Forum: If Abortion On Demand Is Both Legal And Constitutional, Why Not Suicide And Euthanasia ?

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:  If Abortion On Demand Is Both Legal And Constitutional, Why Not Suicide And Euthanasia ?



Virginia Right!: Or why children of illegals who were brought here through no fault of their own deserve amnesty and not unborn babies who are here through no fault of their own.

The Independent Sentinel: Why stop with abortion- it's only a matter of geography - why not kill them after they're born if we're not happy with the results. Actually, hasn't that been suggested by one of the loons Obama surrounds himself with?

Bookworm Room: Abortion on demand is legal because those who support it can argue, less and less convincingly as prenatal care and imaging advance, that a fetus is not a person. That's a difficult argument to make about either depressed or sick people. They may not be enjoying themselves, but they're standing there before you, large as life and twice as natural. When we seem them, we recognize their inherent vitality, a vitality that ought not to be destroyed either by what one hopes is only a transient depression or an illness (even a fatal one) that can be managed humanely.

Peter Singer -- who holds an endowed ethics chair at Princeton -- thinks parents should have a month after the child's birth within which to decide to euthanize it because it's defective. As you can imagine, the disability rights people loath him. He's also the guy who founded the radical animal rights movement. PETA isn't his organization, but it's his brain child. He ran afoul of animal rights activists, though, when he said bestiality was ethically acceptable provided the animal consents. The PETA crowd said that cows can't give consent, so it's always rape. Did I mention that he has an endowed chair at Princeton?

As for the post-birth abortion, a Planned Parenthood representative in Florida said that it was up to a woman and her doctor whether she wanted to "abort" the baby after it was born.

It's views such as these that have pushed me away from being pro-choice. There's something very ugly going on there. Garden-variety pro-choice people should really look at the movement's core and wonder whether they're celebrating choice or death.

Simply Jews : Why, if we base our decisions on that old joke that a Jewish embryo isn't considered a person before he/she gets a law or medicine degree, we could expand the Singer's proposal a bit further.

Jokes aside, when I was reading this, the professor's ideas combined with his attitude to bestiality gave me a few ideas about the professor's immediate future that I would loath to air in this group. Not in writing anyway.

And another corollary: the case of prof Singer, like many other sadly similar cases in the academic circles cause me a grave concern about the future of our higher education and, as a result, about our future in general. I am saying "our", because here the status is very similar.

Princeton... someone should clean up these places, or we all are in big trouble.


The Razor: First of all I do not agree that abortion is Constitutional. My view is that it was a clear-cut case of judicial overreach.

Although I am personally and very (I might add) Pro-Life I still maintain a pro-choice stance simply because I believe Law is too blunt an instrument for cases such as these that require more of a scalpel. Is abortion murder? I believe like most Americans that within the first few weeks of pregnancy, it’s not. But you get into the second trimester and especially the third, and it clearly becomes murder. Suicide is clearly murder, but should a person be charged with a crime for having attempted it? Nope because who would the State be acting on behalf of? Who is the injured party in such an instance? The State has too much power already; to intrude on a person’s decision to kill himself or herself simply strikes me as a greater intrusion than when it interferes with abortion. As for euthanasia, it should be made available to those whose condition is terminally ill. What has been happening in the Netherlands stretches the definition of “terminally ill” to include mental illness which is going too far.

No one ever says that these questions are easy. If they do then something is wrong with them. But as moral human beings we need to consider them and question our beliefs if only to avoid the slippery slope rightly feared by many. But the existence of such a slope should not empower the State nor should it increase needless suffering.

But ask me next week. Perhaps my opinion will change.

 JoshuaPundit: Actually, to answer the question directly,  we're already there to some degree. Euthanasia is already legal in the Netherlands, Belgium and Luxembourg and up for serious consideration in most of the EU, and assisted suicide is legal in the States of Washington, Oregon, Vermont, New Mexico and Montana as well as in the countries of Switzerland, Germany, Albania, Colombia and Japan. And again, there are many more jurisdictions considering it and I have no doubt that the list will be longer by this time next year.And there's no reason it shouldn't be. After all, if life ends in the womb or years later in a discreet medical facility after a few papers get signed, what's the diff? One less mouth to feed, one less file to process. Next please!

What I'm going to write next invites ridicule, which is fine. But some of you may want to mull it over.

Western culture has always prided itself on its freedoms, but the chief impetus for them has always been a recognition that the individual is important, and that freedom itself is a gift to be passed on to future generations. Our culture has changed to the point where these two principles have become something that gets mouthed frequently, but is less and less nonored in practice. What our culture has embraced instead is an anti-life stance, where the individual is dispensable and future generations don't matter as opposed to the all important gratification of the NOW.Even though many people still hold to the realizations and principles behind the west's freedoms, many of our leaders, educators and those who run what E.J. Terrell Jr. once called the Kultursmog do not.

I am by no means a person who says that abortion is always wrong in all situations. But we now have made abortion on demand a modern sacrament, a holy writ not to be challenged no matter what. Why shouldn't euthanasia and assisted suicide be next on the list, along with all the other 'changes' we've embraced, or at least allowed?

We now have a leader who is a fierce advocate for actual infanticide. A mere thirty or forty years ago someone with this view would have been shunned and run out of public life. Many countries in the West are not even reproducing at replacement rates, the very definition of marriage is in the process of being dismantled, and the killing of a child because the kid was merely inconvenient is the subject of a 'comedy' now getting rave reviews in the usual places.

I regard that as decadent and unholy. There are really no other words for it.

America has been, in my view at least, the beneficiary of G-d's providence in many ways. I can't help but wonder if what we're embracing now is going to change that.


The Glittering Eye : If that were the law, I don't think there is a coherent principle opposing them. However, it's not the law. The law is actually mischievous since making the state's interest in the lives of the unborn contingent on an imaginary point of viability encourages those who oppose abortion on principle to seek to capitalize on the state's interest and those who support abortion on demand on principle to make the imagined rights pre-viability absolute. A continuing, zero-sum conflict.

On top of that existing law is bad public policy unless you believe that we need a lot fewer people with educations and jobs and a lot more people without either one. The problem, of course, is that the coherent public policy positions (abortion on demand paid by the state on the one hand and sweeping restrictions on abortion on the other) are each anathema to a substantial chunk of the population. So we're left with incoherent, bad public policy.

Ask Marion: Americans like to see themselves as the most compassionate people on the planet, rescuers of the downtrodden and the heroes that ride in on the white horses to save people, cultures and nations around the world… and sometimes we do and have.

But as a nation we have virtually all accepted the reality of abortion on some level, just like animal lovers have accepted our cruel system for euthanizing more healthy pets every year than any other country in the world. All God’s creatures:

In 2008 we had the choice and opportunity to vote for an all (rather radical) pro-choice ticket, Obama-Biden or a ticket with a fence straddler worried about the vote and a offending anyone, McCain, paired up with a strong pro-life candidate, who had walked the walk, Palin. We elected the radicals twice.

Abortion -> On The Ground At March For Life 2014 – New Poll: 62% of Americans Now Believe Abortion is Morally Wrong and most Pro-Choice advocates don’t even know Planned Parenthood’s Roots or who Margaret Sanger was… an absolute believer in abortion, euthanasia and eugenics. And since President Obama took office, who as Senator voted for partial birth abortions and not giving aid, care or even comfort to tiny babies who survive abortion procedure. See Gary Bauer: 'More Babies Have Been Aborted Than Jobs Have Been Created' Under Obama.

Economic issues aside, it is estimated that 7.5 million companion animals enter shelters each year, and additional 1 million more have been added to that number or just abandoned since the economic downturn in 2009. Only about 30% are reclaimed and approximately 2.7 million animals are adopted (1.2 million dogs and 1.4 million cats).

And over 1,200 Military Dogs have been put down by the Obama Regime.

Eating dogs was bad enough. Killing over 1,200 faithful military dogs who were protecting American troops in Afghanistan is worse:

The heroic service dogs were euthanized because they were deemed too “dangerous” for civilian adoption or jobs with law enforcement agencies, as well as for medical reasons according to U.S. Air Force reports given to Congress.

The dogs were used as guards and to sniff out terrorist bombs.

It’s not as if no homes could be found:

Currently more than 300 people are waiting to adopt a military dog, with an average waiting time of 18 months.

Betraying those who loyally served in Afghanistan and Iraq has been characteristic of the current administration. And if you actually believe that they care more about our two legged Veterans than they do about the 4-legged ones... then Houston... we have a problem. All but 1 of the Michael Vick fighting dogs were able to be rehabbed and re-homed... and none had problems. Everyone of these military canines deserved better!!

Obamaland radical crazies… just a few of the present and former Czars… advisers, cabinet members:

Kathleen Sebelius.Remember, Sebilius was an ardent supporter of murdered partial birth abortionist Tiller, and her extreme record on abortion has sadly been ignored (or hidden) by the media.

Science Czar John P. Holdren – Updated 9.2.09 He Advocated de-developing the US to a world of zero growth, says the Constitution backs compulsory Abortion and believes we should seize babies born to unwed women

Cass Sunstein, Obama's Regulatory Czar advocated removing people’s organs without explicit consent.


Dr. Ezekiel Emanuel, Rahm Emanuel’s brother and his Complete Lives System, who believes we should deny coverage to the elderly an disabled ‘for the Greater Good’

Euthanasia, Assisted Suicide, Death Panels… are all part of, or will be the result of ObamaCare!!

If we do not get rid of ObamaCare and the hold the Progressives have on our government… the death panels are already here. (remember when they called Sarah Palin crazy?, now people like Howard Dean have admitted she was right) A committee of non-medical professionals will make the decisions of who gets what treatments and medications, if any. They will decide against the old… the useless eaters as they call them; the mentally and physically disabled, including Veterans (Is there really an doubt after what we have seen at Veteran’s Affairs over the past few months:); and then anyone else they have no use for. And as the money and help dries up for those afflicted with or caring for people with Alzheimer’s, Autism, Dementia, PTSD, etc etc (all on the rise) and no help is available, the cries for assisted suicide or euthanasia will become louder… the benevolent left… will say YES!

And for the record: Rockefeller Soft Kill Depopulation Plans Exposed. Both Hillary Clinton and Bill Gates have spoken on depopulation. And you can bet it won’t be them or their families!

GrEaT sAtAn"S gIrLfRiEnD : Personally feel it will be in the next few years.


  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.

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How The Palestinians And The Left Are Celebrating The Israeli Kidnappings

By now, most of you know that three Israeli teens were confirmed kidnapped near Gush Etzion, almost certainly by Hamas.

While most Israelis and many(but believe me, not all) Jews in the Diaspora are praying for their safe return, the Palestinians are celebrating this 'successful operation' in their usual hideous fashion.

 

This image came not from Hamas, but from the official Fatah Facebook page showing the three kids as Jewish 'rats' caught in a trap.

Fatah also instructed 'activists' to destroy any CCTV footage that might aid the Israelis in finding the kidnapped kids.




 And of course, candies and sweets are being passed out in Gaza, while the rockets are still being fired at Israel.





As a matter of fact, Hamas,who has not claimed responsibility may not be the kidnappers.

Abbas' thugs in the al-Aksa Martyr's Brigade issued a statement online claiming that they were holding the children and they would only be released in a swap for imprisoned convicted terrorists.

“We won’t release the three children, except in return for thousands of prisoners,” the statement read.

Remember, al-Aksa has pulled off this sort of thing before.

 Al-Quds, a Palestinian news agency, published an article on Wednesday describing the creative ways in which Arabs are celebrating the campaign through personal photographs, shaping the words out of string beans, or even carving them on a Libyan beach.

 

In Israel itself, notorious MK  MK Hanin Zoabi (United Arab List) sparked outrage even from her colleagues on the Left when she said  that those who kidnap Israeli children are not terrorists.

Fortunately, there are a number of Israeli Arabs who don't feel that way, even in the face of death threats.

As despicable as this response from the vast majority of Palestinians is, it's to be expected. They've done far worse over the years.

But the West's reaction is simply abominable.

The Israelis are desperately searching for the missing kids throughout the Hebron area, where they're believed to be held. The response from the Obama White House? To lean on Israel to 'urge restraint.'
Apparently the Obama team thinks Israel has arrested too many Hamas operative in Judea and Samaria for its liking.

The EU took a full five days before issuing a perfunctory condemnation, and the UN actually issued a statement saying they were uncertain whether a kidnapping had actually even taken place!.

None of them are reconsidering in the slightest their support for the new Fatah-Hamas unity government.  

In fact, in the middle of all this, the EU actually adopted a ten page proclamation together with the Arab League hailing "‘Palestine’s commitment to democracy and human rights’ and lauding the new unity government while harshly condemning Israel - or, as they put it , the Occupying Power'- for human rights violations galore, including what they termed the “grave humanitarian situation in the Gaza Strip” caused by "the closure" imposed by Israel against Hamas for firing rockets at Israel's civilians. Of course, there was no mention of the Egyptian government's participation in closing the tunnels and working to keep Hamas from obtaining heavy weapons on their side of the border.

It was so blatantly biased that the Israeli foreign ministry actually summoned EU Ambassador Lars Faaborg-Andersen to complain.

The message here is one that even the most reluctant Israelis are beginning to understand. To the EU and President Obama's team, the kidnapped teens and the rockets being fired into Israel are collateral damage of little importance next to a Jew-free Palestinian reichlet and an indefensible Israel on the 1948 cease fire lines.

The EU,of course has been the most outspoken about this, since they see it as excusing their craven behavior during the Holocaust(with some honorable exceptions), and a way of appeasing their new, restive Muslim populations as attacks on Jews in Europe continue to rise.

In the U.S., while most Americans remain pro-Israel, Barack Obama has largely succeeded in making Israel a partisan issue. And a look at what's happening on America's campuses and on the Left, sparked by a president who declared as early as 2009 that his goal was to create distance between America and Israel is a sign that things may be changing.

No matter how many concessions 'for peace' Israel makes, it will never be enough, because the ultimate goal is no Israel at all, not just as far as the Arabs aree concerned by Israel's implacable enemies in the West.

In essence, it's a movement towards a redo of the 1948 UN vote that created the State of Israel with a "no" outcome, and one of the best reasons I can think of that a strong, vital Jewish State is an absolute necessity.

The Real Bullies Among Us

The Obama Regime has made an 'anti-bullying' campaign a major issue since Day One, and the Left has eagerly followed.

The president has made numerous speeches, sponsored conferences and even endorsed legislation forcing public schools to enact anti-bullying codes of conduct and submit data to the Department of Education showing compliance.

 

Yes, nobody likes a bully.

Today, the Washington Redskins football team and their owner, Dan Snyder were subjected to some bullying. For quite some time, they've been subjected to a campaign to change their traditional nickname based on a 2006 appeal by a handful of activists that claims the name is derogatory to Native Americans.

The team and its owner have continuously refused to change their nickname, so some additional bullying tactics were called for. Today, the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office on Wednesday cancelled six federal trademarks of Washington Redskins.

What that means is that the Redskins no longer own their proprietary trademark, and anyone can produce tee shirts, jackets, caps and other merchandise with the team logo on it without compensating the Redskins. It amounts to the government taking of private property without compensation, something the Constitution declares is illegal.

The team has been through this before and successfully appealed a similar decision like this in court, and there's no doubt they will appeal this one as well. The rules about  what's supposedly derogatory and what isn't when it comes to trademarks and ads is so vague and subjective that in the end, it really depends on what you personally see as demeaning. Once again, we're talking about a right not to be offended that simply doesn't exist. I mean, is the term 'redskin peanuts' offensive? Should it be banned?

The Redskins aside, this got me to thinking. For all the noise about bullying, it's the Obama Regime and the Left that are the prime practitioners.

It's the Regime and the Left who are bullying coal companies using the EPA and trying to put them out of business.

It's the Obama Regime that has been bullying countries like Israel, Honduras, and Egypt,among others.

It's the Regime and the Left that have been bullying bakers, florists,photographers and caterers to service homosexual weddings that violate their religious convictions. Ditto for Catholic institutions when it comes to providing abortificants and birth control to their employees.

It's the Obama campaign and the Left who bullied Sarah Palin and her children and attempted to bankrupt her and her family.

It's the Obama Regime that has used the IRS to bully groups and even individual donors who disagree with them politically.

It was the Obama Regime that bullied individual stockholders in GM (many of them retirees) and cut their holdings while leaving Union holdings intact.

And that's just a small sampling of the kind of bullying that's been going on since Barack Obama entered the Oval Office.

But come to think of it, that shouldn't be a surprise, given who 'progressives' actually are and who their predecessors were. Demonizing and bullying those they perceive as their enemies has been a tactic of theirs for a long time now.


 

Pat Condell: Why I Support Israel

The one and only Pat Condell on Israel, who as always gets right to the heart of the matter.(h/t, The Noisy Room)

Watcher's Council Nominations: The Search For The Lost E-mails Edition

Oh, the thrills and adventure...here's our heroine, Lois Lerner using the dreaded, deadly hashtag. That'll show them congress critters!

After hearing from the IRS that Lerner's emails for the past two years mysteriously died in a hard drive crash, one of those congress critters, Darrell Issa, subpoenaed Lerner's entire hard drive.

The IRS has already replied, saying well,you know, it was just sitting there not doing anything and we believe one of the guys, we can't remember exactly who, took it home to use it as a boat anchor. But that didn't work so good because it was too light, and it was too heavy to be a decent fishing sinker. So if we remember right, the story was that he cut it loose and threw it overboard and as far as we know it's somewhere at the bottom of Chesapeake Bay. Or it might have happened when he took his boat down river to Virginia, no one's really sure. Anyway, it's not here anymore. We regret that we can't be of more help, really we do.

This,I believe is what our grandfathers would have referred to as a real fish story.

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.

This week's contest is dedicated to kidnap victims Ya'akov Naftali (ben Rachel Devorah), Gilad Michael (ben Bat Galim), and Eyal (Ben Iris) Teshura. Please pray for their safe return.

Council News:

The Council In Action!!

* VA Right's Tom White is on quite a roll after being one of the few political writers if not th eonly one to correctly predict Eric Cantor's demise in his native Virginia! He's been cited numerous places, was the subject of a laudatory article by NewsMax and was interviewed by, among other places, the Washington Post and The Columbia Journalism Review, and we'll definitely have those links for you once they're up.Council Akbar!!


This week, The MidKnight Review, Right Truth, The Pirate's Cove and Le·gal In·sur·rec·tion 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.

To bring 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 – The Humanitarian Crisis of Illegal Immigration and Its Underlying Meaning


• The Independent Sentinel – A Marxist President and a Fundamental Change We Can't Recover From


• The Noisy Room – Obama Facilitates The Rise Of The Caliphate


• The Razor – The Fact the GOP Leadership Is Stunned Says it All


• Joshuapundit-Kerry Signals That Joint Military Action With Iran In Iraq Is Imminent


• VA Right! - Setting Realistic Expectations on 7th District Funding – A Response to Anonymous Email


• The Glittering Eye -Failure Is An Orphan


• The Colossus of Rhodey – Priorities


• Nice Deb – Issa Subpoenas IRS Commissioner - IRS Required By Law To Keep Records of all Agency


• The Right Planet – The Blame Bush Meme


• Rhymes With Right – Thoughts On The Cantor Loss


• Bookworm Room – Bookworm's 5 Point Gun Manifesto: Or Why I believe in Gun Rights


• Ask Marion – Should Stupid Is As Stupid Does Be America's New Motto? And How Did We Get Here


• Simply Jews – Finally! Blondes exonerated. So?


• GrEaT sAtAn”S gIrLfRiEnD – Target Tehran

Honorable Mentions

• MidKnight Review - Why are mass shootings in our schools, almost non-existent in heavily populated, non-white, poorer, inner-city school districts? We have the answer (perhaps).


• Right Truth - Planned Parenthood Tells Dem Legislators To Support Sex-Selection Abortions…


• The Pirate's Cove - Berkley Looking To Save Us From Climate Change Using Stickers!


• David Gerstman/Le·gal In·sur·rec·tion - Massive Manhunt Underway for 3 Kidnapped Israeli Teens

Non-Council Submissions

• Mark Steyn – The Unmaking of the American World submitted by Liberty's Spirit


• Jonathan Turley.com –Hot Dog Crimes: Five Guys Restaurants Could Be Committing A Crime For Selling “Kosher Style” Hot Dogs In Washington State submitted by The Independent Sentinel


• Mark Steyn –"Harmless as an Enemy, Treacherous as a Friend" submitted by The Noisy Room


• Adam Garfinkle/American Interest –Iraq: What A way To Go submitted by The Razor


• Victor Davis Hanson – The New Children’s Crusade submitted by Joshuapundit


• Flopping Aces – IRS regulations require e-mails that are “federal records” to be stored in separate, permanent systemsubmitted by VA Right!


• Syria Comment – The Future of ISIS and the Sectarian Response: ISIS has Picked a Fight it Cannot Win submitted by The Glittering Eye


• Francis Fukuyama/WSJ – At the 'End of History' Still Stands Democracy submitted by The Colossus of Rhodey


• Father Z -Nancy “the Theologian” Pelosi scolds Archbp. Cordileone submitted by Nice Deb


• American Civil Rights Union – Bergdahl: They Don't Care About the Law, Get Over It submitted by The Right Planet


• Patterico's Pontifications – Are the Cartels Using the U.S Government to Deliver Their Footsoldiers Into the United States? submitted by Rhymes with Right


• James Lewis/American Thinker-Obama's Children's Crusade submitted by Bookworm Room


• Ryan Scott Welch/American Thinker – How the Tea Party Took Over the GOP in Texas submitted by Ask Marion


• Joy Pullmann/The Federalist – Everyone Say It Loudly: We Need Men submitted by The Watcher


• Dick Cheney, Liz Cheney/WSJ -The Collapsing Obama Doctrinesubmitted by The Watcher


• Blazing Cat Fur – Iraq: Maliki accuses Saudi Arabia of backing rebels submitted by The Watcher


• Andrew McCarthy – Don’t Blame Iraq on Obama Alone submitted by Watcher

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

Mexican Embassy: Mexicans 'Illegally' Crossing U.S. Border 'Are Not Committing a Crime'

An interesting video, especially when you contrast how illegal aliens are treated here as compared to a certain U.S. Marine, Sergeant Andrew Tahmooressi, who crossed the border by mistake, committed no crime and is still rotting in a Mexican jail.

Or as one person in the video alludes to, the difference in the effort the Obama Administration is expending to free Sergeant Tahmoressi, a Marine who served honorably, with what the Regime was willing to do to free Bode Bergdahl.

Quite a contrast.

Hillary's Book Bombs - But It's A Great Undercover Campaign Contribution At Our Expense

Hillary Clinton's latest ghost written memoir, "Hard Choices" received a huge amount of attention in the press and sparked a well publicized book tour, but that apparently isn't translating into the sales Simon & Schuster were expecting based on the $14 million  dollar advance they gave her:

In an email this evening, a veteran publishing source calls the latest Hillary Clinton book, 'Hard Choices', a memoir of her State Department years, a "bomb." The source is referring to the early but underwhelming sales figures.

"Between us, they are nervous at S&S [Simon & Schuster]," says the source, who gave permission for his email to be published. "Sales were well below expectations and the media was a disaster."

According to this source, a Simon & Schuster insider, "They sold 60,000 hard covers first week and 24,000 ebooks." The publishing house was "hoping and praying for 150,000 print first week."

"The 60k represents a less than 10% sell thru based on what they shipped," says the source.

It's been reported that one million copies of Clinton's book were shipped weeks before the June 10 publication date. "They will be lucky to sell 150,000 total lifetime," the source writes in the email.

'Nervous at Simom & Schuster?' I doubt that.

Since I know a bit about how book publishing works, I can tell you that an old line, established publishing house like S & S doesn't make huge mistakes with advances like this. They research this stuff carefully and have a marketing analysis done by experienced hands before they get out the checkbook. For example, Mrs. Clinton's last ghost written memoir, 'Living History' which chronicled her White House years (for which, by the way, she never credited her ghost writer Barbara Feinman and even tried to renege on part of Ms. Feinman's $120,000 fee) only received an $8 million dollar advance and made a profit, but not an overwhelming one.And that sold double what 'Hard Choices' did in its first week.

Not only that, but S & S went to the trouble and expense of printing over one million copies and shipping them before all the retail orders or even the preorders online were even in.

Major publishers simply don't make mistakes like that, or they turn into former publishers.

So let's look at how this works in the real world, shall we? Let's say S & S makes a gross profit on the retail sales of this piece of self-serving package of horse manure of between $3 and $4 million. After they deduct the costs of the advance, advertising, shipping, printing and all the other associated costs, what they end up with is a loss for tax purposes of perhaps $12 million plus..that's fully tax deductible against their other profits.

Meanwhile Mrs. Clinton still has her $14 million advance thanks to Simon & Schuster's unprecedented 'miscalculation'....and a nice campaign contribution that skirts campaign finance laws completely, while S&S is almost completely reimbursed by the American taxpayer, that is, you and me.

That plus the $6 billion that mysteriously went missing and is unaccounted for from the State Department's budget while she was Secretary of State would make a nice start for a 2016 run.

 

What difference does it make, right?


Oh, and who owns Simon & Schuster? CBS, who are in turn owned by Viacom. Just a coincidence of course, but Viacom's Chairman of the Board is Sumner Redstone, a self-described 'liberal Democrat' and a major Democrat donor as are most of the members of Viacom's board....along with Phillipe Dauman, by far the biggest individual shareholder, with over 1,350,000 shares.

Just a coincidence. Of course.

Bombshell! Proof The IRS Is Lying About Lois Lerner's 'Lost' E-mails

 

As I reported previously, the IRS has refused to provide two years worth of formed IRS Exempt Organizations Director Lois Lerner's e-mails with the excuse that her computer crashed.

How convenient! Who would have believed that our own IRS has absolutely no data backup system!

John Hinderaker at Powerline takes this apart even further, and has unearthed a bombshell at the very end that pretty much proves the IRS is lying through its teeth - again.

As Powerline points out, the IRS' own website reveals that their system of storing e-mail is ridiculously inadequate if they're actually telling the truth..which they may not be. We're expected to believe that no records were being kept prior to May of 2013 of all of the evidence on various cases, the decisions made and the actions taken by the IRS' employees.Prior to that, the IRS claims they were storing e-mails on tape which was erased and reused every six months to - wait for it - save taxpayers money. Since May of 2013, they say they now have a new policy of archiving all e-mails, but more about that below.

Of course, the IRS isn't claiming that the subpoenaed e-mails were recycled, remember. They're saying they were never archived at all because Lerner's computer crashed.And apparently, they want us to believe there was no success at all in any attempt to recover the lost data? With all the resources for doing so that the IRS must possess to deal with audits and attempts at fraud and concealing records?

Here's a little something that pretty much proves the IRS may not be telling the truth about this:

 

The IRS supplied this, the end of a supposed exchange of e-mails about the crash to congress as 'proof' Lerner's computer crashed.

First, note the date on this e-mail...July 19th, 2011. That's well before the supposed change in policy of May 2013 took place. So if what the IRS is telling us about their former methods is the truth, this e-mail should have been on those tapes that were 'recycled' and the IRS, if they're telling the truth shouldn't have been able to produce it..

That means that they are either lying about the recycling the e-mail tapes or that they manufactured this one and just backdated it, either of which constitutes lying to congress and obstruction of justice, which are felonies.Anyone else besides me think that they might have been instructed to do this this by someone higher up at the White House?

 

The other interesting point, as Hinderaker points out, is the wording of Lerner's e-mail:

It is remarkable that Lerner does not say: “Oh no! My hard drive crashed, and the IRS’s only copy of two years’ worth of my highly important work has been lost!” No: she is concerned about “my lost personal files,” because “there were some documents in the files that are irreplaceable.” That is a clearly stated and entirely reasonable concern, but it has nothing to do with losing the agency’s only record of two years of work. 

 

Puts a very different connotation on that 'crash', doesn't it?

Border Patrol Agents Handcuffed By New Use-Of-Force Restrictions

 


The surge of illegal aliens openly crossing the border has coincided with brand new use-of-force restrictions that not only keep them from doing what they're supposedly being paid to do but actually endanger them physically.

Agents are now mandated to avoid any situation where deadly force might come into play. "Examples include refraining from blocking moving vehicles' paths" or shooting at rock-throwers unless the agents can prove that they were in imminent danger. "Additionally, agents will be trained on how to carry and use lighter weapons, while also facing restrictions on taser use."

So if a coyote with a van full of sex slaves in the process of being trafficked across the border steps on the gas instead of stopping when ordered to, the Border Patrol has now been ordered to simply step aside and let them pass. And rest assured, whose whose intent is to cross our border illegally are well aware of the new restrictions.

Assaults on Border Patrol Agents by rock throwers on the Mexican side of the border are becoming increasingly common. The image, of course is of harmless kids committing mischief, but the reality (h/t, Breitbart) is that these assaults are far more serious than that:

 







Zack Taylor, Chairman of the National Association of Former Border Patrol Officers (NAFBPO), told Breitbart Texas that agents must have a way to defend themselves against threatening immigrants armed with rocks.

"If you don't throw rocks at the border patrol agent, they're not going to shoot you," Taylor told Breitbart Texas. "If you threaten the life of the officer, you then put the officer in a position where he has to protect his life. What do people not understand about that?"

Aside from putting their lives and safety at risk, the new rules appear to be aimed at sending a message to Border patrol Agents from the Obama Administration: 'Don't take your job of apprehending
illegal aliens and protecting the border seriously. Sit back, get paid and enjoy the scenery.'

Kerry Signals That Joint Military Action With Iran In Iraq Is Imminent

U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry today  left the door wide open on joint military action with Iran in Iraq and as much as said it's practically a done deal.

“We’re open to discussions if there is something constructive that can be contributed by Iran, if Iran is prepared to do something that is going to respect the integrity and sovereignty of Iraq and ability of the government to reform,” Kerry said.

And military cooperation?

“At this moment, I think we need to go step-by-step and see what in fact might be a reality. But I would not rule out anything that would be constructive in providing real stability, a respect for the constitution, a respect for the election process and a respect for the ability of the Iraqi people to form a government that represents all the interests of Iraq,” he said. “We are open to any constructive process here that would minimize the violence.”

Yes, Iran and the Maliki's Iran-friendly government can certainly be counted on not to go tribal again.

Kerry, in fact, is already laying the ground for a 'go' on  air strikes and drone attacks that will be coordinated with Iran once the president finishes yet another golf holiday in Rancho Mirage.



Air strikes “are not the whole answer, but they may well be one of the options that are important to be able to stem the tide and stop the movement of people who are moving around in open convoys and trucks and terrorizing people,” Kerry said. “When you have people murdering, assassinating in these mass massacres, you have to stop that and you do what you need to do if you need to try to stop it from the air or otherwise.”

Of course, what Kerry isn't saying in so many words is that in order to do that, you have to coordinate those air strikes with the boots on the ground. Which means we'll be abandoning ISIS, whom the Obama Administration trained and armed to fight Syria's Basher Assad and moving over to the Shi'ite side with teammates like the Iranian Revolutionary Guard, Moqtada al Sadr's Mahdi Army, and Hezbollah, all of whom have lots of American blood on their hands..and incidentally, contributing to keeping Assad in power, chemical weapons and all.

In other words, what Kerry and President Obama are preparing to do is to have the U.S. pick sides in a sectarian civil war, something I seem to recall a certain Massachusetts Democrat senator and presidential candidate having an absolute hissy fit about back when President George W. Bush did it.

There's absolutely no reason for us to do so.Iraq, a made up country, is now merely reverting to it's natural divisions, and the Sunnis and Shi'ites will fight each other to a standstill, just as Saddam Hussein and the Ayatollahs did for 8 years back in the 1980's, weakening them both. That's definitely to our benefit, especially if Iran gets heavily involved. A war by Iran right now against ISIS and the Sunnis in Iraq with only Iran's minimal air power involved could last a long time without a decisive result for either side.

And the argument that Iraq will become 'a failed state' and a base for terrorist attacks on America? If you look around the region, most of what you see is failed states,. In fact, President Obama created one himself, in Libya.Any of these states can easily become a base for terrorist activity. And speaking of terrorist threats, the last time you checked was the Obama Regime really doing anything about Iran, a major state supporter of terrorism that was complicit in 9/11 and is on the verge of developing nuclear weapons?

If we're talking security risks to America, Iran is a far bigger clear and present danger than ISIS.Yet President Obama and his team are not only pretty much ignoring their illegal nuclear weapons program, they're actually talking about helping them secure a Shiite bloc to strengthen Iran's poisonous regime.

You literally couldn't make this stuff up.

 

Forum: Should The U.S. intervene in Iraq?

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: Should The U.S. intervene in Iraq?

The Independent Sentinel: The U.S. must intervene in Iraq in a significant way. ISIS or ISIL will eventually attack the U.S. and they will attack Israel. Of that, there is no doubt.

United States intelligence intercepted a letter in 2005 written from Al-Zawahiri to the then-leader of Al Qaeda in Iraq. The letter outlined a four-stage plan to expand the war in Iraq: drive the Americans out, establish a caliphate in Bahgdad, use that base to attack other countries, and attack Israel –”because Israel was established only to challenge any new Islamic entity.”

Stage three is to attack us. The United States is in extreme and direct danger from ISIS.

They could have been stopped at the border if we had intervened in a timely manner or if we had a residual force in Iraq.

It's a very complicated matter. We are indirectly supporting these same people in Syria as they rampage through the country killing Christians - they are dispersed among the rebel forces and we are supplying them with arms and funds.

ISIS has joined up with moderate forces in Iraq. The moderates are people we would prefer not to alienate. They don't want Sharia law or an Islamic caliphate but they hate Maliki more. The enemy of my enemy is my friend.

No matter what we do, we will be firing on people we claim to support, but the bottom line is that we can't let ISIS form an Islamic state.

Will President Obama do anything of any significance - unlikely. I hope I am proven wrong.

The Razor: Whenever a clear and present danger against our Republic materializes in that infernal sandpit, then yes we should intervene and crush it. But until that time arises, absolutely not.

 JoshuaPundit: No. Emphatically Hell No, with one possible exception.Send this guy:



Exactly what are we planning to accomplish there? The last time we got involved in Iraq, we took out a Sunni dictatorship that was the single counterpoint in the region to the Islamofacists in Iran and much to our allies in the region's dismay, we put in a Shi'ite dictatorship with major ties to Iran in its place. We allowed the wholesale ethnic cleansing of Iraq's Christians, sold out our only real allies in the region, the Kurds, and were finally able to extricate ourselves by bribing the Sunni chiefs in the Awakening Movement and lying to them about how Maliki was going to include them in his government as full and equal partners.

We lost over 4,400 U.S. troops there, spent at least a trillion dollars rebuilding their infrastructure, saved Iraq's oil wells for the Chinese and spent billions building them an army. We got absolutely nothing for it, not even simple gratitude. Anyone familiar with  the old saying about throwing good money after bad?

ISIS,whom President Obama and his team helped arm, fund and train is now facing off with Iranian forces. Are we now going to commit the U.S. military to fighting on the same side as Hezbollah, Iran's Revolutionary Guard, Moqtada al-Sadr's Mahdi Army. the Badr Force and Basher Assad to keep an Iranian ally in power? And if we're going there, are we going to aid these same forces in Syria as well to help Assad out? Anyone care to explain that pretzel logic to me?

What's most likely going to happen here is a stalemate, now that the Iranians have come in. Baghdad will be the dividing line, and the Shi'ites will hold on to the Baghdad to Basra corridor and the southern oilfields while ISIS puts together its Sunni mini-caliphate in southern Syria and the rest of Iraq and the Kurds carve of the Kurdish areas of northeastern Iraq and eastern Syria just across the border as the independent Kurdistan they always should have had. In other words, an artificial country that never should have been one is dividing along its natural lines.

The bloodshed and horror will last for months, just as it has in Syria and there's absolutely no reason for us to get involved, although President Obama might be stupid enough to aid Iran and the Shi'ite bloc by doing so.It would be a huge  mistake, just as it was sheer idiocy for Obama to go into Libya to save al-Qaeda and the Muslim Brotherhood from Khaddaffi, to champion the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt, to arm Islamists in Syria and to fund the terrorist alliance between Fatah and Hamas in 'Palestine'.

The last time the Sunnis and Shi'ites went to war in the Persian Gulf, there were a million casualties,  both sides were too busy to bother us and ended up substantially weakened.As the Dark Lord Dick Cheney wisely said, "it's a pity they can't both lose."

The majority of these countries are failed states, and most of them mean us no good. For that matter, there's a failed state just east of Afghanistan that we've bribed with billions of dollars. If the rationale is that we're going to knock off failed states with significant ties to Islamist terrorism just because, why not that one, which actually has an illegal nuclear weapons program already and has no love whatsoever for America? Obviously, playing that kind of  whack-a-mole is no strategy.

Our best bet (and hopefully this president will stumble into it through sheer incompetence) is to leave this strictly alone and let the two sides fight it out.

President Obama will not be able to do this at this point because no one in the region trusts him, but we would be far better off resetting our relationships with our allies in the region like Israel, Jordan and Egypt and synching their intel more with our own to monitor the situation.

Especially valuable (and again, President Obama would not be able to pull this off but we might try for it in the future) would be an alliance with the Kurds, who loved America because we protected them from Saddam during the no-fly-zone days and actually wanted us to put bases in their country until Bush 43 betrayed them. A strong independent Kurdistan would be a major U.S. asset, provided we could get win their trust again.

But another undeclared war with fuzzy objectives? No.


Liberty's Spirit: Should the US intervene in Iraq? In a review of the situation in Iraq you cannot look at it without looking at the Middle East as a whole. The effects of inaction in one sphere of the Moslem world has reverberations throughout the region.

The rise of ISIS can be directly connected to the Cairo speech that Obama gave shortly after coming to office. When he gave succor to the Moslem Brotherhood, Obama paved the way for the legitimization of radical Islamist organizations. By Obama turning his back on the consistent American allies in the Arab world (granted they were mostly tyrants and oligarchs) he let it be known throughout the region that the US would not step in to help its allies and that they in fact would support Islamists in their attempt to take over Arab governments. Without a history of democracy in the Arab world, the naive western support for the Arab Spring, which overthrew the longtime American allies, paved the way for the control by Islamists in the region. In truth, the Obama administration sees these Islamist groups as the true voice of the Arab people and an outgrowth of western imperialism and colonialism. In righting what the Obama administration sees as western domination of a third world people the Obama administration has facilitated the rise of the Islamo-fascists. I predicted everything that is happening now in the Middle East years ago, as well as outlining the ineptness of the Obama foreign policy worldwide.

Obama has botched everything about Iraq from the day he came into office. When Obama took office, there was a modicum of organization and the beginnings of a new Iraqi nation. However, Obama was so intent on leaving Iraq that he pulled our troops out without securing the gains made by our soldiers. Obama abandoned the people of Iraq to the duplicitous Maliki government and the evil that is Iran. He basically paved the way for a Shiite-Iran alliance which alienated the Sunni population in the country.

Then Obama's red-line in Syria was more of his machinations and complete inadequate understanding of the region. He allowed the Russians, who also join with Iran on the side of Assad, to come in and take over the "the good guy" position and lead the search for chemical weapons. (Of course, it has been proven to no thinking person's surprise, that Assad has not destroyed his weapons of mass destruction) Now, by the time Obama actually thought to do anything on the side of the opposition, ISIS was the formidable opposition to the Assad-Iran regime. At that point there was no way that it made any sense for the US to take the side against Assad. Obama had his way and decided to just let the Syrian civil war play out on its own.

ISIS as it gained strength in Syria decided to branch out and saw an opening into Iraq. That this is an on-going battle between Sunni and Shiite Islam is true. But there is more at stake right now for the entire world. You have ISIS, which is backed by Qatar and Saudi Arabia, versus the Shiite government of Maliki, which is backed by Iran. It is a power play for the control of the Moslem world and in the end control of the vast oil reserves in that region. (Meanwhile, the Obama administrations refusal to support oil and energy independence for the US in a logical manner, adds to our frightening dependence on this volatile region of the world).

That the US is reaching out to Iran for help to stop ISIS is not unforeseen. The Obama administration has been trying to normalize Iran since they came to office. They see Iran as a true player in Middle Eastern politics despite their human rights abuses and support for world wide terrorism. The Obama administration sees Iran as a needed ingredient to be a hedge against the State of Israel, who they see as the real impediment to any stabilization in the Middle East. The question is what exactly is the Obama administration giving Iran for their help in Iraq? Iran has already won the race toward a nuclear bomb, the issue is how else has the Obama administration endangered the entire world through their ineptness and ignorance when dealing with the Messianic cult that is in charge of Iran?

Yes, in many ways Obama is between a rock and a hard place. But it is one of his own making. Unfortunately his lack of ability to engender respect will lead to loosing the entire Middle East to any idea of democracy and freedom. Islamo-fascists are on the march, not only in the Middle East but in Europe, Asia and South America. They are coming here to the US, if their terror cells are not here already. They have promised that they will come after the US and the west. When people threaten your existence it is wise to listen. History no doubt, shows that Jimmy Carter by losing Iran facilitated the beginnings of the rise of Islamo-fascism. Meanwhile, history will show that Obama and his politically correct minions, caused a World War in the end so that we can preserve our own liberty and freedom.

Now as for what the US should do now? Whatever Obama does, it is too little too late. Bombing ISIS will only help the Iranian regime, but leaving ISIS will embolden Islamists. Arm twisting the Qataris and Saudis to pull their support for ISIS will not work. They have no fear of Obama and are terrified of Iran. Sadly, no matter who controls this region in the end it does not bode well for the future for anyone.

 The Glittering Eye: It's a tough call and I'm of mixed minds on it. Emotionally, I think we should since I think that under the circumstances which include invading their country and removing its government and not following through on post-withdrawal commitments we have a debt of honor. Rationally, I think we shouldn't if for no other reason than that I am predisposed against intervention.

What I really think should happen is a public discussion about our actual interests in Iraq and in the region with the intention of quantifying those interests as a method of producing a cost-benefit analysis.

As it is I think people are producing tactics without a strategy or objectives. Let's decide on the objectives first and then identify the tactics best-suited for accomplishing them.

GrEaT sAtAn"S gIrLfRiEnD:1st off, this ISIS gang is the Artist formerly known As al Qaeda. That alone is reason enough to rain destruction on them and any enablers, actualizers or sympathizers - the hurt feelings of Sunnis be danged.

44 says he's thinking it over

"The U.S. is not simply going to involve itself in a military action in the absence of a political plan by the Iraqis."

A political plan for Iraq is vital. Everything the administration has said about the sectarianism and mis-governance of Prime Minister Nuri al Maliki is true. Assistance to Iraq must include strong conditions to press Maliki to change his approach - or leave office.

Yet the Iraqis need vigorous and intelligent American involvement right now to prevent a stalemate that will leave ISIS in control of much of northern Iraq. That is an unacceptable outcome

We face a simple choice: We can either rejoin our demoralized Iraqi partners in the fight against ISIS or we can watch as this Al Qaeda franchise solidifies its control over several million Iraqis and Syrians, completes its plundering of military bases and continues to build up, train and equip an honest-to-goodness military.

Rejoining the fight means immediately sending air support; intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance assets; air transportation; Special Operations forces; training teams; and more military equipment back into Iraq. It does not mean re-invading Iraq.

Immediately sending air support and Special Forces to Mosul might shock ISIS and embolden the population enough to rout the jihadis from the city. But if it does not, the Iraqi Security Forces may well prove unable to regain Mosul on their own.

In that case, a small contingent of U.S. ground forces would be required.

Friday 44 ruled out putting boots on the ground. He has consistently dismissed critics of his foreign policy as adventurers who want to invade everywhere Al Qaeda operates.

Cautiousness and deliberation are certainly warranted when contemplating re-entering a war, but delay risks allowing a key nation in the Middle East, one in which we've poured billions of dollars and thousands of lives, fall to violent Islamists.

The President no doubt has public opinion strongly on his side - especially since he has been leading the public to that side since before he first took office.

What are we to do as a country in which we have clear interests - preventing Al Qaeda from establishing a massive and wealthy safe-haven, stopping the evolution of a regional ethno-sectarian war, keeping Iran from establishing permanent forward military bases in Iraq - looks to be on the brink of falling to radical Islamists?

If the Iraqis cannot find a political solution quickly,is it better for the U.S. to allow all of this to happen? And are the odds of a political solution in Iraq increased or decreased by American inaction?

When America is passive in such cases, others fill the vacuum.

As we speak, the Iranians are trying to help the Iraqi Shi'a resist the ISIS advance. Reports indicate the deployment of hundreds of Qods Force troops to Iraq, and Tehran has threatened to conduct its own airstrikes in Iraq if militants come close to its border.

That advance will halt in any event once it reaches the Shi'a-dominated areas in and south of Baghdad.

Shi'a groups, including Moqtada al Sadr's militias, are already reforming in preparation for the full-scale sectarian war that is on its way.

Some may argue that we should align ourselves with Iran - that our interests and Tehran's coincide in Iraq. This is folly. The U.S. and Iran share a common concern about Al Qaeda, but our approaches to dealing with the problem are antithetical.

Turning the problem over to Iran is absolutely incompatible with the conditions for involving the U.S. at all that the President announced Friday. If we back Iran in Iraq, we're taking Iran's side against our Arab allies and aligning with the Shi'a against the Sunni. We should not be taking sides, particularly since Iran's approach is certain to lead to an expansion of sectarian war, providing a perennial recruiting masterpiece for Al Qaeda.

Relying on the Iraqis, with Iranian support, to beat back ISIS would have a predictable, almost inevitable, outcome: a transposition of the Syria conflict into Iraq - with Maliki in the role of Assad and ISIS playing, well, ISIS.

Under this scenario, Iraq would once again become another magnet for international jihadis, and the black-and-white ISIS banner will become the symbol not merely of Al Qaeda's most impressive military victory in history, but also of an actual Al Qaeda state.

Some would dispute this characterization, pointing to the vehement disagreements between ISIS and Ayman al Zawahiri, the head of Al Qaeda. Zawahiri, after all, partially expelled ISIS from the Al Qaeda movement.
Key to that disagreement is the argument about whether Al Qaeda affiliates should attempt to set up Islamic states now (ISIS says yes) or focus instead on the global jihad (Zawahiri's insistence). In fact, we should not be surprised if we soon hear claims that it is actually better for us that ISIS prevail in this competition, since it is "locally-focused."

Let us dispense with such sophistries at once. For all intents and purposes, ISIS is the Artist Formerly Known as Al Qaeda in Iraq. Whatever disagreements may fester at the moment, it is and remains part of the global Al Qaeda movement. The group continues to draw would-be jihadis from around the world, including the U.S. and Canada, to fight and die in Syria and Iraq. And it is about to become the most powerful and successful Al Qaeda franchise ever.

There is no way that such a development will be anything but disastrous for the U.S., even leaving aside the calamity that will flow from the full-scale regional and sectarian war that may already be underway.

There is, in fact, no end in sight for this war now, especially if we allow Iraq to go down. A policy of retreat and abandonment remains as it has always been the fastest road to endless war.


Ask Marion: Absolutely… the United States must intervene in Iraq. Otherwise all our young men and women that fought their so honorably, were wounded there, and died there did so in vane. And let us not forget the trillions we invested there.

And there is also a much bigger price to come if we don’t. If we allow this all-slaughter to continue, regardless of what crazy Nancy Pelosi says, that is our fault because President Obama did not listen to his generals and experts on the ground about the withdrawal, the Islamic Caliphate will have begun there, and will spread throughout the Middle East, after which the attacks on Israel, the United States and any non-Muslim countries will be endless.

We need to be launching targeted drones and dropping missiles as well as giving what is left of their leadership guidance… but no boots on the ground!

And people in the know need to be calling the big-three media outlets… ABC, CBS and NBC and their local papers and demanding that this news be covered for the low-informed to see and understand.


Bookworm Room : I’m of many, many minds on this. Assuming that we want to end the bloodshed there, I would intervene only if we had a different (by which I really mean “better”) president. Things will not get better for America or for the Iraqis if we go in with an Obama led fighting force.

Obama doesn’t think in terms of victory or of the safety and well-being of American troops. He thinks in terms of political gamesmanship and the ugliness that is American military might. If he a new invasion, he’d piddle a few bombs here, order a few drones there, and watch a few hundred troops die somewhere else (then convening a panel to prove that the troops provoked their own demise). Then he’d declare we’d achieved some bean-counter’s goal and pull out.

Of course, if we had a better president, we wouldn’t be in this predicament in the first place. American wouldn’t be a paper tiger (or a paper clown). She’d be a world presence whose word meant something, and whose gravitas would keep at least some evil at bay.

And by better president, I do not mean another Dubya iteration. Dubya too never really understand that we’re fighting an enemy so evil it’s almost impossible to comprehend. Dubya thought in terms of a global calculus — bring democracy and we’ll have peace. It didn’t seem to occur to him that Islam and democracy do not coexist in the same temporal and spatial universe.

But really, should we intervene? Iran is now threatening to get involved, which takes me back to the glorious 1980s when Iran and Iraq were so busy killing each other, they had little time to kill anybody else.

Right now, Syria is an appalling blood bath. There are no good guys. Two armies of unspeakable evil are facing off against each other. The only innocents, and the only ones for whom I mourn, are the children and those helpless women — not the “black widows” or “martyred mamas” — who have been sucked into this morass through the sheer bad luck of being part of these toxic cultures.

The more the bad guys kill each other in Syria, the better for us. The same might hold true for Iraq. If it becomes another Shia/Sunni fight to the death, the only thing that I’ll mourn in addition to those poor women and children are the American troops who died, or who were wounded other otherwise suffered in a long war that might have been victorious if one president hadn’t done the “gentlemanly” thing and thrown it away to another president who did nothing at all.

  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?

IRS: 'Sorry, We Lost All Of Lois Lerner's E-Mails'

That, essentially was the response of the Internal Revenue Service to congressional subpoenas for two years of emails from Lois Lerner to the Department of Justice, the Department of the Treasury, the White House or to Democrats on Capitol Hill.

The IRS is blaming - wait for it - a computer crash. Apparently, they would have congress and the American people believe the IRS has no backup system for its data! Try using that one back at them if you're ever audited.

Lerner, the former IRS Director of Exempt Organizations still won't testify before Congress about how the IRS targeted conservative and pro-Israel groups. So this convenient computer crash is a neat tactic to try to ensure that we never know whose orders she was following, or what orders she was giving and to whom.

'Not even a smidgeon of corruption', Mr. President? If nothing else, aside from being obstruction of justice, this is pretty clear evidence in itself that the stench from IRS-Gate leads directly to the White House. After all, how can you have a reasonable presumption of innocence hen the White House is ordering a former IRS top executive not to testify, stonewalling aninvestigation at every turn and destroying evidence through convenient 'computer crashes?' ?

This is especially interesting since it's now come to light that days before the 2010 election, the IRS sent a 1.1 million page database about tax-exempt groups to the FBI. Why they did it and who ordered them to do it is something the IRS is still hiding, but let's remember that Rep. Darrell Issa's House Oversight Committee has already uncovered e-mails showing that Lerner was working with officials in the Obama Department of Justice to to investigate and possibly prosecute any groups critical of the president.

Organizations can retain their tax exempt status provided they spend less than 50% of their resources on politics. The normal procedure in cases where the IRS suspects this statute has been violated is to assign an agent to investigate and then revoke the group's 501 C3 status if necessary. There's no criminal prosecution.

But what we know now is that Lerner shipped a huge database of conservative tax exempt organization's confidential tax records including confidential information on their donors to the FBI, which is the Justice Department's official office for investigating criminal activities. And that a separate email from September 2010 shows Jack Smith, the head of Justice's Public Integrity Unit in its Criminal Division, was openly discussing ways of criminally prosecuting conservative groups under "371" a fairly broad section of the U.S. Code of Justice that allows prosecutors to claim a conspiracy to defraud the U.S. government.

Meanwhile, we also know that the IRS used this information to create 'individualized questions' to target groups’ donors, seize training information, demand personal information on college interns, and even target individuals by name.

There's even a whole series of letters  between Senator Carl Levin (D-MI), chairman of the Subcommittee on Investigations, and top IRS officials throughout 2012 discuss how better to target conservative groups.And Levin wasn't alone by any means. Several nonprofit groups have filed complaints with the Senate Ethics Committee against nine Democratic Senators for improperly interacting with the IRS to urge the targeting and possible criminal prosecution of specific groups and even individuals and/or to hand over confidential nonprofit tax information.

So where do we go from here?

It's blatantly obvious the White House is deeply involved, or they wouldn't be spending this much energy on trying to hide evidence and quash the scandal. We may very well be talking about something impeachment worthy, not that there's be any shortage of that in this lawless, corrupt regime.

Ron Fournier over at the National Journal could best be described as a former Obama fan whose fallen out of love with the president. His latest piece "Let A Special Prosecutor Find The Missing E-Mails" is an outraged call for the president of the United States to appoint an independent prosecutor to get to the bottom of this.

Fournier isn't stupid by any means,but it ought to be fairly obvious  that President Barack Obama has no desire to get to the bottom of Fast And Furious, Benghazi, the VA scandal, NSA-Gate, IRS-Gateor any of the other scandals this president and his people have been involved in. As Michael Barone, one of America's most long serving and well regarded political writers one referred to them, they are, quite simply a lawless gang.

This president is not going to appoint a special prosecutor who has any intention of cooperating with congress and getting to the truth. The president's new RS Commissioner John Koskinen promised to cooperate with Congress, and it was supposed to be a whole new ballgame.

Does it sound like it? "Oops, sorry, heh heh, we lost two years worth of e-mails."

Thanks to Bill Clinton, there is no such thing as a truly independent special prosecutor's office any more. When the Democrats dominated congress after Watergate, they passed the Ethics in Government Act of 1978 that created a special prosecutor, later called an Independent Counsel position, which could be used by either Congress or the Attorney General investigations of Officials in the executive branch. It was totally independent of the Attorney General and the Department of Justice. That's who Kenneth Starr worked for, whose work led to President Clinton's impeachment for the felonies if perjury, obstruction of justice and abuse of office.

As I've mentioned before of Mr. Bill's last 'gifts' to the country before he left office in 2000 was to eliminate the Office of the Independent Counsel totally and replace it with the very different Office of Special Counsel, controlled by the Attorney General as part of the Justice Department.

Exactly what kind of Special Counsel do you think Eric Holder is going to appoint to investigate IRS-Gate?

The key to solving this problem lies in congress allotting funds to hire its own independent prosecutor to investigate this and other sordid scandals. That will be especially effective after November, when the Republicans stand a good chance of taking the4 Senate with its subpoena powers as well.

One For Father's Day..And The Second Amendment

At a time when many children are growing up without fathers due to certain societal changes and of course, the lawyers and the courts, it's well to reflect on one vital function of fathers that these so-called 'feminists' seem to have forgotten in the zeal of conducting the War on Men....that their traditional role was to protect young females in their family from predators.

At about 11 PM last Monday, a 17-year-old girl was getting something from her car parked in front of her house, where she lives with her mother. As reported by Fox2News in St. Louis, two men, both with guns, grabbed her and began to push her back into the home with a gun to her head. They were obviously after a quick and easy home invasion, with the brutal rape of a young girl as an added bonus.

Unfortunately for them, her father, who does not live with his daughter or the girl's mother was visiting right around that time and was strapped.

He didn't dither or delay...his protective instincts kicked in, he pulled his own gun, shot and killed one perpetrator and severely injured the other.

He says he had no choice but to fire. “He was holding her hostage. She was a human shield. So I did what I had to do.”

When the reporter asked him how he had the confidence to pull the trigger when the man was holding his daughter, he said, “It wasn’t like that. It just happened. I didn’t have no choice. He had my daughter so I did what I had to do.”

Oh, and the two perps? Terrell Johnson, who no longer will hurt anyone else and Cortez McClinton, who was wounded were both career criminals. Johnson had a long rap sheet and had served time in the Missouri prison system for armed robbery. Ditto for McClintock, who had already been charged with one murder back in 2010.

I have a feeling President Obama will not be commending this man. Nor will gun confiscation fascists. But imagine what would have happened to the girl , her mother and the father if he hadn't been armed. By the time the police were able to respond, the bleeding bodies on the floor would have belonged to different people.

And there is this. Here's a man who is estranged from his wife and almost certainly doesn't see his daughter as much as he wants to. Yet the bond was so strong that he didn't hesitate risking his life to try and save hers. And he continues to give her an example of masculine behavior and what to look for in a potential husband and father herself when the time comes.

The man wisely insisted on not being identified by the reporter to avoid possible retribution at the hands of some of the perp's friends, but he deserves a shout out on Father's Day. He exemplifies a big part of what it's about.

3 Israeli Teens Feared Kidnapped By Terrorists

 

3 young Israeli teens were reported missing Thursday, and a kidnapping is strongly suspected, especially since their cell phones stopped broadcasting at exactly the same time.

The three boys, who are yeshiva students were on their way home from the Jewish town of Alon Shvut to the Jewish town of Sussya, south of Hebron on Thursday evening when they suddenly disappeared.

Israeli security forces have been searching the Bethlehem and Hebron area today, and have located a burnt car they think was used in the kidnappings.Israeli authorities think that the car, a fairly new one with Israeli plates was used by the suspected kidnappers to lure the victims into a false sense of security as it approached them.



Two of the missing boys are reportedly 16 and one is 19.One of them is a US citizen, and U.S> Ambassador Dan Shapiro was notified by the Israeli government.

Brig. Gen. Motti Almoz, the commander of the IDF Spokesperson’s Unit, said Friday evening that security forces were doing everything possible to locate the teens and PM Netanyahu has been in touch with their families to assure them that everything possible will be done to find their sons.




Netanyahu also reportedly brought the matter up in a previously scheduled conversation with U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry, telling him that since the announcement of a unity government between the Fatah-led PLO and Hamas in April, “the situation on the ground has been destructive.”

“This is the result of letting a murderous terrorist organization enter the Palestinian government,” the PM said.

He's quite right about that. Abbas, thanks to the Obama team and the EU now has plausible denial for everything, just like Yasser Arafat. Hamas, Islamic jihad and Abbas' own Fatah thugs can carry out the attacks on Israeli civilians while Abbas issues pro form a condemnations and laughs up his sleeve at the gullible westerners who label him a 'man of peace' and continue funding terrorism.

The Israelis are now operating on a working basis that they're dealing with a hostage situation.Many Palestinian figures, especially from Hamas and Islamic Jihad but also from Fatah have urged the kidnapping of Israelis as a tool to get convicted terrorists in Israeli custody released.The deal for kidnapped soldier Gilad Shalit, led to the release of 1,027 terrorists, 470 of whom were considered hard core murderers. The Prime Minister’s Office said Friday that, since the beginning of the year, the Shin Bet has foiled 14 attempts to kidnap Israelis.

Hamas in particular celebrated the kidnappings in several messages, although they didn't formally take responsibility. Hamas spokesman in Gaza Husam Badran said “the Hebron operation is a great success for the [Palestinian] resistance in the West Bank.”

The IDF and Shin Bet will leave no stone unturned to try and find the boys.They may, with G-d's help find them and rescue them.

If not, the next step will occur when the Palestinian kidnappers contact the Israeli government with their demands. That's when the Israeli government and Netanyahu are going to be severely tested'

At around midnight on Friday, hundreds of people gathered at the Wailing Wall in Jerusalem’s Old City to pray for the well-being of the three boys.I invite you to join them.

Their names are Ya'akov Naftali ben Rachel Devorah, Gilad Michael ben Bat Galim, and Eyal Ben Iris Teshura.

Meet The Blogger Who Predicted Eric Cantor's Defeat

That would be my good friend and Watcher's Council colleague Tom White from VA Right!, as Tom Schaefer over at Newsmax relates:

 The mainstream media is claiming no one could have foreseen Dave Brat's stunning defeat of House Majority Leader Eric Cantor in Tuesday's Virginia 7th Congressional District GOP primary, but one man did, and detailed it all in a blog post one day earlier.

"Perhaps not since the Chicago Daily Tribune’s infamous 'Dewey Defeats Truman' headline has the political press been so badly blindsided by an election result," Paul Fahri wrote Wednesday in a nuanced mea culpa in The Washington Post.

As Fahri's "political press" was missing the story, a veteran Virginia conservative activist was writing a startlingly accurate description of just why Cantor was in trouble and just how good the chances were that he could lose.

Tom White, editor of the Virginia Right! blog, is a longtime conservative activist who proudly boasts that he has lived in that state's Hanover County since 1983.

In an eerily precise post on the site Monday night titled "Predicting Tomorrow's Dave Brat/Eric Cantor Primary Race," White mentioned the difficulty in forecasting primary elections before getting right to his point: Cantor's seat was in danger.

"This race is not easy to predict by polls. We know it is not a landslide for either side. But I promise you, Eric Cantor is nervous and has every reason to be. And Dave Brat should be cautiously optimistic — and has every reason for the optimism," White wrote.

He then called the very outcome that in the end spelled doom for Cantor.

"I can say with 100% certainty that the people who turned out in 2012 and voted for Eric Cantor will not be doing so in 2014," White wrote.

White listed several reasons for Cantor's lack of appeal to 7th District voters.

"A majority of Dave Brat’s supporters voted for Eric Cantor in 2012. And there are quite a few Cantor supporters that are unhappy with Cantor’s stance on Amnesty, his failure to take away funding from Obamacare and Cantor’s lack of participation in the community. Many of Cantor’s supporters are angered and embarrassed by Cantor’s use of "slating" to disenfranchise Republican voters. And many of them feel Cantor does not deserve their vote. So they will stay home."

"Slating is the process of taking away the votes of a large number of delegates and giving them to a handful of hand-picked individuals," White explained to watchdog.org in May. "In the Virginia Beach [convention] case, more than 1,000 delegates had their votes stripped away and given to 34 people handpicked by the Cantor team."

The move, which was overturned on appeal, increased antipathy for Cantor among grassroots Republicans.

"I think it is a safe bet that the 37,000 votes Cantor received in 2012 will be far more than he will receive tomorrow," White concluded in his prediction post.

More at the link.