Right Opinion

Time to Leave Iraq

WASHINGTON -- Since U.S. troops withdrew from Iraq's cities, two months have passed, and so has the illusion that Iraq is smoothly transitioning to a normality free of sectarian violence. Recently, Gen. Ray Odierno, commander of U.S. troops there, "blanched" when asked if the war is "functionally over." According to The Washington Post's Greg Jaffe, Odierno said: "There are still civilians being killed in Iraq. We still have people that are attempting to attack the new Iraqi order and the move towards democracy and a more open economy. So we still have some work to do."

Bankrupting the Taliban

KANDAHAR, Afghanistan -- Last month, our Fox News' "War Stories" team was in Colombia, covering the tough fight against a narco-insurgency, the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC. This month, we're in Afghanistan, covering another narco-insurgency, the Taliban. In Colombia, cocaine fuels and funds the terror. Here in Afghanistan, it's opium. Despite extraordinary differences in culture, climate and terrain, there are dramatic parallels in the two campaigns. More importantly, lessons learned in the Andean basin are being applied here in the shadows of the Hindu Kush. Both countries have isolated agricultural populations vulnerable to coercion by insurgents financed by narcotics trafficking. In Colombia, the world's largest producer of cocaine, the FARC turned to drug funding when support from fellow communists dried up with the collapse of the Soviet empire. Here in Afghanistan, the global leader in opium production, the radical-Islamist Taliban became drug-dependant after being driven from power in 2001 during the opening days of Operation Enduring Freedom.

Mark Sanford and the Odd Fellows

WASHINGTON -- Why is the governor of South Carolina still a national news story? This past week, Gov. Mark Sanford was again in the news, and neither sex nor romance had anything to do with it. I can understand his first great news splash, after he completely vanished from the face of the earth. Then he duped his staff into announcing that he was communing with the birds and the bees along the Appalachian Trail. Then it was discovered that he had actually been emulating the birds and the bees down in Argentina with a secret Argentine inamorata. She is easy on the eyes and certainly would have been worth the trip, if only he were not married with four children and if that bizarre deception about woodsy trails had not been attempted.

Liberal Lies About National Health Care, Part 3

(9) If you like Medicare, you'll love national health care, which will just extend Medicare's benefits to everyone. Hey -- I have an idea: How about we make everyone in America a multimillionaire by pulling Bernie Madoff out of prison and asking him to invest all our money! Both Medicare and Bernie Madoff's investment portfolio are bankrupt because they operate on a similar financial model known as a "Ponzi scheme." These always seem to run fabulously well -- until the money runs out.

The Second World War -- Seventy Years Later

Seventy years ago this week, on Sept. 1, 1939, the Second World War broke out with the German invasion of Poland. Thousands of books have been written about the war. And by now revisionist historians of revisionist historians engage in an endless cycle of disagreement over why the war started, how it ended and what it all meant. Here are a few more controversial thoughts on the horrific conflict that killed 60 million people, wrecked Europe and set the stage for an ensuing half-century Cold War. Many blame Germany's aggressions on the supposedly harsh terms of the Versailles Treaty following the First World War, which stripped a defeated Germany of territory, required reparations and dismantled its military.

Hey, Conservatives, We're Recovering

Believe it or not, sometimes good news on the economy can be bad news for stocks. It's a distant point, but one worth considering in view of conservative pessimism over Obama's plans to spend, tax, borrow and control the economy. I share these worries. But the U.S. is still a free-market economy, and it will be so at least until the health care and energy sectors are nationalized. And free-market economies are resilient and self-correcting. While so-called spending-and-deficit stimulus may be an economic depressant, Friedmanite monetary stimulus -- which has been substantial -- is gradually exerting a powerful impact on economic growth. At the same time, businesses have become lean and mean, with radical cost-cutting of inventories, employment and hours worked. That's setting up a big profits surge, which is the biggest economic stimulus of all.

This Just In ... Obama Is a Leftist!

"Now I'm truly scared." A friend wrote this after she watched Fox News' Glenn Beck's series on the "alarming number of far-left radicals the President is surrounded by" -- referring to some of the President's special advisers and "czars." President Barack Obama, my friend tells me, is "a true left-winger." So, now she knows. She didn't know after the President signed the $800 billion so-called "stimulus program." She didn't know after government takeovers/bailouts of banks, insurance companies and auto companies.

Obama's Soak-the-Rich Mentality

Small State Senate Race in Florida May Explain Entire Future of National GOP

It has been my contention for the past decade that when it comes to politics, as Florida goes, so goes the nation. Think about the 2008 presidential election. First, following the CNN-YouTube debate, the last major Republican debate to be held before the Iowa caucus, our firm polled Floridians for the Florida Chamber of Commerce. We asked respondents who won the debate. A then-unknown candidate was the clear winner, and the boost he received in Florida gave Mike Huckabee a win in Iowa just over a month later. The tipping point in the Republican presidential contest was Florida Gov. Charlie Crist's endorsement of John McCain in that state's GOP primary. Soon afterward, McCain won an upset victory in New Hampshire. It propelled him to the nomination.

New Facts Undercut Old Positions on Immigration

Before leaving for his vacation on Martha's Vineyard, Barack Obama said the next big item on his legislative agenda -- well, after health care and cap-and-trade and maybe labor's bill to effectively abolish secret ballots in union elections -- was immigration reform. What he has in mind, apparently, is something like the comprehensive immigration bills that foundered in the House in 2006 and in the Senate in 2007. These featured guest-worker and enforcement provisions, as well as a path to legalization. The prospects for such legislation still seem iffy. Immigration bills have typically needed bipartisan support to pass, and the Republicans who took the lead on the Senate bills in 2006 and 2007 aren't interested in doing so again. And some Democratic congressional leaders are wary of a bill that many members' constituents oppose.

Trouble in Liberal Land

Despite their control of all three branches of government, this has not been a good summer for liberal Democrats. Their health care "reform" bill, which has yet to be fully written, much less fully funded, has been exposed at town hall meetings as a power grab over life and death with the strong possibility that "do no harm" will be replaced by a utilitarian approach to treatment. The cap-and-trade measure (dubbed "cap and tax" by the Wall Street Journal) appears in trouble. Closer scrutiny has revealed it as one more reach into our pockets by politicians who never have enough of our money.

Clunker Legislation

The economic illiterates in Washington are so impressed with the "success" of Cash for Clunkers that they're readying Cash for Clunker Appliances. The ludicrous "stimulus" bill gave $300 million to the Department of Energy to provide rebates for 10 types of appliances that have been rated energy efficient. Before government extends Cash for Clunkers to more products, it might be a good idea to examine the original. The fact that Washington and the buyers who took advantage of Cash for Clunkers are gaga is hardly evidence that it was in the public interest.

Washington's Lies

President Obama and congressional supporters estimate that his health care plan will cost between $50 and $65 billion a year. Such cost estimates are lies whether they come from a Democratic president and Congress, or a Republican president and Congress. You say, "Williams, you don't show much trust in the White House and Congress." Let's check out their past dishonesty. At its start, in 1966, Medicare cost $3 billion. The House Ways and Means Committee, along with President Johnson, estimated that Medicare would cost an inflation-adjusted $12 billion by 1990. In 1990, Medicare topped $107 billion. That's nine times Congress' prediction. Today's Medicare tab comes to $420 billion with no signs of leveling off. How much confidence can we have in any cost estimates by the White House or Congress?

Global Warming and the Sun

On the last day of August, scientists spotted a teeny-weeny sunspot, breaking a 51-day streak of blemish-free days for the sun. If it had gone just a bit longer, it would have broken a 96-year record of 53 days without any of the magnetic disruptions that cause solar flares. That record was nearly broken last year as well. Wait, it gets even more exciting. During what scientists call the Maunder Minimum -- a period of solar inactivity from 1645 to 1715 -- the world experienced the worst of the cold streak dubbed the Little Ice Age. At Christmastime, Londoners ice-skated on the Thames, and New Yorkers (then New Amsterdamers) sometimes walked over the Hudson from Manhattan to Staten Island.

Never-ending Katrina Bias

Four years have elapsed since one of the most amazing cases of Republican-bashing media bias in the television era began. The media elites laugh when preachers say immorality causes God to send hurricanes, but they suggested with straight faces that Hurricane Katrina was a death sentence President Bush and his cronies brought to the less fortunate. In the early spin, race-baiting rapper Kanye West and "objective" anchors like Brian Williams were in rhetorical sync: George Bush didn't care about black people. On "The Daily Show," Williams said "everyone" knew Bush would have done better if white people were endangered: "Everyone watching the coverage all week, that kind of reached its peak last weekend, kept saying the same refrain: 'How is this happening in the United States?' And the other refrain was, 'Had this been Nantucket, had this been Boston, Cleveland, Chicago, Miami, Los Angeles, how many choppers would have --'"

Obama's Health Care Options

WASHINGTON -- The incompetence of President Obama's health care reform effort is undeniable, and unexpected. A supremely competent candidate and campaign usually indicate a talent for governing and communications. But on central issues such as the public option and financing methods, the Obama team has been wavering and contradictory. The president's summer recess legislative deadline was hasty and unserious. (As Mississippi Republican Gov. Haley Barbour points out, Obama spent more time picking out the White House dog than he permitted for comprehensive health reform.) Obama allowed the House to lead with a bill that is ruinously expensive, financed by a massive accounting trick and dismissed by a number of Democrats in the Senate. And talk of imposing "go-it-alone," partisan legislation now seems desperate.

How to Break the CIA

It was just back in April that a still new president and commander-in-chief assured the Central Intelligence Agency of his support, especially those of its agents who had protected the country during the dark, confusing days after September 11th. (That date doesn't need a year to identify it, any more than December 7, 1941, once did.) Remember what Barack Obama said then? Even as he was releasing memos that he had to know would be treated as raw meat for the agency's most vociferous critics at home and its deadliest enemies abroad, the president told the agents they need not fear being prosecuted for "relying in good faith upon legal advice from the Justice Department." He even added, "This is a time for reflection, not retribution."

Two Septembers: 1939 and 2001

Unleashed in the early hours of Sept. 1, 1939, Germany's "lightning war" -- the blitzkrieg -- quickly pierced Poland's border forces and sliced through the Danzig Corridor. As the German Luftwaffe hammered Poland's air force, panzer divisions smashed Poland's army, leaving its units scattered and surrounded. Yet Poland continued to resist. Britain and France joined the war on Sept. 3. Sept. 17, however, sealed Poland's fate, as Russian forces invaded eastern Poland -- the "stab in the back" by Joseph Stalin. Poland collapsed.

Waterboarding Policy and Consequences

"President George W. Bush kept us safe from further terrorist attacks." Few presidential claims have been less persuasive to the public than that. Yet after Sept. 11, most Americans thought, "It's not a question of whether, but when." We would have been grateful if we had known at the time that there would be no further attacks while Bush was president. However, as time passed, fewer and fewer believed that Bush's specific judgments and actions were keeping us safe. Most probably assumed our deliverance from a second attack on our soil was attributable to some combination of blind luck and the vigilant work of thousands of our security workers. And, of course, without both of those factors, we would not have avoided danger so far.

Democrat Hispanic Mayor: Obama's Failure to Help May Spring from Racism

Welcome to Mendota, Calif. Its population is 10,000. Most of its families work in farming; the town used to be called the "cantaloupe capital of the world." Today, unemployment hovers around 41 percent. The town is now known as "the food-line capital," says Mendota's mayor, Robert Silva. This is the Dust Bowl, circa 2009. Mendota is located in Fresno County, where July unemployment stood at 15 percent. And even that staggering number is artificially low because of all the temporary employees hired to pick the seasonal vegetables like squash, carrots, tomatoes and peppers.