Right Opinion

Voices of Patience and Wisdom

In the eight days since the deadly shootings in Arizona, the nation has been engulfed by a tidal wave of rhetoric and reaction, much of it unnecessary, ungracious, or unfortunate. But amid the flood of words, two voices have spoken with an uplifting decency and grace that should make them memorable long after the hue and cry of the past week has ended. One of those voices was that of President Obama, whose remarks at the memorial service in Tucson Wednesday night were humane and eloquent, unmarred by the acrimony that has ricocheted back and forth in the political echo chamber. The president spoke movingly about each of the victims whose lives were cut short. He gratefully hailed by name those whose heroism and quick thinking prevented even more lives from being lost. And with no hint of self-interest or rationalization, he urged all Americans not to "use this tragedy as one more occasion to turn on each other."

A Solution at Obama's Fingertips

On Tuesday, the president will deliver his State of the Union message. The conventional wisdom is that Barack Obama will continue his "move to the center." The quotation marks are necessary because some people think he really is moving to the center, while others think he just wants to appear like he is. Either way, this undoubtedly means Obama will try to seem as if he's meeting Republicans halfway on their "reasonable" demands (quotation marks for the same reason as before) while drawing a stark line against their "unreasonable" ones.

The SOTU, Hope and Change

WASHINGTON -- When the world tunes in for the State of the Union address next week, viewers will be treated to a dramatic improvement in the background scenery. Thanks to American voters, House Speaker John Boehner's well-tanned smile will be behind the president instead of Nancy Pelosi's surgically enhanced grimace. But if President Barack Obama -- who campaigned for office by promising "hope" and "change" -- is paying attention to current events, he must also alter his message. James Carville's famous words, "It's the economy, stupid," are still true. Therefore, most of what Obama says Tuesday night will focus on ways he can be credited with "creating and preserving" American jobs and stemming the tidal wave of home foreclosures. Predictably, he will find ways to blame his predecessor for our current economic travail. His remarks will include carefully crafted applause lines on new calls for "civility" in political discourse in the aftermath of the atrocity in Tucson, Ariz., along with pledges to cut deficit spending and debt in the years ahead. We also should expect promises to "work with Republicans" on "improving, not ending," his health insurance law and platitudes about "protecting American security" while eliminating "waste, fraud and abuse" by "reforming" our nation's defense budget.

Postcards From Hell

He seems to have achieved a kind of religious exultation by decapitating Daniel Pearl. That's what emerges from a new report from Georgetown University and the Center for Public Integrity. Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the 9/11 "mastermind" whom the Obama administration abortively planned to try (with the full protections of our Constitution) in a civilian court in Manhattan, was the man who did it. By studying the videotape of Pearl's unbearably cruel and barbarous murder (in a more innocent time -- 2002 -- Americans became nauseated just hearing about it), U.S. investigators were able to compare the vein structure of the hand that appears in the video with KSM's. Though Mohammed had acknowledged being the killer, some had doubts. This report should quiet them.

Mud Libel

The same people who had blamed Sarah Palin for the massacre at the Tucson Safeway and then taunted her for her "silence" were enraged when she responded. Last Tuesday, the night before Palin responded, MSNBC's Keith Olbermann mocked Palin's silence throughout his show: -- "And why is the ever self-promoting Miss Palin so quiet?" -- "And it's quiet, isn't it?" -- "It's too quiet." -- "The silence is deafening from the great Northwest."

Books for the Winter Cold

WASHINGTON -- The other day, I received a call from a very agreeable lady at C-SPAN, asking me to do a show with them called "In Depth." It will take a lot of time, as they want to interview me on all the books I have written. Also, it will last three hours! That is a marathon. I can hardly listen for three hours, much less talk. Yet I have been a fan of C-SPAN for years, so I could hardly say no. Also, I am an advocate of the printed word. I want it to survive. It seems to me the printed word has been under assault for decades. The Internet is the latest threat against it. First there was the camera. Then came TV. Now there is the Internet, on which everyone writes and no one reads. In a world where everyone is a writer and no one a reader, how long can the printed word last? We live in a blizzard of words, but no one is reading seriously.

High-speed Rail Is a Fast Way to Waste Taxpayer Money

Where can the new Congress start cutting spending? Here's one obvious answer: high-speed rail. The Obama administration is sending billions of stimulus dollars around the country for rail projects that make no sense and that, if they are ever built, will be a drag on taxpayers indefinitely. When incoming Govs. Scott Walker of Wisconsin and John Kasich of Ohio cancelled high-speed rail projects, Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood refused to let them spend the dollars on other forms of transportation and sent the funds instead to California and other states.

Black Man's Burden: Those Who Make Them Victims

"Black man's burden," read the headline in the Los Angeles Times piece. "African-American men," read the subheading, "are still often judged by the color of their skin rather than the content of their character." It must be MLK Day. This is when the guilt-ridden, blame-seeking, personal-responsibility-avoiding, racism-under-every-rock, oh-so-sympathetic, victicrat media tell us about Martin Luther King's "unfinished" legacy. Never mind that America, two years ago, elected a black president.

Congress Should Have Addressed Medicare Rather Than Pass 'ObamaCare'

Much ado will be made this week over a vote in the U. S. House to repeal the so-called "ObamaCare" law. And rightfully so, given that it passed with almost no scrutiny and has tons of hidden traps and government red tape stuck inside it. Of course, it is unlikely that a repeal would pass the Senate, and compromise will not come easy. The best method the House has to deal with this monster of a law is to carefully shred it apart at the appropriations level, and that's exactly what I expect. Cut the lifeblood of money off from the new law, and make it unenforceable.

The Blinders of Hubris

WASHINGTON -- It takes a worried man to sing a worried song, and in a recent speech that seemed like Larry Summers' swan song, the president's departed economic adviser warned that America is "at risk of a profound demoralization with respect to government." He fears a future in which "an inadequately resourced government performs badly, leading to further demands that it be cut back, exacerbating performance problems, deepening the backlash, and creating a vicious cycle." The idea that America's problem of governance is one of inadequate resources misses this lesson of the last half-century: No amount of resources can prevent government from performing poorly when it tries to perform too many tasks, or particular tasks for which it is inherently unsuited.

Defining 'Schlemiel'

When I used the Yiddish word "schlemiel" in a recent article, a reader asked me to define it. I suggested it referred to a dummy, a dunderhead, a mental dwarf. I added that to help you identify them, they generally come with a (D) after their name. So it is that in King County, Washington, the schlemiels have now banned those non-tobacco cigarettes that emit vapor because, public officials have decided, kids might see grown-ups puffing air and conclude it is cool to smoke. Or, unless they're as dumb as bureaucrats, the kids might figure out that it's simply a form of breathing, and far preferable to sucking in tobacco and nicotine.

GOP House Right to Vote to Repeal

In a January 2008 Democratic presidential debate, then-Sens. Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama both promised to deliver universal health care plans. But Obama hit Clinton for supporting a requirement that individuals buy their own health care. "She believes that we have to force people who don't have health insurance to buy it. Otherwise, there will be a lot of people who don't get it," Obama charged. "I don't see those folks."

Restoring Economic Freedom

How to Combat an Arrogant China?

Is there a new Cold War developing between China and the United States? That's a question hovering over President Hu Jintao and his entourage as they come to Washington to discuss military, trade and financial flash points with the Obama administration. Hu told The Wall Street Journal that "we should abandon the zero-sum Cold War mentality." But is he to be believed? Everyone agrees that this is a new, muscular and more aggressive China. The more the Chinese strengthen economically, the more rambunctious they become with their foreign policy. Americans are increasingly irritated by this arrogance.

Thirty-Eight Years and 50 Million

When the leadership of the new Republican majority in the House of Representatives decided as their first act to have members read the U.S. Constitution aloud, there were some who wanted to emphasize that part of the original document which, for taxation, enumeration and representation purposes, decreed that slaves had only "three-fifths" the value of whites. That formula between Southern and Northern states, reached during the Philadelphia Convention of 1787, came to be known as the Three-fifths Compromise. In 1865, the Thirteenth Amendment abolished slavery, rendering the three-fifths clause moot, but some House members wanted to read the original article to counter the argument of "original intent" with their own argument that the Constitution is a "living document," which must be regularly updated and interpreted by modern judges.

Ronald Reagan -- Our First Black President?

Who was the first black president? Two decades before the election of Barack Obama, novelist Toni Morrison dubbed Bill Clinton "our first black President." She even said that Clinton was "blacker than any actual black person who could ever be elected in our children’s lifetime." Well, I could make an even stronger case for my father, Ronald Reagan, as "our first black president" -- but I won't make that claim. I don't want to diminish the justifiable pride African-Americans take in having a president who is genetically and culturally black. Our first black president is Barack Obama.

Arbitration's Intolerable Bind

If there were a hall of fame for ideas that sound great in theory but are disastrous in real life, "binding arbitration" for government labor contracts would be a major exhibit. When contract talks between a union representing public employees and the state or local government they work for are deadlocked, many states require that the disagreement be referred to an outside arbitrator for a binding decision. Since strikes by public employees are intolerable -- no one wants firefighters, teachers, or trash collectors walking off the job -- letting a neutral third party hear both sides out and settle the issue can sound like a fair and practical way to resolve thorny issues.

Welcoming Hu Jintao

It was twenty-two years ago, in the spring of 1989, that thousands of Chinese students gathered in Beijing's Tienanmen Square to demand democracy. The students even fashioned their own 30-foot high replica of America's Statue of Liberty. It represented the aspirations for democracy of young Chinese. They yearned to join young people in Poland, East Germany, and the then-united nation of Czechoslovakia. It was a time when it seemed the winds of hope and change might sweep away tyranny from the whole world.

Who Will Sign Obama's 2012 Checks? Guess Hu

Foreign dignitaries visit the United States frequently. Most of them stay for a few days in Washington, D.C. Some of them visit the United Nations in New York. Few of them stray from the governmental and cultural centers of the United States. So, why is Chinese President Hu Jintao traveling to Chicago? This week, President Obama invited President Hu to visit the White House. There, Obama plans to roll out the red carpet with a black tie dinner with all the usual taxpayer-provided accoutrements. By contrast, the Dalai Lama of Tibet was forced to walk out of the White House's side door near an enormous pile of trash bags.

Who Is James Eric Fuller?

OK, so conservatives have to be accused of fostering hatred with our alleged vitriol, the kind of vitriol that fuels the flames of violence, like we witnessed in Tucson except -- well, except there wasn't and isn't a shred of evidence that the killer was influenced by any conservatives since a) he didn't listen to or watch conservative programming and b) isn't a conservative. There is the hypothetical question: What if the perpetrator of violence were liberal? How would the media react then? How many would put Chris Matthews, Paul Krugman, Keith Olbermann and Co. on trial for creating the "atmosphere" of "hatred" so often ascribed to conservatives only?