On Friday, the following results were announced by the Watcher, based upon the votes of my esteemed colleagues on the Watcher's Council.

Winning Council Submissions

• First place with 1 2/3 points! – Rhymes With Right - A Note On The “Tenther” Smear


• Second place with 1 points – (T*) – Soccer Dad - Leaving the nest


• Second place with 1 points – (T*) – Joshuapundit - Welcome To The Babi Yar Hotel


• Second place with 1 points – (T*) – The Colossus of Rhodey - More on ObamaÂ’s ridiculous foreign policy


• Second place with 1 points – (T*) – Mere Rhetoric - Obama Knew About Secret Iran Facility During Transition, Experts Pushed Engagement Anyway With Pro-Iran Pretexts


• Third place with 2/3 points – (T*) – Right Truth - Why America Could Be Doomed


• Third place with 2/3 points – (T*) – Bookworm Room - Obama Keeps Hitler Analogy in the Public Eye


• Fourth place with 1/3 points – The Provocateur - Yet Another Defining Moment

Winning Non-Council Submissions

• First place with 1 1/3 points! – Jennifer Rubin/Commentary - NetanyahuÂ’s Speech for the Ages


• Second place with 1 1/3 points – RedState - Common Sense Outlawed in Indiana


• Third place with 2/3 points – (T*) – Breitbart TV - Sources: Sarkozy Thinks Obama is ‘Incredibly Naive and Grossly EgotisticalÂ’


• Third place with 2/3 points – (T*) – The Anchoress - A Study in Contrasts


• Third place with 2/3 points – (T*) – WSJ/Bret Stephens - The Neocons Make a Comeback


• Third place with 2/3 points – (T*) – StreetWise - ItÂ’s Not a Real Estate Crisis, ItÂ’s a Debt Crisis


• Third place with 2/3 points – (T*) – The Times Online (UK) - The Anglo-world of settlers, not dominators


• Third place with 2/3 points – (T*) – Larry Greenfield / American Thinker - Liberal Jews and the Legacy of Neoconservatism


• Fourth place with 1/3 points – (T*) – Kausfiles @Slate - Did ACORN chicanery elect Al Franken?


• Fourth place with 1/3 points – (T*) – Simply Jews - Ich bin kein Berliner?


• Fourth place with 1/3 points – (T*) – Fore-Left - Speaking of Vast Conspriacies..

  I'm particularly honored to have won this week -- and surprised, too, given the strength of the competition. It just goes to show that I never can tell which post will garner the most respect from my fellow bloggers, because I very nearly submitted a different post this week. My thanks to those who honored me with their votes.

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I guess that Barry Hussein has been too busy being an athletic supporter for Mayor Daley and the Chicago 2016 committee to take notice of this issue.

Fortunately there is a president with the time and moral clarity to speak out on the issue of jihadi recruiting on American soil.

The president of Somalia on Sunday denounced the recruiting of young men from MinnesotaÂ’s huge Somali community for terrorist activity in his war-ravaged homeland, and said he plans to work with the U.S. government to bring those still alive back home.

President Sheik Sharif Sheik Ahmed spoke with The Associated Press while visiting the Minneapolis area, where authorities believe as many as 20 young Somali men—possibly recruited by a vision of jihad to fight—returned to the impoverished nation over the last two years.

At least three have died in Somalia, including one who authorities believe was the first American suicide bomber. Three others have pleaded guilty in the U.S. to terror-related charges.

Maybe he'll have something to say when one of these home-grown jihadis returns to this country and commits a terrorist act on American soil.

Or maybe not.

H/T Michelle Malkin

Posted by: Greg at 03:46 PM | Comments (1) | Add Comment
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On one level, I don't really care whether David Letterman has been dallying with his female employees. On another, I am struck by the hypocrisy of it all.

But there is also a question that has been flopping around in my mind regarding the charges against his accused blackmailer.

David Letterman is a public figure. As such, virtually any detail about his life -- especially about his professional life (and his extracurricular activities with female staffers qualifies as a part of his professional life) is fair game for the paparazzi, the tabloids, and even for more legitimate media. This information, especially given that it is true, could be freely published by any media outlet with no legal repercussions -- and even if the charges were not true it would be difficult to sustain a libel claim because Letterman is a public figure.

So if Joe Halderman could have legally written a book and/or screenplay and could have legally sold them, published the book, or produced the screenplay, on what basis do we as a society make it a crime for him to offer them to the subject of those works (Letterman) rather than to a third party? After all, the only crime here is that he attempted to sell his silence to Letterman rather than his words to a publisher or production company. Isn't what he did morally no different than what he would have done had he sold the story to a third party?

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Could be -- which would certainly help to explain his intense anti-Semitism.

The evidence is here.

A photograph of the Iranian president holding up his identity card during elections in March 2008 clearly shows his family has Jewish roots.

A close-up of the document reveals he was previously known as Sabourjian – a Jewish name meaning cloth weaver.

The short note scrawled on the card suggests his family changed its name to Ahmadinejad when they converted to embrace Islam after his birth.

The Sabourjians traditionally hail from Aradan, Mr Ahmadinejad's birthplace, and the name derives from "weaver of the Sabour", the name for the Jewish Tallit shawl in Persia. The name is even on the list of reserved names for Iranian Jews compiled by Iran's Ministry of the Interior.

Experts last night suggested Mr Ahmadinejad's track record for hate-filled attacks on Jews could be an overcompensation to hide his past.

Yeah, that's right -- if the official document he is holding is correct, the Iranian leader was born a Jew and became a Muslim only later wehnhis fatehr converted to Islam. And much like at least one American neo-Nazi leader, that would seem to explain his need to disassociate himself from his own beople throught the expression of violent hatred -- especially since Islam itself is thoroughly infused with anti-Semitism.

UPDATE: Guess not.

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Because she so often makes posts like this one.

If a conservative doesnÂ’t like guns, he doesn't buy one.
If a liberal doesnÂ’t like guns, he wants all guns outlawed.

If a conservative is a vegetarian, he doesn't eat meat.
If a liberal is a vegetarian, he wants all meat products banned for everyone.

If a conservative sees a foreign threat, he thinks about how to defeat his enemy.
A liberal wonders how to surrender gracefully and still look good.

If a conservative is homosexual, he quietly leads his life.
If a liberal is homosexual, he demands legislated respect.

If a black man or Hispanic are conservative, they see themselves as independently successful.
Their liberal counterparts see themselves as victims in need of government protection.

If a conservative is down-and-out, he thinks about how to better his situation.
A liberal wonders who is going to take care of him.

If a conservative doesnÂ’t like a talk show host, he switches channels.
Liberals demand that those they donÂ’t like be shut down.

If a conservative is a non-believer, he doesnÂ’t go to church.
A liberal non-believer wants any mention of God and religion silenced. (Unless itÂ’s a foreign religion, of course!)

If a conservative decides he needs health care, he goes about shopping for it, or may choose a job that provides it.
A liberal demands that the rest of us pay for his.

If a conservative slips and falls in a store, he gets up, laughs and is embarrassed.
If a liberal slips and falls, he grabs his neck, moans like heÂ’s in labor and then sues.

If a conservative reads this, heÂ’ll forward it so his friends can have a good laugh.
A liberal will delete it because he’s “offended”.

H/t Colossus of Rhodey

UPDATE: For some reason this thought on the authoritarianism of the "liberal" seems to tie in well with this commentary on the desire of some liberals for a dictator to rule over us all.

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I think the fine folks at Saturday Night Live nailed it last night.

Seems to me that Barack Obama is already an EPIC FAIL. And personally, I love the fact that SNL notes that the president has accomplished only two things -- JACK and SQUAT.

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Because if she is right in the things she is saying, she has painted a great big target on herself.

It's obvious to anybody who has eyes in this country that tea-baggers, the 9-12ers, these separatist groups that pretend that it's about policy – they are clearly white-identity movements. They're clearly white power movements. What they don't like about the President is that he's black – or half black (applause) – and they, what also is shocking is that people keep pretending that that's not really the case with these people.

I'm not talking about people that do have problems with his policies, that's fine. But these people, who are also being led by the Glenn Becks, the Michelle Bachmans, the Rush Limbows [presumably Limbaugh], whomever, they are no different than any other white identify movement that's part of our history. This has been going on since the founding of this country that white power movements have tried to establish themselves and hold onto power.

Of course, the only thing actually missing from Janeane's little rant is proof of what she says is true. That's why I believe that the crap that comes out of her mouth is nothing but a schtick designed to keep herself in the spotlight as her career fades. After all, if she REALLY believed that conservatives were white supremacists out to seize power, she would know that she has just made herself one of the leading enemies of that white power movement -- a race traitor who has betrayed her race and sided with those that a real white-identity movement considers to be sub-human.

And we all know, based upon the actions of real racial supremacists in the past, exactly what would happen to someone like that.

Yeah, that's right -- she'd be deader than a terrorist in the hands of Jack Bauer. The sort of folks she claims that "tea-baggers, the 9-12ers, these separatist groups that pretend that it's about policy" really are have a history of violence and murder -- and by making such statements she would have drawn a target on herself. And she knows it.

Not only that, but she knows that such outrageous defamation of patriotic Americans who dare to dissent from this president like she did from the last one won't hurt her career, either. She knows she'll keep getting bookings from Olbermann, Schultz, Maddow, and Maher -- not to mention work on television series and movies. And that, my friends, is what I believe Janeane's little comments are all about.

Robert Stacy McCain also does a great job taking apart the argument made by this brain dead thespian.

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As is so often the case, this one goes to lib talker Ed Schultz.

What the Republicans did, I think, rivals Jane Fonda sitting on a gun in North Vietnam.

Excuse me?

Failure to support the USOC's Olympic bid -- at least in part over political differences with the president -- rivals this?

So not wanting Chicago to get the Olympics because of political differences with the president is on the same level posing on an enemy gun during time of war, declaring American troops to be war criminals, and denying the claims of torture made by American POWs who carried the evidence on their own bodies? Was Ed smoking crack during this broadcast?

You know, since the enemy within Leftists like Ed have always considered Jane Fonda a hero for what she did in Vietnam -- and used it as an example of the sort of "dissent" that they call "the highest form of patriotism" and which most decent Americans recognize as treason.

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Look and see what the future of America looks like if the Democrats get their way on healthcare.

Gordon Brown was warned last night to raise the retirement age above 65 and introduce NHS charges to tackle the soaring state deficit.

In a devastating intervention, the International Monetary Fund called for radical changes to the pension system and spending cuts that go far beyond the plans outlined by the Prime Minister this week.

The global watchdog said root and branch changes to public sector spending would be necessary to 'help keep a lid on the debt' and restore financial stability.

The system in the UK is broke, it is rationing care that is considered ordinary by American standards, and now citizens will be expected to pay for treatments that were formerly free under their womb-to-the-tomb government controlled healthcare system. That will be the future for Americans if Obama and the Democrats get their way.

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Gotta love this one.

Helen Thomas is 89 years old and requires some assistance to get to and from the daily White House briefing. Yet her backbone has proved stronger than that of the president she covers.

Well, that is true – but then again, it isn’t like Thomas is responsible for actually accomplishing anything, unlike a president.

Just for fun, can you think of any other differences between Thomas and Obama? IÂ’ll start you off with a few.

Unlike Obama, Helen Thomas sleeps in a coffin filled with moist earth and can be only be killed with a stake through the heart.

While Barack ObamaÂ’s followers may mistakenly believe he is Jesus, Helen Thomas dated the real Jesus back when she was an exchange student at Nazareth High School.

Feel free to add your own.

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More proof that the reason ObamaCare wonÂ’t cover illegals only because Obama is going to act to legalize them all.

Although President Obama has put off an immigration overhaul until next year, the federal agency in charge of approving visas is planning ahead for the possibility of giving legal status to millions of illegal immigrants, the agencyÂ’s director said Thursday.

“We are under way to prepare for that,” Alejandro Mayorkas, the director of the agency, the United States Citizenship and Immigration Services, said in an interview. Mr. Obama has told immigration officials that a legalization program would be part of legislation the White House would propose, said Mr. Mayorkas, who became director in August. The agency’s goal, he said, is to be ready to expand rapidly to handle the gigantic increase in visa applications it would face if the legislation, known as comprehensive immigration reform, passed Congress.

Here’s a better plan – prepare for deportation hearings for those arrested by law enforcement. Don’t reward the bad behavior of those who break our laws and violate our sovereignty.

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If this isnÂ’t reason enough to jail this cretin for the rest of his natural life, I donÂ’t know what is.

The evidence presented here – evidence which comes from Roman Polanski’s own mouth – makes it clear that the little girl he violently raped in at jack Nicholson’s house all those years ago probably was not the first he abused and certainly was not the last.

If this were Father Polanski the parish priest or Mr. Polanski the drama teacher at the local high school, we would not even be having a discussion of whether or not to jail him forever.

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Last time I checked, the First Amendment still read as follows:

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.

So why, in this story about yet another expression of anti-Obama sentiment (what used to be called “dissent” and “the highest form of patriotism” when it was directed against George W. Bush), do we get this question asked?

Let us know what you think. Is the sign offensive, or is it freedom of speech?

Let’s try this answer on for size – it is certainly freedom of speech, but its offensiveness is purely in the eye of the beholder. The mere fact that something is offensive does not strip it of its First Amendment protection. Indeed, it is precisely those sentiments found offensive by the majority – or by a politically powerful minority – that are most surely covered by the First Amendment’s protection of freedom of speech. That’s why I find the question asked in the story to be so inane – and the equivalent of asking if a certain type of food is nutritious or delicious without considering that it could be both.

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UPDATE -- 10/1/2009

Interesting, isn't it, that all of this Democrat uproar -- including death wishes for the perpetrator -- was directed at something that was the work of a juvenile, just like the case I commented on (to much ridicule) three years ago. Will anyone on the Left admit that I was right three years ago -- or admit that they were wrong to get so upset over some kid playing around?

ORIGINAL POST -- 9/28/2009

When I wrote about this incident three years ago, liberals poo-pooed it as not a big deal. Indeed, some were outraged that the Secret Service would even investigate such a thing on a social networking site.

Well, now the Secret Service is investigating an incident that I consider every bit as serious -- and this time the liberals are up in arms and spewing their venom.

The Secret Service is investigating the origins of a poll that appeared on Facebook that asked whether President Obama should be killed.

Posted over the weekend, the poll was removed by Facebook after the Secret Service received a tip and contacted the company, which was not aware of the survey, sources tell ABC News.

"When the Secret Service became aware of the poll we worked with Facebook to have it taken down and are conducting an investigation," said a spokesman for the Secret Service.

The poll asked: "Should Obama be killed?" The answer choices: "No," "Maybe," "Yes" and "Yes if he cuts my health care."

Now liberals are upset over the poll, and want the perp investigated and prosecuted.

So do I.

The difference -- I was for such actions by the Secret Service when the president was George W. Bush and not Barack Obama. They weren't. In short, I am consistent -- they are hypocrites.

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After all, if the federal government is going to take care of "structural imbalances" in broadcasting and healthcare, shouldn't Congress also take action to address such imbalances in the publishing industry, where liberal political books are markedly less successful than their conservative counterparts?

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That would seem to be the implication of a decision coming out of Dallas.

A Texas judge has cleared the way for two Dallas men to get a divorce, ruling that Texas' ban on same-sex marriage violates the constitutional guarantee to equal protection under the law.

The Dallas Morning News reported that a Dallas district judge's Thursday ruling finds that the court “has jurisdiction to hear a suit for divorce filed by persons legally married in another jurisdiction.”

But here's the problem -- if it is a violation of equal protection of the law not to recognize gay marriages or to dissolve them for this reason, it logically follows that the refusal to perform those marriages is a violation of equal protection for precisely the same reason.

Interestingly enough, I've only encountered one media outlet that seems interested in taking up that angle on the case. Not even Texas' most prominent liberal blog has yet commented on the implications of this decision.

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Imagine that – her co-author is a conservative Republican who is an evangelical Christian!

Sarah Palin's most consequential choice since leaving the Alaska governor's mansion may be her co-author - a staunch conservative, devoted evangelical Christian, and intensely partisan Republican from far, far outside the Beltway.
Lynn Vincent spent the summer working with Palin on a closely-guarded 400 page memoir, "Going Rogue: An American Life." The book is due out from HarperCollins Nov. 17 - but it shot to the top of the Amazon.com and Barnes & Noble bestseller lists Wednesday as word of its publication spread.

Sarah Palin is trying to communicate who she is and her vision for America. In order to best do that, she needs to work with someone who is sympathetic to her point of view. If she didn’t, she would spend more time fighting with her co-author than writing the book. The choice of Lynn Vincent is therefore a good one – an experienced writer who shares Palin’s vision to communicate Sarah’s ideas. Sounds like a smart choice to me.

Posted by: Greg at 01:36 PM | Comments (2) | Add Comment
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I grew up in a military family.

One of the benefits of that upbringing was that I met some extraordinary men and women during my childhood. And as a teenager I had the privilege of meeting a living recipient of the Medal of Honor. I learned that day exactly how special these men really are, and the sort of heroism they exhibited in the course of their duty. And so it is with that in mind that I read this commentary this morning about attempts to change the requirements – in effect to water them down – in an effort to award the MoH more often.

More than a dozen groups and lawmakers are lobbying the Defense Department to award this honor more frequently -- in effect, to lower its standards -- and to upgrade to the Medal of Honor other decorations that soldiers have received. In debate over the National Defense Authorization Act for 2010, the Pentagon was criticized for setting decoration standards too high. The "low numbers" led Rep. Duncan Hunter (R-Calif.) to insert a conference report in the authorization act "to review the current trends in awarding the Medal of Honor to identify whether there is an inadvertent subjective bias amongst commanders that has contributed to the low numbers of awards of the Medal of Honor." It directs Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates to report back to the House and Senate Armed Services Committees next March.

I’m sorry, but no matter how dearly one wishes to honor our men and women in uniform, this is not the right vehicle for doing so. This award is special – its recipients a mere handful among all those who have ever served – and so rarely bestowed that meeting a living recipient is rare. That is as it should be. If there is a desire to give more recognition to special acts of valor, then there is a case for creating a new award – but Congress should keep its hands off of this one.

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Once again, we have an amazing anthropological find out of Ethiopia that sheds light – and raises questions – about the evolution of our species and our primate cousins.

After 15 years of rumors, researchers in the U.S. and Ethiopia on Thursday made public fossils from a 4.4-million-year-old human forebearer they say reveals that our earliest ancestors were more modern than scholars assumed and deepens the evolutionary gulf separating humankind from today's apes and chimpanzees.
The highlight of the extensive fossil trove is a female skeleton a million years older than the iconic bones of Lucy, the primitive female figure that has long symbolized humankind's beginnings.
After 15 years of rumors, researchers in the U.S. and Ethiopia on Thursday made public fossils from a 4.4-million-year-old human forebearer they say reveals that our earliest ancestors were more modern than scholars assumed and deepens the evolutionary gulf separating humankind from today's apes and chimpanzees.
The highlight of the extensive fossil trove is a female skeleton a million years older than the iconic bones of Lucy, the primitive female figure that has long symbolized humankind's beginnings.

The potentially earthshaking aspect of this discovery is that anthropologists may have had it all wrong in thinking that humans evolved away from our earliest prehuman ancestors while chimps, monkeys and apes remain closer to our common ancestors. It appears that we may be more faithful to that common ancestor and the primates are the ones that spun of on an evolutionary tangent. I can’t wait to learn more – because I’ll be teaching this in my classes in the future.

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Here is, from where I sit, the heart of DionneÂ’s argument on why it is common sense that so-called moderates should support the public option is found right here.

The strangest aspect of the debate over a public option for health coverage is that the centrists who oppose it should love it.

It doesn't involve a government takeover of the health-care system. The idea is that only consumers who want to enroll in a government-run health plan would do so. Anyone who preferred private insurance could get it.

The public option also uses government exactly as advocates of market economics say it should be deployed: not as a controlling entity but as a nudge toward greater competition. Fans of the market rightly oppose monopolies. But in many places, a small number of insurance companies -- sometimes only one -- dominates the market. The public option is a monopoly-buster.

He’s right in noting that the preferred method of folks in the middle – and on the right, too – is for the market over the government. The problem is that he doesn’t recognize the fundamental objection to the government entering the marketplace – namely that it will NEVER compete on an equal basis. After all, not one insurance company has the unlimited financial reserves of the federal government behind it, with the ability to operate at a loss in order to keep rates artificially low. What’s more, the impact of such a government player in the market would be to warp it in favor of the government and against the private sector – ultimately creating a system in which there is only one dominant company in the market – namely the government-backed option. The result will inevitably be the collapse of private insurance companies unable to compete with an entity bound by different rules and a different economic model – in effect meaning that while there will be no takeover today, there will be one tomorrow or the day after.

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