Right Wing Nut House

The Watcher’s Council’s vote this week featured some excellent posts from both Council and non-Council members. But when the dust cleared, yours truly came out on top in the Council category for my post on the pope’s death “Taming the Whirlwinds of History.” :

John Paul’s alliance with the Anglo-Americans was never set down on paper and coordination was superficial at best. But where Reagan and Thatcher’s hard-headed actions to defeat Soviet Communism stopped, the Pope’s moral authority took root and turned the tide toward people power by giving legitimacy to the aspirations for freedom so longed for by so many in that captive part of the world.

In short, Pope John Paul II gave a final answer to Josef Stalin’s contemptuous question when conflict with the Catholic Church in Russia seemed unavoidable. “How many divisions does the Pope have?” Stalin asked. This Pope could have told him he not only had the heavenly host of angels on his side but the millions of hearts and minds of people that yearned to breathe free, ready to march at his command.

There was a tie for second among 4 other Council blogs. And my favorite of those was submitted by Alpha Patriot entitled “Moving Melancholy.”

Second, I have evidently reached that age in which placing things in a box is like packing away a lifetime of memories. And nothing has brought that on more than putting away my oldest and dearest friends — my books. Mostly tattered paperbacks, some read so many times that pages threaten to detach from the binding with every turn.

The books that molded me and are as much a part of me as any real experience. A hefty collection of Heinlein and Asimov (some of which are replacements because the first copies really did fall apart from too much use). A translation of War Commentaries of [Julius] Ceaser. The entire Hornblower series by C. S. Forrester. Helter Skelter. Herbert’s Dune. 1984. A Brave New World. Even a copy of the Anarchist’s Cookbook.

The non-Council winner this week was Polipundit for their excellent analysis of the recently released report by the Commission investigating intelligence failures in finding WMD in Iraq, “WMD - or How W Made a Difference:”

Now, one might believe that writing a phone-book sized report shows the diligence these ten members displayed in their effort. On closer review, however, the tome is largely a self-serving buffet, something for everybody. The Left has been quick to help themselves to large slices of the part where the Commission declared the Intelligence effort before the Iraq War “one of the most public - and most damaging - intelligence failures in recent American history.” (page 3 of the report, page 19 printout) The angry mob that is American Liberalism has spent the past week trying to twist that statement into an indictment of the Bush Administration. The Commission, however, also said “we recognize that other reasonable observers could come to a different conclusion” (page 7 of the report, page 23 printout), a vague acknowledgment that they didn’t prove their case, but just printed out a wish list of what they want.

And finally, there was a three way tie for second with the post from Powerline entitled “The Pulitzer Prize for Felony Murder” being my favorite:

So the AP admitted that its photographer was “tipped off” by the terrorists. The only quibble asserted by the AP was that the photographer expected only a “demonstration,” not a murder. So the terrorists wanted to be photographed carrying out the murder, to sow more terror in Iraq and to demoralize American voters. That’s why they tipped off the photographer, and that’s why they dragged the two election workers from their car, so they could be shot in front of the AP’s obliging camera. And the AP was happy to cooperate with the terrorists in all respects…