The Watcher’s Council

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.

It has always saddened me that two of our greatest presidents, one who risked everything to create our beloved Republic and another who gave his all to save it, should have to ‘share’ a day to honor them while others who arguably contributed far less, have a day all to themselves to honor them because it’s politically expedient. That’s particularly true in my home state, where someone who was essentially a mere labor racketeer is so honored.

And let’s not even mention another president born this month who in living memory saved this nation from decay and defeat by sheer force of his principles, character and personality.

This goes beyond the question of a mere day off. As I’ve often written, usually vis a vis the people who identify themselves as ‘Palestinians,’ you can tell a great deal about a people by whom and what they honor and hold up as heroic.

Ah, well! To the business at hand…

Council News:

This week, The Grouch, Capitalist Preservation, The Pagan Temple and Right Truth took advantage of my generous offer of link whorage and earned honorable mention status.

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

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

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

So, let’s see what we have this week…

Council Submissions

• The Colossus of Rhodey – Just a crazy writer looking for attention
• The Mellow Jihadi – Errrrr-rah Marine, Cobra Blood!
• Joshuapundit – Harvard Endorses Israel’s Destruction
• The Independent Sentinel – Forget the Volt and Buy A 1997 Buick Park Avenue
• The Noisy Room – Who The Hell Do These People Think They Are?
• The Political Commentator – To own a gun or not to own a gun?
• Simply Jews – A few questions for a BDS supporter
• GrEaT sAtAn”S gIrLfRiEnD – The World Great Satan Made
• The Right Planet – No More Mr. Nice Guy
• Rhymes With Right – When It Comes To Civil Liberties And Rights, Poll Results Don’t Matter
• Bookworm Room – The ‘ultrasound = rape’ meme on the Left is part of a larger movement to discredit Republicans with a Big Lie
• VA Right! – Obama Is a Progressive. He Can’t Be a Christian Too!
• The Glittering Eye – Peace Through Cost-Benefit Analysis
• The Razor – The Limits of Labels

Honorable Mentions

• The Grouch – The Grouch Educates Facebook Friends on Payroll Tax Cuts and High Gasoline Prices
• The Pagan Temple – Taste Worth Dying For
• Right Truth – Rick Santorum Is right
• Capitalist Preservation – The real issue of liberty and freedom being attacked under ObamaCare

Non-Council Submissions

• Cato@Liberty – Trying to Do Everything, Doing Nothing Well submitted by The Colossus of Rhodey
• Castra Praetoria – What Did They Expect? submitted by The Mellow Jihadi
• Mark Steyn – Contraception Misdirection submitted by Joshuapundit
• Michelle Malkin – Taxing Medical Practice to Death submitted by The Independent Sentinel
• Sultan Knish – Guns, Butter, Jobs and Birth Control submitted by The Noisy Room
• Stonegate Institute – A New Year of “Dhimmitude” for Egypt’s Copts submitted by The Political Commentator
• The Elder Of Ziyon – “Israeli viruses infecting Egyptian chickens” submitted by Simply Jews
• Pressure Points – Playing Down the Iranian Threat submitted by GrEaT sAtAn”S gIrLfRiEnD
• CNS News – George Washington’s Farewell Address submitted by The Right Planet
• Tim Stanley/The Telegraph – Sean Penn should return his Malibu estate to the Mexicans submitted by Rhymes with Right
• Melanie Phillips – When a seven year-old is branded a bigot submitted by Bookworm Room
• The Mental Recession – Unions Behaving Badly: Registering Inmates to Vote, Spending Dues at Strip Clubs submitted by VA Right!
• Via Meadia – Beyond Blue 5: Jobs, Jobs, Jobs submitted by The Glittering Eye
• American Thinker – Reports of the Tea Party’s Death Are Greatly Exagerrated submitted by The Razor
• Just One Minute – When Is A Tie Not A Tie? submitted by The Watcher
• Tevi Troy/Commentary – ObamaCare at the Supreme Court submitted by The Watcher

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

By: Roger Aronoff
Accuracy in Media

While the mainstream media are still overwhelmingly intent on seeing Barack Obama reelected as President, a number of journalists and news organizations are apparently having second thoughts. Or at least they are willing to examine the claims and representations that the Obama administration continues to put forth. This has been the surprising case regarding Obama’s State of the Union address in late January and the budget that he proposed in mid-February. Hopefully this may mark a turning point in how the media allow themselves to be used by the Obama administration, but don’t count on it. More likely it is isolated incidents of self-respect, and an acknowledgement that they can differentiate between normal political spin and outright lies.

The double standard still could not be more clear. During the many Republican debates there has been a constant effort to get the candidates to provide sound bites for Democratic ads during the general election, calling each other liars and flip-floppers, moderates, liberals, influence peddlers, and plutocrats. The ABC New Hampshire debate in which George Stephanopoulos spent a substantial amount of time on the burning issue of whether or not states have the right to ban contraception seemed like a Saturday Night Live skit in how it attempted to make the candidates appear radical. But now it looks more like coordination with the White House in preparation for their battle to make contraception a “free” entitlement for all under ObamaCare.

President Obama rarely faces such questions. He has been able to largely stay above the fray, managing the news flow, picking softball interviewers like NBC’s Matt Lauer before the Super Bowl, and ABC’s Diane Sawyer a few days before that. But what is new, and has the ability to change the dynamics, is that some of the loyal left in the media have begun to actually directly challenge Obama’s claims and narrative. Not enough of them, but it is starting to happen.

There are still hard-to-believe spectacles such as the Super Bowl on February 4 that played like an infomercial for the reelection of President Obama, in front of an audience estimated at 110 million people. But what is new is that within a day of the President’s State of the Union (SOTU) address, the Associated Press (AP) and The Washington Post were both out with detailed refutations of some of Obama’s signature claims—claims to do with the auto industry, the green energy industry, job creation, the size and scope of government under his term in office, Afghanistan, tax fairness, energy production, and relations with Israel.

During halftime of the Super Bowl was the much talked about two-minute Chrysler ad, with Clint Eastwood, calling it “halftime in America” and seeming to endorse a second Obama term, while suggesting the President was in the middle of a great accomplishment, namely saving America’s auto industry and with it the city of Detroit, Michigan.

Eastwood denied that he intended anything political with the ad, and it’s hard not to take Dirty Harry at his word. But the political overtones were clear, even to some of the giddiest of Obama’s allies in the media. For example, Frank Rich, formerly of The New York Times, currently with New York magazine, was on CNN the following night with Piers Morgan on his weekday show. Here was their take on the ad:

MORGAN: I mean, I don’t care what Chrysler says or Clint Eastwood, if you’re Barack Obama watching the Super Bowl, as I’m sure he was with his family yesterday, and up pops Clint Eastwood, one of the biggest movie stars in the world, highlighting one of your big success stories in this financial crisis, the successful bailing out of the car industry, and saying we’re halftime, America, well, the message is pretty clear, isn’t it? Give the guy another half.

RICH: Yes, I mean, for instance, one thing about this ad that’s just fascinating, is it has a “Morning in America” Reagan ad feel to it. It feels almost like a Reagan ad and yet you’re exactly right. It’s basically saying it was a good thing to bail out Detroit, and let’s not forget that Mitt Romney, the likely Republican nominee actually wrote an op-ed piece in The New York Times saying “let Detroit fail. Let these companies go bankrupt.” And so you have Clint Eastwood, who isn’t at least normally a Republican and may well not have had any political motives, lending his incredible prestige and classic American voice and face to this Reaganesque message that’s in favor essentially of Democratic policies during this recession. It’s amazing.

MORGAN: I don’t know who they’re going to try—how they’re going to try and pretend this is not a political ad. And if it is, it really ratchets up this whole Obama-Hollywood thing. Most of the Hollywood stars I’ve been talking to appear to have gone a bit lukewarm with Barack Obama. But you can’t get better than Clint Eastwood, I don’t think.”

And what about Frank Rich’s statement about Mitt Romney’s op-ed in the Times—that Romney said, “let Detroit fail? Let these companies go bankrupt.” What Romney actually wrote in that piece for the Times was this:

“A managed bankruptcy may be the only path to the fundamental restructuring the industry needs. It would permit the companies to shed excess labor, pension and real estate costs. The federal government should provide guarantees for post-bankruptcy financing and assure car buyers that their warranties are not at risk…In a managed bankruptcy, the federal government would propel newly competitive and viable automakers, rather than seal their fate with a bailout check.”

Yet Rich was repeating what Obama and others have said in characterizing Romney’s approach. The choice Obama made was a federal bailout of about $85 billion (including the $20 billion the Bush administration had offered as a bridge loan before he left office) in which for the first time, the secured bondholders, the people who had invested their dollars with the assurance that they were first in line should the company fail, got pushed to the back of the line, while the United Auto Workers came to own 55% of Chrysler, with no wage cuts.

But apparently Joe Klein of Time magazine didn’t see it the same way Frank Rich and Piers Morgan saw it—as a Democratic dream ad. Instead Klein cited Karl Rove, “the master Republican strategist,” as having been “offended” by the ad. Klein said that “any normal person watching this ad had to be thrilled—Eastwood’s voice, the rousing script, the fighting spirit: ‘This country can’t be knocked out with one punch we get right up again when we do the world’s going to hear the roar of our engines.’” Klein said that Rove saw the ad as “a Chicago style payback from Chrysler to Barack Obama for bailing out the company.”

Then Klein went off unhinged into a hyperbolic, left-wing rant saying that Rove lives in a world in which “Obama is the Antichrist…and maybe even, who knows, a secret Muslim immigrant.” At least Klein’s liberal brethren, Frank Rich and Piers Morgan, understood exactly what this ad was about, and they were in full agreement with Rove, though obviously from a different perspective.

Klein went on to peddle the same falsehood as Frank Rich—that Romney took the position that “Detroit should be allowed to fail.”

In the end, both Chrysler and GM went into and came out of bankruptcy only after the $85 billion bailout, with the U.S. government owning 61% of GM and the UAW pension fund owning 55% of Chrysler. The only way either can be considered profitable is by factoring in a $45 billion tax credit granted by the government, and still, the taxpayers are more than $23 billion in the hole.

The unknowable is how the companies would be doing if they had gone through managed bankruptcies, without setting unfortunate precedents related to secured bondholders and crony capitalism.

But that is far from the only falsehood or misrepresentation put forth by the Obama administration. Most are allowed to pass, and receive little examination by the media as to their accuracy.

A word or two on the so-called fact checkers. In December of last year The Weekly Standard ran an article called “Lies, Damned Lies, and ‘Fact Checking.’” While pointing out that “Media fact checking endeavors have never been more popular and influential than they are now,” they argued that too often they represent a liberal ideological bias rather than “providing an impartial referee to help readers sort out acrimonious and hyperbolic political disputes.” Perhaps The Weekly Standard provided a service, pushing some of the fact checkers, like The Washington Post’s Glenn Kessler, the AP and Bloomberg, to become more objective.

Here are some examples from both the January SOTU and the February budget released by the President, as analyzed by these fact-checking services:

The Washington Post

From Glenn Kessler, the Post Fact Checker, on the State of the Union (SOTU) address:

OBAMA: “Take the money we’re no longer spending at war, use half of it to pay down our debt, and use the rest to do some nation-building right here at home.”

KESSLER: “This is fanciful budget math. The wars in Iraq and Afghanistan were funded with borrowed money, so what Obama is really asking for is an increase in domestic spending relative to the Pentagon. The United States is still running huge deficits, so none of this imagined savings would “pay down the debt” until the United States once again began running surpluses. Instead, his proposal would continue to add to the debt.”

OBAMA: “Anyone who tells you otherwise, anyone who tells you that America is in decline or that our influence has waned, doesn’t know what they’re talking about. That’s not the message we get from leaders around the world, all of whom are eager to work with us. That’s not how people feel from Tokyo to Berlin; from Cape Town to Rio; where opinions of America are higher than they’ve been in years.”

KESSLER: “Obama’s self-congratulatory tone aside, the most striking thing about this list is that it does not include any cities in the Islamic world. Obama had made a high-profile speech in Cairo in 2009 designed to bolster the U.S. image; judging by recent polling, his effort has been a failure. The Pew Research Center in May said that both the U.S. favorability rating and confidence in Obama had fallen sharply since 2009. In Turkey, a NATO ally, for instance, the confidence in Obama fell from 33 percent in 2009 to 11 percent in 2011; in Jordan, another key ally, the favorability rating for the United States fell from 25 percent in 2009 to 13 percent in 2011…The survey said that Obama’s handling of the political change spawned by the Arab Spring was a key factor in the slumping numbers.”

The AP on SOTU

OBAMA: “Our health care law relies on a reformed private market, not a government program.”

THE FACTS: “That’s only half true. About half of the more than 30 million uninsured Americans expected to gain coverage through the health care law will be enrolled in a government program. Medicaid, the federal-state program for low-income people, will be expanded starting in 2014 to cover childless adults living near the poverty line…The other half will be enrolled in private health plans through new state-based insurance markets. But many of them will be receiving federal subsidies to make their premiums more affordable. And that’s a government program, too.”

OBAMA: “The Taliban’s momentum has been broken, and some troops in Afghanistan have begun to come home.”

THE FACTS: “Obama is more sanguine about progress in Afghanistan than his own intelligence apparatus. The latest National Intelligence Estimate on Afghanistan warns that the Taliban will grow stronger, using fledgling talks with the U.S. to gain credibility and stall until U.S. troops leave, while continuing to fight for more territory. The classified assessment, described to The AP by officials who have seen it, says the Afghan government hasn’t been able to establish credibility with its people, and predicts the Taliban and warlords will largely control the countryside.”

The AP on Obama’s Budget

BUDGET: “It counts on phantom savings [about $850 billion] from the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. It’s underpinned by tax increases Republicans won’t let happen and program cuts fellow Democrats in Congress are all but certain to block…And it assumes rates of growth that the economy will have to become strikingly undead to achieve.”

REALITY: “There is no direct peace dividend from ending the wars because the government borrowed to pay for them. The government would have to keep borrowing that amount of money to have it to spend on something else.”

BUDGET: “Forecasts healthy growth in years ahead, with GDP growth predicted to reach 4 percent in 2014 and 4.2 percent in 2015.”

REALITY: “It’s obviously too soon to know, but reputable private forecasts are not nearly as rosy as the administration’s assumptions, and their track record tends to be better. They are generally forecasting a percentage point lower or close to that, a huge difference, and don’t see reaching 4 percent growth in the foreseeable future…Last year, the administration built its proposed budget on a projection of 2.7 percent growth in 2011; it turned out to be 1.7 …Such projections are key because the government’s spending and debt plans rest on how much revenue can be expected to come in.”

Investor’s Business Daily—Fairness (SOTU):

OBAMA: “We need to change our tax code so that people like me, and an awful lot of members of Congress, pay our fair share of taxes.”

IBD: “The claim that the rich don’t pay their fair share is simply untrue. The current tax code is extremely progressive, more progressive in fact than it was back in 1979, according to the Congressional Budget Office. As a result, the richest 1% today accounts for 36% of all income taxes paid, while nearly half of taxpayers owe nothing at all, or get cash back. If that isn’t fair, Obama owes it to the country to describe just what sort of distribution would be fair.”

When the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) reported in early February that the unemployment rate had fallen to 8.3%, that was great news, right? But the report showed that in that same month, a record 1.2 million Americans left the labor force. And according to an article in SmartMoney.com last December, “the real unemployment figure including all discouraged workers who stopped looking for work is closer to a staggering 22.6%.”

The Washington Times

(From an article titled “Obama’s Made Up Jobless Numbers,” by Joseph Curl:)

When the unemployment rate dropped to 8.5 percent in December, the Financial Times wasn’t convinced. “According to government statistics, if the same number of people were seeking work today as in 2007, the jobless rate would be 11%.”

Curl argues that the BLS has been “busy rewriting the rules” for counting the unemployed, presumably to make sure that come election time, the official unemployment rate will be 8% or less, allowing Obama to hit his mark.

These are just a few of many examples of phony and misleading claims by the White House that are beginning to be challenged by the mainstream media, but which still are not getting nearly the attention they deserve. Fact checking should be a process reflected in every article or story. The problem is that these stories don’t have any traction in the broadcast media, and thus, are largely ignored.•

Roger Aronoff is the Editor of AIM.

Dear Fellow Media Watchdogs:

AIM returned to CPAC, the annual Conservative Political Action Conference, from February 9-11. As we’ve done for the past several years, we presented the annual Reed Irvine Awards, one for investigative journalism to CBS’s intrepid investigative reporter, Sharyl Attkisson, and one for grassroots journalism to Dana Loesch, a blogger turned Tea Party activist who is now the Editor-in-Chief of Andrew Breitbart’s BigJournalism website.

We received a lot of attention from articles in The Washington Post, Politico, Big Journalism and other sites when the far-left, George Soros-funded Media Matters for America attempted to browbeat CBS News into rejecting the award for Ms. Attkisson. Though it turned out that she was unable to attend because of an assignment, they did send the Washington bureau chief of CBS News, Chris Isham, who graciously accepted the award on her behalf.

Then, on Sunday, February 12, The Daily Caller (DC), co-founded by Tucker Carlson, last year’s winner of the Reed Irvine Award for grassroots journalism, broke part one of an explosive series about Media Matters. They reported that “Media Matters has in less than a decade become a powerful player in Democratic politics. The group operates in regular coordination with the highest levels of the Obama White House, as well as with members of Congress and progressive groups around the country. [David] Brock, who collected over $250,000 in salary from Media Matters in 2010, has himself become a major fundraiser on the left. According to an internal memo obtained by The DC, Media Matters intends to spend nearly $20 million in 2012 to influence news coverage.”

And that was just the beginning. Memos discussed plans to hire private investigators to look into the personal lives of Fox News personnel, and others in the conservative movement. A source told The DC that Media Matters staff “were pretty much writing their prime time” talking points for the cable channel MSNBC. “But then virtually all the mainstream media was using our stuff,” they bragged. There were also reports of erratic behavior by the group’s founder, one-time conservative journalist David Brock.

AIM also gave a Reed Irvine Lifetime Achievement Award to Capt. Charles Rozier (USN Ret.), who still volunteers as head of the Speakers Bureau at AIM at age 91, after 15 years. Charlie is a veteran of D-Day, the battles of Iwo Jima and Okinawa, and was the Captain of the ship that raised the nuclear-armed Soviet submarine during the Cuban missile crisis. Contact him if you need a speaker•

For Accuracy in Media
Roger Aronoff

Roger Aronoff is the Editor of Accuracy in Media, and can be contacted at roger.aronoff@aim.org.

By: Cliff Kincaid
Accuracy in Media

Patrick J. Buchanan, who has been a major figure in the conservative movement for over 40 years, was fired from MSNBC after the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) concluded in Washington, D.C. Buchanan was not a featured speaker at CPAC, but his former colleague, Joe Scarborough, was. Scarborough, the co-host of a little-watched MSNBC program “Morning Joe,” is a former Republican congressman who pleases the liberals by making sure he doesn’t sound too conservative on the air. He takes shots at conservatives to make himself palatable to the left.

Many were astounded that Scarborough was the emcee of a major CPAC event. Scarborough’s real mission was to introduce Rep. Paul Ryan of Wisconsin at a banquet sponsored by Newsmax but he couldn’t resist taking shots at GOP presidential candidate Newt Gingrich, such as saying something about a moon base, one of Gingrich’s more controversial proposals. Gingrich, of course, wasn’t there to defend himself; he spoke to this CPAC on another occasion. Conservatives at my table agreed that Scarborough’s cheap shots at Gingrich were in bad taste. I felt bad for Ryan being introduced in such a tawdry manner.

In order to rub salt in the wounds, Scarborough brought along his liberal MSNBC sidekick Mika Brzezinski, who sat at one of the up-front banquet tables. She posed for pictures with a number of young conservatives who must have thought she was a Hollywood starlet of some kind. For his part, Scarborough has posted photos of himself at CPAC, under the title, “Morning Joe Invades CPAC.” The use of the term “invasion” is the correct one. They invaded the conservative space.

All of this is background information for what has happened to Buchanan and his place in the conservative movement. It’s bad enough that he was fired from MSNBC. In fact, he had been “suspended” weeks before the firing became official. While Buchanan’s magazine The American Conservative was at CPAC, Buchanan was not.

Buchanan seems to be considered anathema by some newcomers to the conservative movement, mostly because of his criticism of America’s foreign wars and pro-Israel foreign policy under George W. Bush. One can criticize those stands and his occasional use of inappropriate language on sensitive issues while acknowledging Buchanan’s stature and place in the conservative movement.

An editorial writer at a young age who was trained in journalism, he has an encyclopedic knowledge of U.S. politics. He has written a number of books, some more controversial than others, as a look at the top of his website will attest. He crossed into government service by working for Republican Presidents Richard Nixon and Ronald Reagan and later ran for president himself. At Reagan’s service, Buchanan was a fierce advocate for freedom against communism.

I first met Buchanan while working for Accuracy in Media. AIM founder Reed Irvine admired and respected Buchanan. This was the norm among conservatives who recognized Buchanan as a fighter against liberals in the media and elsewhere. Buchanan asked me to write an article for his newsletter, “Patrick J. Buchanan From the Right,” about the rise of conservative talk radio. I had hosted a radio show in the early 1990s.

While Buchanan was in the Reagan White House as communications director in the 1980s, I had the opportunity to fill in as the conservative co-host of a then-popular CNN program, “Crossfire.” Buchanan had been the conservative co-host and Tom Braden was the liberal co-host. The “crossfire” aspect also included the fact that there were conservative and liberal guests who sat in the middle, getting questions from both sides. I joked that the slogan of the program was, “Don’t talk while I’m interrupting.” I got into trouble with the producers when I asked the Ambassador from Libya to “please shut up” after he insisted at length that Libya was not involved in international terrorism. Nevertheless, the show had a lot of educational value and was great fun. It was advocacy journalism at its best.

The days of “Crossfire” are gone. The show was cancelled and a true “crossfire” on the issues is not permitted any more by some important media organizations which cower in fear when attacked by the left. It is significant that Buchanan has been forced off the air essentially by the same left-wing forces that previously claimed the scalp of Glenn Beck, who departed from Fox News because of his scrutiny of anti-American hedge fund billionaire George Soros. In both cases, the Soros-funded Media Matters and the Van Jones-founded Color of Change played roles in their ouster.

On his Politico blog, Scarborough issued a joint statement with Brzezinski: “Everyone at Morning Joe considers Pat Buchanan to be a friend and a member of the family. Even though we strongly disagree with the contents of Pat’s latest book, Mika and I believe those differences should have been debated in public. An open dialogue with Morning Joe regulars like Al Sharpton and Harold Ford, Jr. could have developed into an important debate on the future of race relations in America. Because we believe that sunlight is the best disinfectant, Mika and I strongly disagree with this outcome. We understand that the parting was amicable. Still, we will miss Pat.”

Amicable? I see no evidence of that. Buchanan told Sean Hannity on his Fox News program that he had been the victim of an un-American blacklisting for his views on racial matters, as expressed in his new book, Suicide of a Superpower: Will America Survive to 2025?

It is significant that black agitator Al Sharpton, who made false racial allegations against white police officers in the notorious Tawana Brawley case, continues on the air on MSNBC while Buchanan has been let go. This has everything to do with the fact that Sharpton, a “Morning Joe” regular, is a loyal stooge of Obama and a faithful Democrat. It seems he will remain a member of the MSNBC “family” no matter what he says or does.

But to speak up for the interests of what Buchanan would call European-Americans, in terms of defending the Christian foundations of the U.S., is a grievous sin to the liberals. This is what the blacklisting of Buchanan really means. It is telling that Scarborough apparently felt compelled to denounce Buchanan’s views while lamenting his leaving the MSNBC “family.”

Another difference is that the buffoonish Sharpton has the intellectual depth of a saucer, while Buchanan has a deep knowledge of history. Buchanan has the intellectual ammunition to argue and win his arguments. Taking Buchanan to task for some of his comments should not mean conservatives have to fall into the trap of reading him out of the media and the conservative movement.

Conservatives should be able to disagree with his views and conclusions, without using the language of the left to vilify him.

It is disappointing to see Andrew Breitbart’s usually excellent BigJournalism.com linking to an article that calls Buchanan an anti-Semite. The link was to a Pajamas Media article claiming Buchanan was fired for the wrong reason, implying that he should have been fired for a different reason. But firing is not the proper response for someone who was writing conservative editorials at an early age and taking on the liberal media when the writers at Pajamas Media were truly in their pajamas—and diapers. It seems like the Media Matters mentality exists on the right as well.

Sean Hannity is to be commended for giving Buchanan a chance on his Fox News program to defend himself and explain the reasons why he was fired. The trouble for Hannity is that Buchanan followed Glenn Beck out the door, as a result of the same kind of campaign waged by the same forces.

To be fair, Hannity should not condemn one ouster without examining the other. However, we know that he would be risking his job if he seriously investigated on the air why Fox buckled under to pressure from George Soros by getting rid of Beck. This story goes beyond political pressure to threats against Glenn Beck’s personnel, as we have already revealed and documented. The situation at Fox News, which hired feminist commentators Jehmu Greene and Sally Kohn to keep Media Matters at bay, is actually much worse than the sacking of Buchanan.

The bleak media landscape, as the presidential campaign goes forward, shows Fox News moving to the left and MSNBC moving further to the left.

Some viewers have objected to the cancellation of Judge Andrew Napolitano’s show on the Fox Business Network. These complaints should be taken seriously. But his program never had the high ratings that Beck’s show did on the Fox News Channel. What’s more, Napolitano is not completely gone from the channel; he remains as a commentator on Fox News.

As for Joe Scarborough, he realizes that if he goes too far to the right he will meet the same fate as Buchanan. CPAC should repel his “invasion” the next time he tries to breach the gates. A serious conservative when he was elected to Congress, I worked with his staff on a bill to get the U.S. out of the United Nations. But today he is just a “token conservative” who isn’t that conservative at a cable channel that doesn’t believe in free speech and true diversity.

Cliff Kincaid is the Director of the AIM Center for Investigative Journalism and can be contacted at cliff.kincaid@aim.org.

NoisyRoom
By: Terresa Monroe-Hamilton

Imagine you wake up tomorrow and this is not a Constitutional Republic anymore. It is now a dictatorship. Whoops! Already accomplished. Then imagine that you wake up tomorrow and the President and our elites have given away part of the US. Then imagine it was your state and your state and Senators weren’t even consulted on it. In fact the deal was conducted in secret. Well, the nightmare is alive and well and being finalized for Alaska. But, before you go cursing ONLY Obama (as I do every damn chance I get), you better have a really hard look at Progressives on both sides of the aisle. This monstrous act of treason started under Bush Senior in 1990 and was ratified by our Senate in 1991. The only thing holding it back was that Russia had not signed the treaty. Obama is now looking to finish the diabolical deal.

From Drink Your Kool Aid:

On June 1, 1990, Secretary of State James Baker signed a secret executive agreement with Eduard Shevardnadze, the former U.S.S.R. foreign minister. It specified that even though the treaty had not been ratified, the U.S. and the U.S.S.R. agreed to abide by the terms of the treaty beginning June 15, 1990. The Senate ratified the U.S.-U.S.S.R. Maritime Boundary Treaty in 1991, which was then signed by President George Bush.

I can hear you saying that this is only about some tiny little islands and that they are closer to Russia than the US – why should we care? These islands are not tiny. And the true issue here is that they have a wealth of oil and resources on and around them. That’s the big deal. Plus, they’re ours – not Russia’s.

Why now, when this treaty has languished for 22 years? Well… Why not? It accomplishes a number of things for Obama. It takes a slap at the conservative state of Alaska and attempts to put her high-profile residents such as Sarah Palin and Joe Miller in their collective places. It caves to one of our biggest enemies, Russia, and weakens the US even more in their eyes. It gives precious energy resources away for nothing, thereby ensuring that energy prices will skyrocket even more in the US when that energy is needed. And who knows what other nefarious goals the deed accomplishes. Progressives are always figuring an angle and it never benefits US citizens – just the elite and powerful.

From WND:

Part of Obama’s apparent war against U.S. energy independence includes a foreign-aid program that directly threatens my state’s sovereign territory. Obama’s State Department is giving away seven strategic, resource-laden Alaskan islands to the Russians. Yes, to the Putin regime in the Kremlin.

The seven endangered islands in the Arctic Ocean and Bering Sea include one the size of Rhode Island and Delaware combined. The Russians are also to get the tens of thousands of square miles of oil-rich seabeds surrounding the islands. The Department of Interior estimates billions of barrels of oil are at stake.

More:

The State Department has undertaken the giveaway in the guise of a maritime boundary agreement between Alaska and Siberia. Astoundingly, our federal government itself drew the line to put these seven Alaskan islands on the Russian side. But as an executive agreement, it could be reversed with the stroke of a pen by President Obama or Secretary Clinton.

The agreement was negotiated in total secrecy. The state of Alaska was not allowed to participate in the negotiations, nor was the public given any opportunity for comment. This is despite the fact the Alaska Legislature has passed resolutions of opposition – but the State Department doesn’t seem to care.

In May of 1881, US explorers spotted the Jeannette and Henrietta Islands and claimed them for the United States. According to numerous sources, including the group State Department Watch, seven Arctic islands currently controlled by Russia are claimed by the United States. However, according to the United States Department of State, no such claim exists. The USSR/USA Maritime Boundary Treaty, which has yet to be approved by the Russian Duma, does not address the status of these islands nor the maritime boundaries associated with them. And of course, the Russians are claiming them for their own. The fight over Alaskan land has been going on since the 1800s and the Russians are claiming and taking any land anywhere they can find it that has oil or gas.

The Obama Administration is reportedly giving away Wrangell, Bennett, Jeannette and Henrietta islands in Alaska to Russia. They are getting ready to finalize the deal. The federal government drew the line to put these seven Alaskan islands on the Russian side with no input from Alaska, her leaders or her residents. How is that Constitutional? And don’t cite the Treaty Clause to me. This oversteps the bounds of that section by a wide margin. Thus the need for secrecy and no transparency on the deal. The founding fathers never envisioned a sitting President and the State Department just giving away American sovereign land.

And as far as a milquetoast, spineless Senate is concerned – every one of them that ratified this in 1991 that is still in office should be shown the door that leads to a rail out of town with a spiffy new coat of tar and feathers. This treaty makes an excellent argument for abolishing the 17th Amendment and returning to the true Constitutional principle in which senators were elected by state legislatures, not by popular vote. This is what you get when you bastardize and supersede Article I, § 3, Clauses 1 and 2 of the Constitution.

Who the hell do these people think they are? I’ll tell you… They truly believe they are the elite and that they are above your station – you are the riffraff, the serfs that only exist to serve them. They are royalty and their moniker is Progressive. They are the ruling class and the truly, obscenely wealthy and powerful. For too long we have let them rule as they see fit rather than by the will of the people. Obama is just the culmination of decades of inattention to the evil infiltrating our government’s halls. Time to send them all packing.

The powers delegated to the federal government are few and defined. Those which are to remain in the state governments are numerous and indefinite. The former will be exercised principally on external objects, [such] as war, peace, negotiation, and foreign commerce. The powers reserved to the several states will extend to all the objects which, in the ordinary course of affairs, concern the lives, liberties, and properties of the people.

James Madison – The Federalist

That’s who they think they are; your King, your Lords, your Nobility. They don’t care what happened in 1787, they still think they own you.

By: Cliff Kincaid
Accuracy in Media

Fareed Zakaria of CNN has written a column for The Washington Post that serves as an excuse for letting Iran develop and acquire nuclear weapons. MJ Rosenberg, Senior Foreign Policy Fellow at Media Matters Action Network and contributor to Al-Jazeera, was absolutely ecstatic, saying Zakaria had done “a terrific job destroying some arguments for war with Iran,” and that he had done so by “citing history.” But Zakaria’s “history lesson” gets an “F.”

Touting the theory of mutually assured destruction, which prevented the U.S. and the Soviet Union from annihilating one another with nuclear weapons, Zakaria suggested that Iran could be deterred from using nuclear weapons. He quoted Gideon Rose, the editor of Foreign Affairs magazine, as saying that deterrence “is less disastrous than preventive war.” Rose is a former National Security Council official in the Clinton Administration and a prominent official of the Council on Foreign Relations.

Zakaria said that “While the Iranian regime is often called crazy, it has done much less to merit the term than did a regime such as Mao’s China. Over the past decade, there have been thousands of suicide bombings by Saudis, Egyptians, Lebanese, Palestinians and Pakistanis, but not been a single suicide attack by an Iranian.”

This is deceptive to the point of dishonesty. Why would he go back in history to the time of Mao’s China, but only examine suicide bombings over the last ten years?

The answer is that the facts about Iranian suicide bombings do suggest a craziness on the part of the regime. The strange formulation of “over the past decade” enabled him to ignore the fact that, on October 23, 1983, Iran ordered and carried out the suicide bombing of the U.S. Marine barracks in Lebanon, killing 241 American military personnel. An Iranian drove the car bomb into the barracks.

I attended and covered the 2003 trial in which the detailed evidence of the Iranian role in this bombing was presented in detail.

As I reported for AIM at the time, the trial involved a case brought against Iran by attorneys Steven Perles and Thomas Fortune Fay on behalf of the families of the Marines who were killed. Under a U.S. law passed in 1996, victims of terrorism can sue state sponsors of terrorism and collect damages from the assets that the terrorist regime may hold in the U.S.

The trial featured a videotaped deposition of a former terrorist insider named “Mahmoud,” who described in detail how Iran ordered the terrorists to attack the U.S. Marines and French troops in Lebanon, and revealed that the driver of the truck carrying the bomb was himself an Iranian.

In a videotaped deposition, former CIA officer Robert Baer testified that there was no doubt, based on the best intelligence information, that Iran was behind it. Baer said this bombing, and a previous bombing of the U.S. embassy in Beirut, Lebanon, were “acts of war.”

Dr. Reuven Paz of Israel testified via videotape that before the Marine barracks bombing Israel had intercepted a message from the government of Iran to its Ambassador in Syria, calling for military attacks on the foreign forces in Lebanon, including the Americans. Paz, who worked for the Israeli security service known as Shin Bet, said the intercepted message was provided to the CIA.

Admiral James Lyons, who was Deputy Chief of Naval Operations at the time, testified that he received a copy of the message, which described the need for a “spectacular action” against the Marines. But he received the message two days after the bombing.

Sergeant Steve Russell, who was guarding the embassy on that fateful day, said he had been warned about a possible car bombing of the barracks literally hours before it happened. He warned others, and stayed alert. But, as a “peacekeeper” under restrictive rules of engagement, he carried an unloaded gun and the compound was surrounded only by concertina wire. The car bomber drove through all of this into the barracks.

This evidence was accepted by U.S. District Judge Royce Lamberth, who found Iran liable for billions of dollars in damages.

Not only did Zakara ignore all of this, he stated previously, in a Newsweek article, that “Iranians aren’t suicidal.” This seems to be a common theme of his, in order to justify a do-nothing approach to the Iranians developing nuclear weapons. He wants us to believe that the regime can be rational and calm.

Ironically, the article carried the title, “Everything You Know About Iran Is Wrong.”

The author of The Post-American World, Zakaria seems eager to usher in this state of affairs by permitting the rise of dangerous regimes such as Iran with nuclear capability. Interestingly, Obama was photographed in 2008 carrying a copy of Zakaria’s book.

Frighteningly, his bio promotes Zakaria as “the most influential foreign policy adviser of his generation” and one of the top 100 global thinkers in 2010. Not surprisingly, he addresses hedge fund billionaire George Soros, funder of Media Matters and other left-wing causes, on a first name basis as “George.”

In a February 2011 interview that covered Iran and other issues, Zakaria asked Soros about the survival of the Iranian regime, which was being challenged by pro-democracy demonstrators. Soros said he was “convinced that the regime will not survive.”

Zakaria asked if the U.S. could do anything to challenge the regime internally. Soros replied, “I think Obama did actually there also a very good job by refusing to get involved and to be instigating regime change. This—this attempt to impose a regime change from the outside is counterproductive, because then the regime can accuse its opponents as being in the pay of a—of a foreign power, right?”

Zakaria replied: “Right.”

Not only has the regime survived, but there are numerous reports that Iran is preparing to use suicide-bomb boats to disrupt shipping in the Gulf.

However, Zakaria assures us that the Iranians are not crazy and don’t engage in such things—at least over the last decade.

Cliff Kincaid is the Director of the AIM Center for Investigative Journalism and can be contacted at cliff.kincaid@aim.org.

By: Cliff Kincaid
Accuracy in Media

Fox News has aired several interviews with Daily Caller editors and reporters on the influence of Media Matters, the Soros-funded left-wing attack machine. A series of articles in The Daily Caller sheds new light on the operations of the group, which masquerades as a non-profit but has partisan political ties to the Obama White House and the Democratic Party. Unfortunately, the interviews failed to touch on the most visible example of Media Matters working its will on the media—the sacking of Glenn Beck from Fox News.

One can imagine that this is a sensitive topic at Fox News.

It is even more sensitive in view of what News Corporation, the parent of Fox News, is doing to its staff at the British newspaper, The Sun. As part of an internal investigation of phone-hacking and bribery, News Corporation voluntarily turned over information to police authorities.

Sun associate editor Trevor Kavanagh reports that “30 journalists have been needlessly dragged from their beds in dawn raids, arrested and held in police cells while their homes are ransacked.” He said journalists were being treated like members of a criminal gang and that freedom of the press was in danger.

If News Corporation chief Rupert Murdoch would turn over his own journalists to authorities in Britain, why wouldn’t he sack Glenn Beck in response to an orchestrated campaign from George Soros and his operatives at Media Matters?

Beck has himself talked about Soros operatives making threats against his people, while a private investigator who interviewed News Corporation personnel confirmed some of them were living in fear. The channel was told to discontinue its probes into Soros and his financial interests.

When Beck left the channel and started GBTV on the Internet, a statement was issued that Beck and Fox would continue working on projects together. Nothing happened in this regard, although Beck has made some occasional appearances on the channel.

Commenting on The Daily Caller series and other reports, John Hudson of the Atlantic Wire writes, “The leftward shift or ‘course correction’ at Fox News in recent months could have several explanations but a pair of reports in Politico and The Daily Caller give credit to the cable network’s mortal enemy: Media Matters for America. It’s a thesis that Media Matters would gladly tout and Fox News would vehemently deny, but it comes as viewer complaints accumulate that the network is embracing a more mainstream conservatism compared with its previous embrace of Glenn Beck.”

The Daily Caller reported, “Glenn Beck, the former Fox News Channel host, drew the ire of a wide spectrum of liberal groups while his program aired nationally. But according to several people who watched the process from the inside, it was Media Matters that orchestrated much of the opposition to Beck.”

It quoted a former staffer as saying that the left-wing group Color of Change, co-founded by former White House “green jobs” czar Van Jones, received much of the credit for pressuring advertisers to drop their sponsorship of Beck’s show. But The Daily Caller said that in fact “Media Matters developed the campaign that cowed Beck’s sponsors” and provided a $200,000 grant to Citizen Engagement Laboratory, Color of Change’s parent group, to campaign against Beck.

Beck had exposed Jones on the air as a self-described communist engaged in anti-police and 9/11 “truth” activities. This led to his forced resignation from the Obama Administration. Thus, Jones had a vendetta against Fox.

George Soros, who was being subjected to scrutiny by Beck on his popular Fox News Channel program, had a vendetta as well. He personally gave $1 million to Media Matters to neutralize Beck and the conservative message of Fox News.

What has been the result? Complete success on the part of Media Matters and the Soros machine.

Number one—Beck is gone, replaced by a show, “The Five,” that includes Democratic Party operative Bob Beckel. Number two—Fox News now has two paid left-wing feminists on the air, Sally Kohn and Jehmu Greene, both graduates of Jane Fonda’s Women’s Media Center. And number three—it’s being reported that Fox News is developing a new program to be hosted by Greene called “The Greene Room.”

Greene ran the ACORN front-group Project Vote. ACORN whistleblower Anita Moncrief calls her the Fox News “infiltrator.”

What’s more, News Corporation chairman and CEO Rupert Murdoch is now quoting Soros approvingly in regard to his economic thinking. Murdoch’s favorable tweet about Soros followed a flattering story about the hedge fund billionaire in The Wall Street Journal, another property of News Corporation.

The handwriting is on the wall. The “course correction” at the channel is being conducted at the direction, or with the approval, of Rupert Murdoch himself. But as Politico recently reported in a fairly comprehensive story by Keach Hagey, conservatives are definitely not happy with it. A Western Center for Journalism poll found that some 70 percent of conservatives thought the channel had moved to the left.

The issue, however, goes beyond the destruction of Fox News as a reliable conservative voice to the future of News Corporation. Rupert Murdoch has to be commended for bringing conservative news and information to people on a world-wide basis, with the Fox News Channel in the U.S. being the most visible manifestation of this.

But News Corporation’s own Wall Street Journal is reporting that the pressure on the company from the hacking and bribery investigation in Britain is mounting in the U.S., as the Obama/Holder Justice Department is also seriously looking at corruption charges against the media giant.

It appears that throwing Beck to the wolves didn’t stop the onslaught against News Corporation from powerful political interests. In short, the liberal/left may see an opportunity not only to take down Fox News but the whole company. Murdoch seems to think that throwing more journalists to the wolves is his way to avoid being eaten himself.

In a statement, News Corporation says it cooperated with the British Metropolitan Police Service (MPS) in “a review” of The Times, The Sun and The Sunday Times, which are part of News International, the main UK subsidiary of News Corporation. It said the Management and Standards Committee (MSC) of the company “gave the MPS every assistance during the searches of News International premises while ensuring that all appropriate steps were taken to protect legal and journalistic privilege.” The statement added that “immediate legal representation” was offered to those arrested and that “News Corporation will continue to give its total support to the continued work of the MSC and to ensure that legitimate journalism is vigorously pursued in both the public interest and in full compliance with the law.”

But as we saw with the ouster of Glenn Beck, “legitimate journalism” that affects powerful political interests can be sacrificed when it is convenient to do so.

Cliff Kincaid is the Director of the AIM Center for Investigative Journalism and can be contacted at cliff.kincaid@aim.org.

By: Cliff Kincaid
Accuracy in Media

Fresh from their attempts to disrupt the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC), members of the “Occupy” movement showed up in Philadelphia, at the headquarters of Comcast Corp., to demand that the company put the Arab propaganda channel Al-Jazeera on all of its cable systems nationwide.

Despite the pathetic turnout—only about two dozen people showed up—the demonstration garnered attention from such news organizations as the Associated Press and Reuters.

Moshe Phillips, a Philadelphia-based writer/researcher and activist, told AIM, “The words of Dr. Judea Pearl, the father of slain American journalist Daniel Pearl, echoed though my head as I watched the marchers. Dr. Pearl stated last year that ‘weakening the West is their [Al-Jazeera’s] first priority. Al-Jazeera is an anti-Western propaganda machine that also engages in news services for profit and status.’ He was right. And now we see the active and visible collusion between the dregs of the Occupy Philadelphia / Occupy Wall Street crowd with Al-Jazeera. On the streets of Philly today we saw a dark sign of things to come. The question is how much did Al-Jazeera pay for the Occupiers’ services today?”

Pamela Geller, editor and publisher of the Atlas Shrugs blog, told AIM the channel should not only be discouraged but officially blocked from U.S. media markets because of its links to terrorist groups such as al-Qaeda. “Terror TV Al-Jazeera should be designated a terrorist organization just like [Hezbollah’s channel] Al-Manar. Al-Manar is designated a terrorist organization,” she said.

Under such a designation, the Qatar-based and funded channel could be stopped from operating on American soil and its agents and “news personnel” imprisoned.

Geller, who also serves as president of Stop Islamization of Nations (SION), added, “The propaganda war against the West is being waged on all fronts, but no organization has done as much to spread hate, lies and incitement to violence as Al-Jazeera. Al-Jazeera is the leading terrorist propaganda organization in the world. Jihad murder mastermind Anwar al-Awlaki has praised Al-Jazeera, and several years ago one of its most prominent reporters was arrested on terror charges. Al-Jazeera also has for years been the recipient of numerous Al-Qaeda videos featuring bin Laden, Zawahiri, and American traitor Adam Gadahn. Yet they never seem to be able to trace where these videos are coming from. They have repeatedly been set up at the point of attack right before a bomb went off, so that they could take the picture of the slaughtered, dismembered bodies.”

The Philadelphia demonstration was organized by the little-known Rethink Press, a group that boasts a “partnership” relationship with the George Soros-funded Free Press. Al-Jazeera officials openly encouraged the protests through the popular website Meetup.

Meredith Larson, one of the founders of Rethink Press, is listed on the Facebook page for the “First National Call In Day to Demand Al Jazeera English.” Her own personal Facebook page identifies her interests as including Barack Obama, the Democratic Party, the Free Gaza Movement, Noam Chomsky, National Public Radio, Southern Poverty Law Center, and Al-Jazeera English.

The “Campaign for Al Jazeera English’s DC Networking Event,” now on YouTube, featured Mike Haack of Rethink Press describing how the campaign for Al-Jazeera was being conducted through the “Meetup” website. The event was held at Busboys and Poets in Washington D.C., a left-wing bookstore, restaurant, and gathering place, and co-sponsored by the Human Rights Action Center, Institute for Policy Studies, and the Media and Democracy Coalition. People were invited to talk about “why they love Al-Jazeera English.”

Haack’s bio says he “likes Al Jazeera English because of its superb coverage of economic inequalities in the United States.” His Facebook page lists his interests as including Occupy Your Workplace, Noam Chomsky, Institute for Policy Studies, U.S. Campaign to End the Israeli Occupation, Students for Sensible Drug Policy, and the International Solidarity Movement.

Anticipating violence, security officers and representatives from the Comcast building management in Philadelphia stopped the protesters from entering. One report said, “Rethink leaders Xi Wang and Mike Haack were admitted briefly under escort. They brought the signatures, printed on 1,000 pages and tied with a ribbon, to the mail room for delivery to Comcast officials.”

Florida broadcaster Jerry Kenney, a critic of the channel’s efforts to get carriage in the U.S. media market, commented that “It is obvious that these occupiers are clueless that Al Jazeera English is owned and operated by a one percenter, a petrodollar billionaire dictator who forbids freedom of the press in his own country and who could buy Comcast with his pocket change. Why aren’t they protesting for free speech in Qatar or at the Qatar embassy?”

Kenney went on, “The owner of Al Jazeera English is so repressive and paranoid of free speech that he has routinely imprisoned bloggers and even a World Cup film crew. But I guess if 30 tax-supported public television station program managers, mostly in academia, who currently carry Al-Jazeera English for free, think that a dictator’s point of view is just what Americans are crying out for, well, how can we blame another group of useful idiots for thinking the same?”

He is referring to the tax-supported public television stations airing foreign propaganda channels such as Al-Jazeera English and Russia Today (RT).

The small Philadelphia protest was the culmination of months of effort, described as “Bringing Jihad TV to America” by Matthew Vadum of the Capital Research Center in a FrontPageMag.com story last August. He noted that radical activist Phyllis Bennis of the Institute for Policy Studies had been a featured speaker at the “Campaign for Al Jazeera English” event in Washington, D.C., hosted by Rethink Press. Bennis explained, “If there were Al Jazeera access in every city in this country, building a movement to challenge U.S. foreign policy, to make it something different than what it is, would be a whole hell of a lot easier than it is now.”

What she had in mind, Vadum explained, was weakening the U.S. as a world power and undermining its allies such as Israel.

Cliff Kincaid is the Director of the AIM Center for Investigative Journalism and can be contacted at cliff.kincaid@aim.org.

The Watcher’s Council

The Council has spoken, the votes have been cast and the results are in for this week’s Watcher’s Council match up, carved eternally in the akhasic records of cyberspace.

There was a great deal of attention this week from the Council on the Obama Administration’s attack on the First Amendment via Secretary of Health and Human Services Kathleen Sebelius’ fatwa requiring religious institutions like those run by the Catholic Church to provide birth control, sterilization and abortion services to their employees as part of the health insurance requirements of ObamaCare. This week’s winner, Rhymes With Right‘s Should The Catholic Church Go Medieval Over ObamaCare Regulations? proposes that the Church fight back with some ancient strategies. Here’s a slice:

On January 20, 2012, Secretary of Health and Human Services Kathleen Sebelius issued a regulation which required religiously affiliated employers to provide their employees with free sterilization and contraceptives(including abortifacients) even if doing so violated the religious tenets of the organization. While there was a small carve-out that would allow actual houses of worship to refrain from offering such coverage, the regulation would require Catholic schools, hospitals, and charities to pay for such insurance coverage if they employed or served a significant number of non-Catholic employees. While the regulation is not aimed directly at the Catholic Church – it applies equally to other faith groups with teachings against sterilization, birth control, and abortion – it is clear that the biggest impact will be upon Catholic groups.

The uproar was immediate and loud. On February 10, President Obama himself seemed to offer a compromise option, but reality is that the changed wording and presentation did not constitute a substantive change of law or policy. What’s more, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid blocked efforts to introduce and vote on legislation that would have blocked any regulation of this sort, ensuring that President Obama’s allies would ensure that there was no chance to undo the “compromise” – which the President has indicated will be implemented this August. This means that the American people will not have the ability to install new leaders before religious organizations are forced to surrender their principles, pay crippling fines, or shut down.

As I’ve examined the current situation, it strikes me that this attack on religion is unprecedented in American history and that it flies in the face of the guarantees found in the Bill of Rights. But attacks upon the faith are not unprecedented in the history of the Catholic Church. From Apostolic times through the Middle Ages and Reformation and up to the present, there have been political leaders whose lust for power and personal glorification have led them to seek to undercut the teachings of the Church and its spiritual prerogatives. The faithful died in the arenas of the Roman Empire rather than burn incense at the altars of the emperors, popes engaged in political and military conflict with enemies through the ages, and courageous bishops and priests spread the great encyclical letter Mit Brennender Sorge in the face of the Nazi regime in 1938. And if Pope John Paul II had the ability to undermine Communism in Poland and the other nations behind the Iron Curtain, what might his friend, co-worker, and successor Pope Benedict XVI be able to do regarding this effort by Barack Obama to force the Catholic Church to act contrary to its teachings?

Some might ask Josef Stalin’s question – how many divisions does the pope have? But one need only remember that the Church has survived conflicts with greater men than the current occupant of 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue and that Christ himself promised Simon Peter that the gates of Hell will not prevail against him and his successors – a promise kept for some two millennia. All that is necessary is for Benedict to deploy the full force of the spiritual weapons in his arsenal. It would not be unreasonable for him to follow some of the historical precedents for their use in this case. Indeed, I’d argue that the Pope might consider taking a course that has both modern precedent and roots in the medieval period.

To this end, I believe that an encyclical letter, with its definitive version written in English, ought to be issued. In doing this, Pope Benedict would be following the precedent of Pope Pius XI in issuing Mit Brennender Sorge in 1938. The young Joseph Ratzinger would have heard as this denunciation of Nazism was read from the pulpit of his church on Palm Sunday, 1938, as it was in virtually every German church. Benedict should act in kind now, speaking as pastor to his flock and as head of state challenging the misdeeds of the American government — and require that the encyclical be read in every Catholic church on the same Sunday.

What should be included in this encyclical? I would suggest several elements. The first part would be a restatement of the teachings of Vatican II on the proper relationship of church and state, and an analysis as to how the Obama Regime mandate is incompatible with that relationship. It should be made clear that this is not a claim of special privilege, but a function of natural law that applies to all who claim the title of Christian and to non-Christians as well. No government, whether democracy, monarchy, or dictatorship, has within the scope of its authority to direct a faith community to commit actions that are at odds with its fundamental teachings.

The second part of the encyclical should lay out the consequences of the promulgation of this new regulation and its successor. This should begin with an announcement that Secretary of Health and Human Services Kathleen Sebelius is immediately excommunicated, as are any other Catholics within the senior staff of the department. In addition, immediate excommunication should also fall upon any Catholic member of Congress who voted for ObamaCare. Lest there be any confusion on the matter, the individuals excommunicated should be listed by name. In addition, latae sententia will be incurred by any Catholic who directly enforces or causes to be enforced the requirements of the new regulations. Similar sanctions should be directed at state officials in the 28 state with similar provisions in state law. At least as regards the public officials, the lifting of the excommunication ought to be reserved to the Holy Father himself. The second consequence contained within the encyclical ought to include the imposition of interdict upon the United States if the regulation is not rescinded by a certain date, with the interdict to be lifted only upon the lifting of the regulation and the return of any and all property seized as a consequence of failure to comply with the regulation.

In our non-Council category, the winner was Victor Davis Hanson for Iran 1.0, 2.0, 3.0, 4.0 submitted by Joshuapundit.

Here are this week’s full results. New Zeal was unable to vote this week and was affected by the 2/3 vote penalty:

Council Winners

• *First place with 2 1/3 votes! – Rhymes With Right – Should The Catholic Church Go Medieval Over ObamaCare Regulations?
• Second place *t* with 1 2/3 votes – Joshuapundit – President Obama Demands All Bow To His New Religion
• Second place *t* with 1 2/3 votes – New Zeal – Econonomic Sabotage? A Case for the FBI? Occupy Wall Street and the Cuban Connection
• Second place *t* with 1 2/3 votes – The Noisy Room – The Day the Music Died
• Second place *t* with 1 2/3 votes – The Right Planet – In Memory of Kevin Eve: The Last Breathing Hole
• Third place *t* with 1 vote – The Colossus of Rhodey – “Good to know these folks are on our high court”
• Third place *t* with 1 vote – The Razor – Does Romney 2012 = McCain 2008?
• Fourth place *t* with 2/3 vote – Simply Jews – It’s still a free world, is it?
• Fourth place *t* with 2/3 vote – The Mellow Jihadi –German Sailors Support Occupy Wall Street?
• Fourth place *t* with 2/3 vote – The Independent Sentinel – Obama And The Global Push To Ban Small Arms In The United States.
• Fifth place *t* with 1/3 vote – Bookworm Room – White House takes down petition asking it to stop pretending that Catholic institutions aren’t being forced to pay for ideologically offensive products
• Fifth place *t* with 1/3 vote – VA Right! – Ron Newtorum Wins CPAC 2012 Straw Poll With 62%
• Fifth place *t* with 1/3 vote – Gay Patriot – Is Obama expecting economic crisis to last until 2018?
• Fifth place *t* with 1/3 vote – The Glittering Eye – Is There Such a Thing as Moral Failure?

Non-Council Winners

• *First place with 3 1/3 votes! – Victor Davis Hanson – Iran 1.0, 2.0, 3.0, 4.0 submitted by Joshuapundit
• Second place with 3 votes – The Daily Caller – Inside Media Matters: Sources, memos reveal erratic behavior, close coordination with White House and news organizations submitted by The Glittering Eye
• Third place with 2 votes – Sultan Knish – A Tale Of two Wars submitted by The Political Commentator
• Fourth place with 1 2/3 votes – Wolf Howling – A historical perspective on religion and Obama’s HHS mandate submitted by Bookworm Room
• Fifth place with 1 1/3 votes – Promethean Antagonist – Snippets… (rants on Leftdom) submitted by The Razor
• Sixth place with 1 vote – Michelle Malkin – ‘To Stop the Multiplication of the Unfit’ submitted by The Right Planet
• Seventh place *t* with 2/3 vote – Christian Aid Watch – Why Did They Go? submitted by Simply Jews
• Seventh place *t* with 2/3 vote – The Compass – Is Terrorism OK If Israel Does It? submitted by GrEaT sAtAn”S gIrLfRiEnD
• Seventh place *t* with 2/3 vote – The Jersey-Texan – The Racism of Daily Kos for GOP Candidate Mia B. Love submitted by Va Right!
• Eighth place *t* with 1/3 vote – Rush Limbaugh – Obama Didn’t Cave on the HHS Mandate; He’s Making an Unprecedented Power Grab submitted by The Noisy Room
• Eighth place *t* with 1/3 vote – The Enterprise Blog –How Romney can start to energize conservatives submitted by Gay Patriot

See you next week! And don’t forget to follow us on Facebook and Twitter… ’cause we’re cool like that!

NoisyRoom
Hat Tip: BB
From: OWSExposed

The Watcher’s Council

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.

Council News:

Ah, transitions… this week marks the departure of our dear friend and colleague Debbie Hamilton of Right Truth, who is leaving the Council as she dials back her blogging to concentrate on other pursuits. Aside from her writing skills, Debbie has always been the quintessential good ol’ girl in the best sense of the word; loyal, sweet and steadfast to her friends and a joy to have around. We shall all miss her.

But on the other hand, look what we got here! This weeK also marks the debut of two new Council members: Dan at Gay Patriot and Sara at The Independent Sentinel, and both of them I think you’re really going to be impressed by.

This week, Crazy Bald Guy, Liberty’s Spirit and Capitalist Preservation took advantage of my generous offer of link whorage and earned honorable mention status.

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

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

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

So, let’s see what we have this week…

Council Submissions

• The Colossus of Rhodey – “Good to know these folks are on our high court”
• The Noisy Room – The Day the Music Died
• Joshuapundit – President Obama Demands All Bow To His New Religion
• The Political Commentator – Conservatives Dumb, Liberals Mute?
• The Right Planet – In Memory of Kevin Eve: The Last Breathing Hole
• The Independent Sentinel – Obama And The Global Push To Ban Small Arms In The United States.
• Simply Jews – It’s still a free world, is it?
• Rhymes With Right – Should The Catholic Church Go Medieval Over ObamaCare Regulations?
• GrEaT sAtAn”S gIrLfRiEnD – Crescent Crash
• New Zeal – Econonomic Sabotage? A Case for the FBI? Occupy Wall Street and the Cuban Connection
• The Razor – Does Romney 2012 = McCain 2008?
• VA Right! – Ron Newtorum Wins CPAC 2012 Straw Poll With 62%
• The Mellow Jihadi – German Sailors Support Occupy Wall Street?
• The Glittering Eye – Is There Such a Thing as Moral Failure?
• Bookworm Room – White House takes down petition asking it to stop pretending that Catholic institutions aren’t being forced to pay for ideologically offensive products
• Gay Patriot – Is Obama expecting economic crisis to last until 2018?

Honorable Mentions

• Crazy Bald Guy – Santorum surges… for now
• Liberty’s Spirit – Contraception vs Separation of Church and State
• Capitalist Preservation – Move over GI Joe. There’s a new bad ass in town.

Non-Council Submissions

• Natural Born Conservative – Is Mitt Romney Severely Conservative? submitted by The Colossus of Rhodey
• Rush Limbaugh – Obama Didn’t Cave on the HHS Mandate; He’s Making an Unprecedented Power Grab submitted by The Noisy Room
• Victor Davis Hanson – Iran 1.0, 2.0, 3.0, 4.0 submitted by Joshuapundit
• Sultan Knish – A Tale Of two Wars submitted by The Political Commentator
• Michelle Malkin – ‘To Stop the Multiplication of the Unfit’ submitted by The Right Planet
• Yid With Lid – With Friends Like Obama And The PA – Israel Doesn’t Need Enemies submitted by The Independent Sentinel
• Christian Aid Watch – Why Did They Go? submitted by Simply Jews
• Ben Shapiro/Right Wing News – Video: Is The Tea Party Dead? submitted by Rhymes with Right
• The Compass – Is Terrorism OK If Israel Does It? submitted by GrEaT sAtAn”S gIrLfRiEnD
• Accuracy In Media – David Brock Out of the Closet, Again submitted by New Zeal
• Promethean Antagonist – Snippets… (rants on Leftdom) submitted by The Razor
• The Jersey-Texan – The Racism of Daily Kos for GOP Candidate Mia B. Love submitted by VA Right!
• Le·gal In·sur·rec·tion – Providence begs for mercy, probably won’t get it submitted by The Mellow Jihadi
• The Daily Caller – Inside Media Matters: Sources, memos reveal erratic behavior, close coordination with White House and news organizations submitted by The Glittering Eye
• Wolf Howling – A historical perspective on religion and Obama’s HHS mandate submitted by Bookworm Room
• The Enterprise Blog – How Romney can start to energize conservatives submitted by Gay Patriot
• Iowahawk – A Fistful Of Rebates submitted by The Watcher
• Seraphic Secret – Passover, 2011: In Every Generation submitted by The Watcher

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