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May 30, 2008

Exclusive: Friday, May 30

Presidential Watch

For information on Barack Obama's record, GO HERE.

Out of the mouths of babes; hear a child's comments on Hillary's "assassination" remarks - CLICK HERE.

Hillary's Obama Assassination Fantasy?

Jerry Bowyer, Townhall.com

Obama supporters have been hinting about lack of adequate secret service protection since before the primaries began. The Service denies any the accusations. But since in the eyes of his followers Obama is the next Martin Luther King, and since many on the radical Left believe that King was purposely left unprotected by law enforcement, Obama assassination scenarios have been quite common on the web. Don't believe me? Google ‘assassinate Obama' and see for yourself.

Of course, now, after this week's gaffe, your first couple of hundred references will be about Hillary's comment. As far as I can tell, she was making the point that primaries are long and uncertain things and that for this reason she should feel free to keep plugging away at the nomination. She used two historical examples, 1968 and 1992. Yes, Bobby got into the primary late, so what? The point is that the primary itself lasted a long time. She said that this example came to mind because Ted's illness put the Kennedy's woes top of mind for her. Yes, she mentioned this scenario to Time Magazine before the cancer announcement, so what? She didn't say that this was the first time she had thought of this point, only that it came out in this case because she had the Kennedy family on her mind.

She was, of course, incredibly stupid. Did she not see how the cyclone of hard Left hatred for her and the hurricane of Obama's messianic image would combine into a perfect storm of outrage from the Left? Apparently not. Read article.

An Open Letter to Senator Obama on Iran

Manda Zand-Ervin & Banafsheh Zand-Bonazzi, Pajamas Media.com

Dear Senator Barack Obama:

After the recent days of highly charged commentary about "appeasement," we thought that as Iranian-Americans, we would convey to you the feelings of most people in Iran and the Iranian diaspora at large. It is important that a decision to dialogue with the Islamic Republic of Iran not be made in haste, for the purpose of winning the election. Instead, you now have a unique opportunity to make good on your message of change.

On September 24, 2004, while a Democratic candidate for U.S. Senate from Illinois, you suggested that "surgical missile strikes" on Iran may become necessary. "Launching some missile strikes into Iran is not the optimal position for us to be in" given the ongoing war in Iraq, you told the Chicago Tribune. You continued: "On the other hand, having a radical Muslim theocracy in possession of nuclear weapons is worse".

Your change in approach is now stunning for many Iranians. It is not that we want our country to be bombed, but the point is, why did you so suddenly and without explanation go from that extreme to the extreme of "unconditional dialogue"? Read article.

Why I'm Afraid of a President Barack Obama

Sandy Rios, Townhall.com

If Barack Obama is elected President of the United States, I fear our enemies will smell the blood of weakness and rise in retaliation here and abroad. While Obama makes sweeping promises to end the war in Iraq, he never projects the consequences. Radical Islam is waging a holy war against us-and they have no intent on ending their war against the West. Withdrawal will be perceived as surrender and the election of a president sympathetic to their cause will embolden them like nothing else.

Iraq will recede into bloody, sectarian retaliatory violence. Iran will take advantage and wield new power in the region. Our military families will have the sacrifice of their loved ones rendered meaningless. And our enemies will come here.

Israel will find itself alone. Europe and the British Isles, already too overrun with Islamists, will provide little defense. A future President Obama, who is a dear friend to PLO sympathizer andYasser-Arafat-apologist Rashid Kalidi, who is championed by members of Hamas in Gaza and endorsed by one of their leaders, will, I fear, not lift a finger to defend them. It is, after all, this same future president who has sat for 20 years (until recently without objection), listening to Dr. Jeremiah Wright praise Hamas and the famous Israel despiser, Louis Farrakhan.

Read article.

Michelle Obama is fair game

Jeff Jacoby, Boston.com

There is Michelle Obama's creepily authoritarian vision of life under an Obama administration. From a speech in California:

"Barack Obama will require you to work. He is going to demand that you shed your cynicism. That you put down your divisions. That you come out of your isolation, that you move out of your comfort zone . . . Barack will never allow you to go back to your lives as usual - uninvolved, uninformed."

Michelle Obama is undeniably smart, driven, outspoken, and charismatic. She is also relentlessly negative about life in these United States. True, she is not the one running for president. But she is Barack Obama's closest confidante and adviser; if he is elected, her influence will be considerable. That is why her words matter. And why, whether her husband likes it or not, Michelle Obama is a legitimate issue in this campaign. Read article.

What Kind of Justice Would President Obama Mete Out?

Jennifer Rubin, Pajamas Media.com

Barack Obama may have been a professor of constitutional law, but some of his ideas about the role of the Supreme Court could be problematic. Which justices would he appoint if given the chance?

Barack Obama, the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee, never tires of telling his audiences that he was a constitutional law professor and, therefore, particularly qualified to address the sticky constitutional issues which the next president will face. Indeed, his early fame came, in large measure, from his status as the first African American editor of the Harvard Law Review.

Both because he offers his legal background as a qualification for the presidency and because the next president may have the opportunity to appoint five or more Supreme Court justices (plus as many as two hundred lower court judges), it is worthwhile to look at Obama's views on the Constitution and his criteria for selecting judges. Read article.

The Past Is Not Dead

A.J. DiCintio, NMJ.us

When we get to feeling like Big Brown (who certainly has a right to feel his oats), we Americans often plume ourselves about "how far we've come" and how "advanced" we are compared to America of the past.

Well, we have come far and are advanced in many ways; but how about with respect to the democracy bequeathed to us by patriots great and small, including former presidents Jefferson, Jackson, and Lincoln, at whose annual commemorative dinners shameless politicians spew buckets of slop intended to hide the anti-Jeffersonian, anti-Jacksonian, and anti-Lincolnian notions that really guide their politics.

To make a judgment about our degree of democratic advancement, we need to recall that when those presidents spoke of democracy, they meant one in which "We the People" make law or, in Jefferson's words, one in which "the will of the society enounced by the majority of a single vote [is] as sacred as if unanimous."

That's why at every opportunity Jefferson, who believed that "The mass of the citizens is the safest depository of their own rights," railed against the activist judges of his time, denouncing them as guilty of "sapping and mining, slyly, and without alarm, the foundations of the Constitution [to accomplish] what open force would not dare to attempt."

That's why Jackson got so apoplectically angry with John Marshall that he went off the deep end, not only telling the Chief Justice to take one of his decisions and shove it but also never backing down.

That's why Lincoln, with his usual pithy, profound simplicity urged the audience at Gettysburg to resolve that "government of the people by the people for the people, shall not perish from the earth."

But what do the former presidents see as they look upon contemporary America? Read article.

Obama's Metastatic Gaffe

Charles Krauthammer, JWR.com

When the House of Representatives takes up arms against $4 gas by voting 324-84 to sue OPEC, you know that election-year discourse has entered the realm of the surreal. Another unmistakable sign is when a presidential candidate makes a gaffe, then, realizing it is too egregious to take back without suffering humiliation, decides to make it a centerpiece of his foreign policy.

Before the Democratic debate of July 23, Barack Obama had never expounded upon the wisdom of meeting, without precondition, with Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Bashar al-Assad, Hugo Chávez, Kim Jong Il or the Castro brothers. But in that debate, he was asked about doing exactly that. Unprepared, he said sure - then got fancy, declaring the Bush administration's refusal to do so not just "ridiculous" but "a disgrace."

After that, there was no going back. So he doubled down. What started as a gaffe became policy. By now, it has become doctrine. Yet it remains today what it was on the day he blurted it out: an absurdity.

Obama pretends that while he is for such "engagement," the cowboy Republicans oppose it. Another absurdity. No one is debating the need for contacts. The debate is over the stupidity of elevating rogue states and their tyrants, easing their isolation, and increasing their leverage by granting them unconditional meetings with the president of the world's superpower.

Such rhetorical flailing has done more than create an intellectual mess. It has given rise to a new political phenomenon: the metastatic gaffe. The one begets another, begets another, begets . . .

Read article.

If the Shoe Fits, Wear It

Colonel Bob Pappas, USMC, Retired

President Bush recently spoke to the Israeli Knesset. One segment of his speech ignited a political firestorm among American Democrats that Israelis should take as an ominous signal about how the political left in the United States feels about its sovereignty. The following is a direct quote from the President's speech.

"Some seem to believe that we should negotiate with the terrorists and radicals, as if some ingenious argument will persuade them they have been wrong all along. We have heard this foolish delusion before. As Nazi tanks crossed into Poland in 1939, an American senator declared: "Lord, if I could only have talked to Hitler, all this might have been avoided." We have an obligation to call this what it is -- the false comfort of appeasement, which has been repeatedly discredited by history."

Although the President was pointing to the danger of attempting to negotiate with tyrants, it turns out that the Democrats, the Bush haters, the anti-Jewish political opportunists would rather "embrace" an enemy out of fear or stupidity, than resist that fear by embracing what is right. If Obama and his crew of anti-semetic, self-serving, power hungry, bigots had the least understanding of the President's remarks they would be cheering. But no, rather than pay attention to the substance and applaud the President for the truth, they squeal like stuck pigs about how he maligned Obama, whose own childish naivete would have the U.S. in the person of the President, legitimize every rogue dictator and terrorist through direct personal contact. Read article.

Kiss of Death

By Ken Blackwell

Liberals have a propensity for cannibalizing their own. This behavioral trait is entertaining for those on the right and just might cause the Democrats to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory this November. Organizations like NARAL Pro-Choice America and Hamas are weakening the eventual Democrat presidential nominee.

Hillary Clinton has been a high profile abortion rights activist since 1992. As a strident liberal who fiercely advocates unrestricted abortion, Mrs. Clinton is the quintessential NARAL candidate. She is the model of professional success that feminist groups hold up as the epitome of modern womanhood. She is a talented multi-tasker: a loving mother, an accomplished lawyer and political leader.

Yet, last week NARAL endorsed Barack Obama for president. Many diehard feminists in the organization were outraged. They asked why NARAL would weigh in for Mr. Obama when Mrs. Clinton desperately needed their support. She had earned it. But the answer was simple: Mr. Obama is to the left of Mrs. Clinton. Read article.

High-court fears drive conservatives to rally around McCain, overlook flaws

Ralph Z. Hallow, Washington Times.com

Prominent conservatives and activists are indicating they will put aside their differences with presumptive Republican presidential nominee Sen. John McCain and rally their supporters to his side because of one issue: federal judgeships.

In big gatherings and small, in e-mails and one-on-one conversations, conservative opinion leaders fear a Democratic president, especially Sen. Barack Obama, will use the presidential power to appoint federal judges who will remove references to God and religious symbols from public places.

They predict the incoming president likely will fill more vacancies on the federal bench over the next four years than at any time in recent memory, giving a Democratic administration the power to shape the courts to reflect a liberal worldview.

The American Civil Liberties Union "has been on a national rampage to remove God from every public place: the Pledge of Allegiance, the Ten Commandments, plaques in courthouses, the Boys Scouts when they meet on public property," said Phyllis Schlafly, head of the Eagle Forum, a pro-family group that held a private meeting for conservatives yesterday in a Washington hotel. Read article.

Harkin Suggests Military Background Makes McCain Unfit to be Commander-in-Chief

Fox News.com

Iowa Sen. Tom Harkin is catching grief for suggesting John McCain's family history of military service makes the presumptive Republican presidential nominee unfit to be commander-in-chief.

Harkin, who has a history of embellishing his own military record, told Iowa reporters last week that McCain's background as the son and grandson of Navy admirals creates a "dangerous" situation because he can only view the world through the prism of the military.

"He has a hard time thinking beyond that," Harkin said, according to The Des Moines Register. "I think he's trapped in that. Everything is looked at from his life experiences, from always having been in the military, and I think that can be pretty dangerous."

The paper also quotes Iowa's junior senator telling reporters, "It's one thing to have been drafted and served, but another thing when you come from generations of military people and that's just how you're steeped, how you've learned, how you've grown up."

Military service is not a foreign concept to U.S. presidents. Since Franklin D. Roosevelt, who spent seven years as assistant secretary of the Navy, Bill Clinton is the only president to have not served in some branch of the military. Read article.

What Does Hillary Want?

Karen Tumulty, TIME.com

A graceful exit is never easy in a business as fraught with ego and ambition as presidential politics. Which is why in recent days, quiet calls have started going out to key supporters of Hillary Clinton who are showing signs of wanting to jump ship. Clinton's emissaries point out that she is no longer attacking Barack Obama, and they promise she won't start again. Allow her to ride out the last few primaries, they argue, and she won't do anything to make it difficult for her longtime allies to switch their allegiances when the time comes.

Hillary is more opaque about what she might want, divulging little even to those who see and talk to her every day. "It's as plain as the nose on your face that this whole thing has shifted to a different mode," says a top Clinton strategist. "But I don't know what she wants. I don't know what she's thinking." Read article.