Right Opinion
The best of conservative opinion and commentary, updated daily.
Wednesday, October 20, 2010
Returned to Life
The times were uncertain, as they always are. Wars raged, the after-effects of a financial panic still reverberated, and another political season was under way in the United States with all its biennial acrimony and rising pettiness as an election day approached. Politicians postured, people worried about the economy, tensions great and small mounted, and even reason made an appearance now and then. Only an occasional sportsmanlike gesture illuminated the daily dross called the news. Some people rose above the din, others added to it. It was, in short, the best and worst of times, like all others.
The Amazing Elastic Commerce Clause
In 2005, the Supreme Court said the federal government's power to "regulate commerce ... among the several states" extends to the tiniest speck of marijuana wherever it may be found, even in the home of a patient who grows it for her own medical use in compliance with state law.
Extreme Girls: All the President's Radical Women
We are in the era of Democratic Extreme Girls -- Big Nanny handmaidens who demand control of your children, your health care, your energy use, your pocketbook and your news. And that's just for starters. If you think President Obama will move to the center after the midterms, think again.
Tuesday, October 19, 2010
Why The Government Can't Do Everything
Last weekend, President Obama allowed that we voters are too scared right now to "think clearly," but let us gut up and try anyway, shall we? We really can't sort out too often the stakes in this election, including possibly the most important matter of all: whether the federal government can do anything it decides to. So first, for courage, a few slugs of Old Be Joyful; then we'll contemplate what goes on in the ObamaCare lawsuit that a federal judge in Florida said last week should proceed to trial, the perfervid arguments of the Justice Department notwithstanding.
About That 'Ditch'
Here's a technique they don't teach in campaign school: Patronize the voters. President Obama, speaking at a fundraiser in Boston, said, "People out there are still hurting very badly, and they are still scared. And so part of the reason that our politics seems so tough right now, and facts and science and argument does not seem to be winning the day all the time, is because we're hard-wired not to always think clearly when we're scared. And the country is scared, and they have good reason to be." He might as well have reminded his listeners that you can expect little else of people who "cling" to their Bibles and guns and hostility to those who are different.
Proud To Be a Republican
After I became a Republican in the early 1990s -- in a recent column, I explained how emotionally difficult it is for a Democrat to vote Republican, let alone become one -- I concluded that I had left the dangerous party and joined the stupid party.
The Multicultural Cult
Somebody eventually had to say it -- and German chancellor Angela Merkel deserves credit for being the one who had the courage to say it out loud. Multiculturalism has "utterly failed." Multiculturalism is not just a recognition that different groups have different cultures. We all knew that, long before multiculturalism became a cult that has spawned mindless rhapsodies about "diversity," without a speck of evidence to substantiate its supposed benefits.
Where to Cut Spending?
In the last two years, spending by the current Congress has increased 21.4 percent, according to the Congressional Budget Office. The question thrown in the face of tea party activists and other conservative Republicans when they talk of cutting spending is, "Where would you cut?"
The Plight of the Blue Dogs
Pity the blue dogs -- those Democrats in Congress labeled moderates or even conservatives because they depart from the party line on occasion. As on Obamacare or the next big spending program (always call it Economic Stimulus!) or the Bailout of the Day. A show of independence from time to time can be smart politics: The blue dogs' deference to public opinion back home -- even while they support the administration on key votes -- was supposed to assure their re-election.
Obama Can't Be Wrong, so We Must Be Crazy
Memo to those who believe Obama is going to move to the center following his upcoming electoral smack-down: Dream on! Many of you also told us he wouldn't be that liberal in the first instance. Is that egg on your face sticky yet?
Life Gets Better; Politics Get Worse
"High school, for me, it sucked," Kristel, a 27-year-old lesbian who grew up in Honolulu, confided in her videotape; it was "kind of a hostile environment." The good news is: "These people who treat you like crap now, in a few years, they're not going to matter."
Reform the UN -- In Geneva
President Obama famously responded to a question about "American Exceptionalism." Asked by a reporter if he believed in it, Mr. Obama replied: "I believe in American exceptionalism, just as I suspect that the Brits believe in British exceptionalism and the Greeks believe in Greek exceptionalism." It was if he'd just gotten back from Lake Wobegon, where all the chidren are above average.
Disrespect Creates Educational Disasters
While the teachers' loss of control is unacceptable, so too is a classroom environment that makes learning impossible. Certainly, the litigious atmosphere in schools is partly to blame—teachers have few options for dealing with unruly students. (Typical classroom "behavior contracts" offer rewards for good behavior but no consequences for bad behavior.)
Monday, October 18, 2010
Dems Find Careers Threatened by Obamacare Votes
Seven months ago, Speaker Nancy Pelosi spent a busy week rounding up votes to pass the Senate version of the Democrats' health care legislation. It wasn't easy. She had to get Democrats who had voted no in November to switch to yes in March. And she had to get Democrats who had refused to vote for the bill in November without an anti-abortion amendment to vote for a bill in March that lacked that language.
Thank You for Not Voting
For as long as I can remember, people have been cajoled, harangued and even bullied, into voting. They've been reminded incessantly that their ancestors fought and died so that they would have the right to choose their leaders. It's been pointed out to them that even today there are hundreds of millions of people to whom universal suffrage is nothing more than a fantasy.
Tennessee's Rednecks
One of the most vivid memories of my childhood, back when I was really small, was the day that two of my brothers and I were riding with my dad and we came around a curve in the road to find a woodcutter whose load had shifted on his truck, scattering his firewood.
Sunday, October 17, 2010
Josh: 'The Full Circle'
Every day this summer, since the opening day of major league baseball, the first thing I do when I read the newspaper's sports section is to check the box scores and find the name of Josh Hamilton. I can tell you, for instance, it wasn't until June 4th that his batting average finally climbed back to .300.
Harmer Tries To Re-Swing McNerney's House Seat
In 2006, voters in California's 11th Congressional District, which meanders from San Ramon to Stockton, fired Rep. Richard Pombo, once a highly popular congressman first elected in 1992. Pombo got caught up in a wave that cost the GOP 31 seats and its control of the House.
Jesse James Obama
A great many people like to make heroes of those who are, by no stretch of the imagination, even slightly heroic.
Obama, That Seventies Show
WASHINGTON -- With Barack Obama restoring solar panels to the White House roof -- the first were put there by Jimmy Carter -- will Carter's cardigan sweater be reprised? The panels -- environmentalism as a didactic gesture -- are evidence of a Seventies revival. "Energy we have to deal with today," said Obama during a debate with John McCain. "Health care is priority No. 2." Instead, Obama decided that having priorities -- doing this but not that -- is for people less Promethean than he. The cap-and-trade centerpiece of his agenda for turning down the planet's thermostat (as Carter turned down the White House's) has foundered.