The Council Has Spoken!! Our Watcher's Council Results

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

"So we want an Islamic state where Islamic law is not just in the books but enforced, and enforced with determination. There is no space and no room for democratic consultation. The Shariah is set and fixed, so why do we need to discuss it anymore? Just implement it! - ISIS Leader Abu Bakar Bashir

"We're definitely not losing in Iraq" - Barack Obama


"In a very short time the Islamic State has become the most compelling and attractive organisation for Muslim fighters around the world, more so than al-Qaeda ever was" - Sunny Hundal, Al Jazeera






This week's winning essay,Joshuapundit's -Ramadi Falls To ISIS In A Major Victory - And Why It's Important is pretty much about what the title implies it is...an analysis of how and why ISIS won a huge victory in Ramadi, Iraq and what it means. Here's a slice:



On Sunday, Islamic State forces captured Ramadi, routing the Iraqi army, many of whom literally fled from the scene, those that could. Over 500 Iraqi soldiers died in the assault, and the debacle came so quickly that substantial pockets of Iraqi troops were trapped there after taking heavy casualties. They aren't expected to hold out very long and I've already received reports that some of them have already been captured and executed by ISIS.

Hundreds of civilians fled along with the Iraqi troops.






ISIS is using some fairly innovative tactics against fixed defensive points like Ramadi. First they seek to control the ingress and egress via outlying areas, to prevent or delay reinforcement and resupply. The next step in Ramadi was to break the defensive line using car and truck bombs, after which ISIS fighters stormed into the breach.

Many Americans may recall hearing the name Ramadi before, and some might recall that quite a few American lives were spent in securing it. Here's why Ramadi matters.

Look at the map above. Ramadi controls all of the traffic on the Euphrates River. It is only 68 miles (110 Kilometers) from Baghdad and opens the road to that city from the west, just as Fallujah, which ISIS also holds does from the east paving the way for a two-pronged assault. Also, ISIS captured the town of Jubbah in this new offensive, next door to Iraq’s biggest air base at Al-Ansar. That's where US soldiers, AKA advisers are trying to train Iraqi troops to fight ISIS, which so far hasn't been particularly successful.

ISIS has also surrounded the oil-producing town of Baiji near Ramadi, where a small Iraqi army force of a few hundred soldiers is trying to hold out. It's probably only a matter of tie until they're forced to surrender or are wiped out.

Our Secretary of State John Kerry announced from a news conference in Seoul, South Korea that as far as he was concerned Ramadi was " a target of opportunity" for ISIS rather than a carefully planed strategic offensive.

"I am convinced that as the forces are redeployed and as the days flow in the weeks ahead that's going to change, as overall (they) have been driven back ... I am absolutely confident in the days ahead that will be reversed."

Let's examine that.

Exactly what forces is Secretary Kerry talking about? True, the Iraqi government announced that "major military reinforcements" were being deployed to halt the advance of ISIS. The problem is that between Ramadi, the recent 'victory' in Tikrit (about which more later) and an attempted counterattack on Fallujah that went horribly wrong, the Iraqi army has very little strength to 'deploy' between ISIS and Baghdad right now. They're a badly defeated army that is incapable of an offensive against Islamic State right now. The only thing keeping ISIS away from Baghdad is a series of 19 U.S, airstrikes near Ramadi over the past 48 hours.

Much more at the link.

In our non-Council category, the winner was Sultan Knishwith De-Islamization Is The Only Way To Fight ISIS submitted by Joshuapundit


Here are this week’s full results. only the Right Planet was unable to vote this week,but was not subject to the usual 2/3 vote penalty :

Council Winners

• *First place with 4 votes!-Joshuapundit-Ramadi Falls To ISIS In A Major Victory - And Why It's Important


• Second place with 1 1/3 votes – The Glittering Eye -They Wrote What They Saw, Memorial Day, 2015


• Third place *t* with 1 vote –The Noisy Room – Di Blasio's "Contract For Communism"


• Third place *t* with 1 vote –Nice Deb – Ralph Peters: Release of Bin Laden Docs Timed To Divert Attention From Ramadi Embarrassment


• Fourth place *t* with 2/3 vote –Ask Marion – EPA Supports Monsanto Roundup


• Fourth place *t* with 2/3 vote –Bookworm Room – Feminist claims that bad consensual sex equals rape victimize women just as surely as the McMartin trials victimized children


• Fourth place *t* with 2/3 vote –Don Surber – Stephanopoulos made the Clinton Foundation dirty


• Fourth place *t* with 2/3 vote –The Independent Sentinel – Words Matter: Michelle Obama Refers to the US as a Constitutional Democracy at Oberlin


• Fourth place *t* with 2/3 vote –The Razor – Islamic State a Leftist Nightmare


• Fourth place *t* with 2/3 vote –The Right Planet – How Democrats ‘Celebrate’ Memorial Day


• Fifth place *t* with 1/3 vote –VA Right! - Bill Janis Unleashes the Flying Monkeys!


• Fifth place *t* with 1/3 vote –Rhymes With Right – Be Kind To Wheelchairs

Non-Council Winners

• First place with 2 2/3 votes! –Sultan Knish – De-Islamization Is The Only Way To Fight ISIS submitted by Joshuapundit


• Second place with 2 votes – Mark Steyn –Nothing Another 42,000 Airstrikes Can't Fix submitted by The Noisy Room


• Third place with 1 2/3 votes –Victor Davis Hanson -Disasters At Home And Abroad submitted by Nice Deb


• Fourth place *t* with 1 vote -The People's Cube – Stages of the Progressive Agenda submitted by The Right Planet


• Fourth place *t* with 1 vote - Robert Tracinski/The Federalist – Why Does the Left Kowtow to Islam? submitted by The Watcher


• Fourth place *t* with 1 vote - NewsBusters – Bob Woodward: Wrong, Bush Did Not Lie Us Into Iraq submitted by The Watcher


• Fifth place *t* with 2/3 vote -Walter Russell Mead/Via Meadia –Obama, Anti-Semitism and Iran submitted by The Razor and The Glittering Eye


• Fifth place *t* with 2/3 vote -Quin Hillyer/NRO-At Sea in an Alien Culture, Where ‘Normal’ Is Defined as ‘Deviant’ submitted by Bookworm Room


• Fifth place *t* with 2/3 vote - The Daily Beast – With Help From ISIS, a More Deadly Boko Haram Makes a Comeback submitted by GrEaT sAtAn”S gIrLfRiEnD


• Fifth place *t* with 2/3 vote -TeaParty.Org – Pamela Geller Plans Muhammad Cartoon Bus Ads for Washington D.C. submitted by VA Right!

See you next week!

Make sure to tune in every Monday for the Watcher’s Forum. and every  Tuesday morning, when we reveal the weeks' nominees for Weasel of the Week!

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...or any of the other fantabulous Watcher's Council content.

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

Marie Harf Forced Out As State Department Spokeswoman

 

Yes, Marie Harf is leaving us, at least as a public figure in front of the cameras. She's been moved out of the public eye..ummm, promoted to a “new role” as senior adviser for strategic communications to Secretary of State John Kerry, where she will likely have to listen to him talk at length, poor thing, but at least won't have to face all those awkward questions in public any more.

This, after being denied the usual promotion to Jan Psaki's old job after Psaki moved on to become White House Communications Director...heartrending.

Marie Harf was at least entertaining, which is more than I can say for most of the current Regime. It was particularly comical when she was thrown a question on some of the ridiculous things she said trying to defend the regime's foreign policy faux paux. Her forehead would wrinkle, her eyes would grimace, those glasses of hers would slide halfway down her nose and you could literally see the tension as she tried to come up with something that wouldn't get her in even more trouble.It was like watching a hamster desperately running on the little wheel in her cage.

Some of the FOX news folks had some fun at her expense, compiling a video of some of her more famous moments:

June 3, 2014: In response to questioning by Fox News at the briefing, Harf downplayed criticism of the recently announced trade of five Taliban fighters for Bergdahl.
She downplayed "conflicting reports" and "rumor" when asked about accounts from Bergdahl's platoon-mates that he walked off base.

"There's a lot of rumor and telephone game that's being played here," she said.
After continued questioning, she said: "It happened five years ago."

Bergdahl would later be charged with desertion. Former commander of U.S. forces in Afghanistan Gen. Stanley McChrystal also told Fox News this week it was his initial understanding as well that Bergdahl walked off his base before he disappeared.

Sept. 25, 2014: Harf was asked, in an interview with Fox News' Megyn Kelly, to respond to a warning that the U.S. would lose if President Obama did not approve ground troops to fight the Islamic State in Iraq.

"I'm not exactly sure what 'lose' means," Harf said, arguing the solution is "targeted military action." She said the prior U.S. engagement in Iraq, with tens of thousands of U.S. troops on the ground, couldn't prevent terrorism.

Feb. 16, 2015: Speaking on MSNBC's "Hardball," Harf suggested that jobs programs are needed to help take on the Islamic State.

"We're killing a lot of them, and we're going to keep killing more of them. ... But we cannot win this war by killing them," she said. "We need ... to go after the root causes that leads people to join these groups, whether it's lack of opportunity for jobs, whether --"

Harf was interrupted by host Chris Matthews, who pointed out, "There's always going to be poor people. There's always going to be poor Muslims." She acknowledged there's "no easy solution" and said the U.S. would still take out ISIS leaders. But Harf said: "If we can help countries work at the root causes of this -- what makes these 17-year-old kids pick up an AK-47 instead of trying to start a business?"

Feb. 17, 2015: Responding to critics of her remarks on helping fight terror by creating jobs, Harf said her statements were just "too nuanced" for her critics.

"Longer term, we cannot kill every terrorist around the world, nor should we try," Harf said on CNN. "How do you get at the root causes of this? Look, it might be too nuanced an argument for some, like I've seen over the past 24 hours some of the commentary out there, but it's really the smart way that Democrats, Republicans, military commanders, our partners in the Arab world think we need to combat this." Harf went on to say the approach doesn't fit "into a sound bite."

March 6, 2015: Fielding questions at the briefing about ex-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton's use of private email, Harf was asked if the department would release a 2011 cable -- obtained by Fox News -- showing her office told employees not to use personal email for security reasons.

"I think everyone can read it at FoxNews.com," she quipped.

She then assured, "That was in no way an endorsement," before adding: "I don't mean to be flip about it."

When you're the Regime's foreign policy spokesmouth and even Chris Matthews isn't buying what's coming out of your mouth, it really is time to get out of Dodge. And the Regime figured that out, even if Marie Harf didn't.

And that must puzzle her. She did all the right things...total Democrat, major Lefty, a real true believer.  Why,she even wrote her college thesis on the awful way all those wack job Right Wingers and Evangelicals support Israel and how bad it is for U.S.foreign policy! How much more qualified for an Obama State Department gig could she be?

And then straight outta college and into the Obama Campaign as a loyal soldier Down For The Cause, and then it all explodes as she gets banished off stage, with maybe a quick bit on MSNBC every once in a blue moon if she's lucky.

I've seen some mean things (OK, some of them were pretty funny) on the 'Net about how stupid Marie Harf is. I don't think that's it at all.

There were other things that screwed her up, if you ask me.

When you believe in the godking from Chi-town and the accompanying dogma as much as she does, you have to really suspend belief on certain things that have come to light in the last six years or so. To an extent, you have to convince yourself that red is really is blue, that right is left and that the sun rises in the west. To do this convincingly, you have to be a really good liar, good enough to sell it to others.

Mr. Bill is a great example. There's a certain percentage of America's population he could urinate on in public, remark to them about that sudden rain shower we're  having and get away with it. Yes, I know, he's a pathological liar but at this point he's trained himself to actually believe what he's saying is truth, and that's invaluable to him.

Plus Mr. Bill has another great tool that makes this work, an astounding memory. At his second inaugural, the teleprompters died, but Bill Clinton was able to rattle off the entire speech from memory. Can you imagine Barack Obama/Barry Soetoro pulling that one off?


Just compare Bill's skills to those of  Hillary, who's also a serial prevaricator but who  frequently gets caught at it because her delivery lacks Bill's utter conviction and/or she forgets whatever lie it was she told before.

So therein lay Marie Harf's problem. Being a True Believer, she was, on the surface at least, able to stick to the Regime script, but she lacked Bill Clinton's performance ability, and so did the people she was assigned to try and cover up for.  And, being one of the Entitled, there was a part of her that always resented even having to try, and it showed...'Hey, I've got a Masters, I wear glasses and I'm smarter than all of you dammit ! That's why I'm Deputy State Department deputy spokeswoman! '

Ah, but no more, Marie Harf. At least backstage working with the fog machines, you're still part of the show and afterwards, who knows? Maybe a book deal or a gig at MSNBC or one of the alphabet networks.

Because being a True Believer and Down for The Struggle means never having to say you're sorry. Just ask George Stephanopoulos.

Best of luck at the new job.

Watcher's Council Nominations - Strange Days Edition

Strange days, indeed..prescient, or just a reverberation?


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, The Pirate's Cove, Wolf Howling, Simply Jews and Seraphic Secret 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 and a link to the piece you want considered along with an e-mail address (mandatory, but of course it 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 on 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 for you this week....

Council Submissions

• Don Surber – Stephanopoulos made the Clinton Foundation dirty


• The Noisy Room – Di Blasio's "Contract For Communism"


• Joshuapundit-Ramadi Falls To ISIS In A Major Victory - And Why It's Important


• The Razor – Islamic State a Leftist Nightmare


• The Right Planet – How Democrats ‘Celebrate’ Memorial Day


• Bookworm Room – Feminist claims that bad consensual sex equals rape victimize women just as surely as the McMartin trials victimized children


• GrEaT sAtAn”S gIrLfRiEnD – Angels Of Palestine


• VA Right! - Bill Janis Unleashes the Flying Monkeys!


• The Independent Sentinel – Words Matter: Michelle Obama Refers to the US as a Constitutional Democracy at Oberlin


• The Glittering Eye -They Wrote What They Saw, Memorial Day, 2015


• Nice Deb – Ralph Peters: Release of Bin Laden Docs Timed To Divert Attention From Ramadi Embarrassment


• Ask Marion – EPA Supports Monsanto Roundup


• Rhymes With Right – Be Kind To Wheelchairs

Honorable Mentions

• The Pirate's Cove - People Very Upset Over Gentrification In San Francisco’s Mission District


• Wolf Howling - The Left's New Definition Of Racism And Rape


• Simply Jews - On some peculiarities of Russian political discourse


• Seraphic Secret - Obama's Jews -FOX News

Non-Council Submissions

• Washington Post – Save Obama (On Trade) submitted by Don Surber


• Mark Steyn –Nothing Another 42,000 Airstrikes Can't Fix submitted by The Noisy Room


• Sultan Knish – De-Islamization Is The Only Way To Fight ISIS submitted by Joshuapundit


• Walter Russell Mead/Via Meadia –Obama, Anti-Semitism and Iran submitted by The Razor


• The People's Cube – Stages of the Progressive Agenda submitted by The Right Planet


• Quin Hillyer/NRO-At Sea in an Alien Culture, Where ‘Normal’ Is Defined as ‘Deviant’ submitted by Bookworm Room


• The Daily Beast – With Help From ISIS, a More Deadly Boko Haram Makes a Comeback submitted by GrEaT sAtAn”S gIrLfRiEnD


• TeaParty.Org – Pamela Geller Plans Muhammad Cartoon Bus Ads for Washington D.C. submitted by VA Right!


• Ammoland –Barack 'Climate Change' Obama submitted by The Independent Sentinel


• Walter Russell Mead/The National Interest – Obama, Anti-Semitism and Iran submitted by The Glittering Eye


• Victor Davis Hanson -Disasters At Home And Abroad submitted by Nice Deb


• Reclaim Our Republic -MB Obama Amnesty BLOCKED AGAIN – Australia Considers Tougher Citizenship Tests submitted by Ask Marion


• Robert Tracinski/The Federalist – Why Does the Left Kowtow to Islam? submitted by The Watcher


• NewsBusters – Bob Woodward: Wrong, Bush Did Not Lie Us Into Iraq submitted by The Watcher

Enjoy! And don't forget to like us on Facebook and follow us Twitter..'cause we're cool like that!And don't forget to tune in Friday for the results!

Syria Splits Apart As Assad Digs In Against ISIS

 

While a lot of attention is being paid to ISIS's successes in Iraq, few people have been watching the changes going on in Syria.

As I predicted just shy of three years ago, Syria, a made up country to begin with appears to be fracturing pretty much along the lines I saw back then.

Assad's hold on Syria depended on two things - how long the carnage could continue on one side or the other before it reached the point of no return and how long the Russians, Hezbollah and Iran would continue to support him. That point has apparently been reached with a quarter of a million deaths and the reduction of Assad's army from its beginning strength at 300,000 to something like 175,000 men from Assad's regular army, pro-regime Syrian militias and foreign fighters mostly from Hezbollah and Iran.

He simply no longer has the forces necessary to hold all of Syria. And his allies are gradually moving on.

The latest gain for ISIS was their successful offensive on the ancient city of Palmyra in Eastern Syria,which gave them a strategic path to assaults on the regime's key cities of Homs and Hama. If they're successful, they would literally cut off Damascus from the rest of Assad's territory.

The victory by Isis was celebrated Old School style:

Islamic State militants have executed at least 400 mostly women and children in Syria’s ancient city of Palmyra

Eye-witnesses have reported the streets are strewn with bodies – the latest victims of the Islamic State’s unrelenting savagery – on the same day photographs of captured Syrian soldiers have emerged.

It follows the killing of nearly 300 pro-government troops two days after they captured the city, now symbolised by a black ISIS flag flying above an ancient citadel.

As an added bonus, ISIS freed a large number of jihadis held in Palmyra's notorious Tadmur Prison.

What Assad is hoping for now is that he has enough troops to hold on to his strategic corridor in North and west Syria..Damascus, Homs and Hama and the coast areas of Latakia and Tartus, key cities where the majority of Alawites, Assad's Shi'ite oriented sect live.

What he's doing is attempting a strategic withdrawal into territory his forces are better able to hold,something his allies are likely insisting on because their own commitments are becoming strained.

For the Russians, supplying Assad with the tools of the trade has become an expensive proposition, one Russia has increasing difficulty meeting. Putin is still selling Assad ammunition and other supplies, but the Russians have cut way back on the more expensive toys like attack helicopters and are taking a wait and see attitude.

As Hezbollah's casualties have increased in Syria, its leader Sheik Nasrallah has come under massive pressure to cut back on the number of troops being sent to Syria from Lebanon. Hezbollah troops are still fighting in Qalamoun along the Lebanese border,one of the few areas where the Assad regime is taking the offensive, but massive casualties incurred during Assad's failed offensive in February on Aleppo have taken their toll.

This all puts a great deal of pressure on Iran. Aside from the financial cost, the strategic cost is huge. As Assad is forced into a defensive redoubt, the Shi'te bloc Iran thought it was creating from Tehran to Beirut is increasingly unlikely, especially with the pressure ISIS is putting on Iran's Shi'ite allies in Iraq. They will undoubtedly have to commit a lot more resources, human and otherwise just to keep Assad holding on.

For Basher Assad, his task will be to hold on to Damascus, the highways between Damascus and Beruit and Damascus and Homs, as well as the coast cities like Latakia and Tartous. With his reduced supply lines and less territory to defend, Assad has a decent shot at hanging on, especially since his part of Syria would contain about half of the country's population.

And the rest? The Kurds, at least the ones in the enclave just across the border from Iraqi Kurdistan will likely link up, as will the ISIS held areas within those two countries, providing Assad manages to hold on. One wild card in the deck is al-Nusrah, officially an ISIS ally, but my sources tell me they're making noises about a mini-emirate of their own in the territory they hold in the North around Idlib.So we could even see a three way shootout.

 And if Assad can't hold, especially Damascus, we're looking at a major bloodbath, even by Syria's standards. And Iran and Hezbollah maybe faced with either being split by ISIS or committing to a major war.

Oh, by the way, both al-Nusrah and ISIS are now essentially on Jordan's northern border, and Israel's Golan.

UPDATE: ISIS, following up on their victory in Palmyra made a classic strategic move with an assault in Aleppo Province on the small town of Sawran, which they now control.

From Sawran, ISIS is within striking distance of the small city of Azaz on the Turkish border. Azaz is now held by the al-Qaeda affiliated Al-Nusra and their militia allies from Harakat Ahrar Al-Sham and Liwaa Al-Tawheed. They also hold much of Aleppo, Syria's second largest city and its commercial hub.

If ISIS takes Azaz, they control not only the main border crossing from Turkey but al-Nusra's life line into Aleppo for supplies, arms and fighters. ISIS would control Aleppo, and it would be only a matter of time until they take the city.

This was a smart move for ISIS. The al-Nusrah forces have not recovered yet from Assad's unsuccessful assault on Aleppo, and neither have Assad's forces,whom are busy consolidating their lines anyway. So rather than drive directly from Palmyra towards Homs and Hama, ISIS is eliminating a rival (I doubt we'll hear anymore about a separate al-Nusrah emirate), setting the stage to take Aleppo and then hit Assad from two points - in the southeast from Palmyra toward Homs and Hama and from Aleppo in the northeast.

These are the people our dysfunctional president laughed off as 'the jay vee team' in between golf games.

Forum: Do you think the Patriot Act should be renewed?

Every week on Monday morning, the Council and our invited guests weigh in at the Watcher’s Forum with short takes on a major issue of the day, the culture or daily living. This week’s question: Do you think the Patriot Act should be renewed? Why?

GrEaT sAtAn"S gIrLfRiEnD: Really in favor of Amitai Etzioni's bit in Nat'l Interest:

In Defense of the Patriot Act

Many of the commentaries elicited by the tenth anniversary of the Patriot Act are as polarized as other elements of our public discourse. On the one hand, there are those who argue that the threat of terrorism is vastly exaggerated, that fear-mongering is used to deprive Americans of their basic rights, and that terrorists could be dealt with as just another kind of criminal—by the police and civilian courts. Then there are those who maintain that anyone who opposes reasonable security measures is aiding and abetting the enemy and that torture and extraordinary renditions have shown themselves to be vital to aborting major additional attacks on our homeland.

If one moves away from such one-sided, overarching positions, one realizes that we face two major legitimate goals—protecting national security and respecting individual rights—and that neither should trump the other. The tension between them can be worked out. Indeed, this key thesis is reflected in the Fourth Amendment, which holds that there be no unreasonable searches and seizures. That is, the Constitution recognizes that some searches do not violate rights and are fully legitimate. And it provides a criterion for determining which are acceptable: those that a reasonable person will recognize as proper. Needless to say, such recognition changes over time—for instance, after events such as 9/11.

One next examines various new security measures included in the Patriot Act on the basis of their reasonableness rather than condemning or embracing the act wholesale. It contains 161 provisions, only about ten of which have been seriously contested by anybody. Moreover, many of the security measures that have troubled many Americans—including the use of torture, indeterminate detention and extraordinary renditions—are not part of the Patriot Act. True, it was originally enacted in great haste. However, it has since been reviewed and extended several times.
The most important provisions of the Patriot Act seem to meet the criterion of reasonableness.

Phones: Before the Patriot Act was passed, authorities had to obtain a court's permission to tap a phone, but the warrant had to be "particularized" to a given instrument, reflecting the days when most people had just one phone. Cell phones made this narrow rule obsolete. The Patriot Act changed this requirement to attach warrants to a suspect, rather than to one of his instruments in particular. It merely allowed the law to catch up with technological development.

Libraries: Critics have been outraged by the right of the government to search the computers of public libraries. Actually, the term "library" is not mentioned in the act. The bill authorizes searches of "books, records, papers, documents and other items... to protect against international terrorism or clandestine intelligence activities." Critics singled out libraries because such searches evoked more public outrage than if one referred to the actual wording of the bill. While critics argued that this measure would or could have a chilling effect, this observer, at least, is unaware of credible evidence to support this claim.

Homes: The "sneak and peek" clause has been particularly vilified. The act grants authorities the right to search a home without notifying the owner for a period of days. But how long is enough? Russ Feingold favored seven days; Republicans in the House wanted 180 days. But there was little discussion of the grubby details of conducting such a search. How long does it take to de-encrypt a PC? To translate messages? To find collaborators? Clearly, some delay seems reasonable. This provision was amended in 2005 to detail that notification must be provided within 30 days (unless the facts of the case justify a longer delay, which must be overseen by a court and consists of periods of 90 days).

E-mail: Another reasonable new measure changed search warrants from local to national when dealing with the Internet. E-mail often is stored remotely on the servers of Internet service providers (ISPs). Under old laws, search warrants applied only to the jurisdiction in which the search would take place. This meant that if a suspect in, say, New Jersey had e-mail stored on a server located in, say, Silicon Valley, an agent would have to travel across the country to obtain a warrant to seize the e-mail in the jurisdiction in which the server was located. Under the Patriot Act, judges in districts with jurisdiction over particular crimes are allowed to grant search warrants to seize electronic communications stored outside that judge’s jurisdiction.

There is room for debate about how far we need to go to protect ourselves. However, the fact that there has been no successful attack for ten years—and that those that were attempted in the U.S. (that we know about) were particularly inept—should not lull us into letting our guard down. One cannot ignore that survey after survey shows that there are many millions of people throughout the world (and some right here, at home) who hate our guts and wish us harm.

We need to recall the words of a terrorist who explained: “You need to be lucky all the time; I need to be lucky just once.” And we ought not to confuse the main features of the Patriot Act—which meet the criteria of reasonableness—with other new security measures, measures that have crossed the line that separates what free societies will do to defend themselves and that which they consider repugnant.

We would rather absorb some risk to our security than behave like, well, terrorists.

Don Surber: No. We never needed it nor do we need a Department of Homeland Security. Bush went all liberal kooky after 9-11. Time to roll the laws and the bureaucracy back.

Bookworm Room: I like Don's pithiness. I'd add only that I prefer a prepared (i.e., armed and educated) citizenry to a dangerously overreaching government.

Laura Rambeau Lee, Right Reason: The Uniting and Strengthening America by Providing Appropriate Tools Required to Intercept and Obstruct Terrorism Act of 2001 (USA PATRIOT Act) was passed in reaction to the terrorist attacks in America on 9/11/2001. It was not until 2013, with the leaks to the media by Edward Snowden, that the general populace became aware of the massive amounts of metadata being collected by the National Security Agency on each and every one of us. The PATRIOT Act gave the government too much power and should not be renewed as written.

The USA Freedom Act (H.R. 2048) passed the House by a 338-88 vote this month. It restricts the bulk collection of these massive amounts of calling records (metadata) under Section 215 of the Patriot Act. It limits collection to instances where there is "reasonable, articulable suspicion" that a "specific selection term" used to request call detail records is associated with international terrorism. The government must use a specific selection term, which represents an "individual, account, or personal device." This should end the bulk collection of everyone’s phone records and is a move in the right direction to targeting a specific person and communication device; someone deemed to be a person of suspicion with intent to commit acts of terrorism. The House bill also requires the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance (FISA) Court to have more transparency, and puts much needed restrictions on the activities of the NSA.

The primary duty of our federal government is to protect its citizens. The threats from radical Islam, as well as other enemies intent on committing acts of terrorism, are real. The USA Freedom Act is not perfect, but it is a step in the right direction. It scales back the powers given to the federal government through the USA PATRIOT Act, protecting our liberty and privacy rights while allowing for specific targeting of true threats to our homeland.

The Independent Sentinel: I do think it should be renewed but not in its present form.

They are giving themselves unlimited power.

We should abolish the Department of Homeland Security. An department within the FBI would have been sufficient.

Well, there you have it!

Make sure to tune in every Monday for the Watcher’s Forum and every Tuesday morning, when we reveal the week’s nominees for Weasel of the Week!

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... or any of the other fantabulous Watcher’s Council content.

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

The Council Has Spoken!! Our Watcher's Council Results

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

"“I believe there are more instances of the abridgment of the freedom of the people by gradual and silent encroachments of those in power than by violent and sudden usurpations.” - James Madison

“We the people are the rightful masters of both Congress and the courts, not to overthrow the Constitution but to overthrow the men who pervert the Constitution.” -Abraham Lincoln

"Those who have long enjoyed such privileges as we enjoy forget in time that men have died to win them." - Franklin D. Roosevelt





This week's winning essay, Bookworm Room's – A phenomenal talk about the Constitution and how to make it meaningful to America's young people is a fascinating account of a presentation she attending on the Constitution, one she feels would be of great value to young citizens who are being indoctrinated by public education rather that educated. Here's a slice:

I had the great pleasure today of attending a phenomenal talk by Prof. David Bobb, president of the Bill of Rights Institute. BRI uses original source documents to help teachers ans students understand America’s founding document and to see how it’s still relevant today. Its ultimate goal is to bring to an end our nation’s intellectual disengagement from the Constitution and to lead young people to “think the vote,” which is mindful, informed approach to elections, rather than to “rock the vote,” a mindless, drone-like approach to important issues that profoundly affect America’s young people.

Prof. Bobb could not be a better spokesman for his organization. To begin with, his bio is impressive:

David earned his Ph.D. in political science from Boston College, where he was the recipient of fellowships from the Pew, Earhart, and Bradley Foundation, as well as the Intercollegiate Studies Institute.

[snip]

David joined the Bill of Rights Institute in December 2013. Previously he was the founding director of two national centers for Hillsdale College, the Washington, D.C.-based Allan P. Kirby, Jr. Center for Constitutional Studies and Citizenship, and the Hoogland Center for Teacher Excellence, a civic education program. From 2001 to 2013 he also was lecturer in politics at Hillsdale College, where he taught courses in American politics and public policy.

David is the author of Humility: An Unlikely Biography of America’s Greatest Virtue (Thomas Nelson, 2013) and a contributing editor to The U.S. Constitution: A Reader (Hillsdale College Press, 2012). He has written articles and reviews for the Wall Street Journal, Fast Company, Washington Times, Boston Herald, and the Claremont Review of Books, among other publications. He has spoken widely to audiences in twenty-five states on topics including education reform, civic engagement, and the American Constitution.

In other words, Prof. Bobb knows his stuff and he is a natural communicator and teacher. His speaking style, something that always matters to me, is the essence of clarity. No fudging, no obfuscation, no blathering. Frankly, it was a challenge to take notes, because Prof. Bobb had no spare words or sentences in his speech. Every sentence was interesting and to the point. Since I don’t do shorthand, of necessity I had to condense some ideas and I know that I missed others. This means that, to the extent there are any errors in this post, they are definitely mine, not Prof. Bobb’s. With that warning, here goes:

If I were a more detail-oriented person, I would undoubtedly have noticed long ago that, on our one dollar bill, under the pyramid, there is a Latin inscription stating “novus ordo seclorum.“

And if I were a more curious person, I would have gone online to translate that phrase. For those who, like me, don’t remember their Latin and or who aren’t too curious about our dollar bill, the phrase means “New Order Of The Ages.” It is the Founders’ announcement to the world and to posterity that they were embarking upon a grand governmental experiment, one that had never been tried before. In the Federalist papers, Alexander Hamilton noted that Americans were about to take a step no other people had taken before:

" It has been frequently remarked that it seems to have been reserved to the people of this country, by their conduct and example, to decide the important question, whether societies of men are really capable or not of establishing good government from reflection and choice, or whether they are forever destined to depend for their political constitutions on accident and force."

Back in the day, then, the Founders, with a great deal of trepidation, were about to embark upon a planned government, one that would vest the maximum amount of power in the people and that, at the governmental level, would guard against the possibility of tyranny. After all, only a few years before, they had declared themselves free to part ways with England because, in their eyes, George III had become a tyrant by taking upon himself the powers of the executive, the legislature, and the judiciary. They understood that human frailty is such that no one person should ever hold that much power over others.

The unique aspect of the new Constitution was the notion — the product of one hundred years of Enlightenment thinking (powered by an increasingly humanist Christianity) — that each person comes into the world with certain rights vested in him (or her). These are not gifts from the government that the government can then take a way. Instead, when a government infringes on these inherent rights, it’s the people who have the power to destroy the government and initiate a better one — and our Constitution was intended to define that better government.

The most exceptional thing about the Constitution — which is a contract between government and the American people — is the notion of separation of powers. England, of course, led the way with that idea, wresting from the King certain powers reserved for Parliament. This was a notion that was first institutionalized in the Magna Carta; was then tested under Charles I (who lost his head for picking “King power,” rather than “People power” when asked the question “who’s in charge here?”); and was re-tested under George III, who kept his head but lost America because he too thought that he could vest in himself the full powers of government.

The Articles of Confederation, the governing document that preceded the Constitution, did not have a tripartite approach to power. It created an executive office, but had no judiciary or legislature and, significantly, it did not give the executive office the power to tax. The office had, on the one hand, too much power and, on the other hand, no way to put all that power into effect. The Constitution would do better.

At this point in his talk, in light of the upcoming 2016 election, Prof. Bobb narrowed his his focus to the executive office. He noted that, although Alexander Hamilton and James Madison, the intellectual powerhouses behind the Constitution, devoutly believed in diffuse power as a bulwark against tyranny, they also understood that, to the extent they vested power in a specific institution, that power had to be meaningful. To that end, they didn’t try to create a weak executive by splitting that power among different individuals or groups.

It was Hamilton who envisioned as president an individual who, while hedged about with constitutional safeguards, could act with “decision, activity, secrecy, and dispatch.” After all, in times of national emergency, one can’t have a committee laboriously working its way to a tame and untimely bureaucratic response.

While the president could be active, decisive, and secretive, he still had to have limitations — and control over these limitations had to be placed in an organization equally invested in protecting and advancing its power. Or, as James Madison said, “Ambition must be made to counteract ambition.” The Constitution decided that three entities, each jealously protecting its power, would ensure that no single part of that trio would be able to aggregate too much power, the inevitable path to tyranny.

More at the link.

In our non-Council category, the winner was The Baron at Gates of Vienna with a piece that resonates a great deal right now,Playing Nice submitted by Joshuapundit.

The Baron looks at western society's surprising tendency to whitewash Islamist terrorism, deliberately distancing it from its obvious religious inspiration and even blaming the victims on many occasions for the ensuing atrocities. I think he's on to something here when he talks about a certain very prevalent mindset as the cause of this dysfunction.

Well, that, and the billions of petro dollars from certain countries in the Middle East to universities, to various think tanks and lobbyists registered and unregistered, and especially to politicians on both sides of the aisle.

Do read it.

Here are this week’s full results. Only Ask Marion and The Right Planet were unable to vote this week, but neither was subject to the usual 2/3 vote penalty for not voting:

Council Winners

• *First place with 2 2/3 votes!-Bookworm Room – A phenomenal talk about the Constitution and how to make it meaningful to America's young people


• Second place with 1 2/3 votes –Joshuapundit-BB King Makes The Passage 1925-2015


• Third place *t* with 1 vote –VA Right! - Meet the People Who Lost Their Jobs When Bill Janis Betrayed the Republican Party and Elected a Democrat


• Third place *t* with 1 vote –Don Surber – Cruz speaks out against Christian persecution -- in the USA


• Third place *t* with 1 vote –The Glittering Eye -Why Did ABC Hire George Stephanopoulos?


• Third place *t* with 1 vote –Rhymes With Right – Hillary Declares That Any SCOTUS Nominee Will Be Ethically Unfit To Serve On High Court


• Fourth place *t* with 2/3 votes –Nice Deb – Rumor: Obama Admin Okayed Raid on Abu Sayyaf in Syria To Take The Sting Out Of Ramadi Failure


• Fourth place *t* with 2/3 votes –The Independent Sentinel – Deliberate or Not, Barack Obama's Talking Points Are Straight Out of Iran


• Fourth place *t* with 2/3 votes –The Right Planet – Extreme Secrecy Erodes Support for Obama’s Trade Pact


• Fifth place *t* with 2/3 vote –The Noisy Room – Cities On Fire - Seattle


• Fifth place *t* with 2/3 vote –GrEaT sAtAn”S gIrLfRiEnD – Killing Morsi

Non-Council Winners

• First place with 2 1/3 votes! –Gates Of Vienna – Playing Nice submitted by Joshuapundit


• Second place with 1 2/3 votes – Weasel Zippers -More Proof Of Paid Protesters: Ad Asking For Protesters To Travel To Protest, List Of Payouts To #Ferguson Protest Organizers
  submitted by Nice Deb


• Third place *t* with 1 1/3 votes –Outside The Beltway – Hillary Misrepresents Citizen’s United, Says She’ll Demand Promises To Overturn From Nominees submitted by Rhymes with Right


• Third place *t* with 1 1/3 votes –Kurt Schlichter – Let’s Celebrate the Death of the Mainstream Media! submitted by The Watcher


• Fourth place with 1 vote –Michael Walsh/PJ Media – The Real Stephanopoulos Scandal submitted by The Glittering Eye


• Fifth place *t* with 2/3 votes -Matthew Vadum/FrontPage Magazine –Leaders Of The Lynch Mob submitted by The Noisy Room


• Fifth place *t* with 2/3 votes -Red Statements – Enough… I’m Tired submitted by The Right Planet


• Fifth place *t* with 2/3 votes -John Q.Public-One Airman's View: Open Letter to the SARC submitted by Bookworm Room


• Fifth place *t* with 2/3 votes -Sultan Knish –Liberating Our Jerusalem submitted by The Independent Sentinel


• Sixth place *t* with 1/3 vote -Tickld.Com –Woman Realizes That She's Been Accidentally Abusing Her Husband This Whole Time.. submitted by The Razor


• Sixth place *t* with 1/3 vote -Mark Steyn – Buy George, He's Got It! submitted by The Watcher

See you next week!

Make sure to tune in every Monday for the Watcher’s Forum. and every  Tuesday morning, when we reveal the weeks' nominees for Weasel of the Week!

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...or any of the other fantabulous Watcher's Council content.

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

Our Weasel Of The Week

nce again, It's time to present this week's statuette of shame, The Golden Weasel!!

Every Tuesday, the Council nominates some of the slimiest, most despicable characters in public life for some deed of evil, cowardice or corruption they’ve performed. Then we vote to single out one particular Weasel for special mention, to whom we award the statuette of shame, our special, 100% plastic Golden Weasel. This week's nominees were all disgusting but one of them stood out as an almost unanimous choice. The envelope please....



The Clintons' Own Media Meat Puppet George 'What Donations?' Stephanopoulos!!

 The Noisy Room :My nomination this week goes to George Stephanopoulos for failing to disclose that he donated $75,000 to the Clinton Foundation and was obviously biased in his coverage and defense of Hillary Clinton. As the New York Post so astutely put it the bigger they are, the dumber they think we are:

Dan Rather of CBS was toppled by a phony document scam. Lyin' Brian
Williams at NBC casually mixed fact with self-aggrandizing fiction.
Now George Stephanopoulos is caught in a Clinton web of deceit at ABC.

The hat trick of arrogant anchor scandals helps explain why
Americans don't trust network news. With apologies to Walter
Cronkite, that's the way it is, and the way it is stinks.

Stephanopoulos shares with Rather and Williams the rotten
distinction of fessing up only after being exposed by real
journalists. In his case, the Washington Free Beacon
uncovered his secret donations to the
Clinton Foundation and contacted ABC for a response.

Of course, just before the crapola hit the media fan, Stephanopoulos ran
to the Leftist rag, Politico, and vomited a confession. This was after
trying to cover it up. He didn't tell his bosses about the donations and
he didn't tell viewers that he had given money to the Foundation even as
he reported on it and the Clintons.

On April 26, Stephanopoulos put Peter Schweizer in the hot seat; he's
the author of the sensational"Clinton Cash" book that exposes the
Clintons and their graft. Stephanopoulos pressed him to admit the book
contains no 'smoking gun.' The implication was that, if it's not
indictable, it's not important. He sounded more like a lawyer than a
media hack. Stephanopoulos cleverly used that standard to give the
Clintons the all-clear. The anchor also cited Schweizer's 'partisan
interest,' noting that Schweizer was a speechwriter for President George
W. Bush. Boy, pot meet kettle.

Another media sycophant bites the dust amid lies and scandal. Flip this
media shill - he's done. Another Progressive weasel gets whacked.

Ah, yes, the Clinton's own Greek Trojan Horse.Actually even more of interest than the donations to me - after all, $75K is just a step above pocket change for a media talking head with an 8 figure yearly income - is the huge amount of time Stephanopoulos spent working for the Clinton Foundation h0sting events and quite possibly inducing others to donate. Since that foundation appears to be nothing more than a way for the Clintons to park tax free income for selling their offices their influence, and their country.Did George receive some of the swag for his complicity in this? I wouldn't be at all surprised. Nor do I think he'll be fired. The strategy the Clintons and their ilk pursue is lie, deny and delay, and media whores like Stephanopoulos aid and abet them. Six months later when the truth comes out, the American people are tired of hearing about it and weary of trying to fit all the convoluted pieces together, so it recedes from the public consciousness.

But we honor Weasels here, do we not? And George Stephanopoulos appears to be a weasel second only to his owners, the Clintons. Please come up and get your statue.

  Well, there it is!

Make sure to tune in every Monday for the Watcher’s Forum. and every  Tuesday morning, when we reveal the weeks' nominees for Weasel of the Week!

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...or any of the other fantabulous Watcher's Council content.

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

L.A. City Council Votes To Increase Unemployment, Destroy Tax Base

 

Ah, Lah Lah Land! While it's not quite the People's Republic yet, it's getting there fast, with a nice side order of corrupt banana republic.

Today,they voted 14-1 to increase the minimum wage to $15 an hour, joining Seattle, San Francisco and several other municipalities:

Los Angeles became the largest US city to raise its minimum wage to $15 an hour on Tuesday, as a wage increase bill passed the city council by a vote of 14-1.

It is now up to city attorney Mike Feuer to draft an ordinance to implement the new minimum wage requirements. The ordinance will then return to the council for a final vote before becoming law. Under the proposed legislation, the city’s minimum wage would increase to $10.50 in July 2016, and would increase incrementally every year until it reaches $15 in July 2020. For small businesses with 25 or fewer employees, the wage hike would come on a modified schedule with the incremental increases starting in July 2017 and the minimum wage reaching $15 by July 2021.

The current minimum wage in California is $9 an hour and is set to increase to $10 in January 2016.

The one no vote might have come from this guy, who before getting into politics was L.A's no-nonsense police chief:

Council member Bernard Parks has previously expressed concern about $15 minimum wage leading to higher unemployment in the area.

“Every minimum wage increase that we’ve seen, if it’s too high, causes unemployment,” Parks told NPR in February. “If you have a big city like Los Angeles doing something, you’re going to find a lot of people will fall in line without any thought, because they believe that we’ve done the research. The fact is, we have not done the research.”

Proponents of the new law responded that they had done some research..from the Institute for Research on Labor Employment from University of California, Berkeley. And Berkeley, or Berserkely as we natives fondly refer to it, has a certain reputation in matters like these as some of you may know.

So, how will this new law effect Los Angeles? Believe it or not, a lot of the workers whom were egging the council on to pass this will end up far worse off.



The first thing that will happen is that lots of them will be fired. If you own a small business where you were paying people $12 an hour and you now are mandated to pay them $15 per hour so your bottom line costs go up 1/3, you'll either raise your prices (which will cut into your business), cut your work force by 1/3 or both. Or you'll move somewhere else.

San Francisco and Seattle, aside from their radical politics are both fairly small cities. San Francisco in particular is somewhat isolated on its little peninsula unless you take the ferries or pay toll to use the bridge, and it has the advantage of being a major tourist town. so it's a lot easier to get away with this there, to an extent.

Los Angeles isn't like that at all. It's a large, heavily populated area clustered with smaller, independently incorporated cities like Glendale, Burbank, Torrance and Calabasas.All of them are thriving because they've avoided L.A's ridiculous restrictions, costly permits and high taxes on business. The result is that when people start a business , lots of them do it outside Los Angeles unless it's something like a franchised fast food restaurant like a McDonald's where their location is mandated by the franchise. This does not do wonders for the city's tax base.

Next, the ones that still have jobs will be introduced to the wonders of unsubsidized ObamaCare and life without food stamps, section 8 rent subsidies or earned income credit refunds on their federal taxes, because they will no longer qualify for them.

And finally, those of them whom work at jobs where tips are a big part of their income can largely forget about that. In Seattle and San Francisco,the new normal is 'service charges' and no tips. In Seattle, the service charges are running a hefty 18.5% at restaurants like Ivar's and the Whale Wins. And no, the wait staff doesn't get that, the restaurant does to offset that $15 per hour wage, although some restaurants might choose to share a portion of it with the help..who will now be taxed on every cent they receive. Or, since people will be eating out less because the service will deteriorate and the cost will be much higher, restaurants will need those service charges to stay in business. Yes, those waiters and waitresses who used to make more than their co-workers by hustling and taking good care of their customers will have absolutely no incentive to do so. Talk about penalizing hard work and enterprise!

I can just imagine how that's going to work in a spread out, car friendly city like Los Angeles. People will eat out less, or they'll travel outside the city limits to do it. One huge trend in the L.A. area is specialty food trucks featuring gourmet and ethnic cuisine, and I would expect them to get a lot more business as well, since they're mostly small, family owned businesses.

I can hear the wheels turning in those of my reader's heads with socialist leanings. "Why, we can just mandate it in all of L.A. County. Or in all of California! And why not a federal minimum wage law? No one will be able to avoid it then, bwah ha ha ha!"



Well, that's the way it is in much of Europe. It hasn't exactly worked out the way it was supposed to, and those legendary EU high unemployment benefits are already becoming a casualty out of sheer necessity,what with the double digit unemployment and all,

Here's something to think about.

Minimum wage jobs were never intended to be careers. They were always intended to be one of two things. Either they were entry level positions, with the low starting salary a sort of compensation for the employer training you and taking a chance on someone without experience so that you could either move up where you were or find a better paying position as an experienced worker elsewhere. Or they were a stopgap, a temporary situation designed to keep things together until you (a) got that big break (b) finished your schooling or training for something better or (c) were ready to move on somewhere else.

I've had such jobs before. My very first one, at age 15 was working at a gas station owned by a friend of my father's after school. I swept up, pumped gas, checked oil and tires and even did the odd lube job or tire change. I was absolutely thrilled to have it, even though I was paid in cash at slightly less than the minimum wage back then.Aside from being able to give my parents a little money, it meant I had money of my own to spend (there was no such thing as allowances in my house), and it introduced me into the adult world of work and responsibility. That experience was one of the many things I have to thank my father (Z"l) for.

No, I never had to support a family on that. But then, it never would have occurred to me to start a family I couldn't support either.


Attempts like this to bypass economic man never really work. What you end up with is collective misery and massive corruption as people do what they need to do in order to bypass the system. Just talk to anyone who used to live in the Soviet Union.

Watcher's Council Nominations -No Strings Edition

Phony, corrupt little meat puppet...


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:

The Council In Action!!

Our own Tom White at VA Right continues his sucessful march to become the Guru of Virginia political bloggers with a radio interview May 16th with John Fredericks, the biggest talk show host in the state.

This week, 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 and a link to the piece you want considered along with an e-mail address (mandatory, but of course it 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 on 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 for you this week....

Council Submissions

• The Noisy Room – Cities On Fire - Seattle


• Joshuapundit-BB King Makes The Passage 1925-2015


• The Right Planet – Extreme Secrecy Erodes Support for Obama’s Trade Pact


• The Razor – High Entropy


• Bookworm Room – A phenomenal talk about the Constitution and how to make it meaningful to America's young people


• VA Right! - Meet the People Who Lost Their Jobs When Bill Janis Betrayed the Republican Party and Elected a Democrat


• The Glittering Eye -Why Did ABC Hire George Stephanopoulos?


• Nice Deb – Rumor: Obama Admin Okayed Raid on Abu Sayyaf in Syria To Take The Sting Out Of Ramadi Failure


• The Independent Sentinel – Deliberate or Not, Barack Obama's Talking Points Are Straight Out of Iran


• Rhymes With Right – Hillary Declares That Any SCOTUS Nominee Will Be Ethically Unfit To Serve On High Court


• GrEaT sAtAn”S gIrLfRiEnD – Killing Morsi


• Don Surber – Cruz speaks out against Christian persecution -- in the USA

Honorable Mentions

• The Pirate's Cove - Man Who Takes Long Fossil Fueled Flights To Play Golf To Lecture On Climate Change At Coast Guard Graduation


• Le·gal In·sur·rec·tion - Kurdish Revolt Against Iran Brewing?

Non-Council Submissions

• Matthew Vadum/FrontPage Magazine –Leaders Of The Lynch Mob submitted by The Noisy Room


• Gates Of Vienna – Playing Nice submitted by Joshuapundit


• Red Statements – Enough… I’m Tired submitted by The Right Planet


• Tickld.Com –Woman Realizes That She's Been Accidentally Abusing Her Husband This Whole Time.. submitted by The Razor


• John Q.Public-One Airman's View: Open Letter to the SARC submitted by Bookworm Room


• SooperMexican – Revealed: Ferguson Protests Were BOUGHT and PAID For By ACORN Successor submitted by VA Right!


• Michael Walsh/PJ Media – The Real Stephanopoulos Scandal submitted by The Glittering Eye


• Weasel Zippers -More Proof Of Paid Protesters: Ad Asking For Protesters To Travel To Protest, List Of Payouts To #Ferguson Protest Organizers
  submitted by Nice Deb


• Sultan Knish –Liberating Our Jerusalem submitted by The Independent Sentinel


• Outside The Beltway – Hillary Misrepresents Citizen’s United, Says She’ll Demand Promises To Overturn From Nominees submitted by Rhymes with Right


• Kurt Schlichter – Let’s Celebrate the Death of the Mainstream Media! submitted by The Watcher


• Mark Steyn – Buy George, He's Got It! submitted by The Watcher


• Rex Murphy/National Post – ‘White privilege’ on the march submitted by The Watcher

Enjoy! And don't forget to like us on Facebook and follow us Twitter..'cause we're cool like that!And don't forget to tune in Friday for the results!

The Open Wound - Racism Is Alive And Well In America

TNT Academy is a private high school located in Stone Mountain, Georgia. The school is a private, non-traditional school founded for home-schoolers and others who have problems in public schools and whom are hoping to get an accredited degree.Unlike some private schools around the country, the black middle class is well represented in the student body because of the school's record of academic success and moderate tuition.

Last Friday, May 8th was the graduation ceremony, and Nancy Gordeuk, the founder and director of the school made the mistake of forgetting about the valedictorian's speech and dismissing the crowd before the speech was given. She then got on the microphone, admitted her mistake and politely asked those leaving the room to return, trying in vain to quiet the crowd so the valedictorian - who was white - could give his speech. When a number of them kept right on walking, she accused them of being rude. Most parents who've attended these type of things would agree with her.It's common courtesy that you don't leave while another parent's kid is onstage. She then said, "look who's leaving, all the black people."

That unfortunate comment was enough to ignite a real firestorm.

Nancy Gordeuk later apologized to the parents via email:

A terrible mistake on my part was part of the graduation ceremony on Friday night. The devil was in the house and came out from my mouth. I deeply apologize for my racist comment and hope that forgiveness in in your hearts.

We all make mistakes and anyone who knows me realizes that I try my hardest to work with the students for them to obtain their goal of a high school diploma. I do not think I have discriminated against any family in the school. I just pray you will realize I am a human and make mistakes just like everyone else does and be willing to forgive and move forward instead of concentrating on the bad of the situation.

To address the incident at the graduation ceremony of May 8. Please keep the facts in perspective. An unknown man at the beginning of a speech decided to walk up to the front of the audience with his tablet, videotaping the audience and the students causing disruption to the audience and disrespect to the ceremony and its participants. When disregarding the request to please sit down, the security was asked to remove the man.At that point, booing of the request commenced.

Frustrated with the prospect of ruining the once-in-a-lifetime ceremony the graduates have worked so hard for, my emotions got the best of me and that is when I blurted out "you people are being so rude to not listen to this speech (valedictorian). It was my fault that we missed the speech in the program.

I sincerely apologize to all the persons in attendance at the ceremony for the actions of the few causing the disturbance and for my emotional, un-called generalization of the black persons in attendance. I deeply apologize for my actions made in the emotional state of trying to let this last student finish his speech.

I take a personal interest in the success of every student that comes through our doors without regard to their race, religion or ethnicity. My main concern for each is to provide them with an education and high school diploma to be able to continue on the pathway toward adulthood to become a successful member of society.

You will find many, many parents of all races, religions and ethnic groups that have been serviced by our school and are very appreciative of our efforts on the behalf of their students. This same group of students had the same support we have given to every other graduating class.

It is very easy to judge someone, however, we all make mistakes, as we are only human.Again, I deeply apologize for my offensive comment in the heat of my emotional state in trying to achieve respect for a student to be able to speak.

End result? She was fired in less than a week by the school's Board of directors after a massive media assault and high profile complaints by the local NAACP.

By the way, here's a link to a live video of what occurred at the graduation and the context in which Nancy Gordeuk's remarks were made. It certainly does seem to bear out her story that a lot of people in the audience were very unruly and disrespectful and that a lot of them just happened to be black, but I'll let you be the judge.

Now let's look at a similar incident in another part of the country.



This is Boston University’s Saida Grundy,the newest professor at the school’s African American Studies department. Dr. Grundy, who received her doctorate at the University of Michigan last year isn't the victim of an unfortunate outburst made in the emotional heat of the moment. She's an outright, loud n' proud racist. On her Twitter account, according to the AP story, she called "white college males" a "problem population" and wrote that "white masculinity is THE problem for America's colleges." But that's the tame stuff. Here are a few more gems from her Twitter account, which she's since made private: I HAD NO IDEA WHITE BALTIMOREANS WERE THIS TERRIBLE. I THOUGHT YOU WERE ALL MCNULTY! THIS IS *EXACTLY* LIKE FERGUSON. — lord commander (@saigrundy) April 29, 2015

meme of the day: "white people be like #ALLSTORESMATTER" https://t.co/3m5wGupgFF

— lord commander (@saigrundy) April 29, 2015

in other words, deal with your white sh*t, white people. slavery is a *YALL* thing.

— lord commander (@saigrundy) April 22, 2015

in fact, I suggest we ban entirely the inherently racist term "pioneers." your ancestors were land-thieves. nothing more.

— lord commander (@saigrundy) April 19, 2015

every MLK week i commit myself to not spending a dime in white-owned businesses. and every year i find it nearly impossible.

— lord commander (@saigrundy) January 15, 2015

 Oh, and Surprise! She hates Jews too:

Now these remarks and a few others I refuse to soil my site with were not only issued recently in Twitter's public forum for all to see, but were republished online at SoCawlege.com and elsewhere.

These aren't dredged up from the past either, nor are they occasional outbursts. Dr. Grundy is consumed with her racist sentiments and fires off remarks like this constantly.

Boston University harshly condemned these racist remarks. The College President, Robert Brown said in an open letter that there was no place for racism at the University and that Dr. Grundy would not be teaching classes there.

Yes, of course I'm kidding. Here's what actually happened.

When Dr. Grundy's racist statements came to light publicly, she issued, not an apology but a statement: "I regret that my personal passion about issues surrounding these events we now witness with regularity in our nation led me to speak about them indelicately."

”I deprived them of the nuance and complexity that such subjects always deserve."

AKA 'I'm sorry if you were offended.'

The university 'distanced itself' at first,with a spokesperson saying the university was "offended" by Grundy's statements. Other critics called her comments offensive and inappropriate for a professor at a major publicly funded university.

That brought out the racial solidarity cavalry. They started a hashtag #IStandWithSaida and launched an online petition supporting her. Part of the petition read, "Racism extends to virtually every institution in American society - including higher education. Calling Professor Grundy's tweets racist minimizes the very real effects of racism for people of color in the United States."

AKA 'Racism is fine if a person of color does it, just because.

President Brown immediately caved in, (emphasis mine):

President Robert Brown acknowledged Grundy's right to hold and express her opinions but said her remarks unfairly "typecast" certain groups of people. He stopped short, though, of acknowledging the comments were directed almost exclusively at whites. "I do not say this lightly or without a great deal of consultation and soul-searching," Brown's letter reads. "I understand there is a broader context to Dr. Grundy's tweets and that, as a scholar, she has the right to pursue her research, formulate her views, and challenge the rest of us to think differently about race relations. But we also must recognize that words have power and the words in her Twitter feed were powerful in the way they stereotyped and condemned other people."

Yes, I get his point, we all need to be challenged to be more accepting of racism, as long as it's coming from a black person. This, at the university Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. got his doctorate at.

But I will say I'm certainly glad to hear that President Brown supports free speech and controversial views so passionately. So when are Pam Geller, Rush Limbaugh or Ayaan Hirsi Ali scheduled to speak at Boston University? How about Ann Coulter or maybe even Michelle Malkin?

Ri-ight, the fifth of Never.

Do I need to add that Dr. Saida Grundy wasn't fired? She reports for work July 1st.

So here we have two situations, where people involved in academia said inappropriate things.

Maybe Nancy Gordeuk's remarks were more bigoted than Saida Grundy's? Well, I don't know, but it seems to me like 'Look all the black people are leaving' isn't nearly as bad as some of the stuff Dr. Grundy wrote. Especially since Gordeuk's remark was a one time outburst under pressure while Saida Grundy's were premeditated and continuous. Look again at this video. In Georgia, we have a white educator who helped put together a school that arguably benefits children of color disproportionally upset at what was obvious disrespect for both the graduation ceremony and the valedictorian, whom happened to be white, and made an unfortunate generalization based on what she felt she saw happening in that room.

Imagine if the valedictorian was black instead of white and an audience of predominantly white people had disrupted the graduation and walked out on him. Imagine if Nancy Gordeuk was black and said, 'look all the white folks are leaving.' Imagine if instead of what she sent out, she had used Saida Grundy's 'apology' and said she regretted her remarks, but that she spoke out of passion at apparently seeing one of her students disrespected because of his race.

Does anyone remotely think Nancy Gordeuk would have been fired?

If Dr. Saida Grundy was white and the racist tweets on her Twitter account were directed at blacks, does anyone seriously think she wouldn't have been summarily fired? Would the President of Boston College be bloviating about Saida Grundy being a 'scholar' with legitimate views that 'challenge the rest of us to think differently about race relations?'

We are indeed cowards when it comes to race. And racism continues in America because people like Dr. Saida Grundy continue to promulgate it and too many people continue to excuse and tolerate it, provided it comes from a so-called 'person of color.'

This is what keeps racism alive and well in America. It's because its practitioners and their enablers like President Brown whom practice the bigotry of low expectations. Both are racist to the core. And as long as that remains true, it will continue to be America's open wound.

Unfortunately, there are a lot of people whom have a vested interest in keeping it that way.

Dr. King would be appalled and ashamed.


UPDATE: Dr. Saida Grundy has surfaced again with racist remarks directed at a white rape victim. 
Quod Erat Demonstradum...when you give racist behavior a pass, it just emboldens racists in further outrages.