Right Opinion

Homeland Security's Goal: Allow 70 percent of Bad Guys through Ports of Entry

In fiscal 2008, U.S. Border Patrol officers working at checkpoints that are typically set up along roads and highways 25 to 100 miles north of the U.S.-Mexico border stopped three people "who were identified as persons linked to terrorism," according to information provided by the Border Patrol to the Government Accountability Office. "In addition," says a GAO report released Monday, "the Border Patrol reported that in fiscal year 2008 checkpoints encountered 530 aliens from special interest countries, which are countries the Department of State has determined to represent a potential terrorist threat to the United States." According to the Department of Homeland Security, which oversees the Border Patrol, the vast majority of illegal aliens and contraband attempting to move across our border through official ports of entry will succeed.

Unfair, Unbalanced, but Free

"When the government of the United States of America claims the authority to ban books because of their political speech," says Citizens United, " something has gone terribly wrong." A majority of the U.S. Supreme Court seems to agree. Next week, for the second time, the court will hear oral arguments in Citizens United v. FEC, a case that poses the question of whether the Federal Election Commission violated the First Amendment when it prevented the conservative group from showing a highly critical documentary about Hillary Clinton on cable TV during the 2008 primary season. The court scheduled the unusual second round of arguments after it heard the lengths to which the federal government had been driven in defending its suppression of "Hillary: The Movie."

Obama's Classroom Campaign: No Junior Lobbyist Left Behind

"ABC" stands for All Barack's Children. On Sept. 8, young students across the country will be watching television. Yes, they'll be parked in front of boob tubes and computer screens watching President Obama's address on education. Instead of practicing cursive, reviewing multiplication tables, diagramming sentences or learning something concrete, America's kids will be lectured about the importance of learning. And then the schoolchildren, from pre-kindergarten through 12th grade, will be exhorted to Do Something -- other than sit in their seats and receive academic instruction, that is.

The Bigger the Government, the Smaller the Citizen

Those of us who oppose a massive increase in the role the national government plays in health care ("ObamaCare") do so because we fear the immense and unsustainable national debt it would incur and because we are certain that medical care in America would deteriorate. But there is a bigger reason most of us oppose it: We believe that the bigger the government becomes, the smaller the individual citizen becomes. Here are five reasons why bigger government makes less impressive people.

Daughters under Siege

Recently I wrote about the trend in public schools to push an "if it feels good, do it" brand of sex education on our kids. Those who write the "health education" curriculum, oversee the lesson plans and have the greatest authority in education believe that there are no taboos, and no boundaries on a teenager's sex life. That they actually believe teens should engage in sex at all should be enough to cause outrage - but it goes much further than that. Dr. Miriam Grossman's new book, "You're Teaching My Child What?" documents how they seek to shape an entire generation's world view to support and advance a free sex mentality that would shock even a "free love" child of the radical 60's.

Judgment vs. Judgmentalism

Opinion columnists, like the rest of humanity, walk a fine line between judgment (holding people accountable to a standard we did not create) and judgmentalness (thinking ourselves morally superior because we haven't committed the acts of others). Since writing of my friendship with the late Senator Edward Kennedy, I have been flooded with responses. Some have been kind, but many -- perhaps a majority -- have heaped on me the revulsion these writers also heaped on him. Perhaps the unkindest cut of all was the writer who accused me of "going wobbly."

In Afghanistan, Knowing When to Stop

WASHINGTON -- "Yesterday," reads the e-mail from Allen, a Marine in Afghanistan, "I gave blood because a Marine, while out on patrol, stepped on a (mine's) pressure plate and lost both legs." Then "another Marine with a bullet wound to the head was brought in. Both Marines died this morning." "I'm sorry about the drama," writes Allen, an enthusiastic infantryman willing to die "so that each of you may grow old." He says: "I put everything in God's hands." And: "Semper Fi!"

Suicide of the West?

Britain's release of Abdel Baset al-Megrahi-- the Libyan terrorist whose bomb blew up a plane over Lockerbie, Scotland in 1988, killing 270 people-- is galling enough in itself. But it is even more profoundly troubling as a sign of a larger mood that has been growing in the Western democracies in our time. In ways large and small, domestically and internationally, the West is surrendering on the installment plan to Islamic extremists.

Good Thing We Don't Mix Religion and Politics Anymore

Well, thank Heaven George W. Bush is no longer president! Gosh, all of that mixing of religion and politics darn near subverted our Constitution -- which, as all good liberals know -- enshrines the "wall of separation" between church and state. What? That phrase doesn't appear in the Constitution? No matter. Democrats know that conservative Republicans, particularly Christians, are dangerous religious fanatics.

The Mutilated Book

Yale University long has been a citadel of political correctness and a prime example of the current academic rage for deconstructing truth. But this time it's reached the bottom (let's hope) of its flight from Lux et Veritas, Light and Truth. It's getting so that the only remaining evidence of either one at Yale may soon be confined to its motto. This time Yale's university press was about to publish a scholarly volume that would provide some historical and artistic context for those controversial cartoons that Danish newspapers published in 2005 and early 2006, including caricatures of the Prophet Mohammed, and that so enraged mobs throughout the Muslim world. Here, you would think, is just the sort of scholarly study that a university press ought to be publishing.

Obama's Shameless 'Torture' Prosecution Reversal

President Barack Obama is either extraordinarily politically tone-deaf or arrogant beyond bounds, as indicated by his relentless pursuit of policies strongly rejected by the American people. His decision or acquiescence in the Department of Justice's decision to reinvestigate CIA terrorist interrogators is the latest outrage. Obama's approval ratings have cratered even further since my most recent column, and he's either Mr. Magoo, driving along in blissful oblivion, or Fearless Leader, who will do what he wants, American people be damned.

How They Missed Jaycee

Since 1999, when he was placed under California parole supervision for a 1976 rape in Nevada, Phillip Garrido, 58, was subject to drug testing, required to wear a GPS device and subject to twice-monthly visits by his state parole officer. In 2006, a neighbor called 9-1-1 to report that children were living in Garrido's backyard in squalor, but the Contra Costa County Sheriff's Department failed to search the registered sex offender's premises. Last month, UC Berkeley Police Officer Allison Jacobs became suspicious of Garrido, figured out that he was a registered sex offender who was accompanied by two adolescent girls, and contacted Garrido's parole officer. Jacobs told reporters that when she mentioned the girls, whom Garrido said were his daughters, the parole officer responded, "Garrido doesn't have any daughters."

That Kennedy Legacy

The end of Ted Kennedy's long sojourn among us, splendidly splashed by the media, opened the renewed discussion of whether it's time that big government, in the Kennedy mode, came back. The late senator's eulogists -- in politics and the media, not to mention at the funeral -- tended to nod their heads enthusiastically. We needed the big ideas and projects of the senator's legacy for the sake of justice and the future. It was time to get wealth controlled, poverty vanquished and health care extended to all. The latter we had to do (so West Virginia's Sen. Robert Byrd assured us) as a memorial to the senator, who made universal health care the cause of causes.

The End of America's Experiment With Royalty

Edward Kennedy was buried Saturday, the last son of Joseph and Rose Fitzgerald Kennedy, the longest-serving member of the only royal political family our democratic republic has ever produced. Those who remember the 1960s understand viscerally, even if they do not share themselves, the almost mystical devotion the Kennedys inspired. Those who do not find it harder to understand, and those who come after us may find it utterly mystifying. But it was real. Other political families -- the Adamses, the Harrisons, the Tafts -- produced multiple generations of national politicians but generated nothing like mass enthusiasm. The sons of Theodore and Franklin Roosevelt set out on political careers but never got very far.

'Kennedy' Once Meant 'Tax Cutter'

One Long Shot to Watch

SAN DIEGO -- The most ominous domestic event of the 1970s was the collapse of self-government in New York City, which before being put into receivership by the state was liberalism's laboratory. Since then, California has been the slate on which liberalism boldly writes its recipe for decline -- high taxes, heavy regulation, subservience to public employees unions and environmentalism that is simultaneously apocalyptic and chiliastic. Because California's calamitous present -- creative accounting as a rickety bridge to the next budget crisis, coming soon -- might prefigure the nation's future, next year's gubernatorial election is portentous. An especially intriguing candidate in a colorful field is Tom Campbell. Colorful he is not. "Talk softly and carry a small calculator" could be his motto. What glitter, however, are his resume and agenda.

President Obama Should Pardon CIA Interrogators

When he served as deputy attorney general, now Attorney General Eric Holder gave a "neutral leaning positive" recommendation that led to President Bill Clinton's pardoning of gazillionaire fugitive Marc Rich, who was on the lam in Switzerland hiding from federal charges of fraud, evading more than $48 million in taxes, racketeering and trading oil with Iran in violation of a U.S. embargo. Holder also had a role in the 1999 Clinton pardons of 16 Puerto Rico independence terrorists -- members of the bomb-happy FALN or the splinter group Los Macheteros -- who had been convicted on such charges as bank robbery, possession of explosives and participating in a seditious conspiracy -- even though none of the 16 had applied for clemency. As the Los Angeles Times reported, two of the 16 refused to accept the pardon -- as it required them to renounce violence -- while another later was killed in a shootout with federal agents.

Remembering Ted Kennedy

Our national media are treating the passing of Sen. Edward Kennedy as a historic event, more historic even than the deaths of presidents like Gerald Ford. Is this level of attention warranted? We can all grant that Ted Kennedy was a major legislator with his hands in a lot of historic government action. He was at times a very eloquent speaker and was always a passionate fighter. To his side of the aisle, he was their inspirational leader. Now add the personal story: Two of his brothers were mercilessly assassinated. He was the final Kennedy from that generation. Clearly, when the media spent countless hours mourning the death of John F. Kennedy Jr., a man who never had a political career, the death of an actual senator of 47 years should be a greater event.

No Respect

BAGRAM, Afghanistan -- It is amazing how a change of geography can alter perception. In the weeks leading up to this, my 16th Fox News deployment to cover the fight against radical Islamic terror, the news was full of attacks on civilian contractors. The target: those who have been providing support for U.S. military and intelligence operations since Sept. 11. "Contractor" is the new "dirty word" in the so-called mainstream media -- and in Washington. On Capitol Hill, contractors are the Rodney Dangerfields of the war -- they just "get no respect." Here, where the war is being fought, contractors are regarded as essential to victory.

The First Election of the Obama Backlash

WASHINGTON -- The late-night hotel desk clerk in Salem, Va., -- after my long drive from Washington down the Shenandoah Valley -- wanted to talk political philosophy. He intended to support Republican Bob McDonnell for governor in November on Madisonian grounds. "I vote both parties, but I don't want anyone having all the control." Obama, in his view, needed to be checked and balanced. This is the durable tendency of Virginia politics. Since 1977, the political party that has won the presidency has, in every case, lost the Virginia governorship in the next election. This pattern of cussedness is holding, at least for the moment. McDonnell, Virginia's former attorney general, is currently well ahead of his Democratic opponent, Creigh Deeds -- in one poll leading by 15 percent among likely voters.