just 10 years. But do not despair. If we make reasonable cuts to what government spends, our economy can grow us out of our debt. Cutting doesn't just make economic sense, it is also the moral thing to do. Henry David Thoreau had it right when he "accepted(ed) the motto ... that government is best which governs least."

Can Our Nation Be Saved?

National debt is over $14 trillion, the federal budget deficit is $1.4 trillion and, depending on whose estimates are used, the unfunded liability or indebtedness of the federal government (mostly in the form of obligations for Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid and prescription drugs) is estimated to be between $60 and $100 trillion.Those entitlements along with others account for nearly 60 percent of federal spending. They are what Congress calls mandatory or non-discretionary spending. Then there's discretionary spending, half of which is for national defense. Each year, non-discretionary spending consumes a higher and higher percent of the federal budget.

Cash for Education Clunkers

"We're going to have to out-educate other countries," President Obama urged this week. How? By out-spending them, of course! It's the same old quack cure for America's fat and failing government-run schools monopoly. The one-trick ponies at the White House call their academic improvement agenda "targeted investing" for "winning the future." Truth in advertising: Get ready to fork over more Cash for Education Clunkers. Our government already spends more per capita on education than any other of the 34 wealthiest countries in the world except for Switzerland, according to recent analysis of data from the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development. Overall inflation-adjusted K-12 spending has tripled over the past 40 years, the Michigan-based Mackinac Center for Public Policy points out. Yet American test scores and graduation rates are stagnant. One in 10 high schools is a dropout factory. And our students' performance in one of the most prestigious global math competitions has been so abysmal that the U.S. simply withdrew altogether.

Regulations and Rhetoric

Last week, the president wrote in the Wall Street Journal an article titled "Toward a 21st-Century Regulatory System" in which he announced that he had issued an executive order to review all government regulations on a cost-benefit ratio basis. In itself, this is a good idea, although the president makes it explicit that the cost-benefit analysis must take account of -- as benefits -- intangible factors such as "equity, human dignity, fairness, and distributive impacts." Plenty of leeway there for career regulators and liberal political appointees to justify almost any oppressive regulation they may stumble over. But what startles one is the that such a proposal could come from the same administration that has for the last two years been saddling the American economy and our personal lives with more new legislatively mandated regulations than we have ever experienced in such a short time.

The Christmas Wars (Cont'd)

I see by the Letters column that I'm in trouble with readers again, but when am I not? Which is fair enough. More than fair, since I signed up for criticism when I became a newspaper columnist. Indeed, a columnist who isn't in trouble isn't much of one. If he isn't offending somebody somewhere, he isn't doing his job. Because he isn't saying anything. There are worse things than drawing flak in the public prints. Like a columnist's churning out stuff so tepid he never gets a response at all. You have to try to be that boring. I don't know how David Broder does it.

Santorum's Right on Civil Rights, Obama's Wrong

Someone seeking to measure former Sen. Rick Santorum's leadership qualities compared to President Barack Obama's would do well to note that Santorum acknowledges the fundamental principle at the foundation of our republic and applies it with intellectual honesty and moral courage to the policy positions he takes, while President Obama does neither. The Declaration of Independence states the principle: "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness." In a 2008 campaign forum, Obama turned his back on this principle when asked a simple question by Pastor Rick Warren: "At what point does a baby get human rights, in your view?"

The Biggest Lie in American Politics

For decades, liberals have used "big business" as a bugaboo. Leftists say corporations are mean, heartless and cruel -- and what's more, they're inherently capitalist and conservative. When the economy tanks, liberals blame right-wing corporations; when the regulatory state fails, liberals claim that corporations have perverted the system. In reality, corporations aren't conservative. They aren't capitalist. They're after the nearest buck. And when the nearest buck can be obtained simply by playing footsie with the federal government, big business becomes an emissary of the government.

Obama Justice Department Must Probe Child Porn at MTV

The child porn allegations made against MTV for its "Skins" show must be investigated by the Obama Justice Department. Child Pornography is not protected by the First Amendment, and producing child porn is a crime. Whether these allegations are true or not, even allegations of it are something most responsible businesses don't want to be associated with, and they're chasing advertisers away from this latest attempt to redefine what's allowed on television. The latest TV scandal is over MTV's new show, "Skins." The show casts child actors (not adults who play children on camera) with a plot where kids are involved in drugs, sex and reportedly even prostitution. It's pushing the envelope in terms of coarsening society, evidently going for the shock value of being one of the edgiest shows on cable television.

For (and Against) the Filibuster

Any discussion of whether to end, mend, or generally fiddle with the filibuster might well begin by trying to understand what it is, and why such a practice developed in the U.S. Senate. The filibuster is a way to protect the rights and interest of the minority by allowing its members to speak without being cut off by a simple majority vote. Instead, it takes a supermajority to close debate and proceed to a vote -- 60 votes under the current rule. The filibuster is one more part of the intricate web of checks and balances undergirding and expanding all those in the Constitution itself, for the Founding Fathers were not afraid of complexity, especially when it came to dividing and controlling government power. It may have been Madison who pointed out that the danger of tyranny is always greatest wherever power is greatest. In a democracy, he noted, it is the majority that has the most power, and therefore should be most restrained.

Culture Challenge of the Week: When Pro-Life Lacks Love

Culture Challenge of the Week: When Pro-Life Lacks Love As the Director of a Planned Parenthood abortion clinic, Abby Johnson oversaw the abortions of thousands of preborn babies. She poured her energy into counseling the mothers who faced difficult pregnancies, believing that abortion was often the right solution. Abby truly believed she was helping the women. Daily, she drove past ardent pro-lifers who deplored the deadly business Abby directed. They too believed in their mission. A high, ugly fence divided the clinic staff and the pro-lifers -- starkly symbolic.

Environmentalists: Hands Off My Dishes!

I began noticing the white coating, dull film, and simply unclean dishes a few weeks ago. Naturally, I suspected that other members of my clan were failing to place dishes on the racks of the dishwasher properly. "If the water can't reach it, it won't get clean," I lectured (not, ahem, for the first time), ostentatiously removing a small bowl that had been slipped under a larger one, no doubt by a person who clings to the discredited idea that dishwashers should be loaded to the gills. And those little separators in the utensil caddy -- they are there for a reason, gentlemen! But the crisis persisted. And, as the days passed, it became clear that the matter was beyond poor placement. Bits of spaghetti, stiff and stubborn, stuck like stalactites to bowls. The walls and doors of the machine emerged waxy and coated from each wash, in contrast to the gleaming surfaces of the past. Between the tines of forks, ugly bits of hardened remains resembled something you'd see on "NCIS" -- if not quite repellent, then certainly unwelcome from what should have been a disinfected, pristine dishwasher!