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 Brent Bozell, Founder and President of the
Media Research CenterSo Much for 'Core Conservative Values' We’re entering the summer vacation season and conservatives continue feeling confident that an electoral wave is going to wash over the opposition come November. Polls show there is a great and growing dissatisfaction with Washington, which is not new, except the face this time around is that of Barack Obama, and the public is revolting over his administration’s incessant attempts to grant the federal government ever more power and resources. But success in the fall is not guaranteed, and even if it ends in a GOP takeover of the House, as many predict, questions remain. Have Republicans learned anything from the disasters of ’06 and ’08? Will Republicans embrace real conservatism and put some real restraints on Obama’s lust for power? Will conservatives be able to make a mark on the country, or will they return to their fecklessness during the Bush years? |
 Cal Thomas, Author, Columnist and Political
AnalystLoose Lips Sink Generals - And Wars The World War II slogan "Loose Lips Sink Ships," which was intended to encourage Americans to keep quiet about any information pertaining to that war, could also apply to modern generals and their staffs. Gen. Stanley McChrystal's mistake was not indulging in -- and allowing his aides to indulge in -- locker room guy talk; his "mistake in judgment" was allowing a writer for the far-left, anti-war magazine, "Rolling Stone" apparently unrestricted and prolonged access to him and his aides. A liberal White House won't allow access by conservative writers to its deliberations and application of its Saul Alinsky-like redistribution of wealth philosophy. |
 George Will, Pulitzer
Prize Winning Columnist, Journalist, and AuthorMcChrystal had to go In 1932, during a lunch in Albany with Rexford Tugwell, an adviser, New York Gov. Franklin Roosevelt paused to take a telephone call from Louisiana Gov. Huey Long. When the call ended, FDR referred to Long as the second-most dangerous man in America. Who, Tugwell asked, is the most dangerous? FDR answered: Douglas MacArthur. As Army chief of staff, MacArthur had just flamboyantly conducted the violent dispersal of the bedraggled "bonus army" in Washington. Nearly 19 years later, he was to become most dangerous to himself, as another commanding general has now done. But Stanley McChrystal is no MacArthur. |
 John Stossel, Consumer
Reporter, Investigative Journalist, Author and Television HostThis Week's Show: Guns Save Lives The Supreme Court is expected to rule on McDonald v Chicago next week, determining whether Chicago -- or any other city -- can establish gun bans without running afoul of the Second Amendment. On my FBN show this week (New Time: Thursday @ 9pm ET), I'll look at what will happen if gun bans are ruled unconstitutional. I know the MSM and most of my neighbors in New York City believe that allowing Americans to carry guns would lead to chaos. I used to believe the same thing. But as I point out in my syndicated column, those predictions don't pan out: Every time a [conceal] carry law was debated, anti-gun activists predicted outbreaks of gun violence after fender-benders, card games and domestic quarrels. What happened? John Lott, in "More Guns, Less Crime," explains that crime fell by 10 percent in the year after the laws were passed. A reason for the drop in crime may have been that criminals suddenly worried that their next victim might be armed. Indeed, criminals in states with high civilian gun ownership were the most worried about encountering armed victims. |
 Jonah Goldberg, Columnist and
Editor of National Review OnlineThe Latest Thievery: Best Friends There's a great moment in the 1993 movie "Searching for Bobby Fischer." Ben Kingsley plays a coach for a 7-year-old chess prodigy named Josh. Kingsley wants the boy to stop playing chess in the park and devote himself completely to Kingsley's tutelage. Josh's mother doesn't like the idea, because she's a jealous guardian of her son's childhood. "Not playing in the park would kill him. He loves it." Kingsley complains that her decision "just makes my job harder." "Then your job's harder," she responds. As the father of a 7-year-old myself, that scene comes to my mind all the time. Most recently, when I read a profoundly depressing story in the New York Times about how "some educators and other professionals who work with children" don't think kids should have best friends. |
 Larry Elder, Syndicated
Radio Talk Show Host and AuthorUS, Mexico Agree To Act on Illegal Immigration --- By Suing Arizona U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder questioned the constitutionality of Arizona's new immigration law -- before admitting he hadn't read it. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton just confirmed that the feds plan to sue to stop the law. And Mexico, whose president said Arizona's law "opens a Pandora's box of the worst abuses in the history of humanity," recently filed a brief in U.S. federal court to side with the law's opponents. Is Arizona's law, scheduled to go into effect next month, an unconstitutional assault on all things moral and decent? How else to describe the over-the-top reaction to -- and the often completely false description of -- the law by people who apparently neither read nor understood it? A New York Times sports writer, for example, said, "The law makes the failure to carry immigration documents a crime and directs the police to question people about their immigration status and demand to see their documents if there is reason to suspect they are illegal." Federal law already requires that noncitizens carry documents to prove that they are in the country legally. Arizona makes failure to do so a state crime. |
 Mark Steyn, Author,
Columnist and Visiting Fellow, Hillsdale CollegeGulf War Three I believe it was Jean Giraudoux who first said, “Only the mediocre are always at their best.” Barack Obama was supposed to be the best, the very best, and yet he is always, reliably, consistently mediocre. His speech on oil was no better or worse than his speech on race. Yet the Obammyboppers who once squealed with delight are weary of last year’s boy band. At the end of the big Oval Office address, Keith Olbermann, Chris Matthews, and the rest of the MSNBC gang jeered the president. For a bewildered Obama, it must have felt like his Ceausescu balcony moment. Had they caught up with him in the White House parking lot, they’d have put him up against the wall and clubbed him to a pulp with Matthews’s no longer tingling leg. For the first time I felt a wee bit sorry for the poor fellow. What had he done to so enrage his full supporting chorus? In the Washington Post, the reaction of longtime Obammysoxer Eugene Robinson was headlined “Obama Disappoints From The Beginning Of His Speech.” |
 Rich Lowry, Columnist and Editor of National
ReviewThe BP Racket The Brits are upset that Pres. Barack Obama has been referring to disgraced oil giant BP as “British Petroleum,” a name it shed long ago. But what else should Obama call an enormous Britain-based petroleum company? To ask such an innocent question betrays ignorance of the ways of Greenberg Quinlan Rosner Research. The marketing gurus at the firm — led by über Democratic pollster Stanley Greenberg — helped conceive and execute one of the most perverse rebrandings of all time for BP. British? So yesterday. Petroleum? Not very green. A logo of a shield emblazoned with “BP”? Disturbingly martial. In 2000, newly christened BP ditched all these negative associations by adopting the slogan “Beyond Petroleum” and emblazoning itself with a sunflower-like logo that could be mistaken for the symbol of the Green party of Canada. |
 Thomas Sowell, Author,
Economist, Francis Boyer Award Winner, and Senior Fellow, Hoover
InstituteA Sad Day The flap about General Stanley McChrystal's "resignation" was nobody's finest hour. But there are some painful lessons in all this that go beyond any of the individuals involved-- the general, the president or any of the officials at the Pentagon or the State Department. What is far more important than all these individuals put together are the lives of the tens of thousands of Americans fighting in Afghanistan. What is even more important is the national security of this country. It is certainly not politic for a general or his staff to express their contempt for civilian authorities publicly. But what is far more important-- from the standpoint of national security-- is whether what those authorities have done deserves contempt. |
 Walter E. Williams, Professor of
Economics, Author and National Fellow, Hoover InstituteGovernment Aggravated Tragedy When Thomas Paine said, "(G)overnment, even in its best state, is but a necessary evil; in its worst state an intolerable one." He added that when it's self-inflicted, "(O)ur calamity is heightened by reflecting that we furnish the means by which we suffer." The Gulf of Mexico disaster has been made worse because of Washington acts similar to Great Britain's tyrannical acts that caused our founders to rise up in rebellion in 1776. Let's look at it. The Navigation Act was that name given to laws that regulated trade and commerce between Great Britain and its colonies. First enacted in 1651, and often amended, the law stipulated that no merchandise was to be carried to Britain or its colonies except by British ships built and manned by British subjects. The act stifled American manufacturing, increased the cost of goods and gave rise to smuggling and increased resentment against the mother country. The purpose of the mercantilist Navigation Act was to protect and enrich British interests. |
 Michael Barone,
Columnist and
Political AnalystPresident Obama took command Barack Obama, as I wrote in my Examiner column today, faced a tough decision on what to do about General Stanley McChrystal and must take command. I think he just did that in his brief and graceful statement announcing that he had accepted McChrystal’s resignation and appointed General David Petraeus to take his place. Obama was on firm ground when he said that the statements of McChrystal and his staffers were improper and unacceptable conduct by military officers; the principle of civilian control of the military is hugely important, and Obama asserted it forcefully. Obama also sent a message to other appointees: no more public disagreements and leaked misgivings. There must be “unity of effort . . . across our national security team.” This was a message to, among others, one of the men standing behind him, Vice President Joe Biden. There is much that remains to be done to gain success—Obama still won’t use the word victory—in Afghanistan. But this was a strong performance, made by a president who was suddenly forced to make a binary choice under terrific pressure. Good for him. |
 John Fund, Award Winning
Columnist, Author and Political AnalystJ.D. Huckster In his August Senate primary against John McCain, former Arizona Congressman J.D. Hayworth touts himself as "Mr. Conservative." But in 2007, after losing his House seat the previous year, the former talk show host rented himself out as a pitchman in a TV infomercial recruiting viewers to spend at least $1,000 for "seminars" on how to apply for federal grants they wouldn't have to pay back. Now the Florida-based firm that produced the infomercial, National Grants Conferences, is facing bankruptcy. The company racked up hundreds of consumer complaints that led many Better Business Bureau chapters around the country to give it an "F" rating. "A grant expert tells us that the information they're trying to sell you is available for free -- on the Internet or here, at the Pima County Public Library," reported KVOA-TV of Tucson last year. A Census Bureau spokesman characterized the NGC infomercial as "very misleading." One of its claims was that some $384 billion in federal grants were available to individuals. In fact, most federal grants are aimed at small businesses and non-profit applicants and are nearly impossible for individuals to get. |
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