The Council Has Spoken!! This Weeks' Watcher's Council Results.

The Council has spoken, the votes have been cast, and the results are in for this week's Watcher's Council match up.

“The Western world has lost its civil courage, both as a whole and separately, in each country, each government, each political party and of course in the United Nations. Such a decline in courage is particularly noticeable among the ruling groups and the intellectual elite, causing an impression of loss of courage by the entire society. -Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

Quis costodiet ipsos custodies? (Who will guard the guardians?) - Juvenal

There is no crueler tyranny than that which is perpetuated under the shield of law and in the name of justice. -Charles de Montesquieu




This week's winner,Joshuapundit's -The UN Reveals Its Cowardice And Hypocrisy By Attacking The Catholic Church concerns the recent attack on the Catholic Church by an influential UN committee which demanded that the Church make some changes in its religious beliefs to suit their notion of political correctness. I noticed some unusual things about that,including a certain 300 pound gorilla in the room that was curiously not mentioned at all. Here's a slice:

A UN Human Right commission has attacked the Catholic Church and the Vatican concerning its canon law, policies and teachings.

The report, published today by the UN Committee on the Rights of the Child harshly criticized the Church for its teachings on abortion, contraception and homosexuality as well as the Vatican's policies on dealing with pedophile priests in a report whose tone can only be defined as frenzied and aggressive.

The UN Committee on the Rights of the Child is one of 10 U.N. bodies that monitor implementation of the core U.N. human rights treaties, and its 18 members include academics, sociologists and child development specialists from around the globe.

The treaty the committee is supposed to be monitoring is the U.N. Convention on the Rights of the Child, the key U.N. treaty on child protection, which the Holy See ratified in 1990. Apparently the committee simply decided to get into issues of abortion, contraception and homosexuality, none of which are covered by the treaty just because...or perhaps at the urging of various pro-abortion and pro Homosexual marriage activists.

The report blasted the Vatican and claims that it "systematically" adopted policies that allowed priests to molest children over decades, and it called on the Holy See to open its files on pedophiles and bishops who concealed the abuse.

"The committee is gravely concerned that the Holy See has not acknowledged the extent of the crimes committed, has not taken the necessary measures to address cases of child sexual abuse and to protect children, and has adopted policies and practices which have led to the continuation of the abuse by, and the impunity of, the perpetrators," the report said.

That would be news to the almost 400 priests that have been defrocked and tossed out of the Church, the ones who justifiably have done or are doing jail time and the Church officials who paid out hundreds of millions of dollars in compensation to the victims, leaving several dioceses in the US either bankrupt or teetering on the edge.

But wait, there's more. The committee calls on the Church to change its policies to allow abortion and contraception, make sex education, including access to information about contraception and abortion mandatory in Catholic schools and to accept gay marriage and same sex adoption.

Now, I am not a Catholic, and to be honest, I have my own issues with the Catholic Church as an institution based on its history, its policies toward the State of Israel and other topics we need not delve into here. But I don't have to be Catholic to recognize the abject cowardice and hypocrisy on display here.

While I might not agree totally with the Church's stance on abortion, it is the supreme irony to me that a committee charged with monitoring the rights of children would issue a report biased towards abrogating the one right that is the source of all the others - the right to life.

By demanding that the Catholic Church change its religious doctrines on homosexuality, contraception and abortion, the UN committee is essentially saying that the Catholic Church is to be singled out from all other religions as one that sanctions bigotry, intolerance and hatred.And here I thought Jews and Israel had that particular space reserved where the UN was concerned!

But let me see..is the Catholic Church the sole offender here? Or even the worst one?

Much more at the link, including some fun graphics.

In our non-Council category, the winner was Michael Totten with another excellent article in his series on Cuba, The Truth About Che Guevara submitted by The Razor . If you're unfamiliar about whom Che really was or simply are sick and tired of seeing the spoiled children of the middle class iconizing him, this article is especially for you.

Here are this week’s full results. Due to the bad weather and other circumstances, we had a couple of members unable to vote. Both Bookworm Room and The Right Planet were unable to vote this week, but neither was subject to the normal 2/3 vote penalty.

Council Winners

• *First place with 4 votes! -Joshuapundit-The UN Reveals Its Cowardice And Hypocrisy By Attacking The Catholic Church


• Second place with 2 votes –The Independent Sentinel – Common Core Is Rewriting History Like a Tin Pot Dictatorship


• Third place with 1 2/3 votes – Nice Deb – ACLJ Head Says Newly Discovered IRS Emails Are A “Smoking Gun” – Calls For Special Prosecutor


• Fourth place with 1 1/3 votes –Simply Jews – John Kerry's "stand with Ukraine's people" and the staggering ineptness of State Department


• Fifth place with 1 vote –VA Right! - Battered Obama Supporter Syndrome – B.O.S.S.


• Sixth place *t* with 2/3 vote – Bookworm Room – Conservatives should take a page out of the Islamists’ book and disavow bad actors marching under their banner


• Sixth place *t* with 2/3 vote –The Colossus of Rhodey – A Kickstarter idea which is not only unoriginal, but based on pure media bias


• Sixth place *t* with 2/3 vote – The Noisy Room – Idaho Opens the Door to Martial Law and Gun Confiscation – the Nullification of the Posse Comitatus Act


• Sixth place *t* with 2/3 vote –Liberty's Spirit – When told they can't use the word "bitch," watch some male heads explode


• Seventh place *t* with 1/3 vote –GrEaT sAtAn”S gIrLfRiEnD – Code Name: Johnny Walker

Non-Council Winners

• First place with 3 votes! – Michael Totten –The Truth About Che Guevara submitted by The Razor


• Second place *t* with 2 1/3 votes –Mark Steyn – America Takes Early Retirement submitted by Joshuapundit


• Second place *t* with 2 1/3 votes–The Elder Of Ziyon-EoZ posters for "Apartheid Week" submitted by Bookworm Room


• Third place with 1 2/3 votes -The Sad Red Earth – Academic Boycotts and Re-Colonization by Theory submitted by Simply Jews


• Fourth place with 1 vote -Diana West –A Nation of Laws, Not Men, Must Impeach Obama submitted by The Noisy Room


• Fifth place *t* with 2/3 vote- Small Wars Journal – General Patton as a Counterinsurgent submitted by GrEaT sAtAn”S gIrLfRiEnD


• Fifth place *t* with 2/3 vote-Sipsey Street Irregulars -An Open Letter to Michael Lawlor, the CT Governor's Hatchet Man on Firearms Confiscation. "How's your KGB file hangin', Mike?" submitted by Nice Deb


• Fifth place *t* with 2/3 vote-Victor Davis Hanson – An Immigration Morality Tale submitted by Watcher


• Sixth place *t* with 1/3 vote -George Scott Reports – Veteran Texas House Lawmaker Eviscerates Pay To Play Slates As Destructive To GOP Future; Uses Schofield’s Race In District 132 As Example submitted by Rhymes with Right


• Sixth place *t* with 1/3 vote-Frontpage Mag – Union Gangsters: John Sweeney submitted by The Right Planet

See you next week! Don't forget to tune in on Monday AM for this week's Watcher's Forum, as the Council and their invited guests take apart one of the provocative issues of the day and weigh in...don't you dare miss it. And don't forget to like us on Facebook and follow us Twitter..'cause we're cool like that!