Right Opinion
The best of conservative opinion and commentary, updated daily.
Monday, October 26, 2009
Obama at Odds With His Own Vision for the World
Barack Obama, who found time to go on a 24-hour jaunt to Copenhagen on Oct. 2 to seek the 2016 Olympics games for Chicago, apparently cannot find the time for a 24-hour trip to Berlin on Nov. 9 for a celebration of the 20th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall. Well, we all have our priorities, and the president can't be everywhere at once, and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton will surely represent the United States ably in Berlin. Still, it seemed an odd decision to me -- until I went back and got the speech that candidate Obama delivered on July 24, 2008, to a crowd of 200,000 in the Tiergarten in Berlin. As I reread the text, it struck me that there would be an embarrassing contrast between what Obama said in Berlin 15 months ago and many of the policies he has been pursuing in his nine months as president.
Sunday, October 25, 2009
GOP's New Lightning Rod
WASHINGTON -- When Marcus Bachmann came home that Saturday evening in 2000 he checked the telephone answering machine and was mystified by the many messages congratulating his wife for something. "Michele," he said, "do you have something to tell me?" She did. The state senator from her district in suburban Minneapolis-St. Paul had been in office for 17 years, had stopped being pro-life and started supporting tax increases, so that morning she had skipped washing her hair, put on jeans and a tattered sweatshirt and went to the local Republican nominating caucus to ask him a few pointed questions. There, on the spur of the moment, some similarly disgruntled conservatives suggested that she unseat the incumbent. After she made a five-minute speech "on freedom," the caucus emphatically endorsed her and she handily won the subsequent primary.
The Long and the Short of Steve Poizner
Why isn't Insurance Commissioner Steve Poizner doing better in his bid for governor? On paper, Poizner is a solid contender. He's the only Republican elected to statewide office in California who hasn't starred in a blockbuster film. He's a successful entrepreneur who struck it rich developing global positioning technology for cell phones. Later in life, he turned to public service, first as a volunteer schoolteacher, then as a candidate for state Assembly. He is a pro-choice Republican who has been able to reach out to the party's conservative base.
Saturday, October 24, 2009
Friday, October 23, 2009
An Inconvenient Rebuttal
Ann McElhinney's low-budget documentary refuting the global warming hype and hysteria arrives in Washington just in time to break Al Gore's crystal ball. "Not Evil Just Wrong," the feature-length film she made with her husband Phelim McAleer, coolly reveals how Al's disguise of hot fanaticism as cold fact arrives as the Senate begins to gear up for debate on "climate change" legislation. "We know you can't teach religion in school," McElhinney says. "But there is a religion being enforced, a green religion." Her film illustrates just how schoolchildren have been indoctrinated with fear, loathing and foreboding, as Al's film attempts to recruit them as tiny prophets of doom. Her camera shows children in Northern Ireland describing how the sea level rises when the ice caps melt and polar bears drown.
Thursday, October 22, 2009
Medical Marijuana Muddle
During his presidential campaign, Barack Obama repeatedly promised to stop federal interference with state laws that allow the medical use of marijuana. On Monday, the Justice Department seemed to deliver on that promise with a memo telling U.S. attorneys to avoid prosecuting people who use or provide medical marijuana in compliance with state law. The new policy sounds a lot better than the Bush administration's refusal to tolerate any deviation from federal law in this area. But because of disagreements about what compliance with state law requires, it may not make much difference in practice.
