THE FOUNDATION
"No compact among men ... can be pronounced everlasting and inviolable, and if I may so express myself, that no wall of words, that no mound of parchment can be so formed as to stand against the sweeping torrent of boundless ambition on the one side, aided by the sapping current of corrupted morals on the other." --George Washington, draft of first Inaugural Address, 1789TOP 5 RIGHT HOOKS
Another Shooting in Ferguson ... Again
This week marks the third time a white police officer shot a black suspect in Ferguson, Missouri. The protesters who shouted, petitioned and rioted over the shooting of Michael Brown want results, not truth. On Oct. 8, an officer shot and killed Vonderrit Myers Jr. The 18-year-old didn't have Skittles or his hands in the air, but rather a tracking anklet for a weapons charge and a stolen gun that he allegedly fired at the officer. The attorney representing the police officer said he is fortunate to survive because the officer hesitated too long before returning fire. Nevertheless, as word spread of his death that night, hundreds turned out to protest and several police cars were damaged. Ashley Yates, co-founder of Millennial Activists United (who was arrested in Ferguson), said the grand jury must indict Officer Darren Wilson, the policeman who shot Brown -- or else. "If they can't serve justice in this, the people have every right to go out and express their rage in a manner that is equal to what we have suffered." And so, the rabble rousers continue to hold sway. More...Comment | Share
Federal Courts Strike Texas and Wisconsin Voter ID Laws
With the midterm election right around the corner, a federal court in Texas struck down the voting ID laws in the state. And the Supreme Court stayed the implementation of Wisconsin's voter ID law. In both cases, the prevailing argument was that minority and elderly voters would be disproportionately kept from the polls because they may not have proper identification. In Wisconsin, the law would have been implemented with a little more than 30 days until the election and Democrats say it would have burdened the people who need to get proper ID -- i.e., Democrat voters. These two rulings come after SCOTUS recently upheld tougher voting laws in Ohio and North Carolina. Perhaps the voting laws are not at fault. Perhaps the government's tougher standards of what they will accept as proper ID, such as the REAL ID standard, are burdening people from voting. Either way, Democrats will go to any means necessary to get their voters to the polls. More...Comment | Share
Healthcare.gov Will Work Great This Time, They Promise!
Last year's launch of Healthcare.gov didn't exactly go without a glitch -- or several (hundred) -- but it's going to be better this time. You have the word of the Obama administration. "Federal health officials on Wednesday unveiled what they described as a cleaner website and a more logical sign-up process for insurance under the health-care law as they prepared for the next open enrollment period, which begins Nov. 15," reports The Washington Post. "Officials said Wednesday that the enrollment process has been streamlined, and that new customers may face as few as 16 steps -- compared to as many as 76 last year." Of course, it's not the website that's the real problem -- it's that the federal government essentially took over one-sixth of the U.S. economy with tens of thousands of pages of rules and regulations. That destruction isn't a bug in the law, either. It's the main feature. More...
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CBO Says Deficit Is Smaller, but the News Isn't All Good
The Congressional Budget Office released its latest deficit report, and, at first blush, the news seems good. "The federal government ran a budget deficit of $486 billion in fiscal year 2014, the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) estimates -- $195 billion less than the shortfall recorded in fiscal year 2013, and the smallest deficit recorded since 2008. Relative to the size of the economy, that deficit -- at an estimated 2.8 percent of gross domestic product (GDP) -- was slightly below the average experienced over the past 40 years, and 2014 was the fifth consecutive year in which the deficit declined as a percentage of GDP since peaking at 9.8 percent in 2009." But the deficit has declined during these years because Democrats pushed it so high -- quadrupled it, in fact. $486 billion is still real money, and deficits will soon return to near $1 trillion, CBO said, especially as entitlements drive debt. Barack Obama's massive 2013 tax hikes played a role in this year's smaller deficit, bringing in enough additional revenue to offset more spending. But those tax hikes also slow economic growth, leading to larger deficits in the long run. More...Comment | Share
The Left's 'Irrational Animus Against Christianity'
Damon Linker of The Week believes liberals have lost their way when it comes to tolerance, particularly of Christianity. He points to a couple prime examples, noting that they are but two among many. First, in a Slate article, Brian Palmer laments Christian missionary medical workers -- because they're Christian. Second, the New England Association of Schools and Colleges is threatening Gordon College's accreditation over its Christian policies on sexual behavior -- specifically, homosexual behavior. Linker concludes, "Contemporary liberals increasingly think and talk like a class of self-satisfied commissars enforcing a comprehensive, uniformly secular vision of the human good. The idea that someone, somewhere might devote her life to an alternative vision of the good -- one that clashes in some respects with liberalism's moral creed -- is increasingly intolerable. That is a betrayal of what's best in the liberal tradition." He's right. And that's saying something, coming as it does from the author of "The Theocons: Secular America Under Siege." More...Comment | Share
For more, visit Right Hooks.
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RIGHT ANALYSIS
Panetta's 'Worthy Fights' Over Obama's Ego
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When Panetta came to the administration, he already had a well-established career in Democrat politics. He had served eight terms in Congress before Bill Clinton recruited him in 1993 to run the Office of Management and Budget. Panetta then became Clinton's chief of staff, taking on the job of bringing order to the political free-for-all that was the White House during the second half of Clinton's first term. After that, he spent time doing what politicos often do when they leave office -- he established a policy group, lectured and did some teaching. Then he was tapped by Obama to head the CIA in 2009, and two years later, he became Pentagon chief, wrapping up his service shortly after the beginning of Obama's second term.
For those of us who see Obama's foreign policy for the malfeasance that it is, Panetta's grocery list of national security screw-ups doesn't come as a surprise. What's interesting is how he tries to walk a tightrope of offering praise for the president while skewering him at the same time. Panetta takes pains to hail Obama's keen intellect, as so many who have served with the president often do, but his recollections actually go on to refute that flattery.
Panetta recounts through several episodes that the president lacks the passion of a leader and repeatedly exhibits "a frustrating reticence to engage his opponents and rally support for his cause." Wouldn't someone with a keen intellect recognize that leadership is crucial to achieving his goal? And, if he believed in his ideas, wouldn't he be willing to actively defend them with logic rather than petulant political attacks on the opposition?
Iraq is a prime example of Panetta's account of Obama's poor leadership. He details how Obama basically sabotaged that country's future by letting his desire to fulfill a campaign pledge -- get America out of Iraq -- cloud the basic fact that America's military presence was integral to keeping the country together. The White House was “so eager to rid itself of Iraq," Panetta said, "that it was willing to withdraw rather than lock in arrangements that would preserve our influence and interests.”
Furthermore, Panetta wrote, “My fear, as I voiced to the President and others, was that if the country split apart or slid back into the violence that we’d seen in the years immediately following the U.S. invasion, it could become a new haven for terrorists to plot attacks against the U.S.” His stance, he said, “reflected not just my views but also those of the military commanders in the region and the Joint Chiefs.” So Obama's "keen intellect" won out over his knowledgeable advisers.
Indecision combined with deliberately setting unrealistic expectations for Iraq's fragile government essentially sunk the status of forces agreement that the U.S. was trying to hammer out with then-Iraqi leader Nouri al-Maliki. Obama pleased his constituents, but Panetta argues the end result was "a vacuum in terms of the ability of that country to better protect itself, and it’s out of that vacuum that [ISIL] began to breed." (Someone else warned about that too.) Now we've got boots back in the air, fighting what Panetta says should be a "long and sustained battle."
Panetta's motives aren't pure. He's obviously out to sell books, and he may even be angling for a position (secretary of state?) in a Hillary Clinton administration. But Panetta has also captured from the inside what we've been saying about Obama all along -- essentially that the president is a narcissist who ignores wise advice in pursuit of his own ideological agenda. In Iraq, that's proved disastrous. And it's worth hammering home.
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Higher Education in the Hookup Culture
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The latest salvo in this war is an effort by California's overwhelmingly Democrat state legislature to introduce the government to college campus bedrooms. Soon, young men in the Golden State may be prosecuted thanks to a new law proponents dub the “yes means yes” law. It mandates affirmative consent be given by both parties before a tryst turns sexual, with the decision being “affirmative, unambiguous and conscious.” Under the law, signed recently by Democrat Gov. Jerry Brown, silence does not imply consent, and drunkenness by one or both parties cannot be used as a defense.
More troubling, however, is the new legal standard used. Accusers under this law need only have a preponderance of the evidence, which is a slippery slope when one considers the seriousness of the allegation. Should a male student really be expelled for not having a good explanation as to why his date changed her mind after the fact? It is said that hell hath no fury like a woman scorned, and collegiate men in California may well learn that lesson firsthand. Females already compose a clear majority of college students, and laws like this won't help rectify that imbalance any time soon. And woe to the first young man who claims to have been victimized by a female (or another male) under this law.
A group called the National Coalition for Men blasted the law, stating, “It is tragically clear that this campus rape crusade bill presumes the veracity of accusers (a.k.a. 'survivors') and likewise presumes the guilt of accused (who are) virtually all men. This is nice for the accusers -- both false accusers as well as true accusers -- but what about the due process rights of the accused?"
While we've written about similar federal proposals, this is the first time a state has codified this kind of language. It already had been policy in California state-supported schools as well as several Ivy League institutions.
Some see a silver lining in this law, arguing it will encourage real relationships instead of quick hook-ups. (As an aside, the Centers for Disease Control estimate 110 million Americans are or have been infected with sexually transmitted diseases. The hook-up culture is, without question, largely to blame.)
But at what cost does any benefit come?
It's worth noting the irony of the progressive push behind this law. "Get your laws off my body," and "keep the government out of my bedroom," have long been staples of the Democrat Party's rabid support of abortion. Yet when it comes to the activity that creates the child to be aborted, they're all in favor of requiring a virtual government consent form before proceeding.
Then again, quipped humorist Frank J. Fleming, "Conservatives should be happy about California; they’re just one step away from requiring a marriage license to have sex."
Within the politically correct environment of our college campuses, higher education has become increasingly optional. Part of the reason for that is the hook-up culture. Casual sex undermines not only education, but health and future families as well. California's misguided law isn't the answer.
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TOP 5 RIGHT OPINION COLUMNS
- Jonah Goldberg: Hooker Flap a Microcosm of Administration's Problems
- Mona Charen: Let's Repeal Reality
- David Harsanyi: Stop Calling It Marriage Equality
- David Limbaugh: Harvard Students Parade Their Academic Poison
- Charles Krauthammer: The Double Game Our Allies Play
OPINION IN BRIEF
Economics professor Julian Simon (1932-1998): "Not understanding the process of a spontaneously-ordered economy goes hand-in-hand with not understanding the creation of resources and wealth."Columnist Jonah Goldberg: "[T]he White House has been caught covering up a scandal involving a Cartagena hooker. ... Why did the White House go to such lengths to conceal the event? [White House official Jonathan] Dach broke no laws in Cartagena, the alleged tryst took place in a so-called 'tolerance zone' where prostitution is legal. Surely the White House isn’t against tolerance. ... The underlying scandal is fairly minor. But if the White House would falsify records and lie to the public about this, is it really so hard to imagine that it would deceive the public -- and Congress -- about larger issues like, say, Benghazi? ... The president loves to denounce a cynical system where politics comes before the public good. He rails about a system where fat cats live by a different set of rules than the little guy, and money buys special treatment and access. But the way he operates runs completely counter to all that. Which is why the only person to come out of this scandal in an honorable light is the Cartagena hooker."
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Columnist Mona Charen: "The obsession with sex and now the mainstreaming of truly bizarre ideas about human identity suggest that progressives cannot be trusted with responsibility and certainly shouldn’t be anywhere in the vicinity of children. This kookiness about sexuality is brought to us by the people who style themselves the 'pro-science party.' Imagine if they get their hands on chemistry next. A teacher handout might say, 'Protons are positively charged, and electrons are negatively charged. But you can be a neutron if that’s how you feel deep inside.' Or maybe it’s oppressive to assume that protons are always positive. Maybe some days they have negative energy? ... There’s plenty to resent about nature. Why do only women get pregnant and give birth? Some men would like the chance, and some women would gladly change roles. Why are men bigger? Why are some people unattractive and others boring? That doesn’t seem fair. And why must we die? These mortality assignments are a terrible form of oppression. If we declared ourselves 'death neutral,' would that make it so?"
Twitter satirist @weknowwhatsbest: "Obama's motorcade [caused] 500K L.A. cars to idle in place for hours, but [it was] worth it to hear Gwyneth Paltrow's views on carbon footprints."
Semper Vigilo, Fortis, Paratus et Fidelis!
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