Nebraska’s Child Abandonment Nightmare

I'm frankly blown away at the news that a Detroit mother drove 12 hours and 700 miles in the middle of the night to abandon her 13 year-old son at a "safe-haven" hospital in Omaha, Nebraska:

A Michigan mother drove roughly 12 hours to Omaha, so she could abandon her 13-year-old son at a hospital under the state's unique safe-haven law, Nebraska officials said Monday.

The boy from the Detroit area is the second teenager from outside Nebraska and 18th child overall abandoned in the state since the law took effect in July.

"I certainly recognize and can commiserate and empathize with families across our state and across the country who are obviously struggling with parenting issues, but this is not the appropriate way of dealing with them, whether you're in Nebraska or whether you're in another state," said Todd Landry, who heads the state's Department of Health and Human Services' division of children and family services.

There was no sign the boy was in immediate danger before he was abandoned early Monday, but an investigation into the boy's situation was still continuing, Landry said.

The boy has been placed in an emergency shelter. Landry said the family doesn't appear to have ties to Nebraska and he wasn't sure if the family had sought help in Michigan first.

State officials have met with the boy's mother, Landry said but wouldn't immediately address her reasons for leaving her son. He said he believed the boy's parents were married but wasn't sure if the father agreed to the decision.

Nebraska Governor Dave Heineman, who is Republican, issued a press release on October 7 acknowledging the dire consequences of the law and announcing the state's intent to amend the legislation:

Abandonment of an older child is potentially very devastating. Human services professionals have highlighted the difference in giving up a baby who will grow up knowing their birth family wanted a better life for them versus the impact of a parent giving up on an older child.

Nebraskans believe strongly in parental responsibility. The essential element defining any family is the knowledge that parents provide unconditional love for their children.

Here's Captain Ed's remarks on the law, from October 9:

When Nebraska passed a law that allowed panicked mothers to abandon their babies at hospitals with immunity from prosecution, many hailed it as a breakthrough in helping to keep unwanted infants alive. Now it looks more like a poster child for bad legislation.

But note this from the comments at a "women's issues" blog:

This is perhaps just another canary in the mineshaft of just how tight and tense our world - especially financially - is becoming.

If anything ... these [open-ended] laws should be universal across the country.

No doubt the writer's a Democrat, and is looking forward to a Barack Obama administration.

This is not a stretch: Recall that Obama, aka Senator Infanticide, has consistently voted against born-alive infant protection legislation, which indicates the Democratic nominee's demonstrated willingness to abandon those most in need of society's protection - not unlike the Detroit mother who abandoned her son, along with her moral responsibility, at the steps of the hospital's door.

Image Credit: ABC News

The Wright Ticket to the McCain Comeback

The Los Angeles Times reports that John McCain is looking for another comeback:

John McCain unveiled a feisty new campaign speech Monday, but the talk of change and promise of a fist-shaking fight to November failed to allay Republican concerns that the presidential race may be slipping beyond his grasp.

With 21 days to the election, there was widespread agreement that Wednesday night's third and final presidential debate would be a crucial opportunity - and perhaps the last one - for the Arizona senator to change the course of a race that appears to be moving strongly in Democrat Barack Obama's direction.

But the consensus ended there. For just about every Republican urging McCain to focus relentlessly on the economy, there was another who said McCain should continue questioning Obama's character by citing his association with William Ayers, a Vietnam-era radical. Some said the GOP nominee needed to do both, and also bring up the Rev. Jeremiah A. Wright Jr., Obama's controversial former pastor; others called that a mistake and said that a mix of messages was part of McCain's problem.

It now appears that McCain will raise Obama's relationship to Ayers in tomorrow's debate.

I'm one those who've been disappointed in McCain's aversion to attacking Obama's radical ties, although I understand the reasoning: McCain's been searching for the right approach that balances toughness and the bounds of decency (for fear of being labeled "racist").

It's been a difficult process, and it may be too late in many respects, at least on Ayers and ACORN.

The Reverend Jeremiah Wright is another story, however. Obama was badly damaged by viral videos and revelations of his pastor's fire-and-brimstone anti-Americanism. If McCain wants to get serious about attacking the Illinois Senator's questionable associations, Wright's the ticket. Obama admitted a close friendship to his pastor, and he attended Trinity United Church for close to two decades.

Stanley Kurtz, who's done more than anyone else to reveal the extent of Barack Obama's radical associations, has a new report indicating that Obama's relationship to Wright was more significant than previously reported - that from Wright, to Ayers, and the Annenberg Challenge, Barack Obama's radicalism can be seen as a set-piece of funding, planning, and indoctrination.

Can this be the October Surprise?

It looks like Jeremiah Wright was just the tip of the iceberg. Not only did Barack Obama savor Wright’s sermons, Obama gave legitimacy — and a whole lot of money — to education programs built around the same extremist anti-American ideology preached by Reverend Wright. And guess what? Bill Ayers is still palling around with the same bitterly anti-American Afrocentric ideologues that he and Obama were promoting a decade ago. All this is revealed by a bit of digging, combined with a careful study of documents from the Chicago Annenberg Challenge, the education foundation Obama and Ayers jointly led in the late 1990s.

John McCain, take note. Obama’s tie to Wright is no longer a purely personal question (if it ever was one) about one man’s choice of his pastor. The fact that Obama funded extremist Afrocentrists who shared Wright’s anti-Americanism means that this is now a matter of public policy, and therefore an entirely legitimate issue in this campaign.

Read the whole thing.

Barack Obama's ties to anti-American pedagogists and extremist black-separatists are not insignificant.

For John McCain, in looking for a comeback, he need look no further than Barack Obama's long history of funding and empowering groups who would denounce the U.S. as an "ineradicably racist Eurocentric civilization."

Photo Credit: Los Angeles Times

Obama Plays Race Card as More Blacks Are Elected

The New York Times has an important article up tonight, the implications of which will be dismissed by those who insist on making allegations of racism against those who speak critically of Barack Obama.

As the Times reports, black officials in state governments across the country are steadily working their way to successful careers in politics, and the remarkable change here is that white majority constituencies are supporting them:

Political analysts say [black] electoral gains are quietly changing the political landscape, increasing the number of black lawmakers adept at crossing color lines as well as the ranks of white voters who are familiar, and increasingly comfortable, with black political leadership.

The black officials, who often serve in small- and medium-size towns, have been overshadowed by the presidential candidacy of Senator Barack Obama of Illinois, who if elected would be the first African-American to hold that office.

But over the last 10 years, about 200 black politicians have won positions once held by whites in legislatures and city halls in states like New Hampshire, Iowa, Kentucky, Minnesota, Missouri, North Carolina and Tennessee.

In 2007, about 30 percent of the nation’s 622 black state legislators represented predominantly white districts, up from about 16 percent in 2001, according to data collected by the Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies, a research group based in Washington that has kept statistics on black elected officials for nearly 40 years.

Political scientists and local officials also point to an increase in the number of black mayors who represent predominantly white cities in places like Asheville, N.C., population 74,000, and Columbus, Ohio, population 748,000. According to a study conducted by Zoltan L. Hajnal, a political scientist at the University of California, San Diego, about 40 percent of Americans have lived in or near cities that have elected black mayors or in states with black governors.

According to the report, black office-seekers still represent primarily minority communities, but the statistics indicate a startling transformation toward color-blind political representation across large segments of the nation.

Meanwhile, Barack Obama's campaign has made systematic use of racial allegations to propel a candidacy that at one time based its appeal on post-racial transcendence.

Mark Levin has more on this, and the contrast between objective black progress and opportunistic race-baiting is just astounding:

Barack Obama's campaign has managed to paint Geraldine Ferraro, Bill Clinton, John McCain, and Sarah Palin as racists. Meanwhile, how dare anyone suggest that Obama's voluntary association with a racist pastor for 20 years, and his lame defense of the association, raises character questions.

Will the lib media be upset if we quote Aristotle, whose insight seems useful in this context?

"Those, then, are friends to whom the same things are good and evil; and those who are, moreover, friendly or unfriendly to the same people; for in that case they must have the same wishes, and thus by wishing for each other what they wish for themselves, they show themselves each other's friends." (Aristotle, Rhetoric, Book II, Chapter)

We choose our own friends and associates. And this is significant in Obama's case in particular as we are trying to get a sense of who he is and what informs him. Obama is asking the nation to honor him with its highest office. Yet, during most of his adulthood, he has befriended some of the worst kind of people — many of whom detest the nation Obama seeks to lead. And when combined with Obama's own extremism on issue after issue (is there a left-wing position he does not embrace?), there can be no doubt that an Obama administration working with a Democrat majority in Congress will fundamentally alter the nation's character in ways that will be very difficult to unravel.

America's commitment to color-blind equality, a commitment ironically confirmed by Obama's own nomination as the Democratic Party nominee, is one key area of public policy that will undergo transformation.

Strangely, the wheels of progress on race relations will likely grind to a halt, as a Democratic administration - with majorities in Congress - seeks to roll back race-neutral policies in areas of civil rights, education, and voting, with the likely result being the very kind of racial backlash against which Obama and his Democratic allies now decry.

It's Obama's Difference, Not His Race...

Democratic running mate Joseph Biden is in the news today. Apparently he's warning the McCain camp against encouraging "fringe people," a reference to the "angry" mobs who are allegedly threatening to Barack Obama.

This is just a few days after Congressman John Lewis, the civil rights veteran who was beaten while demonstrating at Selma, claimed that John McCain and Sarah Palin were "playing with fire" in invoking the George Wallace legacy of racial hatred.

This really is over the top irrationalism, especially since not one Democrat was upset about the left's Trig Palin smears, or Sandra Bernard's unhinged theatrical performances attacking Sarah Palin (warning she'll be gang-raped), or ... well, you get the picture.

The fact is that, as I've found in talking to people, over and over again, including top political science experts, there's very little Jim Crow racism to be found in the voting electorate; and in fact, we might as well see a reverse-Bradley effect pushing Obama over the finish line on November 4.

What bothers people about Barack Obama is not so much his race, but his difference - especially his oppositional difference to American tradition and values.

This passage, from today's New York Times, captures the common aversion to Obama among regular folks:

Race is indisputably a backdrop against which this campaign has unfolded ... but that does not mean opposing Mr. Obama or using harsh words is racist....

“At first I was open to Obama because I thought we needed new thinking about jobs and the economy,” said Burton Reed, a Republican at the rally here. “But the more I heard about him, the more worried I became. He says he’s Christian, but I hear he’s Muslim. And he just doesn’t sound pro-U.S.A. I kind of question his devotion to this country.”

One factor for Mr. Reed and several other Republicans and independents interviewed along the bus route on Sunday was Mr. Obama’s long association and friendship with Mr. Wright. Others said they simply had a hard time relating to Mr. Obama’s background or accepting his political positions, which are widely seen as liberal.

“The bottom line is, he isn’t one of us, and I’m scared to death of him,” said Lloyd Wood, a Republican and farmer in this rural town in southeast Ohio who came to the local Wal-Mart on Sunday for a campaign visit by Ms. Palin, Mr. McCain’s running mate.

“Guns, abortion, homosexuality, religion, protecting Israel, taxes,” Mr. Wood continued. “I feel like he is totally different from where I stand, and I worry what he would do to this country. And listen, I’ve voted for black Republicans before — voted for one for governor last time — but Obama is just this very privileged kind.”

A "very privileged kind"?

That pretty much sums up the basic resistance to Obama we saw during the Democratic primaries, the type of refrain one might have heard around the time the Illinois Senator alleged that working-class Pennsylvanians were likely to "cling to guns or religion or antipathy toward people who aren't like them..."

I think this is what's bothering so many people, including some of the kindest souls you'd ever be lucky enough to meet ... people without a wicked bone in their bodies.

Obama's "hope and change" is just a bit much, and now Democrats are trying to turn everday folks into KKK night-riders, which reveals just how deeply the Obama camp is willing to go in rekindling the racial tensions that have been steadily subisiding since the civil rights movement of the 1960s.

Paul Krugman Wins Nobel Prize in Economics

Almost a year ago to the day, I wrote:

One would hardly know it from his New York Times commentaries, but Paul Krugman's actually one of the country's great contemporary economists...

The point's certainly relevant, with this morning's announcement that Professor Krugman has won the Nobel Prize in Economics.

I've been familiar with Krugman's work since my days in graduate school in the early '90s. I even attended a lecture given by Krugman while still at UCSB.

While Krugman's Nobel was awarded for his work on "the effects of economies of scale on trade patterns and on the location of economic activity," many scholars remember him especially for the impact he made in strategic trade theory. As Tyler Cowen notes:

Krugman is very well known for his work on strategic trade theory, as it is now called. Building on ideas from Dixit, Helpman, and others, he showed how increasing returns could imply a possible role for welfare-improving protectionism. Krugman, however, insisted that he did not in practice favor protectionism; it is difficult for policymakers to fine tune the relevant variables. Boeing vs. Airbus is perhaps a simple example of the argument. If a government can subsidize the home firm to be a market leader, the subsidizing country can come out ahead through the mechanism of capturing the gains from increasing returns to scale. Here are some very useful slides on the theory. Here is Dixit's excellent summary of Krugman on trade. Krugman himself has admitted that parts of the theory may be less relevant for rich-poor countries trade (America and China) rather than rich-rich trade, such as America and Japan.

Because strategic trade theory gained powerful policy relevance simultaneously with the rise of Japanese economic power in the late-1980s, Krugman's work was often used to bolster arguments in favor of trade protection.

Consequently, Krugman spent later years shoring up his free trade bona fides, and in a 1994 Foreign Affairs essay he went so far as to ague that international economic competitiveness was a "dangerous obsession" (full article available in pdf, here). Clyde Prestowitz, himself a major advocate of strategic trade, took issue with Krugman's longstanding efforts of "running away from the implications of his own findings."

These are old debates, and while Krugman still claims "I’m not a protectionist," what's even more interesting about today's news are the political circumstances surrounding the award.

Krugman, in his capacity as a New York Times columnist, is a superstar on the hardcore ideological left. Many of these nutty nihilists are now claiming political vindication in the Nobel committee's decision, for example, Matthew Yglesias:

Krugman has become known to a wide audience as a left-of-center newspaper columnist. The fact that he’s a credentialed economist has always been well-known, but the point that he’s actually a really well-regarded economist is not all that well-understood. But a Nobel Prize is something people understand. It doesn’t make his political pronouncements the word of God, of course, and there are Nobel Prize winning economists on the right as well. But it does underscore the fact that very many people who really and truly know what they’re talking about think the progressive approach to economic and social policy is the way to go.

That's one of the more simplistic things I've read in some time, considering the partisanship associated with the award, but I'll let Jules Crittenden explain some of the thinking that went into the decision of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences:

I wouldn’t want to suggest Krugman excuses terrorism or hates America. It is likely, however, that his extensive Bush-bashing, Saddam-dismissing, GWOT-mocking absurdism was a heavy thumb on the Nobel scale.

These are the same folks who awarded Al Gore the Nobel Peace Prize for his environmental work, so go figure.

GOP Struggles to Hold the South

I noted yesterday that 2008 may see a "critical election," whereby the recent economic and political trauma creates an electoral crisis reminiscent of the Civil War and the Great Depression, resulting in a Democratic landslide that shakes the nation's political coalitions to their foundations.

It's a dramatic scenario, and not particularly likely, in light of the nature of political dealignment in the U.S. since 1968 (independent voters and split-ticketing have become common and electoral volatility has been characteristic of recent party dynamics, with neither party able to secure a long-term advantage at the national level).

Yet, this morning's Wall Street Journal indicates that for the first time since the 1960s, the GOP ticket is at risk of losing the support of Southern voters: "In Virginia, McCain Struggles To Hold the South for GOP":

Sen. John McCain and Gov. Sarah Palin are scheduled to roll into Virginia on Monday in a bid to stop the Republican ticket's slide in the state and thwart what once was unthinkable: fractures in the "Solid South," the backbone of successful Republican presidential politics for four decades.

Not long ago, Virginia appeared solidly in the McCain camp. Republican strategists knew the race would be tighter there in 2008 than in past years, but were confident enough not to open a standalone state headquarters and spent sparingly on advertising while pouring resources into other states.

But in the past week, polls began showing Sen. McCain falling well behind Democratic presidential nominee Sen. Barack Obama in the state. Two weeks ago, Sen. Obama and his running mate, Sen. Joe Biden, held a rally in Prince William County, Va., long a conservative stronghold in a state that has voted for only one Democratic presidential nominee since 1948. The Democrats drew more than 20,000 people, many of whom waited an hour in a torrential downpour and lightning before the candidates arrived.

Fueled by demographic shifts, rising doubts about the direction of the country, perceived missteps by Sen. McCain and a voter-registration push by the Obama campaign that has helped add a net of 310,000 new, mostly younger voters, the Democratic ticket increasingly appears positioned to win Virginia and make critical inroads across the South. A CNN/Time Inc. poll released Wednesday shows Sen. Obama has opened a nine-point lead on Sen. McCain in Virginia.

The article also notes the Obama's competitive in North Carolina.

While Obama still trails in the Deep South states of Georgia and Mississippi, this year's electoral trends appear to be at least partially reversing the "secular relignment" of Southerners to the Republican column since Barry Goldwater's run for the White House in 1964.

That said, Barack Obama's lead in national polling is tighter than had been assumed, depending on the polling organization and whether one counts "registered" or "likely" voters. Jennifer Rubin, moreover, points to a number of continuing liablities that have preventing the Illinois Democrat from pulling out a double-digit lead in national surveys.

As always, much remains to be seen, and Wednesday night's debate offers one more chance for John McCain to change the dynamics of the race.

"Vanishing Point": A Car Culture Classic

A couple of weeks back, when writing about Paul Newman's passing, I relayed how I used to hang out at the local movie theater when I was a kid.

Newman's death took me back to lazy days watching movies on the neighborhood big screen, with "Butch Cassidy" being one of my favorites. One movie I'll never forget from those times is "Vanishing Point," which I always thought was so unusual that it had to be something special (and being a 10 year-old kid, I was mostly just trying to figure it all out):

It turns out the "Up to Speed" blog at the L.A. Times did an "all-time favorite car movies" roundup last week, and readers were vocal that "Vanishing Point" hadn't made the cut:

The list we posted last weekend of our 10 favorite car films generated a fair amount of commentary — most of it relating to movies that posters felt were unfairly overlooked.
Up to Speed stands by its original selections, but we also understand the subjective nature of lists, rankings and popularity contests of any sort. And with that in mind, here are the four movies that got the most mentions from our readers:

"Vanishing Point" (1971) -– If, like Spinal Tap, we had gone to 11, this movie would’ve made the cut. Along with “Two-Lane Blacktop” (which did make the list), “Vanishing Point” is the car movie as existential epic -- as one poster noted, “one man, one car, one road: no exit.” (That car, by the way, was a white 1970 Dodge Challenger R/T.) If Camus had written a script for a car movie, this would have been the result. And it has one of the coolest endings in Hollywood history...

More at the link.

Will 2008 Be a Critical Election?

The idea of a partisan realignment is a key concept in political science.

In electoral politics, a new partisan era is said to have emerged when the coaltions supporting the parties become disrupted and voters realign their allegiances, with a new party becoming the hegemonic party for decades at the presidency and congressional levels.

There's a long line of research on this, but the most compelling account of partisan realigment is found in the notion of a "critical election." In an election contest whereby the political system is facing a fundamental national crisis of catastrophic proportions, voters choose the party out of power and elevate a new, enduring partisan coalition at the levels of the presidency and Congress. The elections of 1860 and 1932 are the key examples. The Republican Party was the dominant party in American politics following Abraham Lincoln's election at the moment of national crisis precipitating the Civil War; and in 1932, Franklin D. Roosevelt was elected in a New Deal realignment that emerged out of the calamity of the Great Depression.

The Wikipedia page on realignments (which features an excellent review of the scholarship) singles out 1932 as classic case of partisan realigment:

Of all the realigning elections, this one musters the most agreement from political scientists and historians; it is the archetypal realigning election. FDR's admirers have argued that New Deal policies, developed in response to the crash of 1929 and the miseries of the Great Depression under Herbert Hoover, represented an entirely new phenomenon in American politics.

There's been little formal discussion of 2008 as a realigment around the blogosphere.

I've seen a few articles here and there, but partisan bloggers are more caught up in the scandal of the moment to reflect on the factors in this year's race that may portend a contest of epochal proportions. Folks say it's a "Democratic year," but the concatenation of events in foreign policy, and especially at home with a finanicial crisis (routinely described as the worst since the 1930s), may well result in a victory for Barack Obama and congressional Democrats on November 4 ushering in a new era of Democratic dominance lasting well into the future.

The truth about realignments, however, is that they are historical artifacts and not recurring political phenomena. The current political era is more appropriately known as a "dealignment system," in which the rise of politically independent voters and shifting electoral coalitions have resulted in neither party holding a long-term lock on both the presidency and Congress on the scale of the GOP from 1860 to 1928 or of the Democrats from 1932 to 1968.

I've contemplated the potential for a Democratic realignment for some time, but because of the success of the surge in Iraq, and the nomination of John McCain as the Republican standard-bearer, circumstances have appeared hopeful that the GOP might retain the White House. Not only that, for true dominance, should the Democrats take the presidency, the party would also need to consolidate their hold on Congress with a 60-plus filibuster-proof majority in the Senate. That possibility has long seemed remote.

Until this last month, that is.

The collapse of Wall Street over the last few weeks indeed repesents the kind of catastrophic event that precipitated previous partisan realignments - in other words, the current crisis, with polls showing highest voter dissatisfaction in American history, may well be the catalyst for historic Democratic victories, including a 60-plus margin in the upper chamber of the Congress.

Stuart Rothenberg made a dramatic argument this week, laying out the possibility for a GOP bloodbath:

It’s obvious to all that the national landscape — and the presidential map — shifted dramatically in the Democrats’ favor during the financial crisis. Americans are more dissatisfied with the present and worried about the future, all of which helps Democratic presidential nominee Sen. Barack Obama (Ill.) and Democratic Congressional candidates.

Obama may not be comfortably over the crucial 50 percent mark in polls, but states that McCain hoped to compete in are moving out of reach, while more traditionally Republican states have come into play for Obama. McCain needs to change that dynamic quickly to have any chance of winning.

McCain still has a month to change the focus of the race, and Obama may have peaked too soon. But public concern about the economy isn’t likely to disappear over the next month no matter how much Republicans wish it would.

So far, there is no evidence that Democratic candidates are paying a price for the public’s sour mood, or that the election will be “anti-incumbent.” It is Republican candidates who are feeling the political pain.

The outlook in Senate races continues to deteriorate for Republicans, with Democratic gains at least in the high single digits increasingly likely. Where I once wrote in this space that Democrats had a chance of reaching 60 seats in 2010 (“For Democrats, Time to Pad Senate Majority and Think 60 Seats,” Feb. 12, 2007), I now can’t rule out 60 seats for this November....

Republicans appear to be heading into a disastrous election that will usher in a very bleak period for the party. A new generation of party leaders will have to figure out how to pick up the pieces and make their party relevant after November.

On Thursday, Steven Stark laid out the hypothesis that Rothenberg's "bloodbath" may indeed result in a fundamental transformation of the party coalitions:

Over the past eight years, the reaction of the Bush administration to both 9/11 and the current financial mess has been, ironically, one that is traditionally Democratic: running huge deficits while creating vast new government interventionist bureaucracies to deal with homeland security and the credit crisis. The current administration also decided that this new era required an expensive, expansionist foreign policy, fighting "terror wars" on various fronts.

Now, the public may be in the process of deciding that, if a new era requires a more activist and expansionist government, Democrats are better equipped to handle these tasks. Voters may also decide that they are willing to accept the "risk" of a far more rapid military withdrawal from Iraq - which is, after all, the major foreign-policy difference between the McCain and Obama candidacies....

And then there's the credit crisis which has just hit; admittedly, its effects may not be known for months or even years. But if Obama is able to win big because of it, it could serve as the final crystallizing event that allows the Democratic Party to reap the benefit for years to come.

I'm not one to make predictions, and I'm not ruling out that John McCain can pull off a miraculous upset. But if trends on the economy and voter sentiment continue their current trajectory, 2008 may just well turn out to be a genuine critical election.

The key indicator, for me at least, will be what happens in the elections for the Senate, and here's how Patrick Ruffini describes things:

If you're a conservative looking at the odds, what should really scare you is not the 80 to 90 percent chance that Barack Obama is the next President. It's the very real chance that Democrats could get to 60 or tantalizingly close to it in the Senate. President Barack Obama is unfortunate. President Barack Obama with 60 votes in the Senate means a socialist America.

And that would mean a fundamental reorientation in the ideological underpinnings of the American state, not unlike that following 1932.

The Obama Thugocracy

Michael Barone presents a cold, hard look at the likely shape of American politics upon the possible accession of Barack Obama to the presidency: "The Coming Obama Thugocracy":

"I need you to go out and talk to your friends and talk to your neighbors," Barack Obama told a crowd in Elko, Nev. "I want you to talk to them whether they are independent or whether they are Republican. I want you to argue with them and get in their face." Actually, Obama supporters are doing a lot more than getting into people's faces. They seem determined to shut people up.

That's what Obama supporters, alerted by campaign emails, did when conservative Stanley Kurtz appeared on Milt Rosenberg's WGN radio program in Chicago. Kurtz had been researching Obama's relationship with unrepentant Weather Underground terrorist William Ayers in Chicago Annenberg Challenge papers in the Richard J. Daley Library in Chicago -- papers that were closed off to him for some days, apparently at the behest of Obama supporters.

Obama fans jammed WGN's phone lines and sent in hundreds of protest emails. The message was clear to anyone who would follow Rosenberg's example. We will make trouble for you if you let anyone make the case against The One.

Other Obama supporters have threatened critics with criminal prosecution. In September, St. Louis County Circuit Attorney Bob McCulloch and St. Louis City Circuit Attorney Jennifer Joyce warned citizens that they would bring criminal libel prosecutions against anyone who made statements against Obama that were "false." I had been under the impression that the Alien and Sedition Acts had gone out of existence in 1801-02. Not so, apparently, in metropolitan St. Louis. Similarly, the Obama campaign called for a criminal investigation of the American Issues Project when it ran ads highlighting Obama's ties to Ayers.

These attempts to shut down political speech have become routine for liberals....

Once upon a time, liberals prided themselves, with considerable reason, as the staunchest defenders of free speech. Union organizers in the 1930s and 1940s made the case that they should have access to employees to speak freely to them, and union leaders like George Meany and Walter Reuther were ardent defenders of the First Amendment.

Today's liberals seem to be taking their marching orders from other quarters. Specifically, from the college and university campuses where administrators, armed with speech codes, have for years been disciplining and subjecting to sensitivity training any students who dare to utter thoughts that liberals find offensive. The campuses that used to pride themselves as zones of free expression are now the least free part of our society.

Obama supporters who found the campuses congenial and Obama himself, who has chosen to live all his adult life in university communities, seem to find it entirely natural to suppress speech that they don't like and seem utterly oblivious to claims that this violates the letter and spirit of the First Amendment. In this campaign, we have seen the coming of the Obama thugocracy, suppressing free speech, and we may see its flourishing in the four or eight years ahead.

Also, see the short film, "October Surprise," a devasting indictment of Obama's refusal to provide a copy of his birth certificate to Philip Berg, who has filed a lawsuit challenging Obama's citizenship eligibility to serve as president of the United States.

Assassination Politics?

Barack Obama continues to hold a sizable lead in Gallup's daily tracking numbers, but the Democrats nevertheless are reacting with abject paranoia to the recent news of angry GOP supporters at John McCain rallies.

Apparently, the McCain/Palin team is guilty of stoking "hate and fear" among the conservative base, and the visceral emotions seen at the McCain events allegedly indicates that Barack Obama is now at risk of being assassinated:

How far will McCain and Palin go to get what they want? Are they willing to incite violent behavior? The fringe of the right-wing does not need to be encouraged or supported. They simply need to be pushed to the outskirts of civilized society. Sure they can vote, but KKK members can vote too. Best not to pander to hate in a country where hate has already caused so much horror.

And here's this from the New York Times:

IF you think way back to the start of this marathon campaign, back when it seemed preposterous that any black man could be a serious presidential contender, then you remember the biggest fear about Barack Obama: a crazy person might take a shot at him.

Some voters told reporters that they didn’t want Obama to run, let alone win, should his very presence unleash the demons who have stalked America from Lincoln to King. After consultation with Congress, Michael Chertoff, the homeland security secretary, gave Obama a Secret Service detail earlier than any presidential candidate in our history — in May 2007, some eight months before the first Democratic primaries.

“I’ve got the best protection in the world, so stop worrying,” Obama reassured his supporters. Eventually the country got conditioned to his appearing in large arenas without incident (though I confess that the first loud burst of fireworks at the end of his convention stadium speech gave me a start). In America, nothing does succeed like success. The fear receded.

Until now. At McCain-Palin rallies, the raucous and insistent cries of “Treason!” and “Terrorist!” and “Kill him!” and “Off with his head!” as well as the uninhibited slinging of racial epithets, are actually something new in a campaign that has seen almost every conceivable twist. They are alarms. Doing nothing is not an option.

All’s fair in politics. John McCain and Sarah Palin have every right to bring up William Ayers, even if his connection to Obama is minor, even if Ayers’s Weather Underground history dates back to Obama’s childhood, even if establishment Republicans and Democrats alike have collaborated with the present-day Ayers in educational reform. But it’s not just the old Joe McCarthyesque guilt-by-association game, however spurious, that’s going on here. Don’t for an instant believe the many mindlessly “even-handed” journalists who keep saying that the McCain campaign’s use of Ayers is the moral or political equivalent of the Obama campaign’s hammering on Charles Keating.

What makes them different, and what has pumped up the Weimar-like rage at McCain-Palin rallies, is the violent escalation in rhetoric, especially (though not exclusively) by Palin. Obama “launched his political career in the living room of a domestic terrorist.” He is “palling around with terrorists” (note the plural noun). Obama is “not a man who sees America the way you and I see America.” Wielding a wildly out-of-context Obama quote, Palin slurs him as an enemy of American troops.

By the time McCain asks the crowd “Who is the real Barack Obama?” it’s no surprise that someone cries out “Terrorist!” The rhetorical conflation of Obama with terrorism is complete. It is stoked further by the repeated invocation of Obama’s middle name by surrogates introducing McCain and Palin at these rallies. This sleight of hand at once synchronizes with the poisonous Obama-is-a-Muslim e-mail blasts and shifts the brand of terrorism from Ayers’s Vietnam-era variety to the radical Islamic threats of today.

That’s a far cry from simply accusing Obama of being a guilty-by-association radical leftist. Obama is being branded as a potential killer and an accessory to past attempts at murder. “Barack Obama’s friend tried to kill my family” was how a McCain press release last week packaged the remembrance of a Weather Underground incident from 1970 — when Obama was 8.

We all know what punishment fits the crime of murder, or even potential murder, if the security of post-9/11 America is at stake. We all know how self-appointed “patriotic” martyrs always justify taking the law into their own hands.

Especially precious is the "Weimar" reference (Republicans are Nazis, remember), but read the whole thing for more (John McCain and Sarah Palin have apparently assumed the Jesse Helms mantle).

And the Democrats are ahead?

These assassination smears are coming precisely when Obama's held his longest sustained lead all year, and when there's even been some speculation that the Illinois Democrat might see a reverse Bradley effect working in his favor.

We've still got over three weeks of campaigning, of course, so we'll see even more unhinged rants against GOP partisans in the days ahead. Nothing surprises me any more.

Related: "Stop The Hate....Remember The Worst Times In America Are Better Than The Best Times Elsewhere!"

Our Sacred Duty as Parents

A couple of months back, precinct walkers for the Yes on 8 campaign knocked on my door. I told them that I favored the measure and I gave them my card, indicating that my department often hosts speaker forums and that faculty members invite speakers for classroom visits.

I was contacted by a representative of the campaign, and a gentleman came to discuss the Yes on 8 position in my classes. It was an interesting day, with some strong reactions among students, from both sides of the issue, but I was pleased that the kids had a chance to discuss the proposition.

In any case, I thought I'd share that story to go along with this incredibly moving video above, via Political Pistachio, featuring Tony Perkins of the Family Research Council and his interview the Parker family in Massachusetts, where same-sex marriage is legal. The Parker's kindergartner brought home a "diversity" booklet that featured treatments of homosexual marriages as normal. The Parkers were shaken not only by this loss of moral guidance over their kids, but also the state's reaction to their request for parental notification.

It turns out that the measure is now gaining support in public opinion, due to the increased television advertising on the Yes on 8 side (a yes vote would amend the state's constitution to authorize marriage solely between one man and one woman).

See also the Yes on 8 website, Protect Marriage.

The Question of Barack Obama's Socialism

Rick Moran argues that Barack Obama is not a socialist and he says he detests "conservatives throwing around the words “socialism” and “Marxism” when it comes to Obama."

Well, with due respect to Rick, he taking a jab at me in his post!

Actually, while I don't think Obama's an orthodox Marxist-Leninist in the Soviet sense, I do think he's socialist in terms of "welfare state socialism," a form of social democracy that advocates a heavy role for the state in a mixture of government planning, market regulation, and social provision.

Such democratic welfare state socialism is in fact institutionalized in the U.S., particularly in New Deal-era programs like Social Security, agricultural subsidies, workers' compensation, welfare (public assistance), and deposit insurance. Because these policies have become institutionalized and expanded with bipartisan support, we tend not the think of them in terms of "socialism."

What makes Barack Obama different, and why it's not inaccurate to speak of him as ideologically socialist, is that by background and inclination he'd like to expand the American welfare state toward the European model, in countries like Denmark or Germany.

Obama speaks in terms of socialist ideology: He stated during the primaries that "the chance to get a college education is the birthright of every American," and during the primaries, and again in Tuesday's presidential debate, he argued that health care should be a right.

As Investor's Business Daily points out, Obama's essentially a collectivist in outlook:

It's clear from a close reading of his two books that he's a firm believer in class envy. He assumes the economy is a fixed pie, whereby the successful only get rich at the expense of the poor.

Following this discredited Marxist model, he believes government must step in and redistribute pieces of the pie. That requires massive transfers of wealth through government taxing and spending, a return to the entitlement days of old.

Of course, Obama is too smart to try to smuggle such hoary collectivist garbage through the front door. He's disguising the wealth transfers as "investments" — "to make America more competitive," he says, or "that give us a fighting chance," whatever that means.

Among his proposed "investments":

• "Universal," "guaranteed" health care.

• "Free" college tuition.

• "Universal national service" (a la Havana).

• "Universal 401(k)s" (in which the government would match contributions made by "low- and moderate-income families").

• "Free" job training (even for criminals).

• "Wage insurance" (to supplement dislocated union workers' old income levels).

• "Free" child care and "universal" preschool.

• More subsidized public housing.

• A fatter earned income tax credit for "working poor."

• And even a Global Poverty Act that amounts to a Marshall Plan for the Third World, first and foremost Africa.

His new New Deal also guarantees a "living wage," with a $10 minimum wage indexed to inflation; and "fair trade" and "fair labor practices," with breaks for "patriot employers" who cow-tow to unions, and sticks for "nonpatriot" companies that don't.

That's just for starters — first-term stuff.

Obama doesn't stop with socialized health care. He wants to socialize your entire human resources department — from payrolls to pensions. His social-microengineering even extends to mandating all employers provide seven paid sick days per year to salary and hourly workers alike.

You can see why Obama was ranked, hands-down, the most liberal member of the Senate by the National Journal. Some, including colleague and presidential challenger John McCain, think he's the most liberal member in Congress.

There's also the question of Obama's ideological training and past associations. In many respects, one is defined by the company they keep and the activities they pursue. We often hear criticism of the attacks on Obama's past as "guilt by association," but it's not just a radical aquiantance here or an early Marxist mentor there: It's the over-time acclimation to and identification with doctrinaire socialist ideology and practice.

As Jawa Report notes, regarding the controversy surrounding Obama's past relationships:

Aren't we seeing a pattern here? One interaction with one old communist isn't particularly troubling. A handful of sporadic interactions with a handful of radical left-wingers may not be particularly troubling. But a lifelong pattern of extended associations and alliances with scores of fringe, America-hating radicals is very, very troubling indeed.

Just to be clear:

It's not just that Barack Obama's father was a Marxist economist or that his mother Stanley came from radical far-left roots.

It's not just that Obama's childhood mentor Frank Marshall Davis was a famous communist poet.

It's not just that Jeremiah Wright, Obama's pastor, counselor and spiritual mentor of 20 years is a racist, America-hating radical.

It's not just that Michael Phleger, Obama's other spiritual mentor is every bit as extreme as Wright.

It's not just that his wife Michelle has never been really that proud of America, or that she thinks this country is "mean".

It's not just that Obama refused to wear a flag, or that he refused to salute it during the national anthem.

It's not just that Obama's political and financial benefactor William Ayers is an unrepentant radical socialist terrorist.

It's not just that Bernadine Dohrn regrets that she didn't kill more people back in the 1960s.

It's not just that Alice Palmer, Obama's political mentor in Chicago, was a communist propagandist.

It's not just that Obama was a member of the radical socialist New Party or that he ran as a candidate for public office under their far-left platform.

It's not just that Obama was an agitator, trainer and attorney for the corrupt and radical-left ACORN.

None of these facts, by itself, tells you that much about Barack Obama. A reasonable person should, however, be able to look at this motley crew of left-wing communists and America-haters, realize that Barack Obama's rolodex is a veritable Who's Who of American Socialism, be very, very disturbed by that fact and ask some very probing questions about WHO Barack Obama is, WHAT he believes, and WHY this gang of radical America-haters considers Barack Obama such a good friend.

Thus, in both policy and associations, it's clearly not unreasonable to identify Barack Obama as socialist, and not just of the democratic welfare state variety.

If elected, the Illinois Senator may very well take American government further to the left than in any time in U.S. history, not just in terms of market regulation, but in the fullest sense of the democratic socialist model of European-style welfare states.

Dow Drops $8.4 Trillion of Wealth!

Each morning, as I watch the news, read the papers, and write my posts, I'm reminded constantly that this is the "worst economic crisis since the Great Depression."

It remains to be seen if we'll ever have another crisis on par with the collapse of capitalism in the 1930s (see Nobel Prize-winning economist Gary Becker, for example, "We're Not Headed for a Depression").

That said, I might as well admit that I've been in a bit of political funk over the news. The ongoing market turmoil is killing the GOP's chances in November. There's no other way to spin it ... no matter how damaging are Barack Obama's ties to each and every left-wing oppositional group under the sun.

This morning's Wall Street Journal, with yet another banner headline, captured the political implications of economic crisis: "Market's 7-Day Rout Leaves U.S. Reeling":

Stocks fell for the seventh straight trading day on Thursday, continuing what amounts to a slow-motion crash that has pulled the market down more than 20% over that brief period.

On its way down, the Dow Jones Industrial Average broke through another milestone, closing below 9000 for the first time since 2003, wiping out the bulk of the gains from the last bull market. The decline leaves America in one of its worst bear markets in decades, a slump that is triggering comparisons to long-running declines of the 1930s and 1970s.

Thursday's decline - the 11th largest in percentage terms in the Dow's history - put the stock market either in, or nearly in, a crash. A common definition of a crash is a 20% decline in a single day or several days. The Dow's crash in 1987 was 22.6% in one day. The 1929 crash was back-to-back declines of 12.8% and 11.7%.

On my way to work each day, or after I drop off my boy at elementary school, I look around, taking in all the people hustling to their jobs, all the moms strolling the babies and kissing their little ones goodbye, and all of the beautiful landscaping on all of the fabulous homes that line the drives of nearby neighborhoods in suburban Orange County.

And then I say to myself: "A depression does not look like this."

Indeed, some economists argue that the banking crisis will not bring down the U.S. economy - that indeed, the fundamentals are sound (see, Professor Casey Mulligan, "An Economy You Can Bank On").

It's mass psychology that's going to matter, however, and people are feeling the stress. A period of three and a half weeks remains a long time in politics. But if we keep getting daily doses of market declines, while consumers and homeowners stress over inflation and dwindling balances on 401k statements, not too much else is going to matter.

Graphic Credit: Wall Street Journal

Baghdad Walls Come Down Amid Greater Security

Iraq has been off the political radar of late, except for the cheerleaders of terror, who applaud every McClatchy piece of yellow journalism spinning the residual dangers in the region.

The New York Times, also a ringleader of antiwar opposition, does achieve a burst of journalistic objectivity once in a while, for example, in its piece today, "As Fears Ease, Baghdad Sees Walls Tumble":

Market by market, square by square, the walls are beginning to come down. The miles of hulking blast walls, ugly but effective, were installed as a central feature of the surge of American troops to stop neighbors from killing one another.

“They protected against car bombs and drive-by attacks,” said Adnan, 39, a vegetable seller in the once violent neighborhood of Dora, who argues that the walls now block the markets and the commerce that Baghdad needs to thrive. “Now it is safe.”

The slow dismantling of the concrete walls is the most visible sign of a fundamental change here in the Iraqi capital. The American surge strategy, which increased the number of United States troops and contributed to stability here, is drawing to a close. And a transition is under way to the almost inevitable American drawdown in 2009.

There are now more than 148,000 United States troops in Iraq, down from the peak of around 170,000 a year ago, and President Bush has accepted the military’s recommendation to remove 8,000 more by February.

Iraqis are already taking on many of the tasks the Americans once performed, raising great hopes that the country will progress on its own but also deep fears of failure.

On Oct. 1, the Sunni-dominated Awakening movement, widely credited with helping restore order to neighborhoods that were among the most deadly, passed from the American to the Iraqi government payroll in Baghdad. There is deep mutual mistrust between the new employer and many of its new employees, many of whom are former insurgents.

Another element of the transition, which has attracted far less notice than the Awakening transfer, is the effort by the Iraqi Army to begin turning over neighborhoods to the paramilitary National Police. In the future, its officers, too, will leave and be replaced by regular police officers.

All three moves mark a transition to an era in which Iraq’s Shiite-dominated government seeks more control over its own military and sway over America’s.

“The Iraqi security forces are now able to protect Iraq,” said Joaidi Nahim Mahmoud Arif, a National Police sergeant in Dora, in southern Baghdad. “They will depend on themselves above all.”

In dozens of interviews across Baghdad, it is evident that while open hostilities have calmed, beneath the surface many Sunnis and Shiites continue to harbor deep mistrust.

If the changes work as hoped, it will be a huge step toward restoring normal life in Baghdad. Each move, however, has its pitfalls. Awakening members could return to insurgent activity. Bombers could take advantage of streets without walls. The National Police, long accused of being sectarian, could abuse its new positions.

American commanders concede the risks but contend that the changes are worthwhile, given the potential payoff.

“We’ve got to balance that: security with economic concerns,” said Lt. Col. Tim Watson, commander of the Second Battalion, Fourth Infantry, attached to the First Brigade Combat Team, Fourth Infantry Division, for Baghdad.

But commanders acknowledged that the cost of failure would be high. Referring to the Awakening transfer, Colonel Watson’s boss, Maj. Gen. Jeffery Hammond, said, “If the project were to fail, these guys would be out on the street, angry.”

“Al Qaeda in Iraq will be recruiting them,” he said.

That sounds reasonable to me, and I'd suggest these points argue in favor of a substantial residual deployment for some time to come (60 to 70 thousand troops would be my preference).

That said, for the last few years war critics cried, "when will the Iraqis stand up?!!"

It's happening now.Things are going to be rough for some time, but defeatists have long been proven wrong, and the American public has for all intent and purposes accepted an American victory in Iraq (a majority says things are going well), and folks are ready to shift gears a bit, without jeopardizing the gains so far made by the U.S.

See also, Jules Crittenden, "The Forgotten War."

Visualizing Memeorandum

Memeorandum is a really cool blog aggregator, so cool, in fact, I wonder if blogging would be as fun without it.

Yet lately I've been seeing left-wing blogs getting a preponderance of attention, especially on the "featured posts" sidebar. With the exception of Hot Air, the featured links have been to pro-Obama lefties overwhelmingly - and over and over again. It's seemed so bad I was thinking folks like the nihilist Newshoggers were paying kickbacks for the traffic.

Well, it turns out that waxy.org's got a cool study posted, graphically indicating the political biases found at Memeorandum (but not necessarily of Memeorandum):

Like the rest of the world, I've been completely obsessed with the presidential election and nonstop news coverage. My drug of choice? Gabe Rivera's Memeorandum, the political sister site of Techmeme, which constantly surfaces the most controversial stories being discussed by political bloggers.

While most political blogs are extremely partisan, their biases aren't immediately obvious to outsiders like me. I wanted to see, at a glance, how conservative or liberal the blogs were without clicking through to every article.

With the help of del.icio.us founder Joshua Schachter, we used a recommendation algorithm to score every blog on Memeorandum based on their linking activity in the last three months. Then I wrote a Greasemonkey script to pull that information out of Google Spreadsheets, and colorize Memeorandum on-the-fly. Left-leaning blogs are blue and right-leaning blogs are red, with darker colors representing strong biases.

Waxy notes that the model measures linking patterns, not necessarily political bias:

The colors don't necessarily represent each blogger's personal views or biases. It's a reflection of their linking activity. The algorithm looks at the stories that blogger's linked to before, relative to all other bloggers, and groups them accordingly. People that link to things that only conservatives find interesting will be classified as bright red, even if they are personally moderate or liberal, and vice-versa. The algorithm can't read minds, so don't be offended if you feel misrepresented. It's only looking at the data.

The tech mechanics of their model are pretty accurate in any case, as we can see the ideological identification of the blogs highlighted as realistic. American Power is highlighted in light red in the screen-shot above, so that's kind of cool to be captured in all of this hypothesizing.

Note how on the Brooks piece at top, lefty blogs hammered the point like blood-sucking vampires; meanwhile, conservatives took after the Obama socialist documents piece like a pack of hungry wolves. That's the way it is in the political blogosphere, as I noted previously.

Waxy's got script for download availble, to highlight partisan colors in individual browsers.

But my suggestion is for political bloggers to take advantage of Memeorandum itself, reading and linking to it aggressively when writing.

That's how aspiring political commentators will get their stuff noticed - you'll be a "playa"!

ACORN Spells Trouble for Obama

The full extent of ACORN's corruption and radicalism is on display today, with the news that the organization filed thousands of fraudulent voter registration forms in Indiana, and has bribed individuals into submitting multiple or fraudulent voter registration cards in Ohio and elsewhere:

ACORN is under investigation in Ohio and at least eight other states - including Missouri, where the FBI said it's planning to look into potential voter fraud - for over-the-top efforts to get as many names as possible on the voter rolls regardless of whether a person is registered or eligible.

It's even under investigation in Bridgeport, Conn., for allegedly registering a 7-year-old girl to vote, according to the State Elections Enforcement Commission.

Meanwhile, a federal judge yesterday ordered Ohio's Secretary of State to verify the identity of newly registered voters by matching them with other government documents. The order was in response to a Republican lawsuit unrelated to the ACORN probe in Cuyahoga County, in which at least three people, including Johnson, have been subpoenaed.

Meanwhile, the McCain campaign has begun to develop a line of attack on Obama's ties to ACORN, starting with its new 90-second video spot outlining the Illinois Senator's ties to the group:

Here's the text:

ANNCR: Who is Barack Obama? A man with “a political baptism performed at warp speed.” Vast ambition.

After college, he moved to Chicago. Became a community organizer. There, Obama met Madeleine Talbot, part of the Chicago branch of ACORN. He was so impressive that he was asked to train the ACORN staff.

What did ACORN in Chicago engage in? Bullying banks. Intimidation tactics. Disruption of business. ACORN forced banks to issue risky home loans. The same types of loans that caused the financial crisis we’re in today.

No wonder Obama’s campaign is trying to distance him from the group, saying, “Barack Obama Never Organized with ACORN.” But Obama’s ties to ACORN run long and deep. He taught classes for ACORN. They even endorsed him for President.

But now ACORN is in trouble.

REPORTER: There are at least 11 investigations across the country involving thousands of potentially fraudulent ACORN forms.

ANNCR: Massive voter fraud. And the Obama campaign paid more than $800,000 to an ACORN front for get out the vote efforts.

Pressuring banks to issue risky loans. Nationwide voter fraud.

Barack Obama. Bad judgment. Blind ambition. Too risky for America.

Obama's ACORN relationship is indeed damaging, but it remains to be seen how the Obama connection plays out in public opinion.

Barack Obama's Born Alive Cover-Up

Here's the new ad spot from the National Right to Life Committee, which details the scope of Barack Obama's cover-up of his consistent opposition to born alive infant protection legislation:

See the "Fact Check" piece referred to in the video, "Obama and 'Infanticide'."

Barack Obama, aka Senator Infanticide, will not apologize for his deceit.

The Illinois Senator disrespects the sanctity of life - he's the ultimate abortion extremist, and his evolving position on abortion is just one more confirmation that's he's America's stealth candidate.

Related: "Killed Abortion Survivor Finally Gets Funeral."

Barack Obama's ACORN Cover-Up

The unraveling of Barack Obama, America's stealth candidate, continues this morning with new evidence confirming the shady Chicago socialist's ties to ACORN, the radical community rights organization:

While Barack Obama's connection with the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (ACORN) has not gone entirely unreported, it has not been fully explained. Most media background pieces simply note Obama's involvement in a 1995 lawsuit on behalf of ACORN. Obama's own website, as well as most major media, fail to reveal the full depth and extent of his relationship with the organization.

Attempts to hide evidence of Obama's involvement with ACORN have included wiping the web clean of potentially damaging articles that had appeared, and were previously publicly accessible. Unfortunately, those behind the attempted cover-up failed to realize that in today's day and age, nothing disappears forever. There also exists another layer of the web, the hidden web, which is full of information included in proprietary scholarly databases where these very same "missing" articles can be easily uncovered.

See the full story at the link.

Barack Obama's campaign website continues to lie and deny the truth about his involvement and association with ACORN. No matter how many times you say it, it does not make it true. The facts do not lie, Senator Obama. It's time to come clean and tell the truth, and it's time for the American people to demand it.

Public opinion polls show Obama sustaining his lead in national and state surveys. The elecion will be tight going into the final week, but it's safe to say now that the accession of an Obama administration in Washington will see the most election of the most secretive candidate to the White House in American history.

Also, see Obama's "Fight the Smears" cover-up page, "Barack Obama Never Organized with ACORN."

Photo Credit: The Cleveland Leader

Cancer Risk is Barack Obama's Latest Stealth Secret

CNN reports that Barack Obama, a cigarette smoker who continues to light up (after failing to quit), is at risk of contracting cancer.

Obama's smoking is considered an "accelerator" of serious disease. What is more, the Illinois Senator's family history puts him particularly at risk: Obama's mother died of ovarian cancer and his grandfather was afflicted with cancer of the prostate.

Note that John McCain, himself a cancer survivor, has released 1,100 pages of medical documentation on his health, and he has spoken forthrightly and publically on the governmental implications of his recovery.

Obama, on the other hand, refuses to release his medical records.

At 47 years-old, it seems counterintuitive that the younger candidate would be stonewalling the press on matters of great national significance. But as many commentators have observed, Obama has run the most secretive presidential campaign since the smoking-gun administration of Richard Nixon in the '70s.

From birth certificates to "my Muslim faith" to William Ayers to ACORN, Barack Obama is the ultimate stealth candidate.

The American people deserve more than the wool pulled over their eyes by a corrupt Chicago machine politician and closet radical, one who is enabled by a liberal, partisan press intent to install in office the first black president in American history.