SMART DIPLOMACY UPDATE: Reports: Obama won’t require threat of force in UN’s Syria resolution.

President Obama will not insist on a United Nations resolution threatening the use of force against Syria if Damascus does not turn over its stockpile of chemical weapons, according to reports.

The White House telegraphed the president’s strategy Friday amid ongoing negotiations between the U.S. and Russia over a proposal to disarm Syria strongman Bashar Assad’s chemical arsenal to avert a threatened American military strike.

According to the reports from the Associated Press and New York Times, Obama is not ruling out a military strike. The president though believes that any resolution including such language would be vetoed by Russia on the Security Council. The president will reserve the right to strike Assad without UN support if Syria fails to follow through and hand over its chemical weapons.

Obama’s playing checkers. Putin’s playing Phizbin.

ILYA SOMIN ON The Rise of Movements Seeking to Create New States Through Secession. “Over the last week, secession movements seeking to create new states have made some progress in northern California and rural Colorado. Back in 2011, I wrote about the secession movement in southern California. All three movements are examples of rural jurisdictions seeking to secede from state governments they perceive as dominated by urban interests and values.”

MARK STEYN: American Ineffectualism: Every American ally is cringing with embarrassment at the amateurishness of the last month.

PAINFUL: Putin Exposes the Secrets of American Liberalism.

SENATE CLOWN SHOW: ALEC not invited to hearing on legislation it helped write. “Sen. Dick Durbin will hold a hearing Tuesday to discuss the controversial ‘Stand Your Ground’ laws – which the American Legislative Exchange Council helped write and implement – but did not invite ALEC to testify.” Since the public heavily supports stand-your-ground, this seems to be a case of putting on a dumb show for the lefty base. But still . . . .

THIS IS HARDLY A SURPRISE, AT CUNY: Communist Groups Helped Organize Petraeus Protest. “Protests against General David Petraeus Monday by CUNY students were organized by an ad hoc committee that includes several Communist groups. A leaflet for the protests, which refers to Petraeus as a ‘war criminal’ and ‘mass murderer,’ says that the events were organized by the Ad Hoc Committee Against the Militarization of CUNY and were endorsed by the Internationalist Group, Workers Power-US, and IGNITE. These groups are explicitly Communist in nature.” Where were the Sparts?

I think right-leaning groups should similarly hound Hillary and other Obama Administration apparatchiks — including Obama himself, when he ventures onto campuses, both now and post-Presidency. The standard of behavior has been established. Let them live with it.

IT WAS JUST CONSTRUCTED, AT GREAT EXPENSE: Cracks in Y-12′s uranium fortress. Judging from the aerial photo, it was poorly laid out, too.

FROM SARAH HOYT AND CHARLIE MARTIN, it’s Book Plug Friday.

RICHARD FERNANDEZ: Olympus Has Fallen. “Putin has taken Barack Obama’s Narrative apart and handed him the smoking pieces in a bucket. Barry doesn’t even know how it happened, nor are his advisers any the wiser. Maybe it was a video. . . . It remains to be seen whether Washington has the institutional depth to reconstitute itself in a crisis. But reconstitute it must. The current team in the White House is broken. Change must come if there is to be hope.”

JOHN FUND: Liberals in Retreat: Three elections across the globe deliver an unpleasant shock to liberal ideologues.

Three elections in the last week have challenged long-held liberal premises about how elections are fought and what the public wants. It’s worth examining those results in such widely separated places as Australia, Norway, and the Rocky Mountains of Colorado.

In Colorado, liberals are already in denial about the fact that two Democratic state senators were recalled from office in districts Barack Obama carried by some 20 percentage points only ten months ago. The recalls were organized by citizens upset with the lawmakers’ votes in favor of a gun-control measure. The two senators also helped pass bills perceived as being against the interests of rural areas and helped push through a fraud-prone election law that shifted the Centennial State to all-mail voting. . . . What should worry Democrats is that the two Colorado districts that recalled their senators last Tuesday represent the two sides of their electoral coalition. The district in downtown Colorado Springs was urban, trendy, and filled with upper-income social liberals; it voted 59 percent to 38 percent for Obama. The other district in nearby Pueblo and its suburbs was Hispanic, moderate-to-lower income, blue-collar, and more culturally conservative; it voted 58 percent to 39 percent for Obama.

“The recall in Pueblo was started by two plumbers and an electrician,” notes Jon Caldara, head of the pro-recall Independence Institute. “Hispanics and blue-collar voters resented interference in what they regarded as their local rights.” And as for the NRA, the Democratic survey firm Public Policy Polling found voters in Pueblo had a positive view of the group.

If the Colorado results showed the limits of liberal paternalism’s appeal, voters in prosperous Australia and Norway rebelled against liberal governments they perceived as incompetent and too focused on peripheral issues.

Read the whole thing.

And check out AlfonZo Rachel on “The Black NRA.” “I see the Democrats still have an ongoing fetish for segregation.”

WHAT HAPPENS WHEN UNION MEMBERSHIP ISN’T MANDATORY: WEAC Official Admits Most Locals Will Not Re-certify. “Now that Wisconsin’s educators have been given the right to choose whether or not to belong to a labor union, the unions are struggling to attract enough members to stay afloat. Proving all along that the union leaders didn’t really represent their members, as much as sponge off of them.”

Plus: “Kenosha is a trend setter, not an outlier. . . . So, in the end, it wasn’t just the mean old Republican lawmakers who had issues with teachers’ unions. Teachers themselves were/are dissatisfied with the union’s strong arm tactics. As it turns out, Act 10 was the largest anti-bullying initiative in the nation. Who knew?”

SHADES OF BENGHAZI: State Department Downplays Herat Consulate Attack. “State Department says it was a quick response amid high security, but Afghan reporters say attackers made it in the gates and Special Forces arrived after a two-hour gunbattle.”

LIFE IN OBAMA’S POST-RACIAL AMERICA: Teens charged with murdering WWII veteran Delbert Belton plead not guilty. “The two teenage boys, 16, charged with beating to death Delbert ‘Shorty’ Belton, 88, as he crossed a parking lot at a Washington club entered not guilty pleas on Friday. The judge set the trial for Demetrius Glenn and Kenan Adams-Kinard for November, The Associated Press reported. . . . The crime sparked national outrage for its seeming randomness — and also because the suspects are black, the victim, white, and many wondered why noted civil rights activists like Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson didn’t condemn the incident with the same level of furor they did in the George Zimmerman-Trayvon Martin case.”

HMM: Apple’s Fingerprint ID May Mean You Can’t ‘Take the Fifth.’

AT AMAZON, 40% Off On Pet Supplies.

TRUST YOUR LEADERS: 6 Whopping Government Misstatements About NSA Spying.

MISERABLE FAILURE: Public, Union Support For ObamaCare Plummeting.

ADVICE: Don’t leave babies until your thirties, women are told. “Women who want a family should start thinking about having children in their twenties and begin no later than 35, a group of leading fertility experts has warned.”

21ST CENTURY RELATIONSHIPS: I’m single at 50. Why? Men hate me being brainier than them. I’m sure that’s it.

TEST-DRIVING THE Rolls-Royce Wraith.

AT AMAZON, Coupons Galore in Grocery & Gourmet Food.

REASON TV: George Will’s Libertarian Evolution.

WHEN SMARTPHONES do a doctor’s job.

NEWS YOU CAN USE: 10 Surprising Things All Wives Should Know About Their Husbands.

SCIENCE: Functioning ‘mechanical gears’ seen in nature for the first time. “A plant-hopping insect found in gardens across Europe – has hind-leg joints with curved cog-like strips of opposing ‘teeth’ that intermesh, rotating like mechanical gears to synchronise the animal’s legs when it launches into a jump.”