Right Opinion

A Pandora's Box on Speech

WASHINGTON -- It began with the proliferation of campus "speech codes" ostensibly designed to promote civility but frequently used to enforce political conformity. The new censorship accelerated with the McCain-Feingold legislation that licenses government regulation of the quantity, timing and content of speech in political campaigns. Now the attack on First Amendment speech protections has taken an audacious new turn, illustrated by a case being pondered by a Texas judge. He is being asked to collaborate in the suppression of a book, and even of expressions of approval of the book.

Whose Medical Decisions?: Part III

Amid all the controversies over medical care, no one seems to be asking a very basic question: Why does it take more than 1,000 pages of legislation to insure people who lack medical insurance? Despite incessant repetition of the fact that millions of Americans do not have medical insurance, hardy souls who have actually read the mammoth medical care legislation being rushed through Congress have discovered all sorts of things there that have nothing whatever to do with insuring the uninsured-- and everything to do with taking medical decisions out of the hands of doctors and their patients, and transferring those decisions to Washington bureaucrats.

Chadors in the Cabinet Can't Cloak Iran's Misogyny

Liberal Lies About National Health Care

First in a Series

Middle-aged Rant

At a recent Colorado town hall, University of Colorado at Boulder student Zach Lahn asked President Obama how private insurers could be expected to compete with a public health care plan. Lahn, 23, also told Obama, "I'd love to have a debate just all out, anytime, Oxford-style, if you'd like" on health care. Obama answered that UPS and FedEx are a doing a lot better than the Post Office. (If I were Obama, I wouldn't mention the post office while touting public health care.) Then the president observed, "It's good to see a young person who's very engaged and confident challenging the president to an Oxford-style debate." And: "I like that. You got to have a little chutzpah, you know."

Shooting Star

Seven months after taking office amidst a religious-like faith that he was the one (or even The One) we had been waiting for, President Barack Obama is beginning to resemble a shooting star. A new USA Today-Gallup Poll finds that 57 percent of adults believe the president's $787 billion economic stimulus package is having "no impact on the economy or making it worse." The poll asked six questions and the answers reveal that Obama's short-term fixes are producing long-term anxiety. Fifty-four percent told pollsters they think the economy will still be in a recession one year from now. Forty-six percent are "very worried" that stimulus money has been wasted. Significantly, a combined 70 percent say the spending will either have no effect on their personal financial situation (36 percent) or that it will make it worse (34 percent).

The Answer to Everything

"For every complex problem there is an answer that is clear, simple and wrong." --H. L. Mencken The Great Explainer is at it again. Every era has one, or maybe quite a few if it's as enlightened, liberated and gullible as our own. Think of the 1920s, when Freud was a rising star, Marx was about to be, and Charles Ponzi had figured out a way to make any investor millions. Now we have Bernard Madoff, and our great explainer is Malcolm Gladwell.

Why 'ObamaCare' Is Failing

To listen to the White House and its supporters in and out of the media, you would think that opposition to "ObamaCare" is the hobgoblin of a few small minds on the right. Racists, fascists, Neanderthals, the whole "Star Wars" cantina of boogeymen and cranks stand opposed to much-needed reform. Left out of this fairly naked effort to demonize many with the actions of a few is the simple fact that ObamaCare -- however defined -- has been tanking in the polls for weeks. President Obama's handling of health care is unpopular with a majority of Americans and a majority of self-proclaimed independents.

Obamacare's Inevitable Logicj

False charges about Obamacare don't help. Like the end-of-life tempest. Former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin popularized the term "death panels." She said: "The America I know and love is not one in which my parents or my baby with Down syndrome will have to stand in front of Obama's 'death panel' so his bureaucrats can decide, based on a subjective judgment of their 'level of productivity in society,' whether they are worthy of health care".

Finally, Change We Can Believe In

Those of us who are self-appointed advocates -- who expend our efforts trying to persuade a few more people to our political point of view -- must sit back in slack-jawed wonder when the great American public makes one of its great roars, as we all have been hearing in town hall meetings across the country. In the animal kingdom, it is the lion that has the loudest roar. Scientists say it is made as a warning to advertise the animal's presence. Are you listening, Washington? The current American public's roar certainly is being heard around the world. Consider the following lead from Britain's Daily Telegraph newspaper a few days ago:

Is Racial Profiling Racist?

Harvard Professor Henry Gates' arrest has given new life to the issue of racial profiling. We can think of profiling in general as a practice where people use an observable or known physical attribute as a proxy or estimator of some other unobservable or unknown attribute. Race or sex profiling is simply the use of race or sex as that estimator. Profiling represents mankind's attempt to cope with information cost. God would not have to profile since God is all knowing.

Bob Novak

It took cancer longer than a year to kill Bob Novak, and actually, this was the fifth cancer that tried to kill him. Let that stand as testimony as to how tough this guy was. He was very tough. He worked long hours as a reporter and columnist. He always was on call to pop onto a TV set and comment on breaking news. He prepared diligently for the two cable shows he appeared on, CNN's "Crossfire" and "Capital Gang." On those shows, he earned the widely known sobriquet "The Prince of Darkness," which was nonsense. He was tough, but he was fair, objective and a thoroughly decent man.

Mexico's Complex Free Trade Initiative

Credit Mexico's president, Felipe Calderon, with vision and guts. In the midst of the Cartel War's vicious bloodletting, Calderon continues to pursue his "systemic revolution" on multiple fronts, and he's doing so with an enviable cool and steadiness. Despite his National Action Party's (PAN) political losses in the July Chamber of Deputies election, Calderon's postelection statesmanship indicates he intends to pursue his liberalizing, reformist agenda during his remaining three years in office.

Obamacare Puts Families Making $192,920 on Welfare

The current debate over whether the national health care plan being developed in Congress should or should not include a so-called "public option" -- a health insurance plan set up by the government to compete with private health insurance providers -- misses the point. In reality, the entirety of the congressional health care plan is a "public option." It is all about one thing: putting government in control of health care.

The Pay Czar's Power Grab

Pay czar Kenneth Feinberg's official government title is "Special Master for Compensation." You'll be happy to know that he's really getting into the confiscatory spirit of his role. Asked by Reuters whether his powers include reaching back and revoking bonuses awarded to financial industry executives before his office was created earlier this year, Feinberg asserted broad and binding authorities -- including the ability to "claw back" money already paid out.

Whose Medical Decisions?: Part II

When famed bank robber Willie Sutton was asked why he robbed banks, he said: "Because that's where the money is." For the same reason, it is as predictable as the sunrise that medical care for the elderly will be cut back under a government-controlled medical system. Because that's where the money is.

Secular Saboteurs

There are an awful lot of people I know in the world of public policy, many of whom I respect and admire. But beyond respecting his wisdom and admiring his courage, I just plain like Bill Donohue, president of the Catholic League. I like his Irish feistiness. I like his sense of loyalty. I like his sense of humor. Most of all, I like how he drives his opponents mad. And with his new book, "Secular Sabotage: How Liberals are Destroying Religion and Culture in America," he could be expected to be stricken from all manner of Christmas card lists -- except the people he skewers don't believe in Christmas.

Bob Novak, R.I.P. -- Faith, Freedom and Free Enterprise.

Now we say goodbye to Robert Novak, who passed away early Tuesday morning at the age of 78. Yet another conservative icon has left us. He was a good friend and an amazing reporter. In fact, I believe he was the best reporter of his generation, which spans all the way back to the Dwight D. Eisenhower years. Bob had a lot of opinions -- conservative opinions; Reaganesque opinions. But his pursuit of journalistic detail, facts, scoops and stories that no one else got was remarkable. He was "old school" in this respect, which is why he was so esteemed by political allies and critics alike.

The Fannie Mae Health System

President Obama's "public option" health care plan has been temporarily shelved -- or, at least, that's what his spokespeople would have us believe. Kathleen Sibelius, secretary of health and human services, said on Aug. 16 that a public option wasn't an "essential option" in revamping the health care system. Sen. Kent Conrad (D-N.D.) is now pushing a new idea: the insurance co-op. "A co-op has some appeal because it is a nonprofit alternative," Conrad says. "At the same time, not government run or government controlled."

Astroturf and Sunlight

Two years ago, the Senate rejected an attempt to regulate "astroturf," professional political agitation aimed at stimulating (or simulating) grassroots activity. Recently, that measure's supporters have been saying, "I told you so," citing the debate over who is behind boisterous criticism of President Obama's health care agenda at congressional town hall meetings.