The Razor

When I was a child I actually drew up something like this to keep track of the players and allegations during the Watergate Hearings, cutting out newspaper clippings and pasting them into a notebook. That was just one scandal.

I will update this as new stories appear, and as I work backward. Recent stories will be added to the top of each list.

Benghazi

• Bob Woodward: Benghazi Similar To Watergate


• White House Still Hasn’t Explained Why it Blamed the YouTube Video


• Benghazi Scapegoat Remains In Prison For Film


• Emails Contradict White House Claims


• Critical Two Day Gap in Emails


• Holder Says No to Special Counsel


• Talking Points Changed at State Dept’s Request


• Obama’s Claim He Called Attack Terrorism: Four Pinnochios


• White House Spinning Benghazi


• NBC Spiked Story ID’ing Benghazi Whistleblower as Obama Voter


• White House Meets Privately With Press to Discuss Benghazi


• The Benghazi Scandal Grows


• Benghazi Talking Points Underwent 12 Revisions: Scrubbed of Terror References


• Afghanistan Whistleblower: The Gov’t Is Trying to Silence Me


• White House Struggles To Respond to New Benghazi Revelations


• Diplomat Says Questions Over Benghazi Led To Demotion


• Moment By Moment Account of Attack


• Whistleblower: Everyone Believed It Was a Terror Attack


• Special Ops Halted From Responding to Benghazi Attack


• US Military Could Have Stopped Attack


• State Dept Caught Editing Talking Points


• Whistleblower: My Jaw Hit the Floor When YouTube Video Blamed

IRS

• IRS Sued For Seizing 60 Million Medical Records


• St. Louis Anchor Barred From Facebook, Interviews About IRS Harassment


• IRS Asked Group About Content of Their Prayers


• Charlie Rangel: This is Wrong To Abuse the Tax System


• Treasury Dept Knew of IRS Inquiry in 2012


• St. Louis Anchor Who Complained About IRS Harassment Off The Air


• Liberal Senators Schumer, Franken Urge IRS to Target Tea Party in 2012


• IRS Chief: Actions a Mistake Not an Act of Partisanship


• IRS Hid Probe Until After Election


• Is This Still America?


• IRS Stalled Conservative Groups, But Gave Speedy Approval to Obama Foundation


• IRS Scandal Started at the Oval Office


• Peggy Noonan: IRS Scandal Threatens the Basic Integrity of Government


• Conservative Hispanic Groups Targeted By IRS


• IRS Official in Charge During Tea Party Targeting Now Runs Health Care Office


• Camp Says IRS Shows Administration’s Culture of Coverups


• IRS Boss of Tea Party Probes Targeted Anti-Clinton Group in 1990’s


• Fox News Host Audited After Criticizing Obama


• IRS Went After National Organization for Marriage


• IRS Denied Tax Exempt Status for Pro-Lifers on Behalf of Planned Parenthood


• IRS Employees: Simply Did What Their Bosses Ordered


• IRS Spared Liberal Groups as Tea Party Languished, More Conservative Org’s Targeted Than First Thought


• IRS Asked for Printout of Facebook Posts


• Director of IRS Tax-Exempt Determinations is Obama Donor


• IRS Employees Donate Disproportionately to Obama


• Committee Chairman: Yes I Was Lied to By IRS


• Catholic Professor Claims IRS Audited Her After Speaking Out About Obama and Demanded To Know Who Was Paying Her


• Democrat Carl Levin Pressured IRS to Investigate Conservative Non-profit Groups


• Senate Democrats Repeatedly Pressured IRS to Investigate Conservative Groups


• IRS Approved Liberal Groups While Tea Party in Limbo


• IRS Targeted Billy Graham


• Obama Campaign Co-Chair Attacked Romney with Leaked Documents


• IRS Ordered Conservative Educational Group to Turn Over Names of High School Students it Trained


• “Inappropriate Criteria” Stalled IRS Approval of Conservative Groups


• Progressive Group ProPublica Admits IRS Gave Them Conservative Groups’ Confidential Docs


• St. Louis TV Anchor Targeted by IRS After Obama Interview


• IRS Senior Official Speedily Approved Exemption for Obama Brother’s Charity 


• White House Admits Aware Conservatives Targeted By IRS, Did Nothing About It


• Special IRS Unit Targeted Pro-Israel Groups


• IRS Headquarters Involved in Targeting Conservative Groups
  


• Nancy Pelosi: IRS Scrutiny of Conservative Groups Opportunity to Overturn Supreme Court Ruling


• High Level IRS Tax Officials Knew Tea Party Groups Targeted in Aug 2011


• Inspector General Reports IRS Targeted Groups That Opposed Government


• IRS Sent 55 Questions to Conservative Group: Demanded Volunteer and Donor Names


• 2010: Koch Brothers Lawyer to White House: How Did You Get Our Tax Information?


• IRS Also Retaliates Against Outspoken Business Leaders


• The New Enemies List: IRS Scrutiny Broader Than Initially Thought


• Obama’s Chicago Style IRS


• IRS Began Targeting Conservatives in 2010


• Wider Problems Found At IRS


• IRS Kept Shifting Targets in Tax Exempt Group Scrutiny


• IRS Mess


• IRS Targeted Jewish Groups


• IRS Admits Targeting Tea Party Groups: Apologizes


• IRS Spokesman: I’m Not Good At Math


• 2009: Obama Jokes About Auditing Enemies

Press Monitoring/DOJ Wiretaps

• More Mystery Over AP Subpoena Process at Justice Dept


• Justice Dept Wired House Cloak Room


• Bush Administration Refused to Wiretap Press


• Holder Isn’t Sure How Often Reporters’ Records Seized


• Holder Points Finger at Deputy Who Secretly Obtained Journalist Phone Records


• DOJ Tracked 20 Phone Lines at AP


• Government Obtains Wide AP Phone Records in Probe


• ACLU: Private Emails, Facebook Not Safe From Gov’t Surveillance


• All Telephone Calls Recorded and Accessible by US Government

Gross Incompetence

• Invoking Watergate Makes Scandals Seem Smaller Than They Are


• Obama Fires IRS Boss – Who Was Leaving Anyway


• Hand on Heart It Wasn’t Us! Obama and his AG Stand Side By Side in Blaming Others for Scandals Engulfing White House


• A Brief History of Slimy Dem Snoops and Dumpster Divers


• Obama The Uninterested President


• Axelrod: Gov’t Too Vast For Obama


• The Buck Stops… Where?


• Obama to Grads: Reject Voices That Warn About Government Tyranny

Congratulation’s to this week’s winners. Full voting here.

Council Winners

• *First place with 3 votes! Bookworm Room –  Obama and Henry II; Obama and Martin Niemöller; and Obama and Al Capone


• Second place with 2 2/3 votes – The Right Planet- Exasperation: A Nation on the Brink


• Third place with 1 2/3 vote – The Razor- The Ignored Will Not Be Silenced


• Fourth place with 1 1/3 votes – The Noisy Room-Invaders Guarding the Watchtower


• Fifth place t with 1 vote – Gay Patriot-Only the president can end the Benghazi “sideshow”


• Fifth place t with 1 vote – Joshuapundit-Who Really Is Really Savagely Destroying Palestinian Children?


• Fifth place t with 1 vote – Rhymes With Right-A Lawless Agency In Need Of A Special Prosecutor


• Sixth place t with 2/3 vote – The Colossus of Rhodey –“Morality and Conscience”


• Sixth place t with 2/3 vote – The Glittering Eye – What Did They Know and When Did They Know It


• Seventh place t with 1/3 vote – The Mellow Jihadi – Michelle Bachmann, Jihadi Foods, and the US Navy

Non-Council Winners

• First place with 2 1/3 votes! – Zombie/PJ Media-Progracistssubmitted by Rhymes With Right


• Second place  with 2 votes – Godfather Politics –40 Ways to be a Good Democrat   submitted by The Right Planet


• Third place t with 1 1/3 votes – Khalid Abu Toameh/Jewish Press – Kerry Betting On The Wrong Horses submitted byJoshuapundit


• Third place t with 1 1/3 votes -Sultan Knish-With Blood On Their Hands submitted by The Noisy Room


• Third place t with 1 1/3 votes- Michelle Malkin -A Brief History of Slimy Dem Snoops and Dumpster Divers submitted by The Watcher


• Fourth place t with 1 vote - Downgrade Diary –The Moral Disaster of Benghazi, Obamacare, IRS  submitted by The Glittering Eye


• Fourth place t with 1 vote - Shelly Palmer –3D Printing is Way Scarier Than Plastic Guns   submitted by The Mellow Jihadi


• Fourth place t with 1 vote -Michael Totten –Why the Syrian War Could Last Ten Years submitted by The Watcher


• Fifth place t with 2/3 vote -Richard Epstein/Defining Ideas–Watching ObamaCare Unravel   submitted by Bookworm Room


• Fifth place t with 2/3 vote -Cindy Storer/Global Public Square–Why al-Qaeda Isn’t Dead   submitted by GrEaT sAtAn”S gIrLfRiEnD


• Sixth place t with 1/3 vote Rezah Kahlili/WND – Category: Watcher's Council  |  Comment

Council Submissions

• The Noisy Room – Invaders Guarding the Watchtower


• The Colossus of Rhodey – “Morality and Conscience”


• GrEaT sAtAn”S gIrLfRiEnD – The Difference It Made


• The Political Commentator – Cartoon, Video: Hey recent college graduate, congratulations?


• Joshuapundit-Who Really Is Really Savagely Destroying Palestinian Children?


• The Right Planet – Exasperation: A Nation on the Brink


• Gay Patriot – Only the president can end the Benghazi “sideshow”


• Rhymes With Right – A Lawless Agency In Need Of A Special Prosecutor


• VA Right! - A Word on Supervisor Elton Wade Appointing Norm Sulser to the Hanover School Board


• The Glittering Eye -What Did They Know and When Did They Know It


• The Razor – The Ignored Will Not Be Silenced


• Bookworm Room – Obama and Henry II; Obama and Martin Niemöller; and Obama and Al Capone


• The Mellow Jihadi – Michelle Bachmann, Jihadi Foods, and the US Navy


• Simply Jews – When in Rome or the best and the worst of that trip

Honorable Mentions

• Ask Marion – You Cannot Honor What You Don’t Know Or Miss


• The Pirate’s Cove – Obama’s True Concern With All The Scandals

Non-Council Submissions

• Sultan Knish –With Blood On Their Hands submitted by The Noisy Room


• Douglas Ernst – 3D printing drives statists crazy; expect tyrants to double their efforts submitted by The Colossus of Rhodey


• Cindy Storer/Global Public Square – Why al-Qaeda Isn’t Dead submitted by GrEaT sAtAn”S gIrLfRiEnD


• Rezah Kahlili/WND -Terrorist Super Axis To Strike Within U.S. submitted by The Political Commentator


• /Khalid Abu Toameh/Jewish Press – Kerry Betting On The Wrong Horses submitted by Joshuapundit


• Godfather Politics – 40 Ways to be a Good Democrat submitted by The Right Planet


• Commentary -Obama Doubles Down on Benghazi Denial submitted by Gay Patriot


• PJ Media/Zombie – Progracists submitted by Rhymes with Right


• PJ Tatler – A Quick Guide to the Four Major Scandals that May Bring Down the Obama Administration submitted by VA Right!


• Downgrade Diary – The Moral Disaster of Benghazi, Obamacare, IRS submitted by The Glittering Eye


• Newsmax –Liberal Group ProPublica Says IRS Leaked Documents to Them submitted by The Razor


• Richard Epstein/Defining Ideas-Watching ObamaCare Unravel submitted by Bookworm Room


• Shelly Palmer –3D Printing is Way Scarier Than Plastic Guns submitted by The Mellow Jihadi


• Michael Totten – Why the Syrian War Could Last Ten Years submitted by The Watcher


• Michelle Malkin – A Brief History of Slimy Dem Snoops and Dumpster Divers submitted by Watcher

Oh for crap’s sake can’t our leaders do anything right?

Russia Captures US Embassy Worker in Act of CIA Recruitment

This reminds me of an appropriate book for times like these:

There are certain topics I can’t write about, and the trial of late term abortionist Kermit Gosnell has been one of them. If I did I’d have to add a category to my blog “pure evil,” but that’s not the reason. I haven’t been able to write about it because I haven’t been able to read about it. There are certain actions that are so heinous, so vile, and being at heart an incredibly sensitive person I have to protect myself. It’s the same reason why I’ve never seen Schindler’s List. I don’t have to. I have studied the Holocaust and seen enough films, photos and first-hand accounts of barbarism to not need to see historically-based re-enacted horror. It’s the same thing with abortion. I know how the procedures are performed and when, and I have seen pictures of trash cans full of dead children in the past. I don’t need to subject myself to the torment of Gosnell’s actions to appreciate their heinous nature.

Yet I believe cases such as his need to be publicized and the fact the mainstream media had to be shamed into covering it by liberal columnist Kirsten Powers at the Daily Beast only plays to the Right Wing’s narrative that the mainstream media is biased against anyone who holds opinions counter to the liberal orthodoxy, particularly in regard to abortion.

I am Pro-Life, but I am also pro-choice when it comes to first term abortions. I find the old view of pregnancy known as quickening whereby there isn’t any definitive line between when a baby becomes a baby; instead it’s a process where with each passing day a life-form becomes a human being. Where is the line between being a life-form and a baby? There isn’t one, just as there is no line between when a person is a child and when she becomes an adult. So using Plan B to prevent a fertilized egg from implanting is much less of a moral issue to me than vacuuming out a 3 week old embryo with a heart beat, which itself is preferable to other methods used in the later stages of pregnancy. Some murders are worse than others, and those occurring in the second and third trimesters are particularly heinous.

A poor analogy would be the difference between killing a mouse in your kitchen versus a stray dog in your backyard. Where the irony comes in is how many people who champion abortion rights would be horrified to stomp a mouse in their kitchen and would seek out a “humane trap” at the local Home Depot to catch and release the mouse at a nearby park, and call the Dog Catcher to catch the dog and perhaps work to arrange its adoption to keep it from being euthanized at the animal shelter. These are the modern Janists, vegans, animal rights activists and others who can’t kill insects or animals yet have no problem killing children they cannot see.

Everyone has contradictory attitudes and experiences cognitive dissonance as a result to varying degrees, and I am no different. I love animals yet I eat meat. I keep chickens because they are interesting to watch and I don’t eat them, yet that doesn’t stop me from whipping up a chicken stir-fry for dinner as I did last night with dead bird I bought at a local butcher. But when I have had to, I have killed animals. I have wrung the necks of chickens who were dying a painful death after being attacked by hawks, and provided quick and relatively painless deaths for animals I have found dying in misery. I have blood on my hands, but not on my guns. Although I have them and it might be easier to use them to put down a suffering animal, I do not want the guns to “taste” blood. I have Irish and Slavic blood, and both ethnic groups are known for being superstitious, and I want my metal, inanimate but dangerous things to remain “pure” unless I absolutely have no choice but to use them. Yeah, go figure…

I could never perform an abortion myself, and if my daughter became pregnant I would raise the child as my own, just as I have taken responsibility and fixed the (much lesser in degree) mistakes my son has made. But I do not trust the government with laws. The government cannot even handle a stamp drawing contest, yet Americans expect it to write laws that can guide and prohibit human behavior. Just as every drug has side effects every law has unintended consequences and someone somewhere someday will pay a very high price for that law, which is why I believe laws should be as few in number and well-written as possible.  Because of this I believe banning abortion outright is a very bad idea, although I support repealing Roe v. Wade, a poorly written law based on an imaginary constitutional right, and would rather see the states or even local municipalities decide on the legality of the practice. That solution doesn’t exactly fit my own personal world view, but it’s as close to consistent as I can make it and I am continuing to refine it as I go along.

Gosnell, a 72 year old  black man, has probably killed more black people than any Klansman, Confederate soldier or slave owner in history. I don’t know how many abortions he has performed in his career, but judging by what I’ve been able to stomach reading, the number would likely be in the tens, if not hundreds of thousands. A true racist would treat Gosnell as a hero: in their way of thinking he has has prevented tens of thousands of criminals and welfare recipients. In fact had he been white I suspect that mainstream media would have delved into his racist intentions because a white man killing black babies would be too hard for even the liberal media to resist.

Why Gosnell did what he did only he knows. He did not testify on the stand but it’s clear that he profited handsomely from his abortion mill. Perhaps he was a self-hating black man who felt he was doing yeoman’s work ridding the world of his own kind one snip at a time. I suspect he enjoyed his work as evidence by some of the mementos (like a jar full of baby feet) he kept around the office, and by the fact that people do not last long in a position where they are doing something they do not enjoy doing that goes against their principles. Perhaps like many people he doesn’t have any principles. After all he was originally busted for dispensing pain medications to addicts, many of whom killed themselves or others while high. Perhaps in his defense he never killed spiders he found around his house, instead putting them in the basement as I do. But I doubt it. And regardless History is replete with madmen and dictators of the utmost brutality who nevertheless showed a sensitive side. Stalin was a devoted grandfather and checked his granddaughter Svetlana’s homework nightly, but that shouldn’t erase the memories of the tens of millions he ordered killed.

The children who died at Gosnell’s hands have been ignored for a very long time, but not any longer. I pity the prosecution who had to build this case and the jury of common people like me who had to sit through it. Thanks to their effort Justice may be ignored, but it can never be silenced forever.

Congratulations to this week’s winners.

Council: Bookworm Room –“Extremism” when it comes to late term abortion and guns

Noncouncil:  Iowa State Daily/Barry Snell-Waking the dragon — How Feinstein fiddled while America burned

Full voting here.

Yes, even paranoids have enemies, very real, very dangerous, very powerful enemies.

The Internal Revenue Service is apologizing for inappropriately flagging conservative political groups for additional reviews during the 2012 election to see if they were violating their tax-exempt status.

Lois Lerner, who heads the IRS unit that oversees tax-exempt groups, said organizations that included the words “tea party” or “patriot” in their applications for tax-exempt status were singled out for additional reviews.

UPDATE: Here are the IRS excuses reported by WaPo reporter Zach Goldfarb:

The senior IRS official briefing the press just said: “I’m not good at math.”
In her defense, the IRS official, explained: “I’m a lawyer.”
The operative question to the IRS official is: What is one-quarter of 300?

You know, for a government of supposedly intelligent people they sure are pretty stupid.

UPDATE: The Washington Post is reporting things are much worse than the initial story above…

At various points over the past two years, Internal Revenue Service officials targeted nonprofit groups that criticized the government and sought to educate Americans about the U.S. Constitution, according to documents in an audit conducted by the agency’s inspector general.
The documents, obtained by The Washington Post from a congressional aide with knowledge of the findings, show that on June 29, 2011, IRS staffers held a briefing with senior agency official Lois G. Lerner in which they described giving special attention to instances where “statements in the case file criticize how the country is being run.” Lerner, who oversees tax-exempt groups for the agency, raised objections and the agency revised its criteria a week later.

Update: Contrary to initial reports AP is reporting the acting head of the IRS Steven Miller knew about conservative groups being targeted and lied to Congress denying they were.

Anyone wondering what life was like in the Nixon years, well this is what it was like.

Writer Barry Snell explains why gun rights supporters do not trust gun control advocates.

I’ve come to realize after the Sandy Hook shooting that the reason we can’t have a rational gun debate is because the anti-gun side pre-supposes that their pro-gun opponents must first accept that guns are bad in order to have a discussion about guns in the first place. Before we even start the conversation, we’re the bad guys and we have to admit it. Without accepting that guns are bad and supplicating themselves to the anti-gunner, the pro-gunner can’t get a word in edgewise, and is quickly reduced to being called a murderer, or a low, immoral and horrible human being.

He then lays out the reasons why gun control advocates will never convince us to give up our rights.

Gun people don’t trust anti-gun people because they keep saying they “respect the Second Amendment” and go on about how they respect the hunting traditions of America. We don’t trust you because you have to be a complete idiot to think the Second Amendment is about hunting. I wish people weren’t so stupid that I have to say this: The Second Amendment is about checking government tyranny. Period. End of story.

And goes on to list all the other reasons gun rights advocates and gun grabbers share nothing in common, making compromise impossible.

I’ve considered being willing to give up my Constitutional right to gun ownership if the Left would give up their imaginary “right” to abortion, but shredding the Constitution just makes tyranny more likely, and there is no guarantee that the Left would honor their side of the bargain after the 2nd Amendment was destroyed. So I’ll have my guns, and they’ll have the blood of innocents on their hands. At least I won’t have any trouble sleeping at night.

Read the whole thing.

So David Bowie is upsetting Christians with his latest rock video. How boring.

If he wants to “ruffle feathers” dress up as Mohammed and dance around the stage with nearly naked women wearing veils while imams leer at the buttocks of the club goers. That is sure to upset some birdies.

Ruffling feathers of Christians is easy. They don’t issue fatwas calling for your death (see Salman Rushdie) or put a knife in your chest (see Theo Van Gogh).

TownHall writes about CBS news bosses trying to undermine their own reporter’s efforts to uncover the truth in the murder of four Americans including the US Ambassador to Libya at Benghazi on Sept. 11, 2012. Sharyl Attkisson is finding life difficult at her job after reporting on the story, with her bosses cutting back her stories and underutilizing her after she has doggedly pursued a story that all mainstream media outlets have studiously ignored. Over the past few months I have been surprised to see such work coming out of CBS News having long given up on the outlet after Dan Rather and his bosses accused Bush two months before the 2004 election of benefiting from favoritism during the Vietnam War in a series of letters that were quickly exposed as fakes. So I was somewhat surprised to see CBS News leading the investigation into the incident. But I guess it’s no surprise to discover such reporting is an aberration, as CBS News cuts the legs out from under their own reporter in order to preserve their left wing bias.

As a child while other kids played outside or watched cartoons, I watched the Watergate hearings. Those hearings brought about by the reporting of Washington Post reporters Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein left me with a deep appreciation for the role of the media as antagonistic to whomever is in power, Republican or Democrat. As a political realist I recognize the truth of Lord Acton’s adage that power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely regardless of which political faction is in power, so the role of the media in a free society should be to act as a watchdog and expose corruption in order to benefit the People and protect the Republic. So I am deeply saddened to watch the media doggedly pursue any and every story against any centerist, conservative or libertarian politician while allowing leftist politicians to go unmolested.

Thankfully we have the rise of non-mainstream media such as Drudge Report, talk radio, and Fox News, but as AllahPundit notes, in response the leftist mainstream media has attempted to “ghettoize” these news sources by portraying them as biased advocates while portraying leftist mainstream media as unbiased. The sinking ratings and circulations of these mainstream outlets brings to mind Gandhi’s quote “First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win.” The left must feel extremely threatened by these non-leftist sources as it has ignored, laughed at, and fought them every step of the way.

But the Truth has a way of coming out regardless of whether it is convenient for the Left or not. Lefties may choose to believe that the non-Left is focusing on Benghazi as part of a continuation of the “vast right wing conspiracy” against the Clintons, but doing so forces the left to employ cognitive dissonance by suppressing the fact that the story hit during the 2012 election when Obama was running for re-election. The left may also swallow the administration line that at the time the administration blamed the Nakoula video based on initial intelligence reports, but those reports did not suggest the video had anything to do with the attack and the video excuse was added by administration officials. So you can’t blame the intelligence community for something it did not report and that was only fabricated later by the administration.

This story will continue, and Clinton’s run the White House will guarantee it does. The leftist media can ignore, laugh at, and stamp its feet all it wants, but the fact remains its darling in the White House lied to the American people and attempted to cover it up. I’m sure somewhere in Hell Nixon is laughing.

So the LA Times reports a Pew Study finds gun crime has plunged even while American perceptions of it assumes it has risen. Setting aside the obvious issue of what is driving Americans to one conclusion while the facts lead to another, the study raises some other, less obvious issues.

If guns are to blame for violent gun crimes, one would have to assume by the study that the number of guns in American hands have fallen. Yet the opposite appears to be the case, with the highest per capita gun ownership in the US, with roughly one gun for every American man, woman, and child. Over the past four years guns have flown off the shelves, and it is likely there are more guns in private hands today than there were four years ago, although the exact number is difficult to know since such records are not kept. But gun manufacturers are working overtime to fill order backlogs, and the most popular weapons such as AR-15 “assault rifles” are hard to come by. Gun prices have risen as demand has outstripped supply, yet fewer of these weapons are being put to criminal use.

Why?

Because as gun rights supporters have been saying for years, guns don’t kill people, people do. If the opposite was the case American streets should be awash in blood, but they aren’t as writer Barry Snell notes. As as the Pew Study shows, American streets are safer today than they were a generation ago.

So while the Pew Study punctures the liberal myth that guns cause violence, it also pokes a hole in the conservative myth that the breakdown of the traditional family is the root of violent crime. During the same period of the study, the number of out-of-wedlock births has risen. Non-traditional marriages such as those between homosexuals have become more accepted. There are record numbers of people cohabitating. If the breakdown of the family was supposed to lead to a more violent society, it hasn’t.

More likely it’s demographics. Crime spiked in the 1960-80 period as the Baby Boomer generation reached their teens and twenties, the peak time for criminality. As people age they become less impulsive and their criminal behavior is either held in check or condoned in jobs like Federal Reserve Chairman or Goldman Sachs executive. Of course the demographic news isn’t entirely good. While the Baby Boomer generation is less criminal, it is older and requires the smaller cohorts of younger generations to support it in its old age. So younger people might have less chance of being mugged in New York City than their grandparents did, but they’ll be mugged by the taxman. This could explain why suicide rates are spiking among middle aged Americans – proving that guns don’t kill people, aging hippies do.

Congratulations to this week’s winners.

Council: Joshuapundit –Days After Boston, Obama Pressures Israel To Release Terrorists As A ‘Goodwill Gesture’

Noncouncil:  MarkSteyn-The Collapsing of the American Skull

Full voting here.

I’ll admit I’ve been a bit mystified why the Left supports the misogynistic and homophobic religion of Islam, attacking Libertarians and Conservatives who question the religion as being “extremists” and “Islamophobes”. Benjamin Wiker, writing for Human Events, explains that modern liberalism has its roots in and defines itself against Christianity. As a result…

Liberals therefore tended to approve of anything but Christianity. Deism was fine, or even pantheism. The eminent liberal Rousseau praised Islam and declared Christianity incompatible with good government. Hinduism and Buddhism were exotic and tantalizing among the edge-cutting intelligentsia of the 19th century. Christianity, by contrast, was the religion against which actual liberal progress had to be made.

So, other religions were whitewashed even while Christianity was continually tarred. The tarring was part of the liberal strategy aimed at unseating Christianity from its privileged cultural-legal-moral position in the West. The whitewashing of other religions was part of the strategy too, since elevating them helped deflate the privileged status of Christianity.

The problem is that Christians aren’t the threat to that Muslims are today, and so the Leftist view of the world has a huge blind spot that prevents it from seeing the threat Islam itself poses to the liberal ideals of women’s equality and the rights of homosexuals. As a former liberal myself it took the al Qaeda attacks on the US embassies in Kenya and Tanzania to force me to question my beliefs, and the 9-11 attacks and the celebrations that erupted throughout the Muslim world to forever change them, but neither these attacks nor the many that have followed seem to have drawn many away from the self-defeating ideology at the heart of modern liberalism. So liberals will continue being blind to treatment of women and homosexuals, and the intolerance that lies at the heart of Islam.

This: Police say liberal student activist threatened herself with rape in Facebook hoax, framed conservatives

Reminds me of this:

Mel Brooks is a genius. Meg Lanker-Simons is not.

Arm both sides.

The optimal goal is stalemate, to create a quagmire that bogs down both sides, sucking up resources and destroying men and material for however long this state can be maintained. The idea is to encourage both sides to use up what they have against each other so that neither can threaten you after the conflict is resolved.

In a conflict where there are no good guys, where the civilians have been brainwashed through their religion to hate us and suspect us as being the cause of their suffering, there is nothing to be lost by actually making it so. In Syria we have an Iranian-backed Shiite regime fighting a Saudi funded, al Qaeda manned Sunni insurgency. None of the players in the conflict are freedom fighters believing in the establishment of a secular based, peaceful regime in Syria, and nothing will be gained by the United States committing itself to one side or the other.

Obama’s indecisiveness is actually accomplishing this goal. Iraq, a country whose government the US established, is allowing overflights of weapons and munitions from Iran to resupply the Assad regime in Syria. At the same time the US encourages the Saudis and Gulf states to provide arms and material to the insurgents attempting to overthrow the Assad regime.

To put it bluntly, every dead insurgent or Syrian regime soldier is one less insurgent or soldier dedicated to fighting the United States and its allies. The suicide bombers that attack Assad’s regime will not kill American soldiers at checkpoints in Afghanistan, just as the Iranian special forces captured and executed by jihadis will not kill Israeli soldiers in the West Bank.

While this may strike some Westerners as morally repugnant at first, consider the alternatives. If the Assad regime emerges from the civil war victorious, the hand of Iran will be much stronger throughout the region. Hezbollah in Lebanon and Hamas in Syria would be in a much better position to threaten America’s only true ally in the region, Israel. A positive conclusion to the conflict would embolden Iran and provide an end to the drain of resources the current conflict draws from the regime, allowing it to refocus on its nuclear program which not only threatens Israel but Europe and in the long term, the United States. On the other hand, if the Alawite Assad regime is overthrown in Syria, what follows will make the Libyan Afterparty in north Africa look like a juice party at a geek fraternity by comparison. The victorious rebels would make Syria into a terrorist training camp, exporting instability and violent attacks throughout the Middle East, but particularly against Israel and Europe. Syria would become the new Afghanistan, run by Wahhabi fanatics dedicated to the destruction of Israel and the assimilation of the West. When viewed from a purely utilitarian American perspective, a successful overthrow of the regime may in fact be worse, forcing the US to intervene militarily with boots on the ground and repeating the errors of the Iraqi occupation.

Neither situation is palatable from the American perspective, so the only option is to support both sides indirectly until they are thoroughly weakened to the point where they cannot threaten the United States or its allies. Turning Syria into a Vietnam-like quagmire for both Iran and al Qaeda is an opportunity that has fallen into Obama’s lap, which when combined with his terrible leadership skills, may be the best luck America has had in its foreign affairs since Mikhail Gorbachev became the premier of the Soviet Union.