Right Opinion
The best of conservative opinion and commentary, updated daily.
Thursday, August 12, 2010
Let 'Em Eat Soup
The members of the media who savaged my stepmother Nancy Reagan for buying new china for the White House -- dinnerware that will last for decades -- have for the most part either ignored the cost and the significance of Michelle Obama’s regal visit to Spain or downplayed it.
In Churchill's Spirit
JERUSALEM -- Two photographs adorn the office of Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu. Together they illuminate a portentous fact: No two leaders of democracies are less alike -- in life experiences, temperaments and political philosophies -- than Netanyahu, the former commando and fierce nationalist, and Barack Obama, the former professor and post-nationalist.
Is Obama Winning the Hearts and Minds of the Arab and Muslim World?
"It's conceivable," said then-presidential candidate Barack Obama in 2008, "that there are those in the Arab world who say to themselves, 'This is a guy who spent some time in the Muslim world, has a middle name of Hussein, and appears more worldly and has called for talks with people, and so he's not going to be engaging in the same sort of cowboy diplomacy as George Bush.'"
Everyone a Bigot?
State representatives in Arizona overwhelmingly passed an immigration law to popular acclaim -- which the Obama administration for now has successfully blocked in federal court. Arizonans simply wanted the federal government to enforce its own laws. And yet they were quickly dubbed bigots and racists -- more worried about profiling Hispanics than curtailing illegal immigration.
Dracula, Frankenstein and a Lib Walk Into a Bar
In all the old horror movies, the master villain always had an assistant. More often that not, his name was Igor. He tended to lurch and he was usually a hunchback. I always wondered how he got the job. I mean, how would you go about finding someone who’d round up a human brain at a moment’s notice? Was it by referral? Did they hook up during Career Day at the Academy for the Criminally Insane? Did he answer an ad in the New York Times?
Paul Krugman, Comic Genius
WASHINGTON -- The other day, New York Times columnist (and Nobel laureate, though he has yet to be found guilty of plagiarism or fabrication) Paul Krugman indulged one of my favorite pastimes. He engaged in vituperation. He affected a superior pose and lamented that so many of the other superior types had been taken in by mere hucksters. Alas and goddamn!
Wednesday, August 11, 2010
'We Socialists' vs. 'We the People'
The cheerful, jaded, sneering question de jour from liberal journalists and Democratic Party commentators (I know, there's a pretty fine distinction) is, "What will the Republican Party do if it gets back the House?" The question is phrased along the line of what a car-chasing dog would do if it caught the car.
What Handouts To Cut
Because of failure to heed the limitations of the U.S. Constitution, which has produced runaway federal spending, our nation sits on the precipice of disaster. Former Senator Alan Simpson of Wyoming and Erskine Bowles, White House chief of staff under President Bill Clinton, co-chairmen of President Obama's debt and deficit commission, in a Washington Post article "Obama's Debt Commission Warns of Fiscal 'Cancer'" (July 12, 2010) said that "(A)t present, federal revenue is fully consumed by three programs: Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid. The rest of the federal government, including fighting two wars, homeland security, education, art, culture, you name it, veterans -- the whole rest of the discretionary budget is being financed by China and other countries."
Is It Crazy To Call Californians Irrational?: The Weak Case Against Gay Marriage
At first blush, the notion that there is no rational basis for California's ban on same-sex marriage, as U.S. District Chief Judge Vaughn Walker ruled last week, seems extreme. But the more you consider the arguments presented by the ban's supporters the less far-fetched Walker's conclusion looks.
Judge Walker v. The Laws of Nature and Nature's God
Thomas Jefferson, a deist, and Alexander Hamilton, an Episcopalian, anchored opposite ends of the political spectrum in the early years of the republic but agreed on one basic proposition: The nation's laws must follow God's laws.
Constitutional Amendments and Citizenship Rights
It's like clockwork. Whenever conservatives propose a constitutional amendment, progressives suddenly rediscover the delicate gears of the Constitution and the horrible dangers of "tinkering" or "tampering" with its precision craftsmanship. Consider the sudden brouhaha over the idea of revising the 14th Amendment to get rid of automatic birthright citizenship (which would make us more like that alleged progressive nirvana known as "Europe," by the way). Here's Angela Kelley of the liberal Center for American Progress on Sen. Lindsey Graham, who started the amendment chatter: "He's not one to tamper with the Constitution, so I'm surprised he would even suggest this."
The Liberal Uniter's Lost Role
WASHINGTON -- In 1980, Bill Clinton was defeated for re-election as Arkansas governor, making him the youngest ex-governor in America. According to one account, "Clinton sank into a deep funk. Wandering the streets of Little Rock, he'd stop to question strangers: 'Why do you think I lost?'"
Memo to Alan Greenspan: Keep Quiet
I'm getting tired of Alan Greenspan. First, the former Federal Reserve chairman blamed an allegedly unregulated free market for the housing and financial debacle. Now he favors repealing the Bush-era tax cuts.
America on the Brink
Terence P. Jeffrey has written a new book. It is required reading for any conservative worried about, but perhaps not understanding, exactly what the Obama regime is trying to do to America. That demographic includes every conservative who hasn't yet read Jeffrey's new book.
Pandoran Wars: Living with the Kosovo Precedent
Medvedev chatted with an Abkhazian rebel leader, and then reflected on Russia's decision in August 2008 to "liberate" Abkhazia and neighboring South Ossetia from what the Russians insistently described as Georgian ethnic domination. "It was not a simple decision," Medvedev said, according to Agence France-Presse. "But time has shown that it was the right decision. The existence of the peoples of South Ossetia and Abkhazia was under threat."
Magical Thinking in Washington
Remember all those jobs "created and saved" the administration was touting? Those numbers have proven about as solid as its claims that the president's stimulus package would keep the country's unemployment rate under 8 percent. Last time we checked, it was in the seedy neighborhood of 9.5 percent.
Do We Have Anything To Teach the Young?
Do you associate dirt with great music? You might if you were the parent of kids attending the Interlochen summer music program in Michigan. For the third and second summer respectively, my teenage sons have plunged into six weeks of intensive music education, performance, and instruction. I arrived for the final weekend and was greeted by two artistically elevated, high-spirited, and undeniably grubby young men. (Several pairs of gray/brown socks that began life white have been sent to their reward.)
The Left's Special Interest Human Shields
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi deserves a swift rap on the knuckles for hiding underneath the desk of the American schoolteacher. In a cynical ploy to evade accountability for the Democrats' continued fiscal recklessness, Pelosi accused opponents of the $26 billion public employee union bailout bill of "demeaning" teachers -- and nurses, police officers and firefighters. Pelosi took great offense at Republican leaders who called out the Big Labor special interests pushing the emergency summer rescue. But if they walk, talk, spend and lobby like special interests, let's call them what they are.
Tuesday, August 10, 2010
The 'Gay Marriage' Fantasy
With the economy twitching around on the ground, unable to rise, shine and party like old times, "gay marriage," as per last week's Proposition 8 decision in California, must seem to some a secondary matter. That would be a sloppily modern way of looking at things. Not that economic conditions don't matter; it's rather that rationality matters at least as much as money.
Democrats, Please Follow New York Times' Advice
Liberals' derision of "people of faith" as weak, anti-intellectual, anti-reason and anti-science is ironic beyond measure, given their stubborn adherence to their own discredited views on the thin thread of faith alone. New York Times editors' "In Search of a New Playbook" provides a perfect illustration. They not only don't apologize for President Obama's failed policies but also insist that Democrats run proudly on his record.