Right Opinion
The best of conservative opinion and commentary, updated daily.
Wednesday, August 18, 2010
The End of Books
News item, July 8, 2010: "The periodical shelves at Stanford University are nearly bare. Library chief Helen Josephine says that in the past five years, more engineering periodicals have been moved online, making their print versions pretty obsolete -- and books aren't doing much better. ... In 2005, when the university realized it was running out of space for its growing collection of 80,000 engineering books, administrators decided to build a new library. But instead of creating more space for books, they chose to create less. The new library is set to open in August with 10,000 engineering books off the shelves -- a decrease of more than 85 percent from the old library ... eventually, there won't be any books on the shelves at all."
Obama's Big Labor Ethics Loophole
Everything you need to know about President Obama's fraudulent ethics pledge can be summed up in four words: SEIU lawyer Craig Becker.
Tuesday, August 17, 2010
Dismantling America: Part I
"We the people" are the familiar opening words of the Constitution of the United States-- the framework for a self-governing people, free from the arbitrary edicts of rulers. It was the blueprint for America, and the success of America made that blueprint something that other nations sought to follow.
What Was I Going To Say?
The Daily Telegraph brings welcome news -- "Old age begins at 27 as mental powers start to decline, scientists find." It seems that the University of Virginia conducted mental acuity tests on 2,000 adults over the course of seven years. The results: Your steel-trap brain is at its best around the age of 22. By the time 27 rolls around, you've already begun to depreciate.
Same-Sex Marriage and the Insignificance of Men and Women
Marriage is the building block of society. Changing its nature will therefore change society. Among other things, same-sex marriage means that because sex (now called "gender") no longer matters for society's most important institution, it no longer matters in general.
Obama's Mosque Duty
His first intervention, at a White House dinner for Ramadan on Friday, was an unqualified defense of both religious liberty and religious tolerance, implying that opposition to a mosque near Ground Zero violated both. In his second intervention, in an unplanned exchange with a reporter on Saturday, he insisted that he was not commenting "on the wisdom" of building the mosque, merely affirming the right to a construction permit. It was not a contradiction, but it was a marked change in tone. Obama managed to collect all the political damage for taking an unpopular stand without gaining credit for political courage.
A Man in Full
The fatal air crash that took the life of Ted Stevens, who represented Alaska in the U.S. Senate for the longest time (from 1968 to 2009), wasn't the first one he'd been involved in.
Flaws Aside, Rosty and Stevens Put Public First
Writers have noted that Dan Rostenkowski, longtime chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee, went to "Club Fed" (as he called it) on minor corruption charges. They have written at length that Ted Stevens, senator from Alaska for 40 years, brought a lot of pork-barrel projects to his state and was convicted on corruption charges -- a conviction overturned because of prosecutorial misconduct.
Born in the USA, but Not An American?
Last week, House Minority Leader John Boehner of Ohio joined the chorus of Republicans amenable to rewriting the Citizenship Clause of the 14th Amendment, which guarantees American citizenship to "all persons born or naturalized in the United States and subject to the jurisdiction thereof." Should the Constitution be altered, Boehner was asked on NBC’s "Meet the Press," to deny such automatic citizenship to the children of illegal immigrants? "I think it’s worth considering," he replied.
Lessons of the Summer Swoon
The economy is suffering from something like a summer swoon. In the words of business columnist Jimmy Pethokoukis, the recovery summer has gone bust. We all know this from the sloppy statistics coming in for jobs, retail sales and, most recently, manufacturing. But market-based indicators are telling the same story.
Music Industry Sexualizes Your Children
The music industry today is huge, racking up over 1.5 billion in sales in the U.S. alone—and kids are their target audience. It’s an industry that’s no longer primarily about music. It’s become another avenue for selling porn and sexualizing younger and younger children in the process.
Insulting Our Intelligence
What a good thing, from the Democratic perspective, so many of America's schools are in such miserable shape. It means, apparently, Democrats think they can insult voters' intelligence right and left and get away with it, at least until Election Day. After which, they'll think of some other way to cover their tracks.
Ground Zero Sum Game
After months of dithering by the White House about the "Ground Zero Mosque" in lower Manhattan, President Obama endorsed the project at an Iftar dinner Friday night. The president said, "...as a citizen, and as president, I believe that Muslims have the same right to practice their religion as anyone else in this country. That includes the right to build a place of worship and a community center on private property in lower Manhattan, in accordance with local laws and ordinances."
Arnold and Jerry Take a Legal Holiday
When 52 percent of California voters passed Proposition 8 in November 2008, Attorney General Jerry Brown said he would defend the measure during the inevitable appeals. Then, as is his fashion, Brown changed his mind.
Why Does America Always Have To Prove Its Good Will?
A caller to my brother Rush's show suggested that we were making a mistake by opposing the ground zero mosque, because this was an opportunity to show Muslims that we are better than that and that our form of government is superior. This is more muddle-headed leftist thinking, even if it did come from a caller who thinks he's conservative.
Monday, August 16, 2010
Money, Mosques and Monkey Business
By this time, I’m sure you’ve all heard Senators Coburn and McCain reporting on all the goofy nonsense that has been financed by Obama’s trillion-dollar stimulus bill. But in case you missed the announcement, some of the items were new windows for a tourist center that’s been closed since 2007 and that nobody plans to re-open; a study of grandparent roles in Alaska; international ant research; repairing a sidewalk that leads to a ditch in Boynton, Oklahoma; $760,000 to study improvised music; $200,000 to help Siberian communities lobby Russian policy makers; and $700,000 to study why monkeys respond negatively to inequity.
Blood on Their Hands
It was the late 1950s, and out in Oklahoma's scrublands around Fort Sill, a G-2 officer was critiquing one of our field exercises, trying to teach us ROTC cadets some of the rudiments of military intelligence (yes, I know, some say that's an oxymoron) and maybe even just a little plain intelligence.
Sunday, August 15, 2010
A Nomad’s Welcome
When Sgt. Chris Duke arrived at a remote outpost in Afghanistan, it didn’t seem like much time at all before he took up with a stray dog he promptly named Rufus. There is something about a dog that is comforting, especially to a Southern boy in a hostile environment, and when Chris would stand watch ole Rufus would hunker down beside him through the night.
Real Tax Increases, Real Consequences
Taxpayers don't look at taxes the way the people who spend the tax money do. Take the battle over the extension of the "Bush tax cuts." Americans to Washington: They were tax cuts in 2001 and 2003. If Washington allows all or parts of the "Bush tax cuts" to expire at the end of the year, the result won't be to not cut taxes, as Beltway lingo and President Obama suggest, but to raise taxes.
Netanyahu's Warning
JERUSALEM -- When Israel declared independence in 1948, it had to use mostly small arms to repel attacks by six Arab armies. Today, however, Israel feels, and is, more menaced than it was then, or has been since. Hence the potentially world-shaking decision that will be made here, probably within two years.