THE FOUNDATION
"Without liberty, law loses its nature and its name, and becomes oppression. Without law, liberty also loses its nature and its name, and becomes licentiousness." --James Wilson, Of the Study of the Law in the United States, 1790TOP 5 RIGHT HOOKS
Obama Once Worried About Immigration's Toll on U.S. Workers
As we explained last week -- Who Better to Make the Case Against Obama's Amnesty Than Obama? -- the president need only recall his past stipulations on illegal immigration to understand why executive amnesty is a bad idea. Obama's ambivalence on the issue was even evident in his famed 2006 autobiography, "The Audacity of Hope," in which he states: "The number of immigrants added to the labor force every year is of a magnitude not seen in this country for over a century. If this huge influx of mostly low-skill workers provides some benefits to the economy as a whole -- especially by keeping our workforce young, in contrast to an increasingly geriatric Europe and Japan -- it also threatens to depress further the wages of blue-collar Americans and put strains on an already overburdened safety net [emphasis added]." He continued, "When I see Mexican flags waved at pro-immigration demonstrations, I sometimes feel a flush of patriotic resentment. When I'm forced to use a translator to communicate with the guy fixing my car, I feel a certain frustration." Eight years later, this bloc represents a much-needed Democrat base to continue fundamentally transforming America. More...Comment | Share
Liar Lies About Lies
Facing growing questions about the BIG Lies used to sell ObamaCare to the American people, Barack Obama protests too much. As numerous videos surfaced of MIT professor and ObamaCare architect Jonathan Gruber talking about the "stupidity" of American voters and the like, Democrats have denied even knowing the man. “No. I did not" mislead the American people, Obama said. "The fact that an adviser who was never on our staff expressed an opinion that I completely disagree with in terms of the voters is not a reflection on the actual process that was run." Technically, no, Gruber was never on staff, but the government did pay him nearly $400,000 for his services. Obama challenged the media to find more old videos of the bill's debate, because, he said, "I think it's fair to say there was not a provision in the health care law that was not extensively debated and was fully transparent -- it was a tough debate." There he goes again. Obama was the chief liar -- his if you like your plan, no added debt, no abortion funding, lower premiums promises were transparently false. For him to deny all this now is a bridge too far.Comment | Share
Federal Exchange Opens for Second Time
After two years, the government figured out how to build a website. Maybe. The enrollment period on Healthcare.gov opened for the second time on Saturday and 100,000 people signed up for health insurance. Yet in Washington, the state exchange broke after two hours because it computed tax credits incorrectly. Unlike last year, the website has hit only minor speed bumps so far, with some people forgetting their passwords, according to HHS Secretary Sylvia Burwell. Initially, the Congressional Budget Office estimated 13 million people would sign up this year, but HHS projects less than 10 million. It's because they "actually thought more people would switch from employer-based care than did," Burwell said. Burwell assumed people would flock to a government solution. Meanwhile, The New York Times reports, "The Obama administration on Friday unveiled data showing that many Americans with health insurance bought under the Affordable Care Act could face substantial price increases next year -- in some cases as much as 20 percent -- unless they switch plans." If you like your plan, you can keep it. More...Comment | Share
The War Over Peter Kassig's Name
ISIL beheaded aid worker and former Army Ranger Peter Kassig Sunday, the fifth time the group has killed an American and posted a video of the act online. But while ISIL called Kassig by his English name, Peter, the White House kept calling him "Abdul-Rahman," in an effort to portray ISIL as the murderer of Muslims. "ISIL's actions represent no faith, least of all the Muslim faith which Abdul-Rahman adopted as his own," the White House said in a statement. "Today we grieve together, yet we also recall that the indomitable spirit of goodness and perseverance that burned so brightly in Abdul-Rahman Kassig, and which binds humanity together, ultimately is the light that will prevail over the darkness of ISIL." The media reported Kassig converted to Islam after he was captured by ISIL, perhaps in an attempt to avoid death. Bobby Ross Jr. at Get Religion asked if that conversion was genuine -- ISIL thought not. The White House saw the death of "Abdul-Rahman" as an opportunity to frame the debate between the West and ISIL for people in the Middle East. More...Comment | Share
Pelosi Complains of Not Making Time Cover
Time magazine is sexist. At least that's what Nancy Pelosi implies. "[W]hen [Democrats] won the House -- and that was largely an initiative that I started around 2000, to take us to a place where we would win the House -- that was a big thing," Pelosi said. But, she complained, "I was never on the cover of Time magazine, even though I was the first woman to be [speaker]. Isn't that a curiosity? Republicans win and [John] Boehner is on the front of Time magazine. Mitch McConnell wins and he is on the front to Time magazine. Is there a pattern here? But as a woman, is there a message here? Is there something that we're missing?" There's a lot Nancy Pelosi is missing, but in this case, we think she's just bitter and she's got to fall back on the same "war on women" rhetoric that failed to deliver votes on Election Day.Comment | Share
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RIGHT ANALYSIS
Good Policy Held Hostage by Leftist Politics
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Just name any issue confronting America currently -- energy, immigration, national security -- and you’ll find that the Obama administration is setting the stage for confrontation of the worst sorts. This doubling down is happening even in the face of the beat down the president and his failed leftist policies suffered in the midterm election.
Take Friday’s passage of House legislation to approve the Keystone XL pipeline. Bureaucratic red tape and obstruction began before George W. Bush left office, but now, a bipartisan majority (221 Republicans and 31 Democrats) voted to move the pipeline’s prospects one step closer to existence. The Senate is expected to take a floor vote Tuesday.
Americans want to strengthen domestic energy production and processing, but the president stands in the way. And the message to the White House is clear: Stop stalling!
Obama stays on the leash of environmental radicals whose argument is simple, according to The Washington Post: "Environmentalists say the pipeline is especially harmful because it lowers transportation costs and thus provides more incentive for the development of Alberta’s oil sands.”
You read that correctly. Building a transcontinental pipeline to move 730,000 barrels of crude per day from Alberta, Canada, southward, picking up 100,000 barrels per day in Montana and North Dakota to be refined in Texas, would be bad because it lowers the cost of moving the fuel and incentivizes commerce.
No one said those who hold good things hostage are rational. Clearly, handing America’s energy policy over to those who worship the dirt rather than serving as stewards of the earth is absolutely nuts.
These same environmental leftists will be the first to join the anti-war crowd in chanting daisy-laced peace poems as Americans fight for our interests -- among them, energy -- in the Middle East, and as we contend with an aggressive Russian government driven by fossil-fuel production.
A majority of Americans, labor unions and a bipartisan voice in Congress see the value of growing domestic energy production and processing with hundreds, even thousands, of high-wage construction jobs and engineering positions that will monitor the pipeline once built. However, those on the Left who oppose such industry and technology are among those who fret about the minimum wage of the kid working the deep fryer at McDonald's.
But what about that Senate vote Tuesday?
The good policy held hostage by an ecofascist Obama White House will see the light of day only because the wave of Nov. 5 also endangers Louisiana’s Democrat Senator Mary Landrieu. As Landrieu faces an impending loss in December's runoff, she is suddenly the champion of a bipartisan effort in the Senate to move the pipeline legislation to the floor from its shackled existence in Majority Leader Harry Reid’s office.
Landrieu’s Republican opponent, Rep. Bill Cassidy, hit the bull's-eye when he opined, “I have to smile when Senator Landrieu says politics are not involved. Clearly Reid did not care about the 40,000 jobs that would be created for families which are struggling but he does care about Senator Landrieu’s job.”
The Keystone XL pipeline legislation is likely to face the veto of a president who has an agenda that doesn’t include the best interests of the American people and our great nation. “I have to constantly push back against this idea that somehow the Keystone pipeline is either this massive jobs bill for the United States or is somehow lowering gas prices,” Obama said.
Whether it’s the unprecedented opportunity for America to have greater control of our energy policy, and therefore greater national security, or any other critical issue in the next few weeks, be prepared. The extortion of the Left will continue as the governing elites not only ignore our Constitution but also that which is best for America.
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The Continuing Assault on American Culture
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The move was made following a request from the Muslim community that has lobbied for years to include at least one of two major Muslim holidays, Eid al-Adha or Eid al-Fitr, on the school calendar. Saqib Ali, a former Maryland state delegate and co-chair of the Equality for Eid Coalition, bemoaned the decision, saying, "By stripping the names Christmas, Easter, Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur, they have alienated other communities now, and we are no closer to equality.” Muslim leaders were especially interested in raising the status of Eid al-Adha because the holiday falls on the same day as Yom Kippur and they considered the move an important symbolic step.
No doubt. Yet in a predominantly Judeo-Christian nation, the obvious question must be asked: How far should such accommodation go? What about Shinto holidays such as Setsubun-no-hi or Haru Matsuri? Hindu holidays such as Vasant Panchami or Pitr-Paksha? How about the Buddhist holidays of Vesak or Uposatha?
Once our prevailing culture -- the one that created the most dynamic nation in the history of the world -- is subsumed in a multi-culti stew, shouldn’t everyone be equally accommodated? And if not, don’t we owe the rest of the world an apology for having the temerity to insist that our prevailing American culture prevail in America?
Certainly the American Left thinks so. In fact, our apologist in chief, a.k.a. Barack Obama, has made a regular habit of apologizing for our nation’s shortcomings. Moreover, he has rendered the concept of American exceptionalism meaningless by comparing it to that of other nations. Such nonsense is reminiscent of the leftist-inspired “every kid gets a trophy” mindset that puts showing up on par with genuine achievement, lest anyone’s feelings get hurt.
That would be the same Barack Obama poised to deal the prevailing American culture its biggest body blow in history, unilaterally legalizing millions of illegal aliens. Illegal aliens are urged by the Left to “celebrate their differences” in lieu of assimilation, respecting our border, language, traditions and culture.
And make no mistake: Public schools and odious school boards like the one in Montgomery County are leading the charge. They stand in solidarity with city councils in Seattle and Minneapolis that scrapped Columbus Day in favor of "Indigenous People's Day,” part of an effort to remind Americans about “social justice,” and what Seattle Councilmember Kshama Sawant called the "ongoing marginalization, discrimination and poverty that indigenous communities face to this day.”
Again, such cultural assaults are nothing new. In 2012, students at Capital High School (CHS) in Charleston, West Virginia, were forced to stand during the Black National Anthem (Lift Every Voice and Sing), played every morning following the true National Anthem and the Pledge of Allegiance. They were forced to do so until Capital High School principal Clinton Giles relented following pressure from parents. One is left to wonder whether anyone ever challenged the rank separatism a different national anthem for black children represents.
Not likely. As with every assault on America’s prevailing culture, those who dare to object are routinely dismissed as bigots, racists, nativists, etc. by those who believe the only remaining cultural imperative is political correctness.
That political correctness has reached absurd levels in our nation’s schools. In 2013, Hunter Spanjer, a three-year-old deaf boy in Lincoln, Nebraska, was bullied by school officials to change his name, because the Sign Exact English (S.E.E.) for “Hunter” looks like a gun, violating the school’s zero-tolerance policy. Hunter was joined by seven-year-old Josh Welch, a Baltimore student suspended for chewing a Pop Tart into the shape of a pistol, representing yet another affront to the leftist doyens who have willingly joined the ranks of their fellow leftists, all of whom are determined to “transform the United States of America” into a socialist utopia.
It is a socialist utopia that requires dismantling our prevailing culture, brick by brick. One that increasingly characterizes the 80% of Americans who believe Judeo-Christian values constitute the foundations of American culture as out of touch at best, or at worst, as our illustrious president once put it, “bitter clingers” who "cling to guns or religion or antipathy toward people who aren't like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations.”
“It is about equity,” said Montgomery County school board member Rebecca Smondrowski, who introduced the resolution to eliminate the holiday calendar references. “I made the motion because, if we are closing for operational reasons, then there should be no need to make reference to religion. That is the most equitable solution that I could see while recognizing that we need to be seriously addressing the criteria for how these things are decided in the future.”
Bet your life those criteria won’t include any deference for our prevailing Judeo-Christian culture. As far as the Left is concerned, such deference requires an offsetting accommodation -- or an abject apology.
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TOP 5 RIGHT OPINION COLUMNS
- Peggy Noonan: The Loneliest President Since Nixon
- Lawrence Kudlow: Marriage Is Pro-Growth
- John C. Goodman: Liberals Already Trying to Re-write the Obama Presidency
- Tony Perkins: New Air Force Rules Cleared for Takeoff
- Star Parker: How Democrats Defeated Themselves
OPINION IN BRIEF
The Gipper: "I know how swiftly storm clouds can gather on a peaceful horizon. The next time a Saddam Hussein takes over Kuwait, or North Korea brandishes a nuclear weapon, will we be ready to respond? In the end, it all comes down to leadership, and that is what this country is looking for now."Columnist Peggy Noonan: "The press generally allows [Barack Obama] to ramble on, rarely fighting back as they did with Nixon. But I have noticed Mr. Obama uses a lot of words as padding. He always has, but now he does it more. There's a sense of indirection and obfuscation. You can say, 'I love you,' or you can say, 'You know, feelings will develop, that happens among humans and it's good it happens, and I have always said, and I said it again just last week, that you are a good friend, I care about you, and it's fair to say in terms of emotional responses that mine has escalated or increased somewhat, and "love" would not be a wholly inappropriate word to use to describe where I'm coming from.' When politicians do this they’re trying to mush words up so nothing breaks through. ... Most of [Obama's] adult life has been a smooth glide. ... Life never came in and gave it to him hard on the jaw. So he really doesn’t know how to get up from the mat. ... He only knows how to do what he’s doing."
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Economist Larry Kudlow: "I worry that we are creating a permanent underclass of poverty. Broken homes and children that have only one parent are at the root of this poverty trap. And when I think of young people from broken families, barely existing economically, this is what I find myself telling them: Please go to school. ... Then get a job. ... And then get married. ... Learn the sacrifices and responsibilities and compromises -- and the happiness. And only then, have a kid. There’s nothing original about this thinking. I call it Kudlow 101. The trouble is, in our society, we are doing this backward. People don’t finish school. Don’t take a job. Don’t get married. But do have kids. Wrong order. Wrong formula. ... While restoring economic growth may be the great challenge of our time, this goal will never be realized until we restore marriage. In short, marriage is pro-growth. We can’t do without it."
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