The Constitutional Requirement to Seat Burris

For those on the right and on the left who think that Roland Burris should not be seated, the Heritage Foundation has a few words for you!

The most important factor that distinguishes the United States from many other countries around the world, both today and in comparison to civilizations long gone, is that it is a republic based upon the rule of law. It is precisely when upholding the rule of law is unpleasant or unpopular that the rule is sorely tested. The refusal of the United States Senate led by Harry Reid to seat Roland W. Burris fails that test. Burris was appointed by Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich under the authority of the 17th Amendment to replace outgoing Senator Barack Obama.[1] It is clear from a review of the applicable constitutional provisions, Supreme Court case law, and the history of the Constitutional Convention and the Constitution's subsequent ratification that the Senate does not have the constitutional authority to exclude Burris. There are no political or other objectives that the Senators opposing his seating could possibly have that would in any way justify such a stark and direct violation of the Constitution.

The mistaken belief of Reid and others such as Senator Dick Durbin (D-IL) comes from their complete misreading of Article I, §5, cl. 1, which provides that "each House shall be the Judge of the Elections, Returns and Qualifications of its own Members." This provision does not give Senators the power to apply any "qualifications" they arbitrarily create and refuse to seat Burris because of unproven allegations of wrongdoing against the governor or for any other concerns that the Senators may have over the governor or his actions in office. They are ignoring the provisions of Article I, § 3, cl. 3, which state that the only qualifications under the Constitution to be a Senator are to be 30 years old, to have been a citizen for nine years, and to "be an Inhabitant of that State in which he shall be chosen."

Read the whole thing, it is a lesson in Constitutional Law...one that Constitutional lawyer and President Elect Barack Obama has apparently forgotten.

I think we can all agree that Rod Blagojevich is a crooked politician. However, that does not negate the fact that he is still Governor of Illinois and as such he is Constitutionally authorized to appoint Senator Obama's replacement. Period, end of discussion.

Connections

Bekkieann wondered (in the comments to my first post on this subject) why the picture of President Elect Obama with Governor Blagojevich if I was not trying to tie the two together. Mostly because I suspected/feared that the other Chicago shoe (concrete?) was yet to drop and dropped they have. First came the revelation that Rahm Emmanuel (the soon to be President's Chief of Staff) spoke REPEATEDLY to Governor Blagojevich about who would inherit the Obama Senate Seat.



I paid very close attention to President elect Obama's press conference when he stressed that HE had not had discussions with the Governor's office. Although I have to admit one thing. In a conversation with my good friend Gary Gross, Rahm Emmanuel's name came up and I stated that I thought he was too smart to get caught up in something this stupid. It appears I was woefully wrong.

Then came the this post by my good friend (and fellow Chicago escapee) Rick Moran who dug up an old interview with David Axelrod (the man behind the Obama campaign). The subject of the interview was the Fitzgerald investigation into Chicago political corruption.

Then in 2005, the Chicago Sun Times broke a fairly routine scandal involving the use of (or, in this case, the non-use) of city trucks – contracts to politically connected (and sometimes mobbed up) trucking firms that paid millions of dollars for little or no work. The city was entertained for weeks with stories of bribes being paid by city employees to steer truck contracts to specific firms, ghost payrolling, lolligagging truckers drawing taxpayer monies for going golfing, and other examples of extraordinary venality on the part of city politicians.

Once Fitzy got involved, the investigation expanded to include the entire patronage system in Chicago. And what prosecutors found was simply astonishing; 30 city pols who routinely violated the patronage law by doctoring documents to show interviews with candidates that never happened, resume tampering, and other fraudulent actions all to get loyal campaign workers city jobs. Fitzy’s investigation eventually reached deep into Daley’s office as two of his closest aides – including his patronage chief Robert Sorich – were convicted in the case.

Here’s how it worked:

In February 2005 a grand jury indicted Sorich for devising a scheme to “provide financial benefits, in the form of city jobs and promotions, in exchange for campaign work.” As part of this scheme, it charged, Sorich and other officials “corrupted the city’s personnel process” by awarding “jobs and promotions” to preselected candidates “through sham and rigged interviews.”

At the Sorich trial Kozicki, then in the buildings department, testified that as managing deputy commissioner he had altered 19-year-old Andrew Ryan’s interview rating to ensure that Ryan scored high enough to get a building inspector’s job for which other applicants were more qualified. Andrew Ryan is the son of Tom Ryan, secretary-treasurer of Carpenters Local 13, a union that was a major financial contributor to Daley’s 2003 reelection campaign.

And Axelrod? Here’s what the new Senior Advisor to the President had to say about it: back in 2006:

As Axelrod has said, a too-zealous prosecutor can look at normal political behavior and suspect impropriety. In a 2006 Vanity Fair interview, the Obama aide complained about Fitzgerald’s scrutiny of Chicago politics.

“He goes after fleas and elephants with the same bazooka,” Axelrod said. “At some point there’s a line … where you begin criminalizing politics in its most innocent form.”

Emphasis mine. Graft in Chicago has long been a practiced art form. Those that are good at it (the first Mayor Daley comes to mind) never put themselves in a place where they could get caught. Oh sure you could see that there was "something" going on there, but there was never enough there to warrant prosecution. Take a look at Paul Powell. There were multiple investigations into his corruption but nothing stuck and it was not until he died that we learned the depths of his corruption

That is, to me, the thing that makes this whole thing with Governor Blagojevich so laughable. It was the ham-handed nature with which he did business. It was the brazen nature of his corruption that gives pause. It was almost as if Governor Blagojevich wanted to get caught.

I still don't know what impact this will have on Team Obama, but if there are many more ties to this scandal in his transition team it may make his first hundred days in office very uncomfortable.

Stupid Is As Stupid Does - Illinois Division

Well my phone has been buzzing all day with calls and texts from friends and all of them start out with "Did you hear about Blago?". Blago is Illinois governor Rod Blagojevich who was arrested today on charges of selling the US Senate seat that is about to be vacated by Senator Barack Obama. You just can't make this up!

Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich was arrested Tuesday on charges he brazenly conspired to sell or trade President-elect Barack Obama's vacant Senate seat to the highest bidder as part of what federal prosecutors called a "political corruption crime spree." A federal judge later ordered Blagojevich released on his own recognizance.

Even more surprisingly stupid is that Blago threatened the biggest newspaper in the area because they were actually sniffing around the story and making his political life miserable.

A criminal complaint filed in federal court outlines wiretapped conversations between Blagojevich and his chief of staff—who also was arrested Tuesday—in which the governor said he wanted the Tribune to fire its editorial board, which has called for the Illinois House to explore impeaching the governor. In one wiretapped comment in the complaint, Blagojevich is quoted as saying the Tribune's owner should be told to "fire those [expletive]."

The Chicago Sun Times was not as delicate in quoting the transcript and the transcript is a profanity laced tirade that lashes out at not only the Tribune and their reporters, but President-elect Obama as well.

Rod Blagojevich said that the consultants (Advisor B and another consultant are believed to be on the call at that time) are telling him that he has to "suck it up" for two years and do nothing and give this "motherf***er [the President-elect] his senator. F*** him. For nothing? F*** him." Rod Blagojevich states that he will put "[Senate Candidate 4]" in the Senate "before I just give F***ing [Senate Candidate 1] a F***ing Senate seat and I don't get anything." (Senate Candidate 4 is a Deputy Governor of the State of Illinois). Rod Blagojevich stated that he needs to find a way to take the "financial stress" off of his family and that his wife is as qualified or more qualified than another specifically named individual to sit on corporate boards. According to Rod Blagojevich, "the immediate challenge [is] how do we take some of the financial pressure off of our family." Later in the phone call, Rod Blagojevich stated that absent getting something back, Rod Blagojevich will not pick Senate Candidate 1.

Governor Blagojevich has been under investigation (for corruption) practically day one in office so the fact that this was coming was no surprise. In fact, the Tribune recently reported on the fact that the federal government might be tapping the governor's phone calls which lead to this comment.

"It kind of smells like Nixon and Watergate," the governor told reporters. "But I don't care whether you tape me privately or publicly, I can tell you that whatever I say is always lawful."

Special Prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald, not surprisingly, disagreed with the governor on the "lawful" nature of his conversations.

"The conduct would make Lincoln roll over in his grave," Fitzgerald said, quoting Blagojevich as saying the Senate seat is "a bleeping valuable thing. You just don't give it away. ... I've got this thing and it's bleeping golden."

Fitzgerald called the corruption charges against Blagojevich "a truly new low."

Blagojevich wasn't against the corrupt deal for the Senate seat, he was against "being stiffed in the corrupt deal," Fitzgerald said.

The FBI Special Agent in charge of this case had harsher words for Blago in particular and Illinois in general

"If it isn't the most corrupt state in the United States, it's certainly one hell of a competitor," Grant said. "Even the most cynical agents in our office were shocked."

And out of that political climate comes our new President-elect. Now I am not in any way suggesting that Senator Obama had anything to do with this particular story - he didn't. However, the electorate would indeed be wise to keep a very close eye on what comes out of the White House. We don't know how far from the tree that this apple has fallen. Until we do know that, it is in our country's best interests to be watchful.

A Mere Mortal

I caught a bit of flack a while back when I posted a couple of posts where I dared to say that "the One" was just a mortal Chicago politician. Well I may not have been so far off base after all.

Victor Davis Hanson detects in Barack Obama's early personnel decisions "the outline of one of most profound bait-and-switch campaigns in our political history, predicated on the mass appeal of a magnetic leader rather than any principles per se." In this account, "Obama is a masterful politician who never has had any real ideology or persona other than his own diversity story and history, youth, and charisma that together allow him to be whatever is politically expedient at the time."

Hanson's view is consistent with Obama's actions to date as president-elect but, as I have argued elsewhere, hardly compelled by them. But I think Hanson is probably correct with respect to the issue he focuses the most on -- the prosecution of the war on terror, narrowly defined. It would make no sense for Obama to take a soft line when it comes to going after terrorists, and Obama is a sensible politician.

After he practically reassembled the entire Clinton administration (that's change?) it should not be all that surprising that he has backtracked from his hard line position on such key issues as the prosecution of the war on terror and Iraq. After all what else does it mean that Obama kept someone as key to the status quo (vis a vis Iraq) as Robert Gates?

This is not an "I told you so" post - as much as it should be. However, it is my hope that a cold shot of reality will help bring cooler heads to the table when it comes to talking about solving the issues that are important to the country.

UPDATE - Heh apparently the Washington Times is recognizing these trends as well.

From the Huffington Post and the Daily Kos to National Review and the Washington Times - and all the mainstream media in between commentators are puzzling over who the dickens President-elect Barack Obama really is. On the progressive left, they are beginning to fear he may not be for "redistributive justice." On the Wall Street Journal free market right they are seeing, in his economic team, the possibility that he is really as safe to capitalism as a banker. Karl Rove has concluded that "Mr. Obama's economic team was reassuring. He's generally surrounded himself with intelligent, mainstream advisers."

Those impassioned by the anti-war slogan no blood for oil are getting nervous. According to Politico, Jodie Evans, a Code Pink co-founder who with her husband helped raise a lot of money for Mr. Obama during the primary and general election, recalled her interaction with Mr. Obama: "It has gotten to the point where he sees me coming and before I am close he just keeps repeating, 'Jodie, I PROMISE, I will end the war, I promise I will end the war.' "

I tried to tell ya he was just a politician.

RIP Madelyn Dunham

Senator Barack Obama's grandmother has lost her battle with "the Big C" today. Senator Obama was told of his grandmothers passing this morning. It is a pity she could not see her son's bid to make history through to its conclusion, but I am glad that the Senator was able to take time off of the campaign to see her before she died.

Whatever differences you may have with either candidate over issues, as humans we should pull together in their hour of grief to lift them up in prayer. Our families thoughts and prayers are with the Obama family tonight.

What Is Really Necessary?

Chief already pointed us to the comments that Senator Obama made (last January) to "bankrupt" the coal industry, but I think that these comments are more pertinant - especially to any of us who happen to live in an area where the snow flies and it gets below freezing for 3-5 months a year.

The problem is not technical, uh, and the problem is not mastery of the legislative intricacies of Washington. The problem is, uh, can you get the American people to say, “This is really important,” and force their representatives to do the right thing? That requires mobilizing a citizenry. That requires them understanding what is at stake. Uh, and climate change is a great example.

You know, when I was asked earlier about the issue of coal, uh, you know — Under my plan of a cap and trade system, electricity rates would necessarily skyrocket. Even regardless of what I say about whether coal is good or bad. Because I’m capping greenhouse gases, coal power plants, you know, natural gas, you name it — whatever the plants were, whatever the industry was, uh, they would have to retrofit their operations. That will cost money. They will pass that money on to consumers.

They — you — you can already see what the arguments will be during the general election. People will say, “Ah, Obama and Al Gore, these folks, they’re going to destroy the economy, this is going to cost us eight trillion dollars,” or whatever their number is. Um, if you can’t persuade the American people that yes, there is going to be some increase in electricity rates on the front end, but that over the long term, because of combinations of more efficient energy usage, changing lightbulbs and more efficient appliance, but also technology improving how we can produce clean energy, the economy would benefit.

If we can’t make that argument persuasively enough, you — you, uh, can be Lyndon Johnson, you can be the master of Washington. You’re not going to get that done.

Ed Morrissey has the audio linked up at Hot Air (where I got the transcript) emphasis is mine.

So Minnesota - are you really willing to pay even more (on top of the increases that the Minnesota Legislature already burdened you with last session) for electricity to heat and light your homes this winter? The "acceptable" alternatives to coal and gas (the Democrats and their green allies will never allow more nuclear even though it is the cleanest and safest AND CHEAPEST available NOW) will not be ready for another 10 years or more. In the meantime, you will have to sacrifice even more so that the government can tell you what to do. Is that really the life you want to lead? If so then by all means vote for the Democrats tomorrow. However, if you would like to be able to afford to heat your home AND feed your family, you may want to think twice about voting for someone who thinks that skyrocketing costs of electricity are "necessary".

Attention PA, OH, IN and VA Voters

This weekend, audio surfaced of an interview that Senator Barack Obama gave the to editorial board of the San Francisco Gate newspaper. In it, Senator Obama had some interesting things to say about a major industry in your states - coal.



The money line is this

"If somebody wanted to build a coal fired plant they can - it's just that it will bankrupt them because they are going to be charged a huge sum for all of the greenhouse gas that is emitted."

Now think about this...suppose your electric company is like most in the country - they get a majority of their power from coal fired plants. Demand for their product is going through the roof - so much so that it is becoming impossible for them to keep up with the demand. They have two choices - they can either build an expanded plant thereby hiring contractors to build the new plant and then hire the employees to staff the plant and thereby boosting the local economy OR they can charge more for the limited supply in order to suppress demand for their product. Their costs would not necessarily go up and all of that increased money would go straight into the utilities bottom line. Oh sure, the investors would be happy - their stock dividends would go up big time. The Board of Directors would be happy - happy enough to most likely give that CEO a big fat raise. In fact the only ones who would be taking the financial "hit" would be the employees (some of whom would get laid off in order to cover the costs of the cap and trade taxes on the existing plants) and the consumers! And the already fragile economy teeters on the brink of total collapse!

The Ohio Coal Association "gets it":

Regardless of the timing or method of the release of these remarks, the message from the Democratic candidate for President could not be clearer: the Obama-Biden ticket spells disaster for America's coal industry and the tens of thousands of Americans who work in it.

"These undisputed, audio-taped remarks, which include comments from Senator Obama like 'I haven't been some coal booster' and 'if they want to build [coal plants], they can, but it will bankrupt them' are extraordinarily misguided.

"It's evident that this campaign has been pandering in states like Ohio, Virginia, West Virginia, Indiana and Pennsylvania to attempt to generate votes from coal supporters, while keeping his true agenda hidden from the state's voters.

Oh and for those of you who think that this only effects PA, OH, and VA......take a look at this...

Colorado coal producers purchased over $363 million in services and
supplies during 2007.
Coal severance taxes contribute millions of dollars for local/state governments.

It hits the Intermountain West (Colorado, Utah, Wyoming, Nevada and Idaho) just as hard.

Change we can believe in....indeed!

Prayers For The Obama Family

Feh - there is no room in civil discourse for this kind of crap. I will not even sully the pages of this site with many excerpts other than this one....

Obama announced that his grandmother is very sick and that he will visit her Thursday and Friday after she came home from the hospital last week.

Which lead an acquaintance to quip "why wait until Thursday if she is that sick? It's just another ploy..." at which point I must say I blew up. We do not know the circumstances of Mrs. Dunham's illness...for all we know she could be in ICU with no visitors allowed! It is entirely possible (as I know from personal experience) that the doctors will keep visitors out due to infection concerns (which are guaranteed in most elderly people). Then again, maybe it was nothing major at all which would again allow for the delayed visit!

Our thoughts and prayers go out to the Obama family. I know what it is like to have an ailing relative in the hospital and it is never fun - especially someone Mrs. Dunham's age. Let's pray that she recovers quickly and fully so that she can witness the final two weeks of her grandson's historic race for the Presidency.

What Is Going On In Chicago?

That seems to be a fair question to ask today. According Hillbuzz (and consider the source) there may be a lot going on in my old hometown.

There IS a RICO investigation of ACORN and the Obama campaign underway - this has now been established by the mainstream media. Right now it’s rumored here in Chicago that Patrick Fitzgerald is heading it (confirmation on that has not come yet). There is a lot of activity in Chicago right now, with a lot of IRS agents looking into the finances coming in and out of this city, and across state lines (this was established on Monday when the GOP issued emergency press releases that much of Obama’s campaign contributions could very well be illegal foreign contributions - what appears to be deliberately poor record keeping designed to hide the true identities and monetary sources of online donors is at issue here). We see in 15 states now that ACORN is being busted for attempted voter fraud, and for fraudulent, illegal voter registratons in the hundreds of thousands, if not a million. The article below states, and we have confirmed this with people who know for sure, that the people who gathered evidence of Obama’s fraud and voter intimidation techniques during the primaries against Hillary Clinton are sharing everything they have with the Republican Party and the federal government.

What’s happening here is something we have never seen before: centrist Clinton Democrats and Republicans are working together to expose the DNC and Obama campaign’s illegal activities and orchestrated, coordinated fraud. Both parties are working with federal agents to investigate ACORN, which has been funded with upwards of $800,000 in questionable donations from the Obama campaign (in what appears to be the expressed and explicit direction to engineer voter fraud in the general election). The tactics being employed now in the 15 states currently under investigation are the VERY SAME TACTICS we saw on the ground in Iowa, Texas, Colorado, Nebraska, Indiana, and other states working for Hillary Clinton in the primaries.

And all of this ties back to Chicago.

Where the Obama campaign and DNC are now based.

These rumors have been coming fast and furious the last few days but until now I had treated them as just that....rumors. However, with the reports of 15 states now running individual investigations a RICO investigation certainly would be possible. Whether the Obama Campaign has any ties (other than paying them $800,000 for voter registration) to ACORN's fraud may be a stretch to prove.

The paragraph that I found to be intriguing was this one.

Republicans and centrist Democrats are joined together on this effort to get the truth out about Obama before the November election. We firmly believe in McCain’s victory and do not believe it hinges on any developments with RICO. The polls, in our opinon, are wrong, and the internal numbers we see coming out of NC, VA, PA, OH, IN and FL show McCain wins in all of those states (there is no mathematical possibility for Obama to win without taking PA, OH, or FL). We believe after McCain’s win there will be a continued prosecution of Obama and members of the Democratic party for voter fraud under RICO statutes in the months and years ahead. ACORN and leftist Democrats have gone too far this time — for years ACORN has engineered deliberate election fraud using taxpayer dollars funneled to it by Democrats. This time, with both Democrats and Republicans joined against them, ACORN Is going down…and we believe it will ultimately take Obama, Axelrod, and most of today’s Democratic leadership down with it.

Emphasis mine. Now they do not say where the internal polls they are looking at come from (a hot tip there IMHO) however, they do talk about how the internals of many of these polls are badly skewed. For example:

That’s why we’ve also noticed the polling companies changing their party ID samples in the last two or three weeks, upping Democrats’ party ID to 50% in some polls, and dropping Republicans down to just 20%, with 30% Independent. If you look at this critically, you’d see that Democrats have never enjoyed more than a 4% historical party ID advantage. In 2006, a year that Democrats RAGED against both Bush and the sex-scandal plagued GOP (Mark Foley, Larry Craig, and other characters), Democrats had just a 3% party ID advantage. All of this means polls should be using samples with 39% Democrats, 35% Republican, and 26% Independent.

Now it could be that this polling (and the 2000 and 2004 polling which also over sampled Democrats) could be basing those percentages on the increases in voter registration. If they are that could be a huge reason behind why the 2000 and 2004 polling was off at the end and why this years could be way off! It could be an unintended consequence of all of these bogus Democrat registrations!

Wizbang blog has a post up that could possibly explain the polling discrepancies further.

Friday's tracking poll had Obama up by ten points. But that lead is actually the result of two separate tracks, one for Obama and one for McCain. 51 to 41, so they say.

OK, that's their starting number, the one they put in the headline. What drives those numbers, I wonder? I always want to see the internals, but Gallup has been getting sneaky, they release that data later, generally a week afterwards. The most recent detailed support by party I have is from the week ending October 5, when Gallup had Obama leading 50-42. I also note for reference that Gallup showed Obama leading 50-42 on September 28, 48-44 on September 21, and McCain leading 47-45 on September 14. The party affiliation for those dates should help us see where the changes came from.

Let's start with Gallup's base support for the race, conservative republicans for McCain and liberal democrats for Obama. Here's how that looked:

Sep 14: McCain 95%, Obama 94%
Sep 21: McCain 93%, Obama 95%
Sep 28: McCain 93%, Obama 95%
Oct 05: McCain 94%, Obama 95%

Pretty comparable, noting to show a reason for changes. Next up, cross-party support, conservative democrats for McCain, liberal/moderate republicans for Obama:

Sep 14: McCain 17%, Obama 16%
Sep 21: McCain 19%, Obama 15%
Sep 28: McCain 19%, Obama 15%
Oct 05: McCain 16%, Obama 19%

Well, Obama got a boost going into October, but this is a pretty small group, hard to see it swinging the overall vote by the way we've seen. That leaves the independents:

Sep 14: McCain 38%, Obama 24%
Sep 21: McCain 31%, Obama 22%
Sep 28: McCain 31%, Obama 22%
Oct 05: McCain 32%, Obama 23%

McCain has a good advantage here, so that cannot explain the deficit. As I explained before, the only way this can be happening, is that Gallup has weighted the democrats more heavily, assuming that they will be a greater portion of the voter population this year than in past elections.

Now I fully admit that this is conjecture at this point in time. However, I suspect that the Obama supporters realize that their guy is not as secure as they would like us all to believe. If they were certain that the deal was done they would not be going out of their way to call every legit criticism of their guys "racism" or look for "racism" in something as simple as a white ladies jacket.

Chicago Politics - A Primer Part Two

Yesterday I put up a post about Chicago politics in an effort to help Democracy for Utah understand why Chicago Republicans had "no problems" working with Bill Ayers. Today my good friend Rick Moran (a fellow native of Northern Illinois) has a post up on Senator Obama, the New Party, Bill Ayers, ACORN and a few dozen others. In it he hits the heart of Chicago politics.

I may be going over old ground here for daily readers but this is such an important aspect of Obama’s political personae that it bears repeating. Barack Obama’s political beliefs are secondary to his using anyone and everyone – from corrupt Machine politicians to wild eyed radical Maoists – to further his political career. All of the radical associations in his past (and present) represent nothing more than stepping stones to aid him in his political advancement. As early as 1987 he told Jeremiah Wright that he had his eye on the Governor’s mansion in Illinois (no doubt his sights were set higher). The arc of his career has always been headed toward high political office. Of this, there is no doubt.

Besides using these radicals to get ahead and making common cause with groups like ACORN and The New Party, it is a legitimate question to ask if Obama shared their ideology. The answer is almost certainly no.

Emphasis mine. Rick was on Hot Air TV with Ed Morrissey today and he went into depth. Unlike Sarah Palin (whose supposed membership in the Alaskan Independence Party was breathlessly reported until the registration rolls were made public) Senator Barack Obama WAS a member of "The New Party" - it was a condition of receiving their endorsement. It was just another stepping stone.

Like Chicago Republicans working with Ayers, Obama worked with the "New Party" in order to get ahead. Or as Rick so eloquently put it...

Obama’s friendship with Ayers, Rezko, Wright, Pfleger, Meeks, Khalidi, as well as his working with Richard Daley’s Chicago Machine was the result of his overweening ambition and not due to any ideological affinity or strain of corruption in his makeup.

And that my dear Utah friends, is Chicago politics in a nutshell. Go read all of Rick's post and follow out the links to his other writings on the subject. When you are done, you will know just about all you can know about Chicago politics without actually having lived there.

Obama/Ayers - CNN Connects The Dots

CNN ran an expose today on the Obama/Ayers connection that sounded awfully familiar - or at least it is to those of us who lived in Chicago or utilize the alternative media.



Many have been trying to get the "mainstream" media to dig into this story for months. It is no surprise to the right then that the first MSM outlet to run this story (talk about an October surprise) is the "Clinton" News Network.

All joking aside, for months now, Senator Obama has insisted that Bill Ayers was just "a guy in the neighborhood" - no one of importance in his life or political career. CNN just shattered that myth in time for the election.

Chicago Politics - A Primer

Democracy For Utah has a post up today that needs to be addressed but since they don't allow comments, I have to comment here.

NPR:

Regardless of his background, it was never a problem for anyone — including Republicans and Chicago's most powerful business leaders — to work with Ayers on Chicago's public schools. In fact, Ayers is widely respected in the field of urban education.

"It was never a concern by any of us in the Chicago school reform movement that he had led a fugitive life years earlier," said former Illinois state Republican Rep. Diana Nelson, who worked with both Obama and Ayers over the years. [...]

"I don't remember ever hearing anyone raise concerns or questions or concerns about [Ayers'] background," says Anne Hallett, who has worked closely with Ayers on the Annenberg Challenge grant and with Obama on education and other community and legislative matters. "And that included everybody I was engaged with," including prominent Republicans and corporate and civic leaders in Chicago, Hallett adds.

Why do Chicago Republicans hate America?

Unless you have grown up with Chicago politics (which I have) it is a hard duck to fully understand. You don't fully appreciate how much a political "machine" has over every day life if you have never had to work with one. Chicago has the mother of all political machines and it is and has been run for over 60 years by one family - the Daley family. Now Mayor Richard M. (Ritchie) Daley is not the hard core progressive that the majority of Democrats today are. He is the last of the Scoop Jackson/JFK/Richard J. Daley Democratic Party. Because of that, the Progressives and the Republicans all have to put aside a lot, if they ever want to get something done in the City of Chicago. Once Bill Ayers got the Richard M. Daley stamp of approval, the local Republicans had no choice but to work with him in order to get things done. That is what happens when you control a city as thoroughly as the Daley family does.

It is not too far afield, I will admit, from the hold that the LDS Church has on politics in Utah. If you are a Democrat in Utah, you can not toe the Progressive Party line if you ever want to stand a CHANCE of getting anything done in this state. So you compromise quietly on things that can be compromised on so that you can get the really important (to you) things through.

The difference between former state Rep. Nelson and Senator Obama is that Rep. Nelson is NOT applying to run the US Military in the global war on terror where Senator Obama is. Rep. Nelson also admits that Bill Ayers is more than just "some guy from the neighborhood" where Senator Obama has not. These kinds of associations in a state legislator are local politics....in a national leader they can be deadly (politically). It is not a matter of "hating America" as it is a matter of judgment - something that the President of the United States of America needs on a daily basis. There will be times when the only thing between the US and war IS the President's judgment. So I think it is more than fair for the voters in the US to know exactly what kind of judgment Senator Barack Obama has. Don't you?

A "Post-Partisan" Campaign???

So much for the man that was going to run a "different" kind of campaign. Senator Obama just released a new ad today.

NEW YORK - John McCain is mocked as an out-of-touch, out-of-date computer illiterate in a television commercial out Friday from Barack Obama as the Democrat begins his sharpest barrage yet on McCain's long Washington career...

The newest ad showcasing their hard line includes unflattering footage of McCain at a hearing in the early '80s, wearing giant glasses and an out-of-style suit, interspersed with shots of a disco ball, a clunky phone, an outdated computer and a Rubik's Cube.

"1982, John McCain goes to Washington," an announcer says over chirpy elevator music. "Things have changed in the last 26 years, but McCain hasn't.

"He admits he still doesn't know how to use a computer, can't send an e-mail...

"Our economy wouldn't survive without the Internet, and cyber-security continues to represent one our most serious national security threats," Pfeiffer said. "It's extraordinary that someone who wants to be our president and our commander in chief doesn't know how to send an e-mail."

While it is true that Senator McCain does not send e-mails, it is obvious that Team Obama doesn't know how to use Google or Lexis-Nexis - because if they did they would have found this 2000 article that explains WHY Senator McCain does not use email (HT Ed M).

McCain gets emotional at the mention of military families needing food stamps or veterans lacking health care. The outrage comes from inside: McCain's severe war injuries prevent him from combing his hair, typing on a keyboard or tying his shoes.

Emphasis mine. If they had looked at all they would have found this NYTimes interview from last July (HT Allahpundit)

Q: What websites if any do you look at regularly?

Mr. McCain: Brooke and Mark show me Drudge, obviously, everybody watches, for better or for worse, Drudge. Sometimes I look at Politico. Sometimes RealPolitics, sometimes.

(Mrs. McCain and Ms. Buchanan both interject: “Meagan’s blog!”)

Mr. McCain: Excuse me, Meagan’s blog. And we also look at the blogs from Michael and from you that may not be in the newspaper, that are just part of your blog.

Q: But do you go on line for yourself?

Mr. McCain: They go on for me. I am learning to get online myself, and I will have that down fairly soon, getting on myself. I don’t expect to be a great communicator, I don’t expect to set up my own blog, but I am becoming computer literate to the point where I can get the information that I need – including going to my daughter’s blog first, before anything else.

So there you have the new "post-partisan" candidate of change....mocking a man for his disability. Way to stay out of the gutter Senator.....

Mommy Wars

I really have tried to bite my tongue on a lot of this. After all, if you are going to play politics, you have to be able to endure the "slings and arrows". However, the crescendo has reached such a fever pitch that something must be said.

Since August 29, the liberal/progressive side of the political debate started trying to find the "dirt" on Sarah Palin. The attacks have ranged from juvenile to vile. Rather than address the ones that have come out so far, I will point you to these two websites as they have done all the hard work so far.

But the arguments that have really stuck in my craw are the statements that Governor Palin can't run for office and take good care of her son Trig and the converse (that came out yesterday) complaining that Governor Palin is (gasp) taking her children with her on the campaign trail! These are the kinds of attacks (you can't work and be a good mom) that women have been fighting for half a decade. What is worse is that this is coming out of supporters of the party that supposedly gives a fig about womens rights! While I don't find this surprising (after all they used these tactics against Senator Clinton in the primaries) the sexist comments coming out of Senator Obama's supporters are growing in their histrionics.

Senator Obama and his surrogates in the media are worried. They understand that Sarah Barracuda is "the real deal" and they are trying their darnedest to smear her. It got to the point where Democrat Kersten Powers (HT Gary at LFR) took the feminist movement and the media to task over their reaction.

Last night, "Sarah Barracuda" more than lived up to that slogan as she fought back at the media and Washington naysayers who've ridiculed her as a bimbo bumpkin interloper and showed she isn't going to be pushed around.

Had the media not been viciously attacking her family for the last few days, the speech might've seemed too tough. With that backdrop, it was more than appropriate.

The Obama camp also gave her the perfect chance to smack it around for being elitists - since its first response to John McCain picking her was to ridicule the size of her home town.

On that stage last night, Sarah Palin represented everything the feminist movement claims to strive for: a successful working woman with a happy family life and a husband who helps raise the children. Yet, rather than hailing her accomplishment, the feminist establishment has sat by silently as she's savaged for being a working mother.

Turns out old feminism is really just a bunch of good 'ole girls telling you what to think.

The latest offense came from Senator Obama himself when he turned Governor Palin's "pitbull/hockey mom joke" around saying that even if you put "lipstick on a pig it's still a pig". Imagine the righteous howls of indignation if someone referred to either Senator Obama (and his policies) or Senator Biden - I don't care HOW jokingingly - as a "pig". The left and the media would be apoplectic!

It is obvious that the Obama campaign is scared to death of Governor Palin. If not why would they have sent an army of lawyers and opposition researchers to Juneau and Wasilla to try to dig up dirt of Sarah Palin. (HT Ed) . It is also obvious that supporters of Senator Obama only care about feminist "ideals" when the feminist is one of theirs. I just heard an Obama supporter call into Rush Limbaugh's program and on national radio call Governor Palin a "smelly pig"!

And that could very well be the tale of the campaign as this site indicates:

We keep saying this — and no one seems to listen — but over the course of this campaign, we’ve met about 50 people who worked on McGovern-72, and every one of them said to us, without quivocation, that the main reason McGovern lost to Nixon was McGOVERN’S SUPPORTERS. The way McGovern’s “youth army” behaved, and the terrible things they did in McGovern’s name, worked against their candidate and every day drove more people who would have never voted Republican over to Nixon.

We’ll try to spell this out even more clearly: when people see things like this anti-Palin Ebay stunt, it makes normal people wonder why they would support SoetorObama, if this is what his followers are up to. It makes people who might have pulled the lever for this man question the very act of putting someone like this into office, when these are the types of followers he attracts.

People do not want to be associated with this sort of filth – and the fact that SoetorObama’s campaign doesn’t clamp down hard and stop this sort of daily, vulgar, nastiness says A GREAT DEAL about the person Oprah calls “The One”.

They are correct - the more "The One" and his followers stoop into the gutter to attack Sarah, Bristol and Trig Palin, the more they are going to turn off voters that only get their news in 30 second sound bytes on the nightly news. They are going to remember Senator Obama's pledge not to engage in this kind of cynical personal attack and they are going to reject him just as certainly as the electorate rejected Senator McGovern back in 1972.

Rock Star!

Remember this John McCain ad? It was put out (in part) as a reaction to the cult of personality that has sprung up around barack Obama after his European tour, among other things. The reactions (and denunciations) that came from the Obama Campaign were heated. So why is it Senator Obama (and his campaign) continue to do things that perpetuate that celebrity/rock star perception?

Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama's big speech on Thursday night will be delivered from an elaborate columned stage resembling a miniature Greek temple.

The stage, similar to structures used for rock concerts, has been set up at the 50-yard-line, the midpoint of Invesco Field, the stadium where the Denver Broncos' National Football League team plays.

Emphasis mine. Senior Democrats are concerned about the whole thing....

Senior Democratic officials are expressing serious concerns about the political risks posed by Barack Obama’s acceptance speech at Invesco Field at Mile High Stadium Thursday evening.

From the elaborate stagecraft to the teeming crowd of 80,000 cheering partisans, the vagaries of the weather to the unpredictable audience reaction, the optics surrounding the stadium event have heightened worries that the Obama campaign is engaging in a high-risk endeavor in an uncontrollable environment.

A common concern: that the stadium appearance plays against Obama’s convention goal of lowering his star wattage and connecting with average Americans and that it gives Republicans a chance to drive home their message that the Democratic nominee is a narcissistic celebrity candidate.

...as well they should be. The campaign seems determined to undermine (at every possible opportunity) to hand deliver ammunition to the McCain campaign. I mean what better way to say "I'm not a rock star" than to deliver your acceptance speech in a football stadium on a set designed by Britney Spears set designers! I wish I were kidding, but I am not.

If there was ever further evidence needed (especially after Wednesday's speech) that the Democrats picked the wrong candidate to be their nominee this just might be it.

UPDATE: It gets better. Apparently a replica of AF1 is being brought in for the speech tonight!

But his grandiose style lends itself to accusations of hubris – the Greek word for pride before the fall - and he was advised to keep last night simple as he made an impassionaed call for change.

Enlarge

Presidential image: A full-scale replica of Air Force One fuselage arrives at Invesco Field before Mr Obama speaks

It all reminds me of a bit of Biblical wisdom....something about pride and a big fall...

Open Mouth...

As phenomenal as Hillary Clinton has been (for Barack Obama) the same can not be said of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi. Her open feud with the Catholic Church on abortion seems to be the final straw for the Obama Campaign (HT Gary Gross).

The Obama campaign has asked Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi to shut her mouth, but in as nice a way as they possibly can. That isn't to say they aren't mad about her recent activities.

"It's like 'Thanks, madam speaker, you've done quite enough. Please move along,'" says one Obama adviser. "She got us stuck on three different issues that we wanted no part of. She's no master strategist, no matter what she may believe. You may see more of her, but if her mouth is open, what comes out won't be anything that our campaign wants anything to do with.

Emphasis mine! It seems that the Speaker's ego has threatened to overshadow the Presidential nominee's ego.

According to several House Democrat leadership staffers, Pelosi grew increasingly angry several months ago that she was not being given a strategic role in directing the Democrat convention or being actively sought out by the Obama campaign for advice. "She made a point that she was queen of the far left, which was the group that really helped Obama get to where he was," says Democrat leadership staffer, adding, "She didn't call herself a queen, but you get the point, and so did the Obama people."

Emphasis again mine. Now having an ego is a necessity for a politician - especially a politician that wants to be President. However, Speaker Pelosi has to recognize that she is not the one with the power that she craves. Barack Obama is....

Follow The Genes

I have written before about the nature of Chicago politics and the power of the machine. For those of you who have not lived there it may be a little difficult to unravel the layers of this onion, but Michael Baron made a valiant attempt at it today. It is not about what you know or even necessarily who you know (although that helps) as much as who you are related to.

That's how William Ayers got where he was. When he came out of hiding because the federal government was unable to prosecute him (because of government misconduct), he got a degree in education from Columbia and then moved to Chicago and got a job on the education faculty of the University of Illinois-Chicago Circle. How did he get that job? Well, it can't have hurt that his father, Thomas Ayers, was chairman of Commonwealth Edison (now Exelon) and a charter member of the Chicago establishment. As Mayor Richard M. Daley said recently, in arguing that the Ayers association should not be held against Obama, "His father was a great friend of my father."

In none of our other major cities is genealogy so important. I remember a story that Bill Plante of CBS News has often told. Plante was working for WBBM, the Chicago CBS-owned and -operated affiliate, during the violence-plagued Democratic National Convention. At a press conference, he asked the late Mayor Richard J. Daley a question "da mare" thought was impertinent. Daley's answer was, "Sometimes even in the best of families there's a bad apple." It baffled the members of the national press, ut not those from Chicago. Plante's father and brother were Democratic precinct committeemen in the 49th Ward. The late Mayor Daley had the whole city of Chicago in his head. It is only natural that his son should vouch for someone by saying that their fathers were great friends.

The voters of Chicago and Illinois respect family ties in a way that voters in no other state or city do. The current Mayor Daley is, of course, the son of the late Mayor Daley; the two Daleys have been mayors, and effective and competent mayors, of Chicago for 40 of the last 53 years. The attorney general of Illinois is the daughter of the speaker of the Illinois House of Representatives. The governor of Illinois is the son-in-law of the Democratic ward committeeman in the 33rd Ward. The congressman from the 2nd Congressional District is Jesse Jackson Jr. Jackson's predecessor-but-one in the district was Morgan Murphy Jr., whose father was chairman of (get this) Commonwealth Edison.

But my favorite example of the importance of family ties is 3rd District Rep. Dan Lipinski, who was first elected in 2004 to replace his father, Bill Lipinski, who was first elected in 1982. Bill Lipinski won the Democratic nomination in the March 2004 primary. But on August 13, he announced he would not seek re-election and would resign the Democratic nomination. The deadline for replacing him was August 26, and a meeting was set on August 17 for the 19th Ward and township Democratic committeemen to choose a new candidate. Lipinski announced his support for his son, who was then a professor of political science at the University of Tennessee and had not lived in Chicago for many years. Among the committeemen making the decision were: 11th Ward committeeman and County Commissioner John Daley, son of the late mayor and brother of the current mayor; 13th Ward committeeman Michael Madigan, speaker of the Illinois House and father of Attorney General Lisa Madigan; 14th Ward committeeman Edward Burke, who succeeded his father as a council member in his 20s and and was longtime chairman of the Finance Committee, and whose wife is a justice of the Illinois Supreme Court; 19th Ward committeeman Tom Hynes, former Cook County Assessor and father of Illinois Comptroller Dan Hynes; and 23rd Ward committeeman Bill Lipinski. An electorate more averse to an argument against nepotism cannot be imagined. Lipinski advanced his son's name and said, "I'm optimistic, but one never knows in politics until the votes are counted." It did not take long to count them: Dan Lipinski was nominated without opposition. To the charge that the nomination was rigged, one participant dryly noted that anyone could have run.

Emphasis mine - go back and read again the family ties in the bolded section.

One more family needs to be added to the geneology....Emil Jones' family. Remember, this is the same Emil Jones who, when announcing his recent retirement, endorsed his son as his replacement. This is (partly) how Senator Barack Obama fits in to this story.

What stood out about the skinny, 25-year-old community organizer the first time Emil Jones met him?

"He was a little pushy," the president of the Illinois Senate recalls of Barack Obama.

Jones was just a state senator back in 1985 when he noticed a handful of people gathering down the block from his South Side district office. Jones walked over to see what they were up to.

It wasn't till he read about it in Obama's book, years later, that he realized the group had been gathering to organize a protest.

"I sort of startled them by warmly greeting them," Jones said, sitting in his state office in Chicago's Thompson Center. "They were organizing to get some attention for the dropout rate at Fenger High School. I had the same concerns, so I invited them in to my office. We sat down and had a dialogue. They weren't just there to complain. They actually had solutions to the problem. "

Years later, Jones would welcome Obama into the state Senate and help shepherd him into the U.S. Senate.

Now comes the rest of the Obama tie in...

How did this outsider from Hawaii and Columbia and Harvard become somebody somebody sent? His wife, Michelle Robinson Obama, had some connections: Her father was (I believe) a Democratic precinct committeeman, she baby-sat for Jesse Jackson's children, and she worked as a staffer for the current Mayor Daley.

Emphasis again mine. Note more family ties and ties to the Daley family. Now what so you suppose happens when you cross "la famalia"?? Journalist Stanley Kurtz found out the hard way.

Conservative writer Stanley Kurtz—researching an article for the National Review about connections between Barack Obama and former Weather Underground terrorist William Ayers—made a big mistake.

The poor man took a wrong turn on the Chicago Way. Now he's lost.

Kurtz's research was to be done in a special library run by the University of Illinois at Chicago. The library has 132 boxes full of documents pertaining to the Chicago Annenberg Challenge, a foundation vested heavily in school reform.

Care to take a wild guess as to whose name is on the UIC Library? The one that houses the Annenberg Challenge documents? You would be wrong if you said any other name but Daley...

You don't understand, Mr. Kurtz? Allow me to explain. The secret is hidden in the name of the library:

The Richard J. Daley Library.

Eureka!

The Richard J. Daley Library doesn't want nobody nobody sent. And Richard J.'s son, Shortshanks, is now the mayor.

And in the City of Chicago - what the Daley family wants, the Daley family GETS!

This is the "power" behind Senator Barack Obama. He did not get to where he is today without a lot of help from "family" and that "family" is going to expect favors in return once Barack gets into the White House.

Think about that for a moment. Take from now until October 31 if you need to but realize what is behind the so-called "Candidate of Change".....the same old politics of 1968. Talk about Recreating '68!

Out of Touch Again

The headline says it all "Candidate does not know how many houses he owns". Only the headline is not from 2008. It's from 2004! In the last two days, Senator Barack Obama has tried to make hay over a remark by Senator John McCain where he said that he didn't know how many homes that he and his wife owned. Sen. Joe Biden even quipped today that Sen. McCain needs to "figure out which of the seven kitchen tables to sit at". The problem with this is that when Republicans raised the charge about then nominee John Kerry in 2004.....

The aggregate value of these five homes is roughly$29 million, but the claim that John Kerry "owns" all of these properties is problematic. John and Teresa Kerry signed a prenuptial agreement and have kept their premarital assets separate.

Hmmmm.....now where have I heard that before???? Oh yeah that's where...

When I did a story about John McCain's release of his tax returns a few weeks ago, I somehow missed out on the glaring fact that Republican Presidential hopeful John McCain has a prenuptial agreement with second wife Cindy McCain. Well, at least she let him keep his maiden name.

So let's see just who owns those homes...the condo in Arlington, the Phoenix high rise and two of the four properties near Sedona are all owned by the Cindy Hensley McCain Family Trust. The 2nd Phoenix high rise condo and the Phoenix duplex...all owned by the Wild River Rental LLC. The two condos in Coronado CA are owned by the Dream Catcher Family Trust LLC. The other two Sedona properties (a house and a vacant property) are owned by the Sedona Hidden Valley LP. The condo in La Jolla CA is owned by the Margurite Hensley Survivors Trust. Eleven total properties and not one of them has John McCain's name on it. All are owned by either a business trust or by his wife - just the same as John and Teresa Kerry.

So before any of you Democrats decide to cast stones remember this. Four years ago, you defended John Kerry when he was faced with the same accusations. Do you really want to go down this particular road?

Slamming The Door.

I was going to write on this yesterday, but I got bombarded with so many other more timely stories so I let it slide to today. Minnesota Governor Tim Pawlenty was campaigning for Senator McCain in Wisconsin on Monday and he gave a speech on energy at the UW Madison.

Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty, often mentioned as a potential running mate for Sen. John McCain, promoted the presumptive Republican presidential nominee's energy policy and critiqued his rival's as he campaigned across Wisconsin on Monday.

Pawlenty said Democratic Sen. Barack Obama would "slam the door shut" on additional nuclear power and offshore drilling if elected president because of his conditional support for those options.

McCain's plans to open more U.S. coastal waters to exploration for oil and gas and to add 45 nuclear power plants by 2030 would do more reduce the nation's dependence on foreign oil, Pawlenty said.

"Senator McCain's proposal is bold, it's aggressive, it's an all-of-the-above approach," Pawlenty said at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. "Senator Obama has taken a very minimalist, or none-of-the-above, or very-few-of-the-above approaches."

Senator McCain has stated many times that he would support an energy program along the lines of the American Energy Act which is currently bottled up by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi. To be fair he was not always in favor of expanded drilling - however, given the current circumstances, he has realized that his prior plan will no longer work. Senator Obama also has come around to the realization that prior restrictions on domestic energy production can not longer work, however his conversion to the cause has been tepid at best. All of his speeches on the subject have been made with one foot firmly planted on EACH side of the debate.

On Sunday, Obama accused McCain of dropping his longstanding opposition to offshore drilling in recent months only because he saw it was a popular position in polls. The Illinois senator has said he could accept some additional drilling -- but only as part of a comprehensive energy package.

To be fair Senator Obama - Senator McCain at least made the change before the AEA debate got "popular". The same can not be said of you. Your policy shift was made in just the last two weeks when it became overwhelmingly apparent that the American people wanted more domestic energy production and they wanted it NOW!

Obama also has said nuclear energy would be on the table if he's elected.

Pawlenty said Obama's positions would be a roadblock to increasing the nation's energy supply. "I personally believe that if Barack Obama gets elected, he will slam the door shut on these options," he said. "If Senator McCain is elected, he will open the door to these options and allow our energy supply to be increased and take some of the pressure off our energy crisis in the country."

To be fair to both Senators, I am issuing a challenge. Even though the discharge petition does not apply to the Senate - PUT YOUR NAME ON THE PETITION. Show the American people that you mean what you say. Tell Speaker Pelosi that it is time for a real American Energy plan - one that will enrich the American people and not just her family and the businesses SHE has money invested in. Let the House debate and amend the American Energy Act TODAY.

Sign the Petition. Show the American people that you really mean what you say!

Letter From A Democrat

I got this email from a friend who now calls himself a "former Democrat". Could this be the feeling of other former Obama supporters? Names changed to protect the emailers privacy.

“Well, uh, you know, I think that whether you’re looking at it from a theological perspective or, uh, a scientific perspective, uh, answering that question with specificity, uh, you know, is, is, uh, above my pay grade.” - Sen. Barack Obama, on “When does a baby get human rights?”

In 1948, they had Harry Truman and “The buck stops here!”

In 2008, they’ve got Barack Obama and it’s “above my pay grade.”

This is definitely not your grandfather’s Democratic Party.

Certainly not mine. My grandfather, Roy F, was a lifelong FDR Democrat, the kind who would proudly rather vote for a wife-beating, syphilitic drunkard than for a Republican. In fact, he would find the previous sentence entirely redundant.

My grandfather helped push Patton’s tanks across Europe, and one reason for my grandfather’s unshakable party loyalty was his belief that Harry Truman saved his life by dropping the A-bombs on Japan.

If Truman hadn’t made the call - if he’d demurred that such a profound life-and-death decision was “above my pay grade” - my grandfather believed that he and untold thousands of Americans would have died invading the Japanese mainland.

I miss my grandfather, but I’m also glad that he isn’t around to witness the tragic descent of his beloved Democratic Party.

Watching Obama with the Rev. Rick Warren this past weekend, answering questions - or, more accurately, not answering - about his most basic beliefs was simply embarrassing.

Obama supports partial-birth abortion and voted against the “Born Alive Infant Protection Act.” When he got the invitation to an evangelical forum hosted by a pro-life pastor, he had to know that issues regarding life and the law were going to come up.

And his prepared answer to the most fundamental question about public policy and abortion (“is the fetus a human being?”) is that it’s “above my pay grade?”

There are certain sentences that should never appear on the lips of the Leader of the Free World. “That Vladimir Putin, what a great guy!” is one of them. “I did not have sex with that woman” is another.

But on the very top of the list of statements about our nation’s laws that should never be spoken by a guy whose job it is to sit next to the Big, Red Button is “That’s above my pay grade.”

With all due respect, Sen. Obama, being president is above your pay grade. And the voters are starting to figure that out.

Politico.com reported yesterday that 75 percent of Americans believe that John McCain can “handle the job of commander in chief.” Only 50 percent feel the same about Obama. A whopping 42 percent told pollsters they believe Obama is simply not up to the task.

Who can blame them? Obama wants the difficult duty of taking on Iran and North Korea, but he can’t even handle Rick Warren or the Clintons - the latter having commandeered Obama’s own convention in Denver next week and forced their way into a pro-Hillary roll call. Having been routed by the Clintonistas, Obama wants a chance to lead against al-Qaeda? Please.

Leaders don’t pass tough questions to the next “pay grade.” They don’t need five minutes to answer yes-or-no questions about the surge or Russia’s invasion of a democratic neighbor.

Politicians flip-flop on taxes and FISA and the Second Amendment to meet the political needs of the moment. They try to explain away the votes they’ve already cast, like Obama’s extreme pro-abortion voting record. Or they courageously cast 130 non-votes of “present” in the Illinois legislature and pass the buck that way.

That’s not leadership, that’s politics. And Barack Obama is 100 percent pure politician.

He is certainly no Harry Truman