Right to Opine

Dennis Prager, Townhall — If You’re Ever Murdered, Here’s an Idea

Brilliant thought experiment! Does anyone doubt there would be far more greens murdered than reds?

Thomas Sowell, IBD — Taxing The Rich More Doesn’t Make Society Fairer

Jeffrey Lord, American Spectator — Is Media Matters Obama’s Watergate?

WSJ — Concerned Scientists Reply on Global Warming

Award-winning AGW skeptic scientists fire back. Interestingly—to me, at least—they make one of the exact points I brought up with a friend recently: when you have to constantly change your models to match new data because the original models did not correctly predict the new data your modeling has no proven predictive value. Why in the world would we dismantle our world economy based on models with no demonstrable predictive value?

The Hill — Obama: Payroll tax cut extension will help with higher gas prices

Nonsense. That $40 was already being used in my budget last year—before you killed Keystone. It’s not going to help pay for your new gas hikes because it was already being spent to pay for last year’s gas hikes. Maybe you hadn’t noticed, but gas prices have roughly doubled since you took office. Or maybe I shouldn’t expect you to notice…since I’ve been paying both my gas bill and yours for the last three years.

David Harsanyi, Real Clear Politics — Aren’t High Gas Prices What Democrats Want?

Fox 5 Atlanta — Pizza Chain Clerk Dies From Shooting Wounds

From the pizza chain that has made news more than once for firing delivery drivers who have defended their lives with handguns. Yes, they really would rather have a dead unarmed driver than a live armed one.

Read more…

We must band together and demand that the federal government ban all private ownership of cars! Cars kill!

According to the latest news one person was killed and a few others injured when a BMW going 100mph plowed into a KFC restaurant.

CARS KILL! EVIL CARS!

I mean, really, who needs a car that can go that fast? There simply is no civilian purpose for a car of that caliber horsepower. We must ban private ownership of fast cars! I bet it was even a shiny black sedan with chrome mags and smoked windows like I see the bad guys drive on TV! You know they run over cops, and little kids with puppies, and sweet old ladies, and smelly liberal hippies nice concerned citizens with those monstrous things?

CARS KILL! BIG, FAST, EVIL CARS!

Seriously, who even needs to own a car? When you need to go somewhere you can always take a public train or bus, right? Or you can hire a taxi, eh? They’re always on time and available when you need them. (What? No? Then walk, you buffoon! Serves you right for living in the country instead of with us civilized types in the city.) No one has a right legitimate need to provide their own vehicular self-transportation!

CARS KILL! BIG, FAST, EVIL CARS! LITTLE CARS! ALL CARS!

I bet the driver wasn’t even from the same state! And he probably bought it from some shady guy at one of those car shows sponsored by the NHRA! It’s likely even one of those fast-shifting automatics! Who really needs to change gears that quickly?

NO CARS ACROSS STATE LINES! NO PRIVATE CAR SALES! NO AUTOMATIC TRANSMISSIONS! NOT EVEN PUSH-TO-SHIFT! CARS KILL! BIG, FAST, EVIL CARS! LITTLE CARS! ALL CARS!

We must ban cars, you see? They’re simply not safe. After all, it’s for the children.

[Hey Brady Campaign, Mayor Bloomberg, et al, do you see how moronic you sound?]

James Taranto, WSJ — Social Issues and the Santorum Surge

Michelle Malkin, Townhall — Taxing Medical Progress to Death

Townhall Triple

1. Humberto Fontova gives us a view of the real and lasting legacy of JFK—Mimi Alford, You Poor Thing
2. Derek Hunter on what’s in a label—Why “Progressives” and not “Liberals”?
3. Mike Adams explodes the exception—One Rape Two Victims

NY Times — Higher Crime, Fewer Charges on Indian Land

Which way do you want your pie served? Are Indian reservations autonomous nations—in which case they need to take responsibility for and clean up their own messes—or are they part of America—in which case they need to start paying taxes and participate in the responsibility for us cleaning up their messes. Either way it’s long past time for them to quit playing the victim game and step up to the plate.

Side note: those wonderful tribal native lands that have 2.5 times the violent crime rate of the rest of America? “Gun free” zones. It’s not a coincidence.

LA Times — Unmasking the Academy: Oscar voters overwhelmingly white, male

An L.A. Times study of Oscar voters finds that their demographics are much less diverse than the moviegoing public.

I’m flabbergasted. Really? Who knew?

Fox News — California counties get federally-funded teen mail-order condom program

It’d be best if teens didn’t have sex, but if they’re going to do it anyway, they need to protect themselves.

Gotta love that logic. So next we’re going to use federal tax dollars to buy teens booze and pot—because they’re just going to do it anyway?

Washington Times — Obama’s gas-price spike

Essam Abdallah, Israpundit — The State Dept has embraced the Islamist Agenda at home and abroad

Over the weekend, the Wall Street Journal published an excerpt from Alain de Botton’s upcoming book “Religion for Atheists: A Non-Believers Guide to the Uses of Religion.” If this snippet is representative of the whole it should be an interesting read, particularly for those of us who are not atheists.

Botton recognizes the valuable contribution of religion to society and even acknowledges that secular attempts to replace it have fallen far short—all the while heading down a dead end in an attempt at such a replacement. Seeing the good that comes from some of the trappings of faith—such as a real sense of community and the breaking down of economic and racial divisions—he nevertheless makes the classic atheist mistake of confusing causation and correlation. The societal benefit of “religion” isn’t a result of shared ritual, important and valuable though that may be. It comes from the underlying acknowledgment of a power greater than we, to which we are commonly accountable and without which the ritual is meaningless.

Sadly, he misses the reason secular humanism has failed to replace faith. You can’t replace a personal relationship with God by community meals or any other human construct. The purpose of the Eucharist and Passover is not to create a sense of community, but to remind each of us what God has done for us. Botton’s “Agape Restaurant” tries to reproduce a side effect of the ritual while removing its very core ingredient. Without that direct connection the ritual he so admires is merely a sort of collective psychological masturbation. There may be some pleasure in it, but its benefit is entirely transitory and fleeting. It can never be a substitute for the real thing.

Charles Krauthammer, Washington Post — Overreach: Obamacare vs. the Constitution

WSJ — Birth-Control Mandate: Unconstitutional and Illegal

Victor Davis Hanson, IBD — White House No Longer Regards Illegal Immigration As A Crime

Forbes — Solyndras In the Classroom: How We Vastly Overrate Education

John Ransom, Townhall — If Al Gore Had a Change of Heart; It’s that Big

[Hat tip Hot Air]

Why is it that Democrats seem to see everything–at least everything done by a member of a minority group–through the myopic lens of race?

Senator Harry Reid thinks that his colleague, Marco Rubio of Florida, is a bad Hispanic because he doesn’t toe the line of the overlord party to which all real Hispanics should naturally belong.

So does Reid represent whites? Not this one, I can tell you! With any wisdom on the part of Nevadans, he won’t represent anyone at all after his next ballot appearance.

News flash for Mr. Reid: Rubio doesn’t represent Hispanics. As his office very fittingly responded,

Senator Rubio represents Florida.

The politics of division: classic Leftist tactic of which they never seem to tire.

Hot Air — Megadeth frontman endorses … Rick Santorum?

WSJ — Obama’s War on School Vouchers

Emily Miller, Washington Times — Obama’s fast and furious spin: Sneaky White House budget provisions undermine the Second Amendment

Washington Examiner — OMB director undercuts legal case for Obamacare

Michelle Malkin — Acting White House Budget Director Didn’t Get the Obamacare Memo

US News & World Report — CDC Warns Untreatable Gonorrhea is On the Way

Maybe those Luddite, backwards-thinking right-wing religious freaks were right all along about teaching abstinence. [News flash: even when worn correctly, condoms do not provide complete protection against STDs. Chastity does. How quaint.]

SooperMexican — Obama Campaign Manager Mocks Latinos

[Seen at danieljmitchell.wordpress.com]

Mona Charen, Townhall — The Free Lunch Is Back

WSJ — The Amazing Obama Budget

Michelle Malkin — Reminder: 2013/2014 Budget Projections From Same Administration That Underestimated 2012 Deficits by 138 Percent

Hot Air — OMB chief: The sequester is so important to us that we replaced it, or something

BBC — Mormons baptise parents of Nazi-hunter Simon Wiesenthal

Having apologized for this baptism, the Mormon leadership has highlighted a glaring inconsistency. If proxy baptisms are—as the cult has long taught—an essential part of the LDS beliefs, how can one apologize for them or agree to exclude entire groups based on their ethnic or religious identities? After all, Mormonism is the “correction” to orthodox Christianity and Judaism, right? Either what you are teaching is right, or it has been wrong all along.

Investor’s Business Daily triple:

• Obama’s Chickens Come Home To Roost In Egypt
• With All The Volts Counted, Taxpayers Lose Again
• Walter E. Williams — Black Community Responsible For Its Young People

Carolina Journal — Preschooler’s Homemade Lunch Replaced with Cafeteria “Nuggets”

Viral Footage — Ted Nugent Crushes Piers Morgan

Thomas Sowell, IBD — The Progressive Movement’s Discredited Legacy

Yet another incisive piece. Long and worth the time!

Michelle Malkin — ‘To Stop the Multiplication of the Unfit’

A timely look at the roots of—and ongoing disgrace that is—Planned Parenthood.

Matt Barber, Townhall — Obama’s Anti-Religious Implosion

Robert Kagan, WSJ — Why the World Needs America

Miami Herald — Justice Breyer robbed at West Indies vacation home

It’s a shame he was defenseless. No, wait…Breyer doesn’t believe in the right to self-defense.

NY Times — Greek Parliament Passes Austerity Plan After Riots Rage

The Left in America would do well to pay heed.

Emily Miller, Washington Times — Obama’s dire second-term pitch

Cassy Fiano — Choosing Life and Beating the Odds: Accepting Down Syndrome

Mike Adams, Townhall — Extremism in Defense of Equality

Project Veritas demonstrates again why we need voter ID laws:

Hot Air — Two more scientists change sides in the AGW debate