Right Opinion

Democrats' Colorado Gold Rush Turns Into a Bust

Colorado, where the Great Plains meet the Rocky Mountains, has some claim to be on the leading edge of American politics. It produced antiwar, pro-environment Democrats like Sen. Gary Hart in the 1970s, Reaganite Republicans like Sen. Bill Armstrong even before Ronald Reagan won in 1980, Clintonesque Democrats like Gov. Roy Romer in the 1980s, and National Review's favorite Republican governor, Bill Owens, in the 1990s. In this decade, a group of liberal multimillionaires -- Tim Gill, Rutt Bridges, Jared Polis and Pat Stryker -- developed "the Colorado model," not only funding candidates, but setting up think tanks, advocacy groups and public relations operations designed to oust Republicans and install Democrats.

Kennedy Should Resign

Too Big To Vote?

How do you run for California's top political offices when you often have failed to vote yourself and have no political experience? Some big names in the GOP have rallied behind former Hewlett-Packard CEO Carly Fiorina as she eyes a run against Democratic Sen. Barbara Boxer and former eBay CEO Meg Whitman as she prepares to run for governor. They see attractive candidates with high name identification, impressive personal resumes and deep pockets.

A Doctrine of No Retreat

WASHINGTON -- As memories of the Cold War fade, like photographs bleached by sunlight, few remember the Brezhnev Doctrine. It was enunciated by Leonid Brezhnev in Warsaw in November 1968 as a retrospective justification for the Soviet-led invasion of Prague the previous August by Warsaw Pact forces to halt Czechoslovakia's liberalization. The doctrine was supposed to guarantee that history would be directional, controlled by a leftward-clicking ratchet. It asserted a Soviet right to intervene to protect socialism wherever it was imposed.

A Porn-Pop Summer

The baby boomers are trotting out the celebrations for the 40th anniversary of the "Summer of Love," complete with all that soggy and groggy Woodstock nostalgia. Perhaps the singular statement of that summer was the music and the open celebration of "free love." All of which, believe it or not, is preferable to what is on the air this summer. Start with the big hit "Birthday Sex," which brought quick fame (which is to say, infamy) to a singer named Jeremih. (Why must these people always celebrate illiteracy?) His basic lyric is "Don't need candles and cake / Just need your body to make / Birthday sex." But Jeremih also elaborates about how he wants sex in the kitchen, on a waterbed and so on. It's an audio porn movie.

A Rough Equilibrium Threatened

WASHINGTON -- This week, as the health care reform debate reached new levels of divisiveness, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported that America's health system is achieving wonders of longevity. Due to falling mortality in nearly every cause of death, a child born in 2006 is likely to live almost 78 years. This still lags behind some other countries that lack the cultural tradition of the chicken-fried steak. But American life expectancy in 1959 was 70 years. In 1909, it was only 51.

Corporate Shills for Hope and Change

Money from pharmaceutical firms and health care companies is dirty, evil and corrupting -- except when key members of Team Obama are pocketing it. White House spokesman Robert Gibbs derides grassroots opponents of socialized health care as industry-funded lackeys with questionable motives and conflicts of interest. But what about the corporate shills at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue?

Another Promise Broken -- in Record Time

Remember those days of yore, namely the presidential campaign of 2008, when Democrats regularly accused the Bush administration of politicizing the Justice Department? You could scarcely make your way down the aisle of the U.S. Senate without encountering a Democrat who was outraged, indignant and generally all het up over how the administration of justice had been corrupted. The righteous cries of Chuck Schumer, Joe Biden, Russ Feingold, Patrick Leahy and all the other usual suspects rent the air. All demanded that the attorney general -- it was the hapless Alberto Gonzales at the time -- adhere to the "rule of law and the Constitution," to quote Senator Schumer.

February Prediction Proves True in August

Obama Is New Jimmy Carter

Let's Be Honest About Death Counseling

WASHINGTON -- Let's see if we can have a reasoned discussion about end-of-life counseling. We might start by asking Sarah Palin to leave the room. I've got nothing against her. She's a remarkable political talent. But there are no "death panels" in the Democratic health care bills, and to say that there are is to debase the debate. We also have to tell the defenders of the notorious Section 1233 of H.R. 3200 that it is not quite as benign as they pretend. To offer government reimbursement to any doctor who gives end-of-life counseling -- whether or not the patient asked for it -- is to create an incentive for such a chat.

The Good War

Afghanistan was supposed to be the good war -- the one Democrats said we should be fighting instead of Iraq. We heard it over and over again during the presidential campaign, as if to exorcise the image that a Democrat wasn't tough enough to assume the role of commander in chief. Candidate Obama repeatedly called the war in Iraq "a dangerous distraction" from the fight we should be waging and promised to "tak(e) the fight to al-Qaida in Afghanistan and Pakistan." But with a new poll out showing that a majority of Americans now think the war in Afghanistan isn't worth fighting, it won't be long before Democrats decide to turn tail.

A Deck Stacked With Race Cards

What if America transcended race, and Barack Obama wasn't invited? The question comes to mind as cries of racism grow ever louder from Obama's supporters. No one should be surprised. Fish gotta swim, birds gotta fly, liberal Democrats have to accuse their opponents of racism. Indeed, somewhat to their credit, fighting racism -- alas, even where it doesn't exist -- is one of the reasons they became liberal Democrats in the first place.

Can We Succeed in Afghanistan?

He was certainly brave, but was he crazy? That's what I wondered when I picked up Rory Stewart's "The Places in Between," an account of the Scotsman's 2002 solo walk across Afghanistan. That's right, he walked. Many Afghans doubted he would survive the journey. Just weeks after the fall of the Taliban, in the dead of winter, in some of the most remote and difficult terrain in the inhabited world, he went from village to village on foot. Relying on the tradition of hospitality, Stewart found welcome, sustenance, and shelter (mostly, but not always) graciously offered by people who had very little to share.

Obama's Brick Wall: The American People

President Barack Obama has run into a brick wall: the American people, who cherish their liberty and revere their nation and do not want it remade in Obama's socialist image. Obama's free-falling poll numbers are not the result of a misinformation campaign from a small sliver of unruly conservative opponents, as the administration wants you to believe. They are a reflection of the public's reaction to Obama's policies and his own comprehensive misinformation campaign to dupe the people into believing America is unsalvageable without fundamental change.

Cheating the Least Among Us

WILLIAMSBURG, Va. -- Colonial Williamsburg is proud of its tradesmen. You can see the carpenters walking out of the history books and down the cobblestone streets, ready to talk to visitors about how they hammered Williamsburg together, log by log, shingle by shingle, as if still in the 18th century. These tradesmen built new homes, smokehouses, dairies, barns. They built additions and repaired old structures. Some were skilled carpenters and bricklayers, others were just learning, but together they raised rafters and roof beams, set door frames, laid floors with timber cut from nearby trees.

Drugs, Money and Narco-Terror

WASHINGTON -- Last week's brief "Three Amigos" summit in Guadalajara, Mexico, has been all but forgotten in the growing storm over "health care reform." That may be what the three North American heads of state, Presidents Felipe Calderon and Barack Obama and Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper, wanted. All three leaders did their best to ignore the skunk at their picnic -- the serious threat posed to all of us by narco-terrorism. If comments after the confab reflect their thinking, thousands of dead and wounded at the hands of violent drug cartels warrant less attention than the "threat" of global warming and the H1N1 virus.

Whose Medical Decisions?: Part IV

The serious, and sometimes chilling, provisions of the medical care legislation that President Obama has been trying to rush through Congress are important enough for all of us to stop and think, even though his political strategy from the outset has been to prevent us from having time to stop and think about it. What we also should stop to think about is the mindset behind this legislation, which is very consistent with the mindset behind other policies of this administration, whether the particular issue is bailing out General Motors, telling banks who to lend to or appointing "czars" to tell all sorts of people in many walks of life what they can and cannot do.

The Netroots Put Winning Ahead of Convictions

"I am a pessimist by nature, which is why I have spent my life as a journalist instead of trying to be a leader, which requires optimism." So wrote Robert Novak, who died Tuesday, in his 2007 autobiography, "The Prince of Darkness." Novak's voice was mostly stilled after he was diagnosed with brain cancer in July 2008 -- he seemed to adhere to his longstanding practice of never writing a column in which he did not break news -- but he surely anticipated the problems now facing Barack Obama and Democratic congressional leaders, optimists all.

ObamaCare? Ask the British and Canadians

"We spend more on health care than most other countries." "We need to bring costs down." To address these complaints, enter ObamaCare -- which may or may not include a "public option" or a taxpayer-assisted "co-op" to keep insurance companies "honest." But do countries with government-run health care succeed in retaining high quality while "bringing costs down"? What about England?

Divine Debt Trumps All

In Greek mythology, even Olympian gods and heroes were subject to a higher divine power known loosely as "fate" -- an allotted moira , or destiny, that could not be changed even by thunderbolt-throwing Zeus. In modern America, debt -- whether national, state or trade -- now plays the same overarching role as the ancient Greek notion of fate. And the president, Congress and the states for all their various agendas are impotent since they must first pay back trillions that have long ago been borrowed and spent.