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Obama can't shake off Clinton (Roger Simon, Politico)

Barack Obama could not “close the deal” in Pennsylvania on Tuesday night. Hillary Clinton said so, and just about every talking head on TV used that phrase.

Though Obama has won twice as many contests as Clinton, this man clearly suffers from a failure to close.

Why? It may be because, as Clinton argues in her TV ads, he does not have “what it takes” to be president and lead the nation in crisis. (The ad features pictures not just of Osama bin Laden, but also of Pearl Harbor, suggesting, I guess, that Clinton will protect us not just from Al Qaeda but also from the Japanese.)

While Clinton did not actually call Obama a wimp in Pennsylvania, she did say he was “elitist and out of touch” and “demeaning.” She can also drink him under the table. (And he stinks at bowling.)

She's clearly trying to be the more manly candidate. But how will that benefit her as she tries to get the nomination in the mommy party?

Posted by Kevin Whited on 24 April 2008, 07:30 PM | Comments (0)
Filed under: General, American Politics
Positive votes: 34 of 56 | Vote (+ / -)
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Nancy hearts Hugo (Matthew Continetti, Weekly Standard)

A war-torn country with a democratically elected government, plagued by militias, terrorists, and drugs--but one that is steadily making progress against all these evils--wants to strengthen its ties to the United States. The Bush administration acts to help this ally. What does the Democratic Congress do? It changes the rules so that the Colombia Free Trade Agreement (CFTA), negotiated in good faith between the two governments and inked in 2006, can't come to a vote.

Memo to Venezuelan dictator Hugo Chávez: Send flowers to the office of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi.

It is Chávez who profits most from the CFTA's demise. For years now, he's been locked in a struggle with Colombian president lvaro Uribe over the future of South America. Chávez wants that future to be socialist, authoritarian, friendly to other dictators, and belligerent toward the United States. Uribe wants it to be market-oriented, democratic, and integrated into an international system friendly to freedom and organized and led by the United States. The two visions could not be more different.

Posted by Kevin Whited on 24 April 2008, 07:28 PM | Comments (0)
Filed under: General, International Politics, Business/Economics, American Foreign Policy
Positive votes: 26 of 45 | Vote (+ / -)
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A Nightmare of their Own Making (Michael Dawson, The Root)

Obama needs to run as a populist, and as a hard core Democrat who can convincingly make the argument that McCain is not a centrist, but a right wing extremist, who even some of his Republican colleagues consider more dangerous than the current president. He needs to expose McCain's right-wing extremist and corporate, slime-bag supporters and show how they represent not only business, as usual, but a clear and present danger to the Republic. This is the most likely way Obama can win. He cannot out centrist McCain. He has to demonstrate what is at stake and why even those who may not like him should support him for their own good. Democrats have not run campaigns like this much lately. It is a type of campaign, however, that could both invigorate and reunite a party that is now badly fractured and headed for a nightmarish fall.

Could the GOP ask for more?

Posted by R. Alex Whitlock on 24 April 2008, 09:14 AM | Comments (0)
Filed under: General, American Politics
Positive votes: 21 of 38 | Vote (+ / -)
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Education Lessons We Left Behind (George Will, Washington Post)

In 1976, for the first time in its 119-year history, the National Education Association, the teachers union, endorsed a presidential candidate, Jimmy Carter, who repaid it by creating the Education Department, a monument to the premise that money and government programs matter most. At the NEA's behest, the nation has expanded the number of teachers much faster than the number of students has grown. Hiring more, rather than more competent, teachers meant more dues-paying union members. For decades, schools have been treated as laboratories for various equity experiments. Fads incubated in education schools gave us "open" classrooms, teachers as "facilitators of learning" rather than transmitters of knowledge, abandonment of a literary canon in the name of "multiculturalism," and so on, producing a majority of high school juniors who could not locate the Civil War in the proper half-century.

In 1994, Congress grandly decreed that by 2000 the high school graduation rate would be "at least" 90 percent and that American students would be "first in the world in mathematics and science achievement." Moynihan, likening such goals to Soviet grain quotas -- solemnly avowed, never fulfilled -- said: "That will not happen." It did not.

Posted by R. Alex Whitlock on 24 April 2008, 09:12 AM | Comments (0)
Filed under: General, Education/Academia
Positive votes: 25 of 49 | Vote (+ / -)
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The truths shall set you free (Iain Murray, The American Spectator)

I wanted to warn people about the disastrous effects of biofuel policies around the world, and now events have justified my concern far more than I ever imagined. For years, biofuels were a bit player in the farm subsidies game, a losing proposition that politicians kept going to curry favor with the farm lobby.

Then, as concern over global warming began to heat up, biofuels came to be seen as an easy solution to loud calls on the political left to decarbonize the nation's energy supply. Left-liberal politicians did an about-face. Once seen as a political sweetheart deal, government mandating use of ethanol in gasoline and subsidizing its production became a vital component in the fight against global warming.

Yet all the world's various biofuels laws have done is to force industries to burn food as fuel. This has precipitated food shortages and massive increases in food prices around the world. There have been food riots in Indonesia, Mexico, Egypt, and most recently, Haiti -- where the poor have been reduced to eating cakes made with bleach and are on the verge of bringing the government down. Even in America, some grocery stores have begun to institute a form of rationing.

Meanwhile, massive tracts of rainforest are being cleared in Indonesia to produce biodiesel, threatening the orangutan and other magnificent animals with extinction. In Brazil, the growth of sugar cultivation for ethanol is forcing food producers into the Amazon. Little of this would have happened without the demands for less carbon-intensive energy from the environmental movement. Now they've let the genie out of the bottle.

THIS RESULT WAS inevitable given the model, which was first used in the campaign to ban DDT.

Posted by Kevin Whited on 22 April 2008, 11:29 PM | Comments (2)
Filed under: General, Environment, Books/Arts
Positive votes: 23 of 43 | Vote (+ / -)
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The Audacity of the real audacity (Stanley Kurtz, NRO)

What did Jeremiah Wright actually say in the “Audacity of Hope” sermon that so famously led to Barack Obama’s conversion? It seems clear that the sermon text posted by PreachingToday.com and reposted on many blogs during the height of the Wright controversy in March is not, in fact, a complete text of what Obama heard on that fateful day. A longer and decidedly more political text, can be found in What Makes You So Strong? Sermons of Joy and Strength From Jeremiah A. Wright Jr. The “Audacity to Hope” sermon reprinted in that volume may not be precisely what Obama himself first heard, but it does seem significantly closer to the original than the text posted last month at PreachingToday.com.

In any case, the book version of the famous “Audacity” sermon, like the other sermons reprinted in What Makes You So Strong? provides a fascinating window into Reverend Wright’s political and social worldview. Out of this collection come passages equating Zionism with racism, offering criticism of the Catholic practice of Holy Communion, defending Louis Farrakhan, and attacking American military interventions in Panama, Grenada, and the first Gulf War.

Posted by Kevin Whited on 22 April 2008, 11:23 PM | Comments (0)
Filed under: General, American Politics
Positive votes: 18 of 48 | Vote (+ / -)
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Higher prices (Thomas Sowell, NRO)

A front-page headline in the New York Times captures much of the economic confusion of our time: “Fewer Options Open to Pay for Costs of College.”

The whole article is about the increased costs of college, the difficulties parents have in paying those costs, and the difficulties that both students and parents have in trying to borrow the money needed when their current incomes will not cover college costs.

All that is fine for a purely “human interest”story. But making economic policies on the basis of human interest stories — which is what politicians increasingly do, especially in election years — has a big downside for those people who do not happen to be in the categories chosen to write human interest stories about.

The general thrust of human interest stories about people with economic problems, whether they are college students or people faced with mortgage foreclosures, is that the government ought to come to their rescue, presumably because the government has so much money and these individuals have so little.

Like most “deep pockets,” however, the government’s deep pockets come from vast numbers of people with much shallower pockets. In many cases, the average taxpayer has lower income than the people on whom the government lavishes its financial favors.

Posted by Kevin Whited on 22 April 2008, 11:20 PM | Comments (0)
Filed under: General, Business/Economics
Positive votes: 21 of 47 | Vote (+ / -)
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Democrats attack: Expanding the Dionne lexicon (Peter Wehner, NRO)

In his appearance on Meet the Press on Sunday E.J. Dionne, Jr. said this:

Hillary Clinton is running as the tough fighter, and if Obama doesn’t show Democrats that he can be a tough fighter against the Republican attack machine, so-called, but in fact it is, then, you know, Democrats are going to pull back from him.

This has been a theme of Dionne’s for years now. I’d urge readers to do a simple Google search with the words “E. J. Dionne” and “Republican attack machine” or “right-wing attack machine” and see the treasure trove you’ll stumble across. Dionne believes the “Republican attack machine” is brutal, efficient, and unique. Republicans play dirty, according to this narrative; Democrats do not.

And why would we expect other than this from such a hardcore partisan?

Posted by Kevin Whited on 22 April 2008, 11:17 PM | Comments (0)
Filed under: General, American Politics
Positive votes: 21 of 39 | Vote (+ / -)
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The rules change for Obama (Michael Barone, RealClearPolitics)

Obama fans are upset that ABC News' Stephanopoulos and Charlie Gibson broke the unwritten rule that you are not supposed to ask Democratic candidates about these things. Associations with unrepentant radicals and comments made to contributors at a San Francisco fund-raiser in a billionaire's mansion are supposed to be kept indoors. Only the face that the candidate wants to place before the public should be seen.

Beliefs that most activist liberals share should be kept under wraps if they are unpopular with most of the voting public. That is how mainstream media have operated for the last generation or more. But not at Philadelphia's Constitution Center on April 16. The rules had changed. And Barack Obama was not well prepared.

Posted by Kevin Whited on 22 April 2008, 11:15 PM | Comments (0)
Filed under: General, Media/Journalism, American Politics
Positive votes: 20 of 36 | Vote (+ / -)
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Debating Obama drama (Mark Hemingway, NRO)

Were Stephanopoulos and Gibson really out of line?

No.

Posted by Kevin Whited on 22 April 2008, 11:14 PM | Comments (0)
Filed under: General, Media/Journalism, American Politics
Positive votes: 20 of 35 | Vote (+ / -)
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New Book Illuminates Top Levels of Government Heading Into Iraq (Michael Barone, US News)

I haven't finished reading Douglas Feith's War and Decision: Inside the Pentagon at the Dawn of the War on Terrorism, but I feel secure in saying that it is an extraordinarily frank and persuasive book. Feith, who served as under secretary of defense for policy from 2001 to 2005, has been criticized harshly and, I think, unfairly for somehow lying us into Iraq. In War and Decision he presents his view, fortified by generous quotes from government documents, reports, and memorandums. He should be saluted for getting many materials declassified so that we can have a clearer idea of what was actually going on at the top levels of government. I have long been struck by the contrast between what we can read today about the acts of leaders in World War II and what I gather was available to readers at the time. This book provides our first in-depth look at the inside of the Bush administration's national security top leadership from one who was there.

One warning, however: Those who are looking for dirt on Feith's colleagues in government are not going to find it here. He seems to be at pains to relay the arguments of those who had different views fairly and accurately. He concedes some mistakes of his own. And he contradicts much of what has become conventional wisdom about the Iraq war.

Posted by Kevin Whited on 21 April 2008, 01:10 PM | Comments (0)
Filed under: General, International Politics, American Foreign Policy
Positive votes: 22 of 43 | Vote (+ / -)
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The War on the Times (Michael Wolff, Vanity Fair)

The reward of going after The New York Times—the attention you’ll get for trying—is so much greater than the risk. It’s a worthy investment for any financial player seeking attention and glory with a few hundred million to play with—and there are countless such players. (Harbinger made $1.3 billion last year by betting against the housing market. Its C.E.O., Philip Falcone, just paid $49 million for Penthouse founder Bob Guccione’s Manhattan town house.)

The Times is good sport.

What happens, too, with such guerrilla actions, and with this type of war of attrition, is that the consensus shifts. As people begin to articulate various scenarios in which the Sulzberger family becomes jittery, morose, divided, resigned, this, in turn, gets more people thinking that the Times, rather than being a monolith, is an opportunity.

Indeed, the Times itself in mid-March recognized that, given the discontented vote of 42 percent of its shareholders at the last annual meeting (and a worsening of almost all circumstances since) and Harbinger’s and Firebrand’s significant and increasing holdings, the only way to avoid an embarrassing public defeat—and the possibility of losing all four of the seats—was to agree to give the insurgents two slots. Hence, Scott Galloway and investor James Kohlberg will join the New York Times board as avowed (and professional) malcontents.

Then, too, there is the other kind of rising discontent—more emotional than financial.

The ever growing list of its own journalistic missteps, blunders, and offenses threatens to become one of the things the Times most stands for: putting its foot in it. And the expectation, both within the Times and among those who obsessively watch it, is that there is always some further black eye, calumny, screwup, or remarkable instance of tone-deafness on the horizon.

This includes, most recently, the John McCain sex-scandal story—wherein the Times’s own agonizing internal conflicts about the story (Do we? Don’t we?), and its apparent tortured inability to deal with the most basic elements of the story (it’s about adultery, but we’ll say it’s about questionable lobbying), became close to farcical.

And then there’s the recent selection by Sulzberger and Andrew Rosenthal, the editorial-page editor, of William Kristol as a new op-ed columnist. This, predictably and furiously, has aroused the Times’s core liberal constituency, because Kristol is not just a conservative (the liberal Times, for unclear reasons, believes it must showcase conservative voices) but a neocon whose views have been dramatically discredited by events of the past few years. Adding to the sense of brand ennui at the paper is the fact that Kristol is everywhere. He’s a dial-a-conservative. What added value does it offer to Times readers, or to the Times’s “brand exclusivity,” to give its column space to somebody whose views are already widely known?

And then there’s the powerful rumor mill: the misfortunes and Kremlinology—a disintegrating Kremlin—at the Times have become a minor entertainment genre in the New York media.

Here’s the latest gossip: The Times editorial board was, apparently, planning to endorse Barack Obama in the New York primary; the Clinton campaign, getting wind of this, called upon one of its major financial supporters (and eager-beaver prospective Treasury secretary), the private-equity manager Steven Rattner, the best friend and principal adviser of Arthur Sulzberger Jr. Rattner is thought to have petitioned Sulzberger, and Sulzberger thereupon overruled his editorial board, which then backed Clinton. Among the messages here: Sulzberger is a weak link, and if one Wall Street guy has his hooks into the Times like this, why not others whose money is just as good as Rattner’s—or better?

So what will happen?

Posted by Kevin Whited on 21 April 2008, 01:07 PM | Comments (0)
Filed under: General, Media/Journalism
Positive votes: 18 of 40 | Vote (+ / -)
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Russia starts to pay price for its energy strategy (Catherine Belton, Financial Times)

Russian oil output in 2003 was increasing at such a swift pace even Saudi Arabia worried about upstart energy companies - including Yukos and Sibneft - then posting production gains of more than 20 per cent.

But from 2004 the Moscow government changed its tax regime and began to take over privately held assets, including Yukos, and so Saudi Arabia's fears proved short-lived.

As a result of these and other policies, average production growth in Russia has slowed to 2.5 per cent from a high point of 12 per cent in 2003. The problem has become so severe that Russian politicians and energy executives fear that this year the world's second biggest exporter may see its first decline in 10 years.

Output in the first three months fell 1 per cent to 9.76m barrels per day. For it to increase in the long-term, massive investments are needed to develop fresh pockets in western Siberia and to tap more remote provinces in eastern Siberia and the Arctic. Leonid Fedun, Lukoil vice-president, says Russia needs about $300bn (€190bn, £150bn) during the next eight years only to keep production at current levels.

But many projects are being held back by a difficult fiscal and political regime that began with the break up of Mikhail Khodorkovsky's Yukos by the Russian state after the tycoon's arrest in 2003 over tax charges.

Another problem is access to new fields, which is limited by a new law to companies with more than 51 per cent Russian participation.

Posted by Kevin Whited on 21 April 2008, 01:02 PM | Comments (0)
Filed under: General, International Politics, Business/Economics
Positive votes: 17 of 39 | Vote (+ / -)
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Nepal Authorizes Deadly Force to Stop Olympic Torch Protests (AP)

Nepalese soldiers and police guarding the slopes of Mount Everest are authorized to shoot to stop any protests during China's Olympic torch run to the summit, an official said Sunday.

Chinese climbers plan to take the torch to the summit of Everest -- the world's highest peak on the border between Nepal and Tibet -- in the first few days of May. During that time, other climbers will be banned from the mountain's higher elevations.

Police and soldiers ''have been given orders to stop any protest on the mountain using whatever means necessary, including use of weapons,'' Nepal's Home Ministry spokesman Modraj Dotel said, adding that the use of deadly force was authorized only as a last resort.

[snip]

The torch relay -- the longest in Olympic history -- was meant to highlight China's rising economic and political power. But activists have seized on it as a platform to protest China's human rights record. It has drawn particular ire from those denouncing China's rule in Tibet following a a crackdown on demonstrations in the Himalayan region in March.

Tibetan exiles have protested almost daily in the Nepalese capital of Katmandu in front of the United Nations office and the Chinese Embassy against Beijing's rule over the region.

The United Nations and international rights groups have criticized Nepal for using what they say is excessive force to stop the demonstrations. Police have beaten protesters with batons and dragged them through streets while detaining them.

You have to love that nonjudgmental "for using what they say is excessive force."

Posted by Kevin Whited on 21 April 2008, 12:58 PM | Comments (0)
Filed under: General, International Politics
Positive votes: 27 of 51 | Vote (+ / -)
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Girls disappearing as India advances (AP)

It has long been clear that India has a deep-seated preference for boys. By 2001, researchers estimated the country had anywhere from 20 million to 40 million "missing" girls from sex-selective abortions made available through the spread of ultrasound technology.

But as India modernizes -- as places like Singhpura become small towns, as towns become cities and as India's once-overwhelming poverty is slowly supplanted by an increasingly educated middle class that wants fewer children -- researchers say the problem is only getting worse.

"We're now dealing with attitudes that are spreading," said Sabu George, a prominent activist against the practice. "It's frightening what we're heading to."

Though the next national census will not be done until 2011 to give a detailed overall picture, study after study has found an increasingly grim situation even as India's middle class grows.

Researchers once thought education and wealth would dampen the preference for boys, but the reverse has turned out to be true.

According to UNICEF, about 7,000 fewer girls than would be expected are born every day in India.

According to the British medical journal the Lancet, as many as 500,000 female fetuses are being aborted every year. This in a country where abortion is legal but sex-determination tests were outlawed in 1991 -- a law nearly impossible to enforce.

Posted by Kevin Whited on 21 April 2008, 12:55 PM | Comments (0)
Filed under: General
Positive votes: 19 of 35 | Vote (+ / -)
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About Obama's terrorist acquaintance (Steve Chapman, RealClearPolitics)

I don't much care if he declines to wear a flag pin; I can overlook his wife's limited capacity for patriotic pride; and I defended his relationship with his former pastor. But his comfortable association with an unrepentant former terrorist should induce queasiness in anyone who shares the humane values that Obama extols.

When the issue came up in Wednesday's Democratic debate, the Illinois senator tried to duck it. "This is a guy who lives in my neighborhood, who's a professor of English in Chicago, who I know and who I have not received some official endorsement from," he said. He added that to suggest "knowing somebody who engaged in detestable acts 40 years ago, when I was 8 years old, somehow reflects on me and my values doesn't make much sense."

Obama went on, "I'm also friendly with Tom Coburn, one of the most conservative Republicans in the United States Senate, who during his campaign once said that it might be appropriate to apply the death penalty to those who carried out abortions. Do I need to apologize for Mr. Coburn's statements?"

This exercise in moral equivalence is unconvincing, if not dishonest. Would Obama be friendly with someone who actually bombed abortion clinics and defends that conduct? Not likely. But he is friendly with William Ayers, a leader of the radical Weather Underground, which in the 1970s carried out numerous bombings, including one inside the U.S. Capitol. (Though the last person who should object is Hillary Clinton, whose husband pardoned two Weather Underground members.)

Obama minimized his relationship by acknowledging only that he knows Ayers. But they have quite a bit more of a connection than that. He's appeared on panels with Ayers, served on a foundation board with him and held a 1995 campaign event at the home of Ayers and his wife, fellow terrorist Bernardine Dohrn. Ayers even gave money to one of his campaigns.

Strange, but that doesn't appear to be Karl Rove's name on this column.

Posted by Kevin Whited on 21 April 2008, 12:53 PM | Comments (0)
Filed under: General, American Politics
Positive votes: 20 of 38 | Vote (+ / -)
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What "Bittergate" reveals about the 2008 race (Sean Collins, Spiked)

Obama’s ‘explanation’ as to why Pennsylvanian voters ‘cling’ to their backward habits – he blames economic insecurity – is really patronising. This rationale, intended to be generous, is just vulgar economic determinism, whereby all political and social phenomena can be explained by unemployment and low wages. He, and other enlightened ones like him, presumably have rational, intellectual reasons for their beliefs, but the sheep-like masses are prone to irrational attachments whenever economic stagnation hits. If only the unemployed Pennsylvanians had jobs, like San Francisco liberals, they would relax and see the sense of right-on values of diversity and multiculturalism.

All in all, Obama’s comments make him appear aloof and uninformed about the people he claims he wants to represent. Obama comes across as more Anthropologist-in-Chief than presidential candidate. At his fundraising event, he seemed to be explaining the strange ways of some unusual tribe to friendly San Francisco liberals who just cannot fathom why white working-class people would not simply automatically vote for Obama.

Given these problems with Obama’s remarks, it may seem obvious why they have caused a hail of protest that has yet to subside. But it isn’t obvious at all.

Why are his comments viewed as outrageous, when they have been commonplace within the Democratic Party for many years?

Posted by Kevin Whited on 21 April 2008, 12:50 PM | Comments (0)
Filed under: General, American Politics
Positive votes: 22 of 40 | Vote (+ / -)
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Obama Could Get 'Swift Boated' (Kate Snow, ABC News)

Titled "What Is Rove Up To?," Sloan writes that Rove will seek to redefine Obama's signature slogan "Change We Can Believe In" and brand it instead as "revolutionary change, change driven by an alien ideology, change no patriotic American could stomach. And he intends to do so by channeling Sen. Joseph McCarthy."

The IAMAW endorsed Clinton last year, and Sloan is an avid Clinton supporter. The document makes no mention of Sloan's position with the union, and he told ABC News he sent it as a private citizen, not in his role as a spokesman for the union.

[snip]

In the memo, Sloan lays out the case he believes Republicans are making and would make against Obama if he were the Democratic nominee, linking the senator to Weather Underground founders Bill Ayers and Bernadine Dohrn.

"According to Weatherman communiqués and papers compiled by the Federal Bureau of Investigation into a 403 page summary, Ayers and Dohrn toed the Marxist-Leninist-Maoist line. They were hardcore Communists bent on world revolution," Sloan writes.

"Ayers and Dohrn were responsible for bombings of the US State Department, US Capitol, the Pentagon, the National Guard Headquarters and nineteen other sites. Two other Weathermen, the parents of Ayers and Dohrn's adopted son, Chelsa, were convicted of murdering two policemen and a security guard during a Brinks truck robbery," he says.

Sloan says Rove and Republicans would "eviscerate" Obama if he were the Democratic presidential candidate. He recalls links that have been reported in the press between Obama and Ayers and brings up other leftist leaders and ideologues.

"Rove's frame for the fall campaign will be filled with revolutionary figures -- Marx, Lenin, Mao, Ho Chi Minh and Che Guevara. His audio tapes of Ayers, Dohrn and other Weathermen will provide the screams of revolution. The bombing of the US Capitol, the Pentagon and the US State Department will serve as b-roll for his television ads that will have one final visual as the announcer gravely intones 'Their Change -- Not What You Had In Mind?'" he predicts.

Nice of him to contribute to the advertising suggestion box. It is not at all clear why Obama's associations shouldn't be an issue in the campaign, though.

Posted by Kevin Whited on 21 April 2008, 12:45 PM | Comments (0)
Filed under: General, American Politics
Positive votes: 20 of 38 | Vote (+ / -)
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Democrats Blocked Resolution Welcoming Pope because of "pro-life" language (John Jalsevac, LifeSiteNews)

A resolution welcoming the Pope to the United States was stalled in the U.S. Senate after Democrats said they would not vote on the resolution unless offending "pro-life language" was removed from it.

The resolution was introduced on Tuesday by Republican Senator Sam Brownback and was co-sponsored by Democratic Senator Bob Casey, both Catholics.

The original text included, amongst a series of statements regarding the Holy Father's biography and accomplishments, the statement, "Whereas Pope Benedict XVI has spoken out for the weak and vulnerable, witnessing to the value of each and every human life."

Democratic Senator Barbara Boxer, however, disapproved of the wording of that part of the resolution, and demanded that the last ten words, "witnessing to the value of each and every human life", be removed. Boxer and a number of colleagues delayed the vote for three days. In order to pass using the process of "hotlining," which allows for a resolution or a bill to pass in a matter of minutes instead of weeks, the resolution welcoming Benedict required a unanimous vote.

One senior Republican leadership aide told FOX News, "What's the problem with this? Does Sen. Boxer not value life? It speaks directly to the message the Pope delivered when he arrived here."

Posted by Kevin Whited on 21 April 2008, 12:42 PM | Comments (0)
Filed under: General, American Politics
Positive votes: 22 of 43 | Vote (+ / -)
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A "bitter" misstep (Kimberley Strassel, Wall Street Journal)

Mr. Obama's political brilliance to date has been to use his message of hope to deflect questions about himself or his record. He'd actually created the perception that to challenge him was to challenge "hope" itself. Think back to that soaring race speech, which so successfully turned the debate toward America's shared problem, and away from Mr. Obama's individual Jeremiah Wright problem. But the San Fran comments proved one scandal too many; man and message have now been delinked.

And so nearly the whole first hour of Wednesday's debate was devoted to Mr. Obama's gun-God comments, his wisdom in sticking with a rabid pastor, his links to 1960s radicals, even his patriotism. The candidate's frustration was visible, and he spent yesterday complaining the debate was the latest in "gotcha games" that take away from the "issues." Then again, among the important "issues" for many voters are a candidate's beliefs, character and judgment. Mr. Obama will just have to get used to it.

Posted by Kevin Whited on 18 April 2008, 01:07 PM | Comments (0)
Filed under: General, American Politics
Positive votes: 22 of 46 | Vote (+ / -)
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