Right Opinion

Dems Change Stance on Military and Afghanistan

At the Democratic National Convention in Denver last summer, then-Sen. Barack Obama pledged to "finish the fight against the Taliban in Afghanistan." Lately Obama has toned down his rhetoric when it comes to succeeding in Afghanistan. "I'm always worried about using the word 'victory,' because, you know, it invokes this notion of Emperor Hirohito coming down and signing a surrender to MacArthur," the president told ABC in July. Apparently the "the audacity of hope" approach does not apply to the U.S. military fighting against al-Qaida and the Taliban.

Anger Management Hits a Hump

WASHINGTON -- Consider nature. Not the placid nature that Constable painted, but nature as Tennyson saw it, "red in tooth and claw." To glimpse a state of nature as Hobbes imagined it, where human life is "nasty, brutish and short," visit the Whole Foods store on River Road in Bethesda, Md. There, and -- let the political profiling begin -- probably at many Whole Food stores and other magnets for liberals, nationwide, you will see proof of this social equation: Four Priuses + three parking spaces = angry anarchy.

Lose at the Ballot, Push! for Payback at the Bench

Chief U.S. District Judge Vaughn Walker opened the gates to hell this month when he ruled that strategists for Proposition 8 -- the 2008 ballot measure, passed by 52 percent of California voters, that limited marriage to a man and a woman -- must release internal campaign documents to measure opponents. Political activists of all stripes beware: Unless this ruling is overturned, the word will be out that sore losers who can't beat you at the ballot box and probably can't beat you in court can file a lawsuit designed to pry away proprietary information that they later can use to embarrass you.

A Bluntly Political Act

In Defense of Glenn Beck

For a self-described rodeo clown who frequently admits he isn't that bright, Glenn Beck must be doing something right. A de facto leader of the populist backlash against President Obama, he made the cover of Time magazine, with his tongue sticking out no less. His books are immediate best-sellers. His radio and TV shows have stratospheric ratings. His one-man comedy performances draw packed audiences, and the proceeds from his numerous ventures have him making north of $20 million a year. But perhaps his most impressive feat is his ability to unite a broad coalition of liberals, media scolds and conservatives under the single banner of Beck-hatred.

Neither Obama nor the Culture War

WASHINGTON -- Creigh Deeds, the Democrat running for governor of Virginia, may not be much of a candidate, but he has a future as a political commentator. During a recent interview, Deeds explained his trouble gaining political traction: "Frankly, a lot of what's going on in Washington has made it very tough. We had a very tough August because people were just uncomfortable with the spending; they were uncomfortable with a lot of what was going on, a lot of the noise that was coming out of Washington, D.C."

Sense and Sexuality

Not so long ago, rape was a capital offense, right up there with murder. When death was not decreed, convicted rapists could count on a long prison sentence. No one took rape lightly. The crime was an absolute evil, the moral equivalent of neither shoplifting nor stealing a kiss. Our sex-saturated society -- where children are exposed to titillation they cannot fully understand and often are regarded as more knowledgeable than they really are -- has changed all that. Children are pressured to affect an air of sexual sophistication, leading to a young adult attitude of devil-may-care hedonism.

David Letterman, Cad

In the wake of the arrest of director/rapist Roman Polanski comes the sex-with-subordinates scandal of David Letterman. The timing was a blessing for Letterman, since his aggressive excuse-makers now could quickly assert that the female employees he exploited were all adults and all gave their consent. Letterman's habit of engaging in sex with women who are his employees only emerged because of an ugly extortion threat from a longtime CBS News producer who lived with one of Letterman's conquests. That's doubly embarrassing for CBS, which has character problems coming and going. Letterman added to the embarrassment by revealing the extortion and his behavior in a jokey manner on his show.

Young Hamlet's Agony

WASHINGTON -- The genius of democracy is the rotation of power, which forces the opposition to be serious -- particularly about things like war, about which until Jan. 20 of this year Democrats were decidedly unserious. When the Iraq War (which a majority of Senate Democrats voted for) ran into trouble and casualties began to mount, Democrats followed the shifting winds of public opinion and turned decidedly anti-war. But needing political cover because of their post-Vietnam reputation for weakness on national defense, they adopted Afghanistan as their pet war.

Cloistered Media Libs Don't Get It

CNN "senior political analyst" Gloria Borger doesn't get it. Like so many cloistered mainstream media liberals, she just can't imagine why anyone would oppose Barack Obama's agenda. To her, it's all politics. Where was Borger when Democrats, purely for partisan purposes, pummeled President George W. Bush for eight years? But let's stay focused on the present, because Republican opposition isn't about paybacks or getting even. Borger argues that "Republicans don't really want to work with Obama" because they stand to regain congressional control simply by opposing his agenda without offering any ideas of their own.

Disenfranchising Citizens

If there's one thing Barack Obama learned back in his community organizing days, it was that numbers count. The more people you can claim to represent, the bigger your political base. So it should come as no surprise that the Obama administration sees the business of counting people as crucial to its political power. And that's why next year's decennial census is rife with opportunities for a major power grab by the president's party. Every 10 years, the Census Bureau counts the number of people living in the United States; the Constitution mandates. Those figures are used for all sorts of things, from determining the amount of federal aid states and localities receive for certain programs to drawing legislative districts.

Crime, Census and Censorship

There are serious problems with the administration of the U.S. census. Americans have good reason to be wary of the stranger's knock on the door. Unfortunately, anything critics say about the federal census can and will be used against them in the court of left-wing opinion. First, the disturbing news about the government's most recent census travails: According to a new General Accounting Office report, botched fingerprinting by ill-trained employees led to the hiring of some 36,000 census workers with insufficient background checks. "More than 200" of those workers may have had serious criminal records, according to the GAO.

When the First Amendment Counts Most, Court Has Been AWOL

The air was thick with hypotheticals at the Supreme Court last week as the justices considered whether a law designed to outlaw videos depicting cruelty to animals was constitutional. Because there is no floor to human decadence, so-called "crush videos" depicting women in high heels crushing small animals to death enjoyed a certain popularity. Congress outlawed them. Most of the justices appeared to think that the law ran afoul of the First Amendment and they let fly with a quiver full of theoreticals. "What if I'm an aficionado of bullfighting who wants to promote his passion about the noble fight of man versus beast by selling videos?" Justice Scalia asked.

Quiet, Please

WASHINGTON -- Eight years ago this week, just 25 days after the vicious attacks of 9/11, the U.S. struck back at the Taliban and al-Qaida in Afghanistan. Thirty-three days later, U.S.-supported Northern Alliance troops were in Kabul, and the remnants of al-Qaida and its Taliban hosts were in retreat to Kandahar and mountain redoubts along the Afghanistan-Pakistan border. All of this was preceded by intense diplomacy and a virtually nonstop publicly aired series of presidential announcements, news conferences, speeches, debates and discussions at the White House, from the badly damaged Pentagon, in congressional hearings -- even at the United Nations.

The Dawn of a New Era in Infotainment

"After reviewing hundreds of hours of 'Shark Week' footage and consulting with leading ichthyologists, CBS News can now confirm that the so-called 'Land Shark' made famous on 'Saturday Night Live' is a hoax," Katie Couric assured viewers. Meanwhile, over on MSNBC, the crack news team continued its in-depth exposé on "SNL's" faked assassination of the Little Rascals' Buckwheat. Sleuths working for The New York Times revealed that not only was John Belushi not an Olympic decathlete, but his touted regimen of cigarettes and "little chocolate donuts" was, according to experts in sports medicine, "not even remotely nutritious."

Half-Speed Ahead and Unsteady as She Goes

What do you think it's like just now to be a GI somewhere at the end of the earth, say in mountainous Nuristan in eastern Afghanistan, and see the latest video of Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid addressing the press outside the White House, just having left still another strategy session on this endless war? Is it like being a grunt in Vietnam back in the chaotic Sixties and reading about the Best and Brightest urging another escalation? Or is it more like being a member of the Chosin Frozen advancing in a different direction, that is, retreating down the Korean Peninsula in what we now call the Forgotten War?

Hollywood, Media Misfire on Polanski and Letterman

Hollywood and the traditional media seem determined to flaunt their cluelessness. Director Roman Polanski pleaded guilty, in 1977, to one count of unlawful sex with a minor -- a girl 13 years old. Normal people call this rape. After a photography session with the girl, the 43-year-old Polanski gave her drugs and alcohol. The victim told a grand jury she repeatedly told him to "keep away," but Polanski forced her to have sex -- orally, anally and vaginally.

A Conservative 'Stimulus' That Actually Worked

It's rare when a liberal Democratic U.S. senator like New York's Chuck Schumer and a conservative like Sen. John Cornyn of Texas can agree on any piece of major legislation, much less on national television. But this last week both agreed that legislation sponsored earlier this year by Sen. Johnny Isakson, R-Ga., was sound stuff. The law is designed to provide tax credits for first-time homebuyers. It has helped bring a pulse back into the housing market.

Weak Himself, Obama Draws Strength From Bush

In trying to understand what is happening in the nation and world, we all employ narratives -- story lines that indicate where things are going and what is likely to happen next. We can check the validity of these narratives by observing whether events move in the indicated direction. If so, the narrative is confirmed. But if things seem to be moving in an entirely different direction, it's time to discard the narrative and look for another. When Barack Obama took office, most Americans and certainly most of the press had a narrative in mind.

Guru America

President Obama last week flew to Copenhagen to persuade the International Olympic Committee to award the 2016 games to Chicago, his hometown. He and first lady Michelle Obama delivered their now well-known inspirational stories about their Chicago neighborhood experiences. They even had Oprah in tow, along with a number of other Chicago big shots. Danish crowds thronged to see the celebrity president. The paparazzi had a field day. After little more than an hour-long presidential pep talk, Obama's Chicago whirlwind entourage jetted back home on Air Force One. A few hours later, the IOC rejected Chicago's we-are-the-world bid in the first round.