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June 2, 2008

Exclusive: Monday, June 2

Presidential Watch

Obama quits Chicago church after long controversy

Tom Raum, My Way News.com

Barack Obama has resigned his 20 year membership in the Trinity United Church of Christ in Chicago in the aftermath of inflammatory remarks by his longtime pastor the Rev. Jeremiah Wright and more recent fiery remarks at the church by another minister.

Obama campaign communications director Robert Gibbs said Obama had resigned from the church "over the last few days."

Campaign aides said they weren't immediately certain how the resignation took place, whether by letter or in some other fashion, and were trying to find out.

Messages left for a church spokeswoman in Chicago were not immediately returned Saturday afternoon.

The development came as Obama campaigned in South Dakota.

Obama said he disagreed with Wright but initially portrayed him as a family member he couldn't disown. The preacher had officiated at Obama's wedding and been his spiritual mentor for some 20 years.

But six weeks after Obama's well-received speech on race, Wright claimed at an appearance in Washington that the U.S. government was capable of planting AIDS in the black community, praised Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan and suggested that Obama was acting like a politician by putting his pastor at arm's length while privately agreeing with him. Read article.

No End Of Bile From Obama's Bully Pulpits

IBD Editorials.com

Decision '08: Everybody knows the Rev. Jeremiah Wright and his bigoted anti-American rants. We'll soon get to know the Rev. Michael Pfleger. With Barack Obama, you're not only waiting for the other shoe to drop. You're following a centipede.

In April 2004, Sen. Obama told a reporter from the Chicago Sun-Times that he had three spiritual mentors or counselors: Jeremiah Wright, James Meeks and Father Michael Pfleger. On Sunday, May 25, Pfleger showed up at Obama's Trinity United Church of Christ doing his best Rev. Wright imitation.

A radical priest at Chicago's St. Sabina Catholic Church, Pfleger told the congregation, "We must be honest enough to expose white entitlement and supremacy wherever it raises its head." He mimicked Hillary Clinton crying and said her reaction to Obama's candidacy was to say: "I'm white. I'm entitled. There's a black man stealing my show."

Obama was quicker on the draw than he was with Wright, saying last week that he was "deeply disappointed in Father Pfleger's divisive, backward-looking rhetoric." Maybe, maybe not. But if Obama doesn't share Pfleger's views, Trinity Church - Obama's church - obviously does. Read article.

Party rift on display as Dems settle Florida, Michigan

Sam Youngman, The Hill.com

Seconds after the 30 members of the Democratic National Committee's Rules and Bylaws Committee finished their vote on how best to seat the delegations from Michigan and Florida, the room erupted.

"DENVER! DENVER! DENVER!" supporters of Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-N.Y.) chanted. Then they walked out of the hotel ballroom and declared that this was no longer their Democratic Party, and that they would never vote for Sen. Barack Obama (Ill.) if he wins the nomination.

"John McCain has just been elected by the DNC, and it's a sad day," said a teary-eyed Debbie Weihl, a teacher from Pennsylvania.

After the committee returned from a three-hour lunch break - one hour for lunch, two for an unannounced closed-door session - the vibrations in the room turned nasty.

When one candidate's name was mentioned, the other side booed and hissed. When committee members lectured the crowd on rules and decorum, they were shouted at.

Alice Huffman, a committee member, asked the crowd to refrain from its antics, but she too was booed.

If Obama does win the nomination, he might find that he is inheriting a party with deep rifts. Read article.

Obama's Revisionist History

Karl Rove, Online WSJ.com

This week's minor controversy about Barack Obama's claim that an uncle liberated Auschwitz was quickly put to rest by his campaign. They conceded that it was a great uncle whose unit liberated Buchenwald, 500 miles away.

But other, much more troubling, episodes have provided a revealing glimpse into a candidate who instinctively resorts to parsing, evasions and misdirection. The saga over Rev. Jeremiah Wright is Exhibit A. In just 62 days, Americans were treated to eight different explanations.

The Rev. Wright affair is just one instance where the Illinois senator has said something wrong or offensive, and then offered shifting explanations for his views.

The Rev. Wright affair is just one instance where the Illinois senator has said something wrong or offensive, and then offered shifting explanations for his views. Consider flag pins.

Mr. Obama told an Iowa radio station last October he didn't wear an American flag lapel pin because, after 9/11, it had "became a substitute for I think true patriotism, which is speaking out on issues . . . ." His campaign issued a statement that "Senator Obama believes that being a patriot is about more than a symbol." To highlight his own moral superiority, he denigrated the patriotism of those who wore a flag.

Yet by April, campaigning in culturally conservative Pennsylvania, Mr. Obama was blaming others for the controversy he'd created, claiming, "I have never said that I don't wear flag pins or refuse to wear flag pins. This is the kind of manufactured issue that our politics has become obsessed with and, once again, distracts us . . . ." A month later Mr. Obama was once again wearing a pin, saying "Sometimes I wear it, sometimes I don't." Read article.

Clinton & Obama: Gaffes, Switcheroos - Or Stupidities?

Ross Mackenzie, Townhall.com

As Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama struggle toward resolution of their tedious nominating contest, they are outdoing themselves in rhetorical stupidities.

Early on Senator Clinton said she and Chelsea were in a blaze of sniper fire on the tarmac at Tuzla. More recently - in May - Senator Clinton offered (1) the Robert Kennedy assassination reference and (2) extensive talk about the white vote. For instance, in an interview with USA Today she referenced an Associated Press story, saying: "Senator Obama's support among working, hard-working Americans, white Americans, is weakening again," and "whites" in Indiana and North Carolina without college degrees are "supporting me."

Then (3), most hilariously, she has attributed her lagging effort to sexism in her genderistic party and in that ol' Hillary-hating, chauvinistic press: "It does seem as though the press at least is not as bothered by the incredible vitriol that has been engendered by comments and reactions of people (i.e., leftists and Democrats) who are nothing but misogynists." Maybe they're all closet members of her imagined "vast right-wing conspiracy."

Yet Barack Obama likely will take the nomination, so - given these two gaffers - he is the more important. Read article.

Obama's Woes: A Tale of Three States

Richard Baehr, American Thinker.com

If you want evidence that the Democrats are taking a huge gamble by nominating Barack Obama as their Presidential candidate, you need look no further than the current state of the race in three Southern/border states.

In 1992 and 1996 Bill Clinton won Kentucky, West Virginia and Arkansas. In 2000 and 2004, George Bush won all three states. In the current Democratic Party nominating contest, Hillary Clinton won all three states by huge margins -- 30 points or more in each case. West Virginia (3%), and Kentucky (7%) have relatively small black populations. Arkansas is just over 15% African American (in the same range as Florida and Tennessee).

The three states have 19 Electoral College votes among them, almost as many as Ohio (20). In 2004, Bush won the Electoral College by 286-252. Had he lost Ohio, Kerry would have been elected. In 2008, Ohio will undoubtedly be a battleground again.

Were the Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton, the Democrats would be in very good shape even without Ohio. That is because current surveys show Hillary Clinton winning all three states by solid margins over John McCain. But John McCain trounces Barack Obama in the same three states by over 20% in each case. So with Clinton as the nominee, these states vote as they did when her husband was the nominee. When Barack Obama is the Democratic nominee, these states vote as they did when George Bush was running. The differences in the poll results are shocking. Read article.

Inside Obama's Acorn: By their fruits ye shall know them.

Stanley Kurtz, NRO.com

What if Barack Obama's most important radical connection has been hiding in plain sight all along? Obama has had an intimate and long-term association with the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (Acorn), the largest radical group in America. If I told you Obama had close ties with MoveOn.org or Code Pink, you'd know what I was talking about. Acorn is at least as radical as these better-known groups, arguably more so. Yet because Acorn works locally, in carefully selected urban areas, its national profile is lower. Acorn likes it that way. And so, I'd wager, does Barack Obama.

This is a story we've largely missed. While Obama's Acorn connection has not gone entirely unreported, its depth, extent, and significance have been poorly understood. Typically, media background pieces note that, on behalf of Acorn, Obama and a team of Chicago attorneys won a 1995 suit forcing the state of Illinois to implement the federal "motor-voter" bill. In fact, Obama's Acorn connection is far more extensive. In the few stories where Obama's role as an Acorn "leadership trainer" is noted, or his seats on the boards of foundations that may have supported Acorn are discussed, there is little follow-up. Even these more extensive reports miss many aspects of Obama's ties to Acorn.

An Anti-Capitalism Agenda

To understand the nature and extent of Acorn's radicalism, an excellent place to begin is Sol Stern's 2003 City Journal article, "ACORN's Nutty Regime for Cities."

Sol Stern explains that Acorn is the key modern successor of the radical 1960's "New Left," with a "1960's-bred agenda of anti-capitalism" to match. Acorn, says Stern, grew out of "one of the New Left's silliest and most destructive groups, the National Welfare Rights Organization." In the 1960's, NWRO launched a campaign of sit-ins and disruptions at welfare offices. The goal was to remove eligibility restrictions, and thus effectively flood welfare rolls with so many clients that the system would burst. The theory, explains Stern, was that an impossibly overburdened welfare system would force "a radical reconstruction of America's unjust capitalist economy." Read article.

It's the Communism, Stupid

Cliff Kincaid, AIM.org

Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama tried to deflect a question about his relationship with terrorist Bill Ayers by saying that he "engaged in detestable acts 40 years ago when I was 8 years old" and that he was now a professor and a neighbor. The real issue is whether Obama shares Ayers' communist views. Obama admitted to exchanging ideas with Ayers on an irregular basis but did not say what those ideas were. But we know that Ayers, rather than just being a 1960s "radical," was a member of a Marxist-Leninist communist group.

The Weather Under-ground, or Weathermen, wasn't just home-grown and domestic in nature, although it had evolved from the so-called Students for a Democratic Society (SDS), which laid siege to college campuses and tried to take over administration buildings. Their openly proclaimed goal was world communism and they had links to hostile foreign powers.

"We're revolutionary communists," Ayers himself said in 1969.

The FBI said that the Weather Underground had more contacts abroad than the Moscow-controlled Communist Party USA.

Which brings up another aspect of Obama's background-the role of his childhood mentor, Communist Party member Frank Marshall Davis. This is the hard-core Soviet apologist who filled Obama's head full of anti-American thoughts at a tender age. Read article.

Sirhan wannabe would target McCain, not Obama

Judith A. Klinghoffer, Political Mavens.com

Sirhan Sirhan assassinated Robert Kennedy on the anniversary of the 6 Day War because he was a strong supporter of Israel. Hence, if a Palestinian would consider a similar despicable act, he would not focus on Barack Obama, the man endorsed by Hamas but on the man who could be trusted to stand up to Hamas and it's puppet masters, John McCain.

But wasn't Robert Kennedy an antiwar advocate? And, therefore, wasn't the CIA the real culprit, as conspiracy theorists advocates would like to argue?

The simple answer is no. Robert Kennedy (and Eugene McCarthy for that matter) was a Vietnam dove but a Middle East hawk. The Johnson administration liked to refer to them as "Dawks and Hoves." Indeed, when captured, Sirhan Sirhan was carrying an newspaper article describing Kennedy as such. Kennedy believed that American forces could not hold the containment line both in Southeast Asia and that the Middle East was the more important one. That translated into support for Israel and more specifically, into support for the sale of Phantom Jets to the Jewish state. Read article.

Why Hillary Goes Nuclear

Daniel Henninger, Online WSJ.com

Hillary is right: Weird stuff really could happen in June. Rafael Nadal could lose the French Open. Big Brown could lose at Belmont. Alan Greenspan could admit error. But I've got a list of things that will never happen to Barack Obama this June.

This June, Barack Obama will not call for extending the Bush tax cuts.

In June, Barack Obama will not say the surge proves the U.S. should stay the course in Iraq.

Not in this or any June will Barack Obama come out for private health savings accounts.

June will freeze over before Barack Obama says the Bush warrantless wiretap program has made Americans safer. In fact, Hillary Clinton herself won't say any of these things either.

Hillary is right. Whether running for president or playing the lottery, you never know. Here, though, is one constant in a knuckleball world: In any month she can name the past year, Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama have been singing from the same hymnal to the same Democratic choir. Which is why Hillary keeps going nuclear.

Which is why Hillary keeps going nuclear. Read article.

Obama, the Closer: An eloquent clean-cut black man is the perfect front man for the radical Left.

Kyle-Anne Shiver, NRO.com

Is Barack the one we have been waiting for? Or is it the other way around? Are we the people we have been waiting for? Barack Obama is giving voice and space to an awakening beyond his wildest expectations, a social force that may lead him far beyond his modest policy agenda.

- Tom Hayden, endorsing the Obama Movement

For a Boomer like me, following the threads of the Obama movement is like a flashback from a bad 60s drug trip - an old, unwelcome nightmare.

Whether it's Billy Ayers or Bernadine Dohrn, Tom Hayden or Jane Fonda, or any of the other lesser-knowns, 60s Marxist radicals are lining up behind Obama.

Obama's young worshippers think they see something altogether new, a unique persona, seemingly magically transported to this moment in history to help them finally be the ones to net the elusive butterfly of socialism's never-realized promise.

The kids think they see something new. But do they?

Sixties' radicals see their as yet unfulfilled yearning for socialist utopia in a well-groomed, glittery, establishment-approved package. Read article.

Do We Still Have Grants and Shermans?

Victor Davis Hanson, Townhall.com

Who becomes a general - and why - tells us a lot about whether our military is on the right or wrong track. The annual spring list of Army colonels promoted to brigadier generals will be shortly released. Already, rumors suggest that this year, unlike in the recent past, a number of maverick officers who have distinguished themselves fighting - and usually defeating - insurgents in Afghanistan and Iraq will be chosen.

For example, scholar-soldier Col. H.R. McMaster, Special Forces Col. Ken Tovo and Col. Sean MacFarland - all of whom helped turn Sunni insurgents into allies - could, and should, make the cut.

These three colonels have had decorated careers in Iraq mastering the complexities of working with Iraqi forces in hunting down terrorists and insurgents. And they, like David Petraeus, the top U.S. commander in Iraq, in the past did not always reflect the Army establishment in Washington. Their unconventional views about counterinsurgency warfare do not hinge on high-tech weaponry, tanks, artillery and rapid massed advance.

But most wars are rarely fought as they were planned. During the fighting, those who adjust most quickly to the unexpected tend to be successful. And in almost all of America's past conflicts, our top commanders on the eve of war were not those who finished it. Read article.