Coverup- White House Picks Obama Partisan To Head 'Probe' Into IRS Tea Party Targeting

 

The Obama Justice Department has finally picked someone to to lead what's supposed to be an investigation into the use of the IRS to suppress conservative political activity and target conservative donors.

And surprise, surprise! It's Barbara Kay Bosserman, a trial lawyer in the Justice Department whose an Obama donor as well as a hardline Obama partisan and Democrat. She's listed as having donated more than $6,000 to the president’s 2008 and 2012 campaigns, as well as several hundred dollars to the national Democratic Party.

Needless to say,Reps. Darrell Issa and Regulatory affairs subcommittee Chairman Jim Jordan are livid.

“The department has created a startling conflict of interest,” Mr. Issa and Mr. Jordan said in a letter sent Wednesday and reviewed by The Washington Times. “It is unbelievable that the department would choose such an individual to examine the federal government’s systematic targeting and harassment of organizations opposed to the president’s policies.”

No kidding. After it was discovered (after numerous outright lies and stonewalling) that the IRS had been used for partisan purposes to deliberately target conservative groups for delays an denial of 501C status as well as to audit and harass conservative donors, President Obama promised that the FBI and the Justice Department would conduct a full investigation.

Of course, eight months later absolutely nothing's been done and there have been no results, and the FBI and Justice Department are refusing to give him any information at all. In fact, the FBI is actually using the fact that there's supposedly an ongoing investigation gong on as an excuse to refuse to release any of the documents Issa has asked them for.

And to add to this travesty, the Justice Department is claiming that their policies forbid them from considering an employees political affiliation when giving out assignments.If anyone seriously believes that if Barbara Kay Bosserman were a Republican who donated to Romney, she would have had any chance at all of getting the job, you probably still think that if you like your health insurance you can keep it.

Issa and Jordan warned Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. that the refusal FBI to cooperate could rise “to the level of criminal obstruction” of Congress’. oversight responsibilities. In response, the Justice Department promised to at least brief congressional investigators on the status of the FBI investigation, but then refused to follow through.

A good example of the4 level of IRS corruption we're talking about here is a brief response to Rep. Issa concerning a different letter by Stephen D. Kelly, assistant director of the FBI’s office of congressional affairs:

Catherine Engelbrecht, a chief organizer of King Street Patriots, said she felt the government was targeting her after the FBI made repeated inquiries about someone who attended a King Street Patriots meeting.

In its letter to Mr. Issa, the FBI said it contacted the King Street Patriots after receiving a complaint in 2010 that a member of the group had said he wanted to start a revolution and had visited a firing range.

Mr. Kelly said FBI agents checked with the group, which said the man attended a training session but was asked to leave. Mr. Kelly said the group provided an address the man had given, but that address turned out to be false. When the FBI ultimately tracked down the man, he “indicated that his remarks were made in jest.”

“The King Street Patriots were questioned concerning their limited relationship with the individual in question,” Mr. Kelly said in the FBI letter.

But that doesn’t jibe with Ms. Engelbrecht’s recollection, nor with the paper record that was released. In a heavily redacted copy of one of the FBI’s contact reports, which Ms. Engelbrecht obtained, the FBI makes no mention of the individual Mr. Kelly said the agency was investigating. Instead, the report lists the contact as part of “community outreach.”

Ms. Engelbrecht said the FBI made a half-dozen inquiries over the course of a year. She said she also fielded inquiries at her business from the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives; faced an audit by the Occupational Safety and Health Administration of Engelbrecht Manufacturing; and underwent an IRS audit of her personal tax returns.

She's by no means the only one.

Rep. Issa and his colleagues in the House are never going to get a straight answer on anything from the Obama Administration.They need to get the Select Committee going and appoint a Special Prosecutor to investigate this and the myriad other scandals swarming around the Obama White House like flies around manure.

Otherwise, nothings going to happen.

The Israeli Knesset Shoots Down Labor's Attempt to Give Israel Away

The Israeli Knesset shot down a bill this week presented by Israel's Leftist Labor Party that would have prevented Israel from ever annexing any land unless the Palestinians okay it.

Labor MK Hilik Bar and his friends were somehow unable to comprehend that a law like this would literally hold Israel hostage to the demands of the Palestinian Authority and their new partners, Hamas.

"You are reaching a moment of truth, in which you have to look in the mirror of history and realize that we need to separate from the Palestinians," opposition leader Isaac Herzog (Labor) said to the coalition. "If you don't take this opportunity now, history will judge you, because we will become an isolated, binational state."

Actually, Herzog's plan would definitely create an isolated state, and one with indefensible borders at the mercy of Israel's enemies.

The bill was voted down with 44 opposed, including MKs from Tzipi Livni's Hatnua and Yesh Atid; only 25 MKs voted in favor, which pretty much means Labor, the ultra-Left Meretz and maybe some of the Arab Mks.

Deputy Minister for Liaison with the Knesset Ofir Akunis responded to Bar's proposal, saying that the government is in the middle of negotiations and will bring whatever agreement it reaches to the Knesset for approval.

However, Akunis added, the legislature cannot decide the guidelines for talks with the PLO.

"Why do you have such passion to give away parts of our homeland?" Akunis asked Bar.

Here's the easy answer. It's a mixture of self-loathing and stupidity.

Happy 70th,Jimmy Page!

Happy Birthday, Elvis..

"The King is dead, but he's not forgotten..."

And never will be.

Chris Christie - Has The Hindenburg Crashed?

New Jersey Governor Chris Christie appears to be in some real trouble.

A couple of readers have asked for my take on this, but I was pretty much content to leave it alone in favor of stories and outside projects I felt were a lot more important then some tale of petty political revenge. That was especially true since my views on Governor Christie, especially as a presidential candidate are pretty well known and have been for some time.

But that was before I found out that these antics actually resulted in someone's death.That puts this in a whole other realm.

What happened here is that one of Governor Christie's top aides ordered the closing of the George Washington Bridge as a retaliation against Fort Lee’s Democratic mayor, Mark Sokolich for not endorsing Christie in his re-election run for governor last year. That resulted in a 4 hour traffic delay, something Christie was pretty callous and disinterested about at the time.

This would have stayed hidden except that e-mails surfaced between Bridget Anne Kelly, Christie’s deputy chief of staff for legislative and intergovernmental affairs and David Wildstein, a long time Christie aide and New Jersey's Port Authority Director of Interstate Projects. check this out:



Unfortunately, the fall out wasn't just political.A woman died because of the politically motivated delays while waiting for EMS techs to get to her location through the traffic. As one of my attorney friends tells me, this is known as involuntary manslaughter and he'd be very surprised if the woman's family wasn't fielding non-stop calls from Jersey attorneys seeking to represent them in a lawsuit.

Christie originally said his office had nothing to do with the closures, something we now know was, well, pretty much one of those politically expedient falsehoods we've gotten used to in the Age of Obama.

After being caught out on that one, he was forced to talk to the media today. The new line? He apologized, but "Hey I didn't know nuthin'." He claims that he hardly ever even spoke to David Wildstein, someone he's been close friends with since high school and whom he personally appointed to the post of Port Authority Director.And now, since he's apologized, he wants us all to just move on, nothing to see here.

So, what does all this tell us about Governor Christie?

Not too much I wasn't aware of before, but this episode underlines it nicely.

For one thing, with him its all about theatrics and plausible deniability. Even if a few top aides went rogue and did this on their own (an unlikely story, but let's go with it) the governor is either guilty of gross incompetence and lousy judgement if he's telling the truth, and petty, Obama-like use of government for political revenge if he isn't and was in on this from the jump.The George Washington Bridge is not some small town two laner but a major commuter and commercial artery. A four hour closure is something that ordinarily would merit top priority from a governor, especially in a small state like New Jersey - unless it was something he okayed personally. If he didn't, than he obviously wasn't doing his job and was focused elsewhere, something we've also become accustomed to in the Age of Obama.Andthe fact that this stunt in the name of politics resulted in someone's death also strikes a familiar note..sort of a small scale version of Benghazi or Fast and Furious.

Obviously, there's are good reasons the governor and President Obama get along so well.



As I wrote elsewhere, the governor agrees with President Obama on all the major issues anyway. He's anti  Second Amendment, (New Jersey has some of the most restrictive gun laws in the nation), pro   amnesty for illegal migrants, pro abortion on demand, and on board for pretty much everything else that's part of Obama's agenda except the sanctity of the public employee unions. And even that was limited to a couple of famous YouTube clips. He even agrees with the president on ObamaCare, agreeing to accept Obamacare funding to expand Medicaid and reversing himself after declaring a year ago that it would be fiscally unsound.

And speaking of things fiscal, for all the rep Christie has as a fiscal conservative, New Jersey's  official unemployment rate is still 8.4% (the real U-6 rate is over 10%), it's one of the highest taxed states in the country, and under Christie's stewardship, the state's debt rose by $6 billion in fiscal 2012, up 9 percent, to about $71 billion. last year ,with Moody's downgrading the  state's bond outlook from stable to negative.

In other words, he's pretty much similar to Barack Obama  with less of a tan and a slightly bigger resume.

In the event the GOP manages to strong arm the party's base and make him the 2016 Republican nominee, he'd be a real waste of effort - almost certainly a losing candidate because the base would stay home again, but an absolute nightmare in office if he managed to win somehow.

So if this scandal manages to end his presidential aspirations, consider that a blessing in disguise.

AG Holder's New School Discipline Diktats: "Stop Targeting Blacks And Hispanics":

Attorney General Eric Holder has a new crusade.He says that schools discriminate against blacks and Latinos when it comes to meting out discipline in public schools, and he wants it stopped.

The Justice Department and the Department of Education have issued new guidelines for disciplining students in public schools, and claim that their internal investigations show racial bias.

The wide-ranging series of guidelines issued today in essence threatens schools with strong action if they are seen as 'not adhering to standards of fairness and equity in student discipline.'

"In our investigations, we have found cases where African-American students were disciplined more harshly and more frequently because of their race than similarly situated white students," the Justice Department and Education Department said in the letter to school districts. "In short, racial discrimination in school discipline is a real problem."

Could it maybe have something to do with a higher percentage of black students constituting major discipline problems perhaps? Nah, couldn't be. Must be racism.

According to government civil rights data collection from 2011-2012, black students make up 15% of the population of America's public schools. Yet they were more than three times as likely as white students students to get expelled or suspended.They made up more than a third of students suspended once, 44 percent of those suspended more than once and more than a third of students expelled. According to one study I saw, blacks were ten times more likely to get suspended or expelled than Asian students.

More than half of students involved in school-related arrests or referred to law enforcement were Hispanic or black, according to the data.Racism obviously. Although not in California or some other jurisdictions, where the huge Los Angeles Unified School District has a policy now of not suspending students for what's called 'willful defiance'..in other words, repeatedly disrupting class, creating a climate where learning is impossible and refusing to pay any attention to a teacher's efforts to stop it. This has now gone statewide with pending legislation, AB40, that's going to make it fairly difficult for a public school to suspend or expel any student. This too was largely sparked by complaints that black and Hispanic students are being 'suspended too often'.

There's teeth in the new policies too. For instance, in Brevard County Florida, where the public schools suspend black students about two-and-a-half times as often as its white students, the NAACP has filed a complaint against the school district and the Justice Department and The U.S. Department of Education are helping them proceed.

Holder said in a statement that he blames the high rates of black suspension and expulsion on "zero-tolerance" policies that too often inject the criminal justice system into school discipline. The zero tolerance policies he's talking about are mandated set penalties for things like truancy, drugs on campus, or carrying a weapon, and our attorney general thinks it's time that stopped.

It used to be that trouble makers guilty of multiple offenses were sent to a specific school set up for exactly that purpose and placed under stricter discipline to both benefit themselves and the other children who actually wanted to learn. That sort of common sense arrangement is a thing of the distant past.

While the new Obama guidelines are said to be exactly that, they're clearly a warning and will be taken as such by the schools. So if your child is assaulted, bullied or cheated out of the education you paid for by someone's else's activities in the classroom and the perpetrator just happens to be black or Hispanic, don't even bother complaining, even if you yourself are black or Hispanic, let alone white or Asian. Ditto if you're a teacher,especially in one of the large urban politically correct school districts.

Or to put it another way, is there a reason you haven't started homeschooling or put your kids in private school yet?

FOX's Roger Ailes Talks Back - Great Interview!

 

The Hollywood Reporter has a revealing and yes, funny interview with FOX news head Roger Ailes,arguably one of the most influential people in news today and certainly one of the most successful. Here's a slice:

How long had you been planning the changes to the primetime block?

I'd been thinking about it for a year. CNN and MSNBC, our primary competitors, are trying to figure out how to beat us. There are some good, smart people at those networks, and even occasionally a blind pig finds an acorn. I never want to get caught with not expecting something. And I believed, in some cases, we needed to freshen up a little bit. Audiences are shifting. Platforms are shifting. Ages are shifting. It's better to be in charge of change than to have to react to change.

Megyn Kelly, a ratings boon to primetime, has been a lightning rod since moving to 9 p.m. What do you think of the attention she got for saying, "For all you kids watching at home, Santa just is white"?

I don't like [the uproar]. She was joking. She's talking about Santa Claus, for Christ's sake. But the people who are jealous of her, who want to bring down or hurt Fox News, see an opportunity. If they have to beat up somebody as talented as Megyn Kelly on Santa Claus, they're pathetic.

Other people in cable news have said things in the past few months that cost them their jobs. What did you think of MSNBC's Alec Baldwin experiment?

They dodged a bullet. They put him in there, and they would've had to fire him for no ratings. He gave them a reason to get fired. He appears to be angry and explosive, so that was essentially bound to happen. If somebody wants to book Alec Baldwin on one of our shows, and he wants to come on and talk to our people and say what he wants, I don't care. We would question him on his choice of words. He's sort of a ready-fire-aim kind of guy as opposed to ready-aim-fire.

Among your competitors, is there any talent you particularly admire?

I think Rachel Maddow has been a surprise to a lot of people. She wouldn't really work at this network because she wouldn't even come in the door, but on a personal level, I like her. I don't want to hurt her career, so I won't say we get along, but I've had dialogue with her, and she's very smart. She has adapted well to the television medium.

What do you think of Jeff Zucker saying CNN is now focused on making shows and moving away from newscasts?

I'm actually thrilled. MSNBC has [already] announced they're out of the news business. They have several different hosts, but it's always the same show: Republicans are no good. The NBC News people won't get caught dead on MSNBC. They could have a traffic accident in front of the window, and they wouldn't cover it. For CNN to also throw in the towel and announce they're out of the news business is quite interesting. That means Fox has won the cable news wars. [Zucker] had a big hit with a whale one night [the documentary Blackfish]. I guess he's going to do whales a lot. If I were Discovery, I'd be worried.

Fox News always has made a distinction between the news and more opinionated programming. Does Megyn's move change the way those are defined?

I think our [viewers] are adults. They know the difference between news and programming. I grew up in the era when Dan Rather hated Richard Nixon. He was a newsman, but you knew what his opinion was. Walter Cronkite came back from Vietnam and offered his opinion on the war. I know what the news shows are, and I know what the programming shows are, and there's a difference.

How long will Bill O'Reilly continue his show?

You can never tell. If you go back pretty far to Steve Allen and Jack Paar, they had a very short life span. Mike Wallace did it for 40 years. It's a very individual thing. I think Bill can last as long as he wants because he's driven by organic energy. He likes money, but he's not doing it for the money. He probably likes power, but he's not doing it for the power. He's driven by things that he sees that are not right from his point of view. If his ratings were to go way down, or if he thought he'd burned out or didn't have anything else to say, those are reasons to retire, but he is still killing everybody in the ratings.

Do you have any interest to work with Bill on other projects, like the assassination histories he's done with National Geographic?

I do. I would like News Corp to form a history channel and let Bill work with me. I'd run it for him because I'd like history done correctly for a change. They're not teaching the kids the real stuff. I think there is room for another channel, and I would love to do it.

Why bring back Sarah Palin just a few months after not renewing her contract?

The only two people I knew who got worse press than her were Richard Nixon and George W. Bush -- some of it unfairly, much of it unfair to her family. She's recognizable, she's attractive, and she still has the message of stop raising taxes. The Tea Party started as a group that [the government] could make go home to bake meatloaf at any point in the last three years by simply doing two things: Stop raising taxes and stop stealing their money. Congress can't stop spending money. I'm not a defender of everything she says. I don't hear everything she says. But I know she represents a certain group of people who rose up against their own party, which you rarely see. I probably hired her back, if you really want to get to the bottom of it, to give her a chance to say her piece and piss off the people that wanted her dead.

What has having a teenager at home taught you about how younger people are consuming media?

The television set means nothing to him, other than he can get Netflix and a movie he wants. … A major sporting event, maybe, but there's no, "It's 8 o'clock -- time to watch something!" And that generation has taught themselves to watch movies on a telephone. I find that annoying and too small.

Does the move away from TV concern you?

The real concern I have is the fragmentation. Twitter is a wonderful device. And I call it a device, but there are people that are addicted to it now. That's not good. You're really not very interesting using only so many letters. If you're in the four-letter category for Scrabble, it's a long damn game. I don't have the problem with it that a lot of older people do, but I worry that digital media has become too much of their life.

You’re the subject of an unauthorized book, for which you declined to participate. Are you doing anything to counteract any negative elements?

Bette Davis said -- I think it was Bette Davis -- "What other people think of me is none of my business." Attacking me and Fox News is nothing new -- it's a cottage industry. What's new is that Random House refused to fact check the content with me or Fox News; that tells you everything you need to know about this book and its agenda.

Lots more at the link.

Watcher's Council Nominations - Global Warming Edition

 

Welcome to the Watcher's Council, a blogging group consisting of some of the most incisive blogs in the 'sphere, and the longest running group of its kind in existence. Every week, the members nominate two posts each, one written by themselves and one written by someone from outside the group for consideration by the whole Council.Then we vote on the best two posts, with the results appearing on Friday morning.

Council News:

This week, Ask Marion, The Blue Ridge Forum, The Pirate's Cove and The Independent Sentinel earned honorable mention status with some great articles.

You can, too! Want to see your work appear on the Watcher’s Council homepage in our weekly contest listing? Didn’t get nominated by a Council member? No worries.

Simply head over to Joshuapundit and post the title a link to the piece you want considered along with an e-mail address ( which won't be published) in the comments section no later than Monday 6PM PST in order to be considered for our honorable mention category. Then return the favor by creating a post on your site linking to the Watcher’s Council contest for the week when it comes out Wednesday morning

Simple, no?

It's a great way of exposing your best work to Watcher’s Council readers and Council members. while grabbing the increased traffic and notoriety. And how good is that, eh?

So, let's see what we have this week....

Council Submissions

• Liberty's Spirit – New York City: Melting Pot or Plantation


• The Noisy Room – New York Gets The Communist Leader It Deserves


• Rhymes With Right – Archdiocese Of New York Explains What's Wrong With ObamaCare Birth Control Mandate Intransigence


• Joshuapundit-Al-Qaeda Wins A Major Victory Over The Iraqi Army


• Simply Jews – PressTV, Gordon Duff and Quenelle


• The Political Commentator – An Amsterdam good time is giving beer to alcoholics!


• The Colossus of Rhodey – Merely saying "I'm not gay" isn't enough


• GrEaT sAtAn”S gIrLfRiEnD – Losing Iraq


• The Right Planet – All Incandescent Light Bulbs Declared ‘Enemies of the State’


• Bookworm Room – Solidarity with the nuns -- a tipping point moment?


• Nice Deb – Video: Priests for Life Wins Emergency Relief From HHS mandate


• The Glittering Eye -Chicago’s Public Pension Problem


• VA Right! - Obamacare Targets Women: Pregnant Women Forced to Pay In Full BEFORE Delivery


• The Razor – The Entitlement Mindset


• The Mellow Jihadi – Business ethics & credibility BZ…

Honorable Mentions

• Ask Marion - Election 2014 and 2016… All Sewn-Up or the Battle(s) for Americas Life


• Blue Ridge Forum - Stop The President’s Lawlessness Before It Stops Us


• The Pirate's Cove - Good Grief: Cold Weather Events More Likely Due To “Climate Change”


• The Independent Sentinel - Obama Administration’s Hostile Takeover of the Little Sisters of the Poor

Non-Council Submissions

• Sandra Stotsky/WSJ – Common Core Doesn't Add Up to STEM Success submitted by Liberty's Spirit


• Matthew Vadum/FrontPage Mag –Comrade De Blasio Takes Over submitted by The Noisy Room


• Red State – Why Faith submitted by Rhymes with Right


• Powerline – Rachel Maddow Is Crazy, Too submitted by Joshuapundit


• The Sad Red Earth – Wrong on Both Counts: Academic Boycotts and Israel submitted by Simply Jews


• American Thinker -Leftist Jew-Hatred: From Marx to Dieudonne submitted by The Political Commentator


• National Affairs – The Brooklyn Burkeans submitted by The Colossus of Rhodey


• War On The Rocks – It's an Anbar Thing submitted by GrEaT sAtAn”S gIrLfRiEnD


• Bleeding Heart Libertarians – Immigration, Eugenics, and the Minimum Wage submitted by The Right Planet


• Andrew McCarthy/NRO-Down the Times' Benghazi Rabbit Hole submitted by Bookworm Room


• John Sexton, The Conversation -Now It Can Be Told: Obamacare Paves the Way for Single Payer submitted by Nice Deb


• Sean Davis/The Federalist – "Sorry, Comrade, But You Didn’t Just Discover The Secret To Making Communism Work" submitted by The Glittering Eye


• The Other McCain – Al Gore and the Big Climate Lie submitted by VA Right!


• Megan McArdle –Another Problem Obamacare Won't Solve: Health Costs submitted by The Razor


• JustOneMinute – Obama Quit In Afghanistan submitted by Watcher

Enjoy! And don't forget to like us on Facebook and follow us Twitter..'cause we're cool like that!

It's Official - The FBI Drops Law Enforcement From Its Primary Mission

The Federal Bureau of Investigation has made a major change in what it considers it's primary mission:

 

The change was first noticed this year by Kel McClanahan, a Washington-based national security lawyer.
McClanahan noticed the change while reviewing a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request from the FBI and the FBI fact sheet accompanies every FOIA response.

This apparently reflects a noticeable change in agency policy in the last few years. Investigations of white collar crime, kidnapping and other federal offenses and an increase is counterterrorism and surveillance. In fact, according to a 2010 Inspector's General report, between 2001 and 2009, the FBI doubled the amount of agents concentrating on counterterrorism.

Needless to say, the emphasis on counterterrorism and national security reduces FBI manpower and resources available to fight crime.There's also the problem of multiple agencies like the NSA and DHS duplicating the FBI's efforts and getting in each others way...which was supposed to be what establishing the Department of Homeland Security was supposed to be about in the first place, wasn't it?

At least the FBI is finally being honest about it.

Update: The Latest On Turkey

 

The crisis in Turkey continues to foment, as Turkey's Islamist leader Tayyip Erdoğan continues to try and quash massive corruption scandals reaching the highest levels of his government, including Erdoğan himself.

Major unrest broke out in several Turkish cities,especially in Istanbul, where police used tear gas, water cannons, batons and plastic bullets to break up anti-Erdoğan demonstrations.



As I reported previously, the rumor that Erdoğan had summarily removed prosecutors investigating the massive scandals and replaced them with Erdoğan loyalists is unfortunately true. Public prosecutor Muammer Akkas, who was overseeing the inquiry, was removed from the case. In a letter to the Turkish media he accused the government of actively hindering the investigation. "The judiciary was subjected to open pressure by the police force, and the execution of court orders was obstructed," he said.

What he was referring to was the wholesale transfer of police officers who were involved in the investigation and their replacement by cops loyal to Erdoğan and the AKP.That included Istanbul police chief Hüseyin Çapkin.

These new police officers refused to comply with the prosecutor's orders to take more suspects into custody, a list of 41 high-ranking businessmen and officials, according to the Turkish daily Hürriyet.There's also evidence that the Erdoğan informed the suspects which gave them an opportunity to destroy evidence or even to leave Turkey for awhile until the scandals blow over.

Erdoğan was forced to fire four high ranking cabinet ministers after their sons were arrested following a long-running investigation into allegations of corruption. Along with 22 others they're awaiting trial on charges including bribery, selling government assets at deep discounts to well-connected companies and illicit money transfers to Iran,among other things.

Erdoğan and his own family are implicated at well in a scandal concerning TÜRGEV, an Islamic educational foundation where Erdoğan's son Bilal sits on the board.The foundation claims they used money they received tax free to build dormitories for students,when in fact the money came from the Fatih district municipality, which is headed by an AKP mayor who's now also been jailed. What Erdoğan’s family did with the money they claimed was spent on the dormitory is unknown.

TÜRGEV is also suspect for receiving state-owned land free of charge or at a much lower price than the land was worth.

And Bilal Erdoğan is also implicated in the suspicious land worth $1 billion belonging to the Etiler Police Academy that was sold to a company called Bosphorus without a public tender for a giveaway price of $460 million. Questions about whom exactly is involved with Bosphorus or what Bilal's part in the transaction were have yet to be answered.

Today, Erdoğan announced yet another purge of Turkey's police force, with 350 police officers removed from their positions in the capital of Ankara on Tuesday and police commanders ousted from their posts in at least nine other cities around the country, the government Anadolu news agency reported.

According to the Turkish press, most of the police officers affected were working in departments that battle terrorism, smuggling and organized crime. The ones who weren't fired outright were reassigned to police traffic.

Another thing most of these police had in common were connections to Fethullah Gülen and the Hizmet movement, former Islamist allies of Erdoğan and the AKP but now a faction that has allied itself with other groups opposing Erdoğan's increasingly authoritarian and dictatorial rule. The break occurred after Erdoğan began working to eliminate the group's dershanes, prep schools that serve as a major source of money recruitment and influence for the Gülenists and ousting Gülenists in power.

The latest challenge to Erdoğan comes from two fronts. First, opposition calls to re-try members of the Turkish military who were convicted on trumped up evidence of plotting a coup against Erdoğan.

Erdoğan and the AKP essentially purged the military, which constitutionally was charged with protecting Turkey's secular government since the time of Ataturk and the founding of the modern Turkish republic after WWI. Two years ago, almost two hundred high ranking military officers and others, including journalists were convicted in what amounted to show trials of plotting to overthrow the government. The stench was so bad that a whole cadre of Turkish officers, including the commanders in chief of the army, navy and air force resigned.

Erdoğan, faced with calls for retrials by the opposition is said to be considering the idea of retrial, especially since thanks to his 'reforms' AKP loyalists now control the judiciary as well.But he faces a slight problem here. Erdoğan's standard line lately has been that the trials were conducted by his former allies in Hizmet. But he championed the trials, signed off on the outcomes and approved of the results.

So Erdoğan would be faced with admitting to the nation that he approved and supported something he knew was false if the officers are acquitted, or need to cease blaming Gülen and Hizmat if the verdicts stand.

The other problem Erdoğan has to deal with is a lot more basic. The Turkish economy is finally on the skids as the huge credit bubble that supported it is finally deflating, and the huge current-account deficit on large gas and oil imports is beginning to be felt. meanwhile, the Turkish stock market is plummeting and the Lira's value versus the dollar had almost been cut in half while th ecost of staples in increasing steadily.

Erdoğan and the AKP's major claim to power have been clean government and a growing economy. Both appear to be inflated and on shaky ground.

Liz Cheney Drops Out Of Wyoming Senate Race

Well, I figured this was coming.

She announced her withdrawal today, citing, health concerns in her family as the reason.

She did have some concerns, to be sure..a daughter with newly diagnosed juvenile diabetes. I can personally testify to how devastating that can be to deal with.

Aside from the heavy odds taking on long time conservative Senator Mike Enzi, a struggle in itself in a small state like Wyoming, there was also the unfortunate matter of her remarks on gay marriage.

Her sister Mary,whom she's always been close to married her partner Heather Poe in 2012.

There's no law that says someone has to have a position on each and every issue, and no matter how one feels about same sex marriage, a response along the lines of 'this is a family matter for me and I don't feel it's appropriate to comment' would have been a proper response. Instead, she chose to make it a campaign issue, understandably enraging her sister and putting her parents in the uncomfortable position of being in the middle.

That lack of judgment alone would have had me pulling the lever for Mike Enzi if I lived in Wyoming. But I'm also prepared to cut Liz Cheney some slack and call it an unforced rookie error, provided she learns from it and makes an effort to make things right. An endorsement of Enzi might be a good start, as well as an apology to members of her family.

While she was taking a beating in the polls, the fact also remains that she raised over $2 million in funding,very respectable for Wyoming. Enzi's 69, junior Senator John Barrasso turns 62 this year, and Wyoming's sole member of the House, Rep. Cynthia Lummis is well entrenched. Meanwhile, Liz Cheney is fairly young and a retirement by any of them or even a run in a nearby state, along with some seasoning, might see Liz Cheney in Congress.

California Democrats Preparing A Boatload Of New Taxes.

California is a Democrat-ruled state, with super majorities in the Assembly and the state Senate, and control of all other major state offices including the governor's mansion.

That's already resulted in the highest taxes in America, defacto amnesty for illegal aliens including driver's licenses, the strictest anti-Second Amendment laws outside of New York's, and the imposition of same sex marriage in spite of state laws, among other things.

Here's what they have planned for the coming year.

New taxes on oil are on the agenda, in spite of the fact that the oil companies already pay half a billion dollars to the state of California each year. Spearheading the drive is billionaire activist
Tom Steyer, a global warming advocate who has poured millions into issues like opposition to the Keystone Pipeline and carbon taxes...in other words, he's opposed to oil, period.

The wealthy Steyer could obviously care less, but California already has some of the highest gas prices in America thanks to California's high sales taxes, fees on energy companies, property taxes and business levies. While the oil extraction tax he wants might pass the legislature and give Sacramento a few dollars to spend, it will simply result in less revenue as even higher gas prices result in people simply cutting back on useage and oil companies ramping down their production in California and transferring it elsewhere. That will end up causing a loss to what California now collects from the industry, and a loss of high paying blue collar jobs.

The state is planning try to to more than double car license fees, including a 1% 'value' levy each year. That will have to go on the ballot, but California's Democrats have something planned for that too.Just as a coincidence, also want to legislate how propositions relating to taxation can be passed. Right now, it takes a 2/3 majority of the voters. The new proposal is to make it a simple majority.

And that relates to yet another huge tax increase.

The last time Democrats had this kind of control of the Golden State back in the 1970's, they pushed property taxes to the absolute limit. Elderly people were literally being forced out of homes they'd lived in for decades, and the housing market had taken a major dip as new home buyers looked, aghast, at what they would be expected to pony up.

In response, there was literally a tax payers revolt that culminated in the passage of Proposition 13 in 1978 , which limited the amount property taxes could be raised annually and set a high bar for how government can raise them.

Democrats have always singled out Proposition 13 for special hatred,because it limited increases to 'special assessments' rather than the wholesale plundering they wanted. Now that they have control of the state again, they want to gut Prop 13 and get their hands on one of the last sources of wealth remaining to the middle class and the elderly.

Right now, the way this is being pushed is as a way to rob from corporately owned properties...something that will simply do wonders for California's double digit unemployment and skyrocket rents, something the politicians backing this aren't mentioning. Rest assured once Prop 13 is breached, residential properties won't be far behind.

It would take a two thirds majority in both Houses and governor Browns signature to push this through, which is a no brainer right now.It will bring about the same misery and destruction of the housing market it did back in the 1970's.

Thinking of moving to California because of the weather? Take a tip from Woody Guthrie..even commies get it right sometimes:




Or better yet, just do a little research and see where California's middle class, jobseekers and retirees are moving.

Something to Think About Concerning The Big Freeze In The USA

 

To the distress of the global warming groupies, what we appear to be seeing now is a trend towards global cooling, a theory a number of scientists have now come out for.

The average temperature today in America is a chilly 19.9°Fahrenheit. Airports, schools and roads are closed nationwide, and temperature records in places like Chicago have been smashed.

In Canada, it's so cold they're experiencing what are called 'frost quakes' - sonic boom type explosion that occur when rain and ice seeps down into the soil freezes when the temperature drops and then expands with a loud explosion as the temperature drops further.

And in Europe, some people are comparing this winter to a period in the 14th century known as 'the year without summer'.

We live in a time when 'climate change' - actually, an excuse for a wealth transfer from the developed western world to UN and EU bureaucrats and selected cronies - has led to carbon taxes, 'smart grids' that can regulate when and how you use your appliances,various green energy scams while proven technology is handicapped and shut down and even the banning of the light bulb in favor of hazmat creating mercury-filled devices at ten times the price.

Here's something to mull over as you shiver...what if all of these devices, products and processes were what was keeping a major cooling of the earth at bay? Geologically speaking, the earth has an ice age on average every ten thousand years or so and we were overdue before the 'global warming' Nazis began using this as a new avenue of government control and in many cases,personal enrichment.

What if the entire 'global warming' campaign is responsible for the Big Chill that's going on now?

NSA Dodges; Refuses To Say It Doesn't Spy On Congress

Senator Bernie Sanders,an Independent from Vermont, sent a letter to the NSA Friday, asking whether it has or is "spying" on members of Congress and other elected American officials.

In his letter, Sanders specifically defined "spying" as "gathering metadata on calls made from official or personal phones, content from websites visited or e-mails sent, or collecting any other data from a third party not made available to the general public in the regular course of business."

The NSA didn't answer the Senator's question, but their response was most revealing: "Members of Congress have the same privacy protections as all U.S. persons."

In other words, they have none. And of course in the process of hoovering up data on virtually every call, internet customer and e-mail in America, the calls members of Congress and other elected officials are being scooped up as well.

Attorney General Eric Holder pulled the same stunt at a congressional hearing last summer when he responded to Senator Mark Kirk, (R-Illinois) by saying that the NSA had no "intent" to spy on Congress, but that this was something that needed to be discussed privately..and of course, not under oath.

What the Attorney General undoubtedly had in mind was James Clapper, director of National Intelligence being caught in a blatant lie to Senator Ron Wyden(D-Oregon) while testifying to Congress last March that the NSA was not collecting data on millions of Americans:



That was before Edward Snowden's leak on exactly what the NSA was doing, and before the news on how internet and cell providers were being forced to cooperate.

The idea of the NSA recording and storing metadata on the communications of members of Congress and other elected officials gives rise to some interesting possibilities, especially since we're talking about the Obama Administration.

Remember, this is the man who won his senate seat by getting his people to shop for a judge who would unseal the sealed divorce records of his Republican opponent Jack Ryan, which contained some of the usual wild, unproven accusations one finds in a contentious divorce where child custody is involved.

And let's not forget the suspicious timing of the leak on General David Petraeus' extramarital affair...after he testified before Congress backing up the Administration's fairy tale on Benghazi, something he did a 180 on a month later, once the president's re-election was safely in the bag and the leak was used to discredit him.The data used to find out about his affair came from phone records that were used to match up with certain hotel bills.

And dare we mention the way the IRS was used to go after President Obama's perceived political enemies?

The same techniques can be used to sway members of Congress to vote a certain way, or to 'persuade' a popular senator or governor not to run for office.

In spite of what the Obama Administration and tools like Clapper and Holder might say, we do have an expectation of privacy. It's called the Fourth Amendment, something I'm sure President Obama has little familiarity with:

"The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized."

Our Founders put this in the Constitution for a good reason, and they would be would be amazed at how tamely we've repeatedly allowed this right to be violated.

Forum: Whom Would You Least Like To See In A Presidential Matchup In 2016?

Every week on Monday morning , the Council and our invited guests weigh in at the Watcher's Forum, short takes on a major issue of the day, the culture, or daily living. This week's question: Whom Would You Least Like To See In A Presidential Matchup In 2016?

The Razor: Well the Democrat is easy: Hillary Clinton. I would have preferred her in 2008; in fact I hoped she would win the nomination because I was never a Clinton hater like so many on the Right. But after her stint as Secretary of State, and particularly after Benghazi and the “WHAT DIFFERENCE DOES IT MAKE” breakdown in front of Congress, she’s not fit to be my county’s dog catcher.

On the GOP side it’s tougher. We’re still too far out to see who the main challengers are going to be, and in fairness no one stands out. I’m not much of a fan of Chris Christie given that I’m not a fan of his state nor of his anti-gun rights stances, but I suspect he’d put up a much better fight than Romney did in ‘12. Paul Ryan strikes me as another weak candidate at this point, as does Rand Paul. I hope to see one or the other grow, but I really feel that we need to find someone with management experience, and that means selecting a governor.

So I would probably select either Paul Ryan or Rand Paul as the GOP candidate I’d least like to see in the match-up, if only because Amateur Hour is over. We need experience.

PS: I personally know our dog catcher; he’s a nice guy with a tough job and people generally like him around here. If Hillary ran for his job she’d lose by a landslide.

The Glittering Eye: I don't look forward to anyone running for president in 2016. I find the entire prospect terribly depressing.

Given that proviso it's hard for me to give an answer to the forum's question other than a flip one: I'd like to see any Republican who could beat Hillary Clinton run. I don't much care who it is. I do not much want to see Hillary Clinton elected to the presidency. I'd like to see any Democrat who can beat her run. Or Libertarian. Heck, I'd even prefer a Green who could beat her.

JoshuaPundit: It's hard to answer this one from a negative standpoint, which makes it a lil' bit tricky (*chuckle*).

Frankly, given the mess the next president will inherit, it's hard to see who would want the job unless they had ulterior motives. Like say, Mrs. Clinton, who already has her sycophants  testing the waters for her.

What we really need, of course, is someone not part of the Ruling Class (or someone who doesn't aspire to be part of it), who is a person of principle who would be willing to do what it takes and get their hands dirty in order to fix what's wrong and deal with our deep seated problems. Based on that, I would not want to see a matchup between Mrs. Clinton or Chris Christie, Jeb Bush or Paul Ryan on the Republican side, among others.

We have, at this point, had three very poor presidents in a row, the worst in our history and all were two termers, meaning we have had a quarter century of dysfunctional leadership and in the case of Bill Clinton and Barack Obama,men who have avidly sought to enrich themselves personally through the office. I have often written that the issue for America is not our destruction - we're far too powerful for that - but whether we wish to reinvigorate our Republic on the principles it was founded or become Rome.So far, based on our last three presidents I think we're leaning towards Rome and it will take an incredible person to reverse that in the other direction.

The Roman Republic had its moment in 83 BC with striking similarities to our own in the strife between the optimates and the populares somewhat similar in outlook respectively to our own Republican conservatives and Leftist Democrats. The Republic was about to collapse in corruption, civil strife, cronyism and blatant mismanagement.

That's when Lucius Cornelius Sulla, Rome's most famous and victorious general and an optimate marched five of his legions back into Rome, assumed a position as dictator and took over the city.

The Senate, having no choice, appointed him dictator legibus faciendis et reipublicae constituendae causa ("dictator for the making of laws and for the settling of the constitution").

Sulla used his powers to enact a series of reforms to the Roman constitution, arrested and/or exiled a number of people he suspected of corruption or other crimes against the Republic and carried out a number of executions of those he considered traitors or whom had acted against Rome's interest.

Amazingly, once his reforms restored the balance of power between the executive and legislative parts of Rome's government and codified requirements for holding office, the economy was working well again and the state again operating on its founding principles, Sulla voluntarily relinquished his absolute power, disbanded his legions and resigned two years after he first became dictator, retiring to his country villa with his family.

In spite of how he took power, he remained beloved of Rome's people and was given a hero's funeral by the City when he died 3 years later. His contemporaries like Plutarch credited him with saving the Roman Republic, which managed to last for another half century before Augustus turned it into an empire in 27 BC.

I relate this not because I want to see a dictatorship ruling our republic, but to show how perilously close to the edge we are. Hopefully the changes we need will be carried out in a peaceful way by men who are as dedicated to our nation as Sulla was to his.

  Well, there you have it.

Make sure to tune in every Monday for the Watcher’s Forum. And remember, every Wednesday, the Council has its weekly contest with the members nominating two posts each, one written by themselves and one written by someone from outside the group for consideration by the whole Council. The votes are cast by the Council, and the results are posted on Friday morning.

It’s a weekly magazine of some of the best stuff written in the blogosphere, and you won’t want to miss it.

And don’t forget to like us on Facebook and follow us on Twitter..’cause we’re cool like that, y'know?

Al-Qaeda Wins Major Victory Over Iraqi Army

 

Al-Qaeda forces under the command of Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi turned back an Iraqi army offensive with heavy losses, winning a major military victory.

Baghdadi’s troops decimated Iraq's 7th and 1st divisions, which were trained and equipped courtesy of Uncle Sam as some of the most elite troops in the Iraqi Army. Not only did the al-Qaeda forces defeat them and send them in headlong retreat towards Baghdad, but the jihadis were able to advance, capture and hold virtually all of Fallujah and most of Ramadi, the provincial capitol of Anbar. These are both key Sunni strong points in western and central Iraq.

The Iraqi forces attempted a counterattack to retake these areas(their fourth),but were thrown back with heavy losses. Whole units fled the battlefield, dropping those shiny new American arms behind them.

The subtext of this is the ongoing war in Syria.

Al-Baghdadi is a commander in an al-Qaeda group that calls themselves Islamic State in Iraq and al-Shams, the jihadis name for Syria. ISIS, as it's known is part of the Islamists rebels fighting Syria's Bashir Assad, Hezbollah and Iran for control of Syria.

ISIS has been operating in the Sunni areas of Iraq for some time, fueled by the current Iranian-backed Shi'ite government headed by Nouri al-Maliki essentially marginalizing the Sunnis in government and in Iraq's security forces. This was exactly the opposite of what Iraq's Sunnis were promised by General David Petraeus when they went on the U.S. payroll and fought al-Qaeda in the “Awakening” groups during the 2005 Surge.Now, a lot of them are fighting with ISIS against al-Maliki's Shi'ite forces.

It's important not to overlook Iran's part in all this. Iraq is essentially an Iranian colony now, with al-Maliki kept in power by the Shiite bloc led by Muqtada al-Sadr. Remember Mookie? Al-Maliki was prodded to attack the Sunni areas of Anbar by Iran, who saw it as a second front to put more pressure on the Syrian rebels. Instead, the al-Qaeda forces, allied with the Sunni tribesmen kicked their collective behinds in and sent them retreating back to Baghdad.

The Obama Administration's response is almost sitcom worthy. They're sending al-Maliki F-16s and drones. We might as well send them to Tehran or to Basher Assad.

The al-Qaeda victory, aside from the morale boost and a harvest of gently used only-dropped-once weaponry has some major political consequences. Rather than opening up a new front for the Shiite/Iran bloc, it has done just the opposite, allowing the Iraqi al-Qaeda fighters and their Sunni tribal allies to link up with al-Qaeda elements in Syria like al-Nusrah and increasing the pressure on Assad.Iran, Assad and Hezbollah had the war in Syria pretty much going their way until this happened. Now things have turned around, with consequences for other al-Qaeda fronts in Sinai and Jordan as well.

Not only that,but the Obama Administration came out looking ridiculously ineffectual in the eyes of both sides, since they made a point of shipping heavy weapons to the Iraqi government..many of which are now in the hands of al-Qaeda and ISIS.If you think about it and remember this president's early arming of jihadis in Syria and his clueless adventure in Libya, more heavy weapons have ended up in the hands of our enemies due to American efforts since he took office than any president in modern history.

So much for President Obama's brag that 'al-Qaeda's on the run'. But as you'll recall, President Obama bears a great deal of responsibility for al-Qaeda's resurgence in the Middle East.

One thing that bears mentioning, when we talk about responsibility. President Obama was very quick to pound his chest and claim he ended the war in Iraq, and a lot of his critics are blaming him for the current chaos. Neither is true.The disposition of forces agreement was signed in 2009 by George W. Bush before he left office, and it was al-Maliki, following his Iranian friends orders who insisted on a complete U.S. withdrawal. Barack Obama had nothing to do with it - he simply followed the agreement. He neither ended the war not 'lost' it - although he certainly did his very best to do the latter as a U.S. senator.

Iraq is going to puzzle historians in the future. We went in with the idea of building a nation out of something that never really existed, just a handful of ethnically diverse provinces of the old Ottoman villayet of Mesopotamia the Brits threw together after WWI. Our only real allies and the only ones who actually had a shot at nation building were the Kurds, who begged us to be theirr allies, put our bases there and to help them establish an independent Kurdistan. Their IDF-trained Persh Merga killed every al-Qaeda jihadi that came anywhere near their territory without our having to even spend the manpower to patrol it. We sold them out for the likes of Turkey's Islamist fascist leader Tayyip Erdoğan, and instead we placed our billion dollar bet on the Shi'ites and on al-Maliki, who spent the Saddam years cuddled up with our enemies the Ayatollahs.

We went in and made a huge (and justified) deal about Saddam being a genocidal monster who needed to be taken out. And after that happened, we sat back and did nothing while Iraq's Christians were brutalized and ethnically cleansed on our watch.

Our warriors, in spite of the way they were handcuffed by the politically correct politicians back home won an amazing military victory. Osama bin-Laden made the mistake of making Iraq the central front of his war on America, and our troops decimated al-Qaeda and pushed them, for the most part, out of the Middle East.

After which we essentially left Iraq in the hands of a politician allied with our enemies and went home, washing our hands of it, and the situation has now returned to internecine violence.

Iraq will unfortunately rank with Somalia as a futile and quixotic misuse of America's armed might.

It remains to be seen how this all turns out, but hopefully the American people learned something from it..about how proper and clear objectives are needed when we go to war, and about how carefully we need to choose the leaders who make those decisions. And also about the nature of the Muslim world. Because they are not like us, they do not want what we want and pretending that they do is a sure route to repeated folly.

New Study - Legal Concealed Carry Equals Fewer Murders

A new study conducted by Quinnipiac University came up with some interesting results for gun control fanatics.Not only do states that outlaw concealed carry by law abiding citizens have much higher gun-related murder rates, but that banning 'assault weapons' (to gun grabbers, anything semi-automatic with scary looking graphics and the ability to fire five shots out of its magazine)has no meaningful effect on gun murder rates. (h/t, Truth Revolt)

The study, conducted by Quinnipiac University's Mark Gius, was published in Applied Economics Letters, and used extensive data from a thirty-year period, 1980-2009. Here's Gius's summation of the results:

Using data for the period 1980 to 2009 and controlling for state and year fixed effects, the results of the present study suggest that states with restrictions on the carrying of concealed weapons had higher gun-related murder rates than other states. It was also found that assault weapons bans did not significantly affect murder rates at the state level. These results suggest that restrictive concealed weapons laws may cause an increase in gun-related murders at the state level.

Gius also cites similar studies by John R. Lott and David B. Mustard.

It's actually an assault on common sense that such studies should be needed at all. People intent on breaking the law will always find or even make guns to do it if that's their tool of choice. The people at a disadvantage are law abiding citizens,their property and their families, who are given a choice of becoming criminals or remaining helpless.

To make it even simpler, answer these questions for yourself. If you were a criminal bent on robbing a convenience store, using a .38 as a persuader and then murdering any potential witnesses, where would you face the least risk of things going wrong? In New York City or Chicago? Or in Texas,where the
clerk, the guy in the stockroom in back and probably the forty-year-old matron over on aisle 3 are very likely carrying their own brand of lead-fueled deterrent and know how to use it?

If you and a co-perp break in and do a home invasion with rape, plunder and murder in mind, where would you be most likely to feel confident after you hear five shots about rushing and overpowering that terrified housewife before she can reload? In Los Angeles, where you know that's all the bullets she was able to legally have in her weapon? Or in Tulsa?

Here's a fun fact, by the way. The state with the loosest gun laws in America (including legal concealed carry) and the lowest per capita gun murder rate just happen to be the same...Vermont.

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

 

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

 

This week's winner, Liberty's Spirit's J"accuse the Ultimate Anti-Semite (Update): The "as a Jew" Meme Returns is her take on the phenomenon of Jewish anti-Semitism. Here's a slice:

I have UPDATED the following post from 2011 in response to the rekindled “as a Jew” meme. Somehow, without fail, whenever some politico or pundit (in this case Obama/Kerry) decides Israel alone has to put her children’s lives at risk for peace, these “as a Jew” court-Jews seem to come out of the woodwork.

********

“J’Accuse” The Ultimate Anti-Semite

There are many definitions of antisemite. Just who are these people who denigrate anything Jewish. They use Nazi-like imagery to denounce Jewish society and Israel. They use false allusions to try to destroy the right of the Jewish nation to exist and the Jewish people to live free in their ancestral homeland. They extend their reach into the secular world and deny Jews the right to practice Judaism, be it circumcision, kosher slaughter or the right to wear religious garb for fear of being attacked. They take from the Jewish citizen the right to be counted among the nations of the world and be counted as a human being. Whether it takes its form as those that deny the holocaust, deny Jewish history and attachment to Eretz Yisroel or the senseless need to dehumanize, delegitimize and equate the Jewish people with their persecutors, this is antisemitism. The anti-Semite teaches their children that Jews are descended from apes and pigs. This is all part and parcel of modern antisemitism. It is also an accepted part of society and welcomed worldover. Sadly antisemitism is more open and accepted today as anytime since the advent of Nazi Germany.

Whether it comes from respected journalists, politicians, “peace activists,” Nobel prize winners or religious leaders, it is a daily barrage of hate aimed at anyone Jewish. Yet the ultimate anti-Semite is not the gentile that spouts the hatred and bile that has become commonplace once again in the world. The ultimate anti-Semite is the Jew who joins with the persecutors and tries to use the fact that they emerged into this world from a Jewish womb, as a right to destroy their own people. You can’t call them anti-Semite after all they are Jews, they shout…but they are Jews without a shred of attachment to the Jewish people, to history or to reality.

There is a wonderful book written years ago by the well-known author Erica Jong, called Serenissima. It was a masterful look at the Merchant of Venice through different eyes. In that book the author discusses the character of Jessica. Jessica is the daughter of Shylock. She betrays her father, her people and her heritage to win the love and approval of a man and his friends who will never accept her as an equal because no matter what she does in life, she was born a Jew. Erica Jong, wrote that in the end, it was not the courts, nor the Christian community that were the ultimate anti-Semite in the story, but that it was Jessica herself. Denigrating everything that she was born to be to win the approval of those that would never accept her because in the end, no matter what she did they would always think of her first and foremost as a Jew. Unfortunately there are many Jessicas today, both female and male in positions of power, influence and education.

In fact today’s ultimate antisemite can even claim to be religious Jews. Some are religious like the Naturei Karta, or Satmars, who are Hasidim, but I am not sure how helping kill your fellow Jews follows the Torah or the Talmud. However, at least it appears that the vast majority of these ultimate anti-Semite Jews, never enter a synagogue, are not married to a fellow Jew or have Jewish children or grandchildren. But what they do is to try to denigrate the Jewish religion, history, and attachments while trying to change it to suit their needs. That is not reality. Religion, its symbols, its history, its essence, has meaning. All aspects of religion have purpose. All aspects of history is reality and has created who we are today. To try to change the religion to make it meet your criteria for reality is hubris, narcissism and above all disrespect. To promote revisionist history to serve your politics of hate is evil. It is the act of the ultimate anti-Semite to change what God has put forth. It is the act of the ultimate anti-Semite to rewrite Jewish history to blame anti-Semitism on the Jews. It is the act of the ultimate anti-Semite to think that they know better than God. You either accept the religion or you don’t. Ultimately, it is the act of the ultimate anti-Semite to rewrite Jewish history and suffering to promote their hate filled politics.

In our non-Council category, the winner was Sherri Mandel with  I'm Glad My Son's Murderers Have Not Been Found submitted by Joshuapundit.Mrs. Mandel's heartfelt cri de couer is an indictment of everyone who advocates that Israel free terrorist murderers convicted in Israel courts 'for peace'. It should be required reading for them.

OK,  here are this week’s full results. Both The Mellow Jihadi and The Right Planet were unable to vote this week, Neither was subject to the usual 2/3 vote penalty.

Council Winners

• *First place with 2 1/3 votes! - Liberty's Spirit -J"accuse the Ultimate Anti-Semite (Update): The "as a Jew" Meme Returns


• Second place *t* with 2 votes – Bookworm Room -When it comes to Norman Rockwell (“nudge, nudge”), homosexuality is in the eye of an obsessed culture


• Second place *t* with 2 votes – Joshuapundit -Stone Soup


• Third place *t* with 1 2/3 votes –Simply Jews -Turkish Blues


• Third place *t* with 1 2/3 votes –The Political Commentator -Egypt knows what Obama still can't figure out!


• Fourth place with 1 vote – The Noisy Room-Verily, It Is A Clusterduck


• Fifth place *t* with 2/3 vote – VA Right!-Duck Dynasty’s Phil Robertson a Modern Day Rosa Parks


• Fifth place *t* with 2/3 vote – The Right Planet- Do Barack Obama and Karl Marx Agree on Social Inequality?


• Fifth place *t* with 2/3 vote –The Mellow Jihadi -The French peasants are revolting…


• Sixth place *t* with 1/3 vote –The Razor - 2013 Posts That Went nowhere

Non-Council Winners

• First place with 2 2/3 votes! – Sherri Mandel- – I'm Glad My Son's Murderers Have Not Been Found submitted by Joshuapundit
  


• Second place with 2 1/3 votes – Sultan Knish --Rise of the Mediacracy submitted by Nice Deb


• Third place *t* with 1 vote – Caroline Glick/Jerusalem Post - – Khodorkovsky and the Freedom Agenda submitted by Liberty's Spirit


• Third place *t* with 1 vote –Roger L.Simon/Pajamas Media -–The Principal Enemy submitted by The Mellow Jihadi


• Third place *t* with 1 vote –David P. Goldman/ Pajamas Media - – The End of Erdogan’s Cave of Wonders: An I-Told-You-So submitted by Simply Jews


• Fourth place  *t* with 2/3 vote - American Thinker -Will 2014 See A Repeat Of 1914? submitted by The Political Commentator


• Fourth place  *t* with 2/3 vote-War On The Rocks – Holiday Reading List submitted by GrEaT sAtAn”S gIrLfRiEnD


• Fourth place *t*   with 2/3 vote-Alinsky Defeater's Blog– The Darwinian Paradox of Progressivism submitted by The Right Planet


• Fourth place *t*   with 2/3 vote-Althouse – "Look, you wait until they get to be 20-years-old, the only picking that’s going to take place is your pocket. " submitted by The Glittering Eye


• Fourth place  *t* with 2/3 vote-Popehat –Burn the F***ing System to the Ground submitted by The Razor


• Fourth place *t*   with 2/3 vote- Bill Whittle – The End of the Beginning submitted by The Watcher


• Fifth place *t* with 1/3 vote -Doug Ross @Journal – Obamacare Comix - Real Numbers Edition submitted by Rhymes with Right
  


• Fifth place *t* with 1/3 vote -New American – Global Warming Alarmists Stuck In Antarctic Sea Ice submitted by VA Right!
  


• Fifth place *t* with 1/3 vote -Norman Rogers/American Thinker-The Solar Swindle submitted by Bookworm Room
  

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 special guests take apart one of the provocative issues of the day with short takes and weigh in...don't you dare miss it. And don't forget to like us on Facebook and follow us on Twitter.....'cause we're cool like that!

Watcher's Council Nominations -Snappy Happy New Year Edition

Welcome to the Watcher's Council, a blogging group consisting of some of the most incisive blogs in the 'sphere, and the longest running group of its kind in existence. Every week, the members nominate two posts each, one written by themselves and one written by someone from outside the group for consideration by the whole Council.Then we vote on the best two posts, with the results appearing on Friday morning.

Well, 2014 is upon us, and I'm sure all of my Council mates and the WoW community join me in wishing you a prosperous, healthy and happy New Year. Traffic wise, this was one of our best years ever, and we couldn't have done it without your support, I tell ya!

Oh, and 2014? Some of the Council and our invited guests weighed in with a few predictions for the New Year you can view here.


Council News:

This year, once again the Council as a whole won the award for Best Blog Ring in the 2013 Fabulous 50 Blog Awards, not to mention that Council members The Noisy Room and Nice Deb copped the awards for Best All Around Blogger, as did our pal, Council alumnus and distinguished member of the WoW community Sarah Noble of The Independent Sentinel.
Council Akbar indeed!Thanks to everyone who voted for us.

This week, Ask Marion, Seraphic Secret, Maggie's Notebook and The Independent Sentinel took advantage of my generous offer of link whorage and earned honorable mention status with some great articles.

You can, too! Want to see your work appear on the Watcher’s Council homepage in our weekly contest listing? Didn’t get nominated by a Council member? No worries.

Tobring something to my attention, simply head over to Joshuapundit and post the title a link to the piece you want considered along with an e-mail address ( which won't be published) in the comments section no later than Monday 6PM PST in order to be considered for our honorable mention category. Then return the favor by creating a post on your site linking to the Watcher’s Council contest for the week when it comes out Wednesday morning.

Simple, no?

It's a great way of exposing your best work to Watcher’s Council readers and Council members. while grabbing the increased traffic and notoriety. And how good is that, eh?

So, let's see what we have this week....

Council Submissions

• Liberty's Spirit – J"accuse the Ultimate Anti-Semite (Update): The "as a Jew" Meme Returns


• The Noisy Room – Verily, It Is A Clusterduck


• The Political Commentator – Egypt knows what Obama still can't figure out!


• Joshuapundit-Stone Soup


• GrEaT sAtAn”S gIrLfRiEnD – What If Germany Won WWI?


• Simply Jews – Turkish Blues


• Rhymes With Right – Book Review -- Unintimidated By Scott Walke


• VA Right! - Duck Dynasty’s Phil Robertson a Modern Day Rosa Parks


• The Right Planet – Do Barack Obama and Karl Marx Agree on Social Inequality?


• The Colossus of Rhodey – Missed Irony


• The Mellow Jihadi – The French peasants are revolting…


• Nice Deb – Benghazi Witnesses Outraged By NYT’s Story: ‘Complete Baloney’ (Video)


• The Glittering Eye -Nativity Scenes


• Bookworm Room – When it comes to Norman Rockwell (“nudge, nudge”), homosexuality is in the eye of an obsessed culture


• The Razor – 2013 Posts That Went Nowhere

Honorable Mentions

• Ask Marion - Inside TAO… NSA Intercepts Your Mail


• Maggie's Notebook - Can the NYT Get More Bizarre: Why Yes…They Can and Did: NYT Reporter on the Ground in Benghazi a Photographer? Or Is It Just a Lie?


• Seraphic Secret - Obama Flees From ObamaCare


• The Independent Sentinel - Stunning: ACA Mandate for Religious Organizations Blocked by Justice

Non-Council Submissions

• Caroline Glick/Jerusalem Post – Khodorkovsky and the Freedom Agenda submitted by Liberty's Spirit


• Red State –Of Ducks And Disposition submitted by The Noisy Room


• American Thinker -Will 2014 See A Repeat Of 1914? submitted by The Political Commentator


• Sherri Mandel – I'm Glad My Son's Murderers Have Not Been Found submitted by Joshuapundit


• War On The Rocks – Holiday Reading List submitted by GrEaT sAtAn”S gIrLfRiEnD


• David P. Goldman/ PJ Media – The End of Erdogan’s Cave of Wonders: An I-Told-You-So submitted by Simply Jews


• Doug Ross @Journal – Obamacare Comix - Real Numbers Edition submitted by Rhymes with Right


• New American – Global Warming Alarmists Stuck In Antarctic Sea Ice submitted by VA Right!


• Alinsky Defeater's Blog – The Darwinian Paradox of Progressivism submitted by The Right Planet


• The Daily Caller – 5 dumbest Melissa Harris-Perry quotes of 2013 submitted by The Colossus of Rhodey


• Roger L. Simon/Pajamas Media –The Principal Enemy submitted by The Mellow Jihadi


• Sultan Knish -Rise of the Mediacracy submitted by Nice Deb


• Althouse – "Look, you wait until they get to be 20-years-old, the only picking that’s going to take place is your pocket. " submitted by The Glittering Eye


• Norman Rogers/American Thinker-The Solar Swindle submitted by Bookworm Room


• Popehat –Burn the F***ing System to the Ground submitted by The Razor


• Bill Whittle – The End of the Beginning submitted by The Watcher


• Victor Davis Hanson – 2017 and the End of Ethics submitted by Watcher

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