From American Thinker:
Bill & Barack's Excellent Adventure
By Thomas Lifson

August 22, 2008

William Ayers, unrepentant terrorist and education professor, is once again being tied to Barack Obama in the public mind. Controversy builds over the withholding of the archives of the Chicago Annenberg Challenge, an expensive failed school reform effort headed by Obama and effectively run by Ayers, held by the library of the University of Illinois Chicago. Researchers who have gained access to a few documents recording the history of the project have found strong evidence of a very important working relationship between the two men on the project, Obama's sole claim to executive experience.

Oddly enough, even though the project produced no measurable improvement in student performance according to its own final report, educators and administrators -- participants and grantees of the CAC -- were reported by outside monitors to be often "ebullient" about the activities. For insiders, it was an excellent adventure. For the pupils stuck in the failing public schools of Chicago, an ongoing, unrelieved disaster.

Obama and his campaign long have gone out of their way to downplay, in fact distort, the long and evidently deep relationship between Ayers and Obama. In the Philadelphia Democratic debate last April, George Stephanopoulos asked Obama about his relationship with Ayers, and the candidate responded:

"This is a guy who lives in my neighborhood, who's a professor of English in Chicago, who I know and who I have not received some official endorsement from. He's not somebody who I exchange ideas from on a regular basis.

"And the notion that somehow as a consequence of me knowing somebody who engaged in detestable acts 40 years ago when I was 8 years old, somehow reflects on me and my values, doesn't make much sense, George. [....]

"So this kind of game, in which anybody who I know, regardless of how flimsy the relationship is, is somehow -- somehow their ideas could be attributed to me -- I think the American people are smarter than that. They're not going to suggest somehow that that is reflective of my views, because it obviously isn't."

Almost two months earlier, the "neighbor" talking point campaign manager David Axelrod introduced the notion that Obama and Ayers were mostly just neighbors, telling The Politico's Ben Smith,

"Bill Ayers lives in his neighborhood. Their kids attend the same school," he said. "They're certainly friendly, they know each other, as anyone whose kids go to school together."

Ayers and his wife are in their sixties, while the Obamas are in their mid-forties. Ayers' children are all adults, while Obama's children are currently 10 and 7. Axelrod's prevarication is telling, bespeaking confidence that nobody in the media will bother to dispute an obvious falsehood.

"Flimsy" turns out to be a completely misleading word when it comes to characterizing the Obama-Ayers relationship.

Notwithstanding the campaign's efforts to direct attention away from Ayers, a 527 group, American Issues Project, has just released a television ad tying Obama to Ayers, and says it is spending 2.8 million on television airtime in key states.

Despite the legally questionable embargo of the CAC archives, most of its tax returns and official evaluations of the CAC have already been made public. In the hands of intrepid bloggers such as Steve Diamond, Tom Maguire and Dan Riehl, there is already proof of Obama's extensive involvement with Ayers over the course of his chairmanship, and an emerging picture of Obama's indecisiveness and absence when serious problems needed leadership.

Barack Obama joined the CAC shortly after William Ayers and Anne C. Hallett received news that their letter of November 8, 1994 submitting a grant proposal to The Annenberg Challenge had been approved. They were to get as much as $49 million from Annenberg, plus tens of millions more dollars from other foundations. Obama's involvement predates by months the actual incorporation of the CAC and his appointment as founding chairman of the board. He came on board almost as soon as the proposal was approved.

How on earth did a relatively unknown associate at a politically-connected but small Chicago law firm come to be entrusted with the heady task of handing out tens of millions of dollars of other people's money?

Keep in mind that Obama was at this point in his career very undistinguished considering his pedigree. It would be a kind understatement to say he had underperformed his academic resume. Three years out of Harvard Law and the Law Review Presidency, here is a short list of some of the things Obama had not done:

Clerked for a US Supreme Court Justice (or any Federal Judge);

worked in an important legal position at any level of serious responsibility;

written a law review article or note or published anything of legal substance.

As of 1995 Obama may have had the most professionally empty resume of any President of the Harvard Law Review three years gone from "The Law School."

And yet Ayers gave him a gig that would enable him to hand out large amounts of money to many people in Chicago, who could be expected to be grateful, once Obama ran for office -- as he was to do later that very year, in an event held at the home of Ayers and Dohrn.

Quite clearly, Obama was already well-enough known and trusted by Ayers to be offered the sensitive, prestigious and highly visible post of chairman of this important new undertaking. So we must ask, when did Obama and Ayers actually first get to know one another? And how did they come to trust one another?

One possible connection between Ayers and Obama was Sidley Austin, the prestigious Chicago law firm where Obama had a summer job after his first year at Harvard Law School, and where he met his future wife Michelle, assigned to him as a mentor. Also working at Sidley Austin was Bernadine Dohrn, wife of William Ayers, and a fellow Weather Underground terrorist. Given the shared "progressive" politics of the three, they probably knew one another and associated together at a firm known as a white shoe corporate practice.

Or Obama might have met Ayers even earlier, during his stint as a community organizer on the South Side of Chicago, in fact. Ayers was a well-known and very active figure in left wing Chicago politics, and might have encountered the young, articulate, Ivy League educated rookie black radical Obama, working in a Saul Alinksy spinoff.

We soon will know much more about the period of collaboration between Obama and Ayers following the start of the CAC. Even if the archives continue to be withheld from public scrutiny, the cat is out of the bag with the documents available to all. The formidable analytical engine of bloggers trading insights and new data is warming up.

But the period prior to 1995, the time when Bill and Barack, the terrorist and the presidential aspirant, got to know one another and build the relationship of trust, is one excellent adventure likely to remain obscure.

Hat tip: James Edward Pennington and Ed Lasky

Thomas Lifson is editor and publisher of American Thinker.

From Dallas Morning News:
Upshaw leaves dual legacy in NFL
By Rick Gosselin

01:05 AM CDT on Friday, August 22, 2008

Gene Upshaw couldn't seem to lose as a football player with the Oakland Raiders. Later in life, as the highest ranking member of the NFL Players Association, he couldn't seem to win.

Upshaw, who died Wednesday of pancreatic cancer at the age of 63, became a first-round draft pick in 1967 because Al Davis wanted a player who could block future Hall of Fame defensive tackle Buck Buchanan of the Kansas City Chiefs.

Upshaw blocked Buchanan and everyone else who lined up in front of him during a 15-year career that resulted in his own induction into the Pro Football Hall of Fame.

His teams went to the playoffs 11 times and won eight division titles. A nine-year captain of the Raiders, Upshaw became the first player to participate in Super Bowls in three different decades (1968, 1977, 1981).

But Upshaw's work off the field quickly overshadowed his work on the field.

Upshaw retired after the 1981 season, but he was already entrenched in his next career – organized labor. He became a member of the NFL Players Association's bargaining committee in the late 1970s and was named the union's executive director in 1983.

Upshaw steered the players through a tumultuous 25 years that included two player strikes, antitrust litigation that would eventually produce free agency and a salary cap in the 1990s, and an explosion of franchise revenues that today generates $100 million contracts for the league's best players.

The NFL and its players enjoyed labor peace for the final 21 years of the Upshaw era – but he was continually criticized for negotiating owner-friendly collective bargaining agreements. TV commentator Bryant Gumbel went as far as to say Upshaw was on a leash held by former NFL commissioner Paul Tagliabue.

There was an uprising this decade of NFL old-timers – players from a generation ago who missed out on the big contracts and big benefits that television dollars were bankrolling by the 1990s and 2000s. The old-timers accused Upshaw of turning his back on his peers for not addressing their medical and pension needs.

One of Upshaw's most vocal critics was fellow Hall of Fame guard Joe Delamielleure. Peeved by his onslaught, Upshaw threatened to break Delamielleure's neck.

There also was an uprising last winter by current NFL players, led by Baltimore kicker Matt Stover, who wanted to overthrow Upshaw before the next round of contract negotiations.

The NFL owners opted out of the current CBA last May, saying privately that they could no longer live with giving the players upwards of 60 percent of the game's gross revenues.

The salary cap rose from $34.6 million in its first year in 1994 to $116 million this season.

If the CBA is not renegotiated, there would be no salary cap in the 2010 season. The deal, originally negotiated through the 2012 season, would end after 2010.

Upshaw, whose own contract with the NFLPA was to expire in 2010, said if owners gave up a salary cap they would never get it back. He also said he wouldn't leave his post until there was a resolution of this labor situation.

But Upshaw never got the chance to sit back down at the bargaining table. Doctors discovered his cancer just last Sunday, and he died at his home near California's Lake Tahoe on Wednesday surrounded by his family.

"Few people in the history of the National Football League have played the game as well as Gene," former NFL commissioner Paul Tagliabue said, "and then have another career in football with so much positive impact on the structure and competitiveness of the entire league as Gene.

"In both careers, if you hit him on the head, he could hit you back twice as hard – but he didn't always do so. He was very tough but also a good listener. He never lost sight of the interests of the game and the big picture."

From The New York Post:
BARACK'S FAVORS FOR CORRUPT CRONY
By DAVID FREDDOSO

August 21, 2008 --

Barack Obama has ad mitted it was "boneheaded" to get involved in a land deal with Tony Rezko, his friend and fund-raiser. But the media's focus on that deal has distracted from the bigger question: Why would Obama become involved in any deal with a man like Rezko, who made his living sponging off taxpayers and corrupting public officials? Because, by the time of the deal, the two already had a long relationship of mutual benefit.

The deal's details are well-known: On June 15, 2005, Obama bought a gorgeous house in Hyde Park for $1.65 million - $300,000 below the list price. Rezko bought the empty but attractive lot next door from the same seller at the same time; Obama would later buy part of Rezko's lot, overpaying him.

The transaction was shady, but not obviously corrupt. The overall Obama-Rezko relationship looks worse.

After Rezko's 2006 indictment on unrelated federal corruption charges, Obama denied unequivocally that he'd ever helped the man: "I've never done any favors for him."

That's simply false. Rezko was a genius of corporate welfare who enriched himself at taxpayers' expense, both legally and illegally, via his multiple political connections. Yes, he went to others for the illegal deals that landed him in prison. But Rezko depended on Obama when he wanted legal access to the state treasury. The arrangement was a far cry from Obama's image of "change and hope."

It's impossible to know Obama's motives. But several of his official acts benefited Rezko, who in turn raised some $250,000 for Obama's campaigns.

In October 1998, Obama wrote city and state officials, urging them to give Rezko $14 million to build an apartment complex outside of Obama's state Senate district. The Chicago Sun-Times noted last year that Obama's request included $855,000 in "development fees" for Rezko and for another developer, Allison Davis, who happened to be Obama's old law-firm boss. Obama's spokesman said it was just a coincidence that the state senator wrote letters to obtain millions of dollars for his two longtime friends.

In fact, Obama was a dependable ally of subsidized developers in the Legislature, giving Rezko and others broader help as well. In "The Case Against Barack Obama," I identify and parse six housing bills with which Obama was closely involved. A few examples:

* In 2001, Obama cosponsored a bill allowing developers to sell state tax credits to others and pocket half of the proceeds.

* In 2002 and 2004, he was chief cosponsor of a bill to authorize a rent-subsidy fund giving "grants . . . directly to developers" of low-income housing. Seventy percent of the money was earmarked for the Chicago area.

* Obama cosponsored the Illinois Housing Initiative Act of 2003, which required the governor to develop a plan for more low-income housing and "provide[d] for funding for housing construction and rehabilitation and supportive services."

* In 2003, Obama voted for the Affordable Housing Planning and Appeal Act, which required Illinois municipalities to make 10 percent of their housing units "affordable" (by definition, this included subsidized housing). This forced 46 communities just outside of Chicago to create more than 7,000 new "affordable" units - a huge boost in demand for area developers. The bill also provided loopholes for developers to circumvent local ordinances and regulations.

After voting for this measure (it passed narrowly), Obama then cosponsored a new bill that moved up its implementation by more than a year.

These and the other Obama-backed bills helped make millionaires of Rezko and other slum developers at taxpayers' expense. The developers - including his former law boss and an adviser to his current campaign - reciprocated, together giving and raising hundreds of thousands of dollars for Obama's campaigns.

To sum up: Obama got them subsidies to build. He secured them a steady income of government rent subsidies. He arranged special tax credits and abatements for them. He backed measures that increased demand for their services, and helped them legally circumvent local laws.

Perhaps Obama acted with only the poor in mind. Yet some of his developer friends weren't so conscientious - especially Rezko.

Notably, Rezko's company claimed that it lacked the funds to heat one of its 11 buildings in Obama's state Senate district from December 1996 to February 1997. But Rezko still managed to write a $1,000 check to Obama's campaign fund on Jan. 14. That month, his tenants shivered as 19 inches of snow fell on northern Illinois.

With his early and large investments in Obama, Rezko helped the Democratic nominee get to where he is today. Obama, meanwhile, helped Rezko with his legislative work and his letter-writing. Given this close working relationship, the Obama-Rezko land deal is far less surprising.

David Freddoso, a political reporter for National Review, is the author of "The Case Against Barack Obama: The Unlikely Rise and Unexamined Agenda of the Media's Favorite Candidate."

From The Japan Times: An interesting counter opinion to
most U.S. commentary on the Russia vs. Georgia conflict.
World gives Russia an unfair rap
The Russians are right to use the Kosovo example
as a proof of Western hypocrisy
By GREGORY CLARK

U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice is an intelligent woman. So how can she possibly want to tell the world that Russia's response to the Georgian attack on South Ossetia resembled the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1968.

The comparisons should be the reverse. The Russian willingness to go to the aid of a small region under brutal attack contrasts greatly with the empty Western rhetoric back in the days when Czechoslovakia or other regions were under Moscow attack. And the knee-jerk anti-Russian reactions of the media and other commentators too biased or lazy to question the official U.S. version of events parallels the Russian media's knee-jerk acceptance of Moscow's distorted explanations for past misdemeanors such as Chechnya.

Let's begin with the facts. On the morning of Aug. 8 we woke to reports of a fierce Georgian Army attack on the small town of Tskhinvali, the capital of the small South Ossetia autonomous district within Georgia. Civilian casualties were put in the thousands. As well, 10 or more Russian "peacekeepers," stationed after a previous Georgian attack on South Ossetia in 1991-1992, were killed.

Russian troops then intervened, first to drive the Georgian troops out of Ossetia and then to neutralize Georgian military bases elsewhere. Without that intervention it is quite certain that the Georgians would have stripped the area of its autonomous status, with those Ossetians not killed or cowed being forced to move to North Ossetia on the other side of the Caucasus ranges.

But for the Western media none of this was relevant. For them, everything seems to have begun with the Russian intervention, portrayed as a crime of aggression and even ethnic cleansing (somehow the Georgian attack on the small Ossetian minority is not ethnic cleansing).

U.S. President George W. Bush condemns the Russian attack as a violation of Georgian sovereignty. Did sovereignty concerns ever bother the United States during its attacks on various nations? Besides, we now have doctrines that say nations have moral obligations to intervene to defend peoples under immoral attack, regardless of sovereignty concerns. The Russians could easily claim that in Ossetia.

The Russians are right to use the Kosovo example as a proof of Western hypocrisy. There, too, the Serbian minority population was under attack from Western-backed Albanian guerrillas. Serbian attempts to stop the attacks were amazingly described as Serbian ethnic cleansing.

This in turn was used to justify prolonged U.S.-NATO bombardment of civilian and military targets in Serbia, in a bid to make Belgrade abandon its internationally recognized sovereignty over Kosovo.

And once again most of the Western media were too lazy or spineless to challenge the official versions justifying Western behavior. Few wanted to do the homework needed to find what the dispute was about, and not just in Kosovo but earlier in Croatia and Bosnia too. Even today we get little mention of continuing ethnic cleansing efforts by ethnic Albanians to drive out all minorities, including Jews and Gypsies.

I visited Ossetia back in the Soviet days, to check out the existence of this 400,000- member ethnic minority that speaks a unique language of Iranian origins and is divided into two autonomous areas on either side of 5,000 meter Caucuses ranges. But to get there in those primitive days you had to take a local bus on bad roads crossing the 3,000 meter passes from North Ossetia. (Today there is a large tunnel. Some say the Georgian failure to close that tunnel was proof they were sure U.S. support would prevent a Russian intervention.)

It was a rough trip, wedged in with earthy Ossetian farmers clutching their chickens and bags of farm produce. But there was one consolation — you could easily spot the KGB types trailing you. They were the ones without the chickens. Soviet concern to keep the many Caucasus peoples under its control was strong and we were followed relentlessly wherever we went. Eventually we reached Tskhinvali, the small rustic capital of South Ossetia and hardly the kind of place where you could expect an East-West confrontation to be triggered.

It was only after the 1991 breakup of the Soviet Union that Ossetia began to hit the headlines. It had tried to use its autonomous status to claim independence from Georgia. But with their 1991-92 attacks the Georgian authorities made it clear they had other ideas and the pro-Russian Ossetians had to settle for autonomy with Russian peacekeepers. The attack on the night of Aug. 7-8 made it clear the Georgians would not accept even autonomy, just as earlier they had tried to challenge the autonomy of pro-Russian Abkhazia in eastern Georgia.

Yet none of this seems to make much impression on the allegedly impartial Western media. Former Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev tried on a CNN program to point out the need to look at the Aug. 7-8 events before passing any other judgments. But his questioner seemed unable to grasp the point. Established wisdoms have few doubters in the West once their propaganda agencies go to work. In Darfur the talk turns easily to war crimes, despite the civil war reality there. But when Georgia attacks innocent South Ossetian towns and villages it is those who defend the towns and villages who are said to be guilty of war crimes.

The media accept it when the U.S. says it needs to stay on Iraq to guarantee security. When the Russians say they need to linger longer in Georgia for the same reasons we get more Western talk about sovereignty violation and Czechoslovakia.

Cambodia was the classic example of the hypocritical way Western policymakers and propagandists distort events. The U.S. and others at first recognized the brutal Khmer Rouge regime there simply because it was anti-Vietnam. They even condemned as aggression the Vietnamese attacks needed to put an end to the killing fields there. Then when they decided the Khmer Rouge were evil after all, the talk turned to Khmer Rouge war crimes, forgetting the fact that much of the killing field brutality had been due to the remorseless and secret U.S. B-52 bombings on innocent villages and civilians for much of the early '70s — war crimes by any definition.

The Sino-Indian frontier dispute had strong Ossetia parallels. In 1962 India had made a foolishly adventurous attack into territory that even Western maps recognized as Chinese. Even so, the Chinese counterattack was fiercely condemned by the West as aggression aimed at annexing Indian territory, discrediting the Indian government and so on.

Almost no one bothered to look at the material proving where the original attack had occurred. Heavy support for India was promised. Western propaganda agencies set out to demonize Beijing. Even after the Chinese went back to their original positions six weeks later, returning even the weapons they had captured, the myth of innate Chinese aggressiveness was set in motion, with the tragic results we were to see in Indochina just a few years later.

If the extraordinary efforts to demonize Moscow over South Ossetia succeed, the results could be equally tragic.

Gregory Clark is a former Australian diplomat and vice president of Akita International University.

From ESPN: The Magazine:
The Life of Reilly
By Rick Reilly

Getty Images

---

- photograph by Guy Aceto from Backstreets.com

From Peter Holsapple's blog: http://halfpearblog.blogspot.com:
Springsteen in Charleston

August 17, 2008

I was lucky enough to get tickets for Smart Wife and myself to see Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band in Charleston last night. She'd never seen Bruce play, and we had an opportunity to leave the young'uns with her cousins, so I lobbied hard for two tickets and was able to get them. SW and I don't get a lot of one-on-one time these days, with me being on the road for the last two months. Suffice it to say, she was very excited for this chance to go out for some music with me.

We got to our seats, which were about twenty feet from stage left and set about watching the people around us. Obviously a high concentration of every vintage Springsteen tour shirts on folks in the crowd were evident, along with some interesting homemade ones (a pink tank top on an older woman proclaiming incompletely "Tramps Like Us"--or maybe the thought was complete at that). The average age was probably around forty; lots of greying balding guys and their wives, with a few families with kids thrown in.

Makes sense considering Bruce has been making records since 1973--I was envisioning Mom and Dad telling Junior that he was coming to the show, that it would be a coming-of-age event for him, that his life would change like theirs did when they discovered Bruce Springsteen themselves decades ago. Junior, who'd probably rather have been playing GuitarHero with his friends, sighs, agrees to don the ancient shirt and accompany them grudgingly.

Well, Junior got his ears opened last night. Whether he takes it to heart will depend on his own character development, but it was not from the artist's lack of effort towards that end.

Starting with an amazing version of the Swingin' Medallions' "Double Shot of My Baby's Love" as a tribute to Carolina beach music, Bruce and the band roared through about three hours' worth of songs with nary a dip in the energy level. From "Spirit in the Night" to "Radio Nowhere" we were given ample proof of Springsteen's depth and his massive catalog's staying power. Songs I'd plum forgotten about, like "She's the One", and ones I barely knew, like "Mary's Place", stormed through the Coliseum intermingled with hits like "Badlands" and "Hungry Heart" with most everyone singing along to at least parts of each song.

The E Street Band is what a rock band is supposed to be like, I think. They have played together for so long, that even when it looked like Max Weinberg kept one song going longer than planned, the rest of the musicians rolled with it, they didn't panic and the song didn't fall apart. It's a huge glorious racket coming from the PA when the whole ensemble is playing, which is for most of the set's length. Two keyboards (both bald and bespectacled, how interesting). Four guitars. Lots of singers behind Bruce. Big bass from Gary Tallent, and of course, the enormity of the Weinberg kit in action.

My favorite moment was probably Nils Lofgren's rhapsodic and gymnastic solo on "Because the Night". I've loved Nils since I heard "White Lies" by Grin on a Columbia Records sampler sometime in the early 1970's. From there, I obsessed over his first solo album on A&M and "Beggar's Day" on the first Crazy Horse album. When I saw the E Street Band in New Jersey during the Born in the U.S.A. tour, Nils was still doing flips on his mini-trampoline. Tonight, he looked slim and fit, moving between rhythm parts and harmonic leads, but the mini-tramp was nowhere to be found (there was a pedal steel lurking behind him, but he only played slide on his Stratocaster on "The Rising" best as I could tell). Nils is a treasure, and his playing stands out among his virtuoso bandmates. He helped erase for me whatever memories of damage done to the song in a subsequent cover version (and I don't mean Patti's.)

Charlie Giordano has filled the position left by the death of Danny Federici who died in April. Charlie played with Pat Benatar for many years, and he'd done the Seeger Sessions with Bruce before the E Street Band reconvened. It's got to be the toughest job in the band to try to blend in as well as Danny, who was a charter member, but Charlie's a fine player and his solos were confident and in the right zone. I was rooting for him all night long.

It was cool to watch Bruce and Steve Van Zandt share a microphone, and when it flashed on the big screen above the band, you could see the two old friends, matched like a pair of shoes, still harmonizing perfectly after so many years.

Bruce Springsteen is so comfortable onstage. He and the band look happy to be there. He's down at the front apron of the stage, holding hands, singing into kids' eyes, generally connecting on a very personal level throughout the show. I suspect that there are a lot of performers who'd be wiping themselves down with antibacterial soap between songs if they ever had to touch a member of the great unwashed before them. The closest Bruce came to that was 'baptising' the standees in the orchestra with water in the name of the Garden State during the Isley Brothers' "Twist and Shout". He's fearless, he's amusing, he's amused, he swings round and round on a very strong, floor mounted microphone stand. He was in your face, and he was a face in the crowd. He has never not seemed like the guy you'd like to hang out with at the bar or a softball game. His zeal is overriding and contagious.

We all felt it, I daresay. SW was completely into it, but as the show went on, I found myself drawn to watching a couple on the floor and another guy near them. The man in the couple was wearing a "Dancing In the Dark"-style black muscle shirt and jeans, pretty de rigueur for the night. He had enough muscles to make the shirt convincing. He was singing every line, pantomiming some of them for his companion's benefit, singing "Born to Run" to her sweetly at the top of his lungs. He danced and danced, throwing his hands in the air to testify along with Bruce, punching out accents. The other guy was wearing a reversed baseball cap, and I'd mistakenly thought he'd been flipping off the back section of standees during one song--he wasn't, he had more fingers up and I'd only had a side view. He, too, was howling along. At one point, he went up to a fan in front of him who'd been holding a poster-sized sign with a song title request on it so hopefully Bruce would see it and grant the wish. But this guy shamed her into lowering the sign for the rest of the evening. At one point, muscle shirt guy and backward baseball cap guy found each other to be two peas in a pod, and they were suddenly dancing around with each other like leprechauns, utterly entranced in the song. I love to see people get so far into the music they're listening to that they lose every ounce of self-consciousness like these folks.

At the end of the night, after Bruce told us "You can't TAKE any more!" we left exhilarated, lifted, charmed, hoarse from shouting, sore from clapping, happy we came but sad we were done. Maybe we couldn't have taken any more, but I doubt I'm the only one there last night who wouldn't have wanted to try.

Constitutional Scholar Obama
Questions Legality of Slavery Ban
by Ann Coulter

Updated 08/20/2008 ET

This week, Barack Obama's challenge is to select a running mate who's young, hip, and whose accomplishments in life don't overshadow Obama's. Allow me to suggest Kevin Federline.

The only thing we can be sure of is that Obama will choose someone who is the polar opposite of all his advisers until now. In other words, it will be a very, very white male who was probably proud of his country even before being chosen as Obama's running mate.

Obama's got a lot of ground to make up following that performance last weekend at the Saddleback presidential forum with pastor Rick Warren.

After seeing Obama defend infanticide with the glib excuse that the question of when life begins is above his "pay-grade," Rev. Jeremiah Wright announced that although he's known Obama for 30 years, he only recently became aware of how extreme the senator's viewpoints were. Wright, after all, has his reputation to consider.

Network heads responded by dashing off an urgent memo: During the main presidential debates this fall, ask NO questions about abortion, ethics or evil! Morality isn't the Democrats' forte.

Obama's defenders spin his abominable performance in the Saddleback forum by saying he's just too smart to give a straight answer. As Rick Warren charitably described Obama's debate performance: "He likes to nuance things ... He's a constitutional attorney." The constitutional lawyer "does nuance," as Bill Maher said on "Larry King Live," "and you saw how well that goes over with the Rick Warren people."

If that's Obama's excuse, he ought to know a few basics about the Constitution.

Did the big constitutional lawyer whose "nuance" is too sophisticated for Rick Warren's audience see the letter his wife sent out on his behalf in 2004? Michelle Obama denounced a federal law banning partial-birth abortion, writing that "this ban on a legitimate medical procedure is clearly unconstitutional." Clearly!

The Supreme Court later found the law not "unconstitutional," but "constitutional" -- which I believe may have been the precise moment when Michelle Obama realized just how ashamed she had always been of her country.

But most stunningly, when Warren asked Obama if he supported a constitutional amendment defining marriage as between a man and a woman, Obama said he did not "because historically -- because historically, we have not defined marriage in our Constitution."

I don't care if you support a marriage amendment or not. That answer is literally the stupidest thing I've ever heard anyone say. If marriage were already defined in the Constitution, we wouldn't need an amendment, no?

Say, you know what else was "historically" not defined in the Constitution? Slavery. The words "slavery" and "slave" do not appear once in the original Constitution. The framers correctly thought it would sully the freedom-enshrining document to acknowledge the repellent practice. (Much like abortion!)

But in 1865, the 13th Amendment banned slavery throughout the land, in the first constitutional phrase ever to mention "slavery": "Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction."

On Obama's "historical" argument, they shouldn't have passed the 13th Amendment because the Constitution "historically" had not mentioned slavery.

Do we know for a fact Barack Obama has read the Constitution? Obama's Facebook profile: "I'm pro-infanticide, I love sunsets, and I don't get the 13th Amendment!"

This is the guy who thinks he can condescend to Clarence Thomas? Asked at the Saddleback forum which Supreme Court justice Obama would not have nominated, Obama said ... the black one!

In Obama's defense, he said he thought Thomas wasn't experienced enough "at the time." So I guess Obama thinks Thomas should have to "wait his turn."

By contrast, Obama has experience pouring out of those big ears of his. Asked last year by Robin Roberts on ABC's "Good Morning America" about his lack of experience in foreign policy, Obama took umbrage.

Swelling up his puny little chest, Obama said: "Well, actually, my experience in foreign policy is probably more diverse than most others in the field. I'm somebody who has actually lived overseas, somebody who has studied overseas. I majored in international relations."

He actually cited his undergraduate major as a qualification to be president.

But on Saturday night, Obama said he didn't think Clarence Thomas was a "strong enough jurist or legal thinker" to be put on the Supreme Court.

I bet Thomas has heard of the 13th Amendment!

From The Corner: This. is. awesome.

If McCain's campaign has really grown a pair and keeps this kind of attacking up, Obama could be toast.

Wow

[Rich Lowry]

From McCain campaign:

Please see comment from me on Barack Obama’s new ad supposedly running in Georgia:

“Barack Obama’s ad is ridiculous. Because of John McCain, corruption was exposed and people like Jack Abramoff went to jail.

“However, if Barack Obama wants to have a discussion about truly questionable associations, let’s start with his relationship with the unrepentant terrorist William Ayers, at whose home Obama’s political career was reportedly launched. Mr. Ayers was a leader of the Weather Underground, a terrorist group responsible for countless bombings against targets including the U.S. Capitol, the Pentagon and numerous police stations, courthouses and banks. In recent years, Mr. Ayers has stated, ‘I don’t regret setting bombs … I feel we didn’t do enough.’

“The question now is, will Barack Obama immediately call on the University of Illinois to release all of the records they are currently withholding to shed further light on Senator Obama’s relationship with this unrepentant terrorist?”

—McCain spokesman Brian Rogers

From The Wall Street Journal:
Obama Played by Chicago Rules
By DAVID FREDDOSO

August 20, 2008

Democrats don't like it when you say that Barack Obama won his first election in 1996 by throwing all of his opponents off the ballot on technicalities.

By clearing out the incumbent and the others in his first Democratic primary for state Senate, Mr. Obama did something that was neither illegal nor even uncommon. But Mr. Obama claims to represent something different from old-style politics -- especially old-style Chicago politics. And the senator is embarrassed enough by what he did that he misrepresents it in the prologue of his political memoir, "The Audacity of Hope."

AP

Barack Obama talks with Chicago Mayor Richard M. Daley, June 6.

In that book, Mr. Obama paints a portrait of himself as a genuine reformer and change agent, just as he has in this presidential campaign. He attributes his 1996 victory to his message of hope, and his exhortations that Chicagoans drop their justifiable cynicism about politics.

When voters complained of all the broken promises politicians had made in the past, Mr. Obama writes that he "would usually smile and nod, and say that I understood the skepticism, but that there was -- and always had been -- another tradition to politics, a tradition based on the simple idea that we have a stake in one another, and that what binds us together is greater than what drives us apart, and that if enough people believe in the truth of that proposition and act on it, then we might not solve every problem, but we can get something meaningful done."

Mr. Obama writes that even if the voters were not impressed by this speech, "enough of them appreciated my earnestness and youthful swagger that I made it to the Illinois legislature."

In real life, it did not matter what Mr. Obama said on the stump or whether South Side voters were impressed. What mattered was that, beginning on Jan. 2, 1996, his campaigners began challenging thousands of petition signatures the other candidates in the race had submitted in order to appear on the ballot. Thus would Mr. Obama win his state Senate seat, months before a single vote was cast.

According to the Chicago Tribune, Mr. Obama's petition challengers reported to him nightly on their progress as they disqualified his opponents' signatures on various technical grounds -- all legitimate from the perspective of law. One local newspaper, Chicago Weekend, reported that "[s]ome of the problems include printing registered voters name [sic] instead of writing, a female voter got married after she registered to vote and signed her maiden name, registered voters signed the petitions but don't live in the 13th district."

One of the candidates would speculate that his signature-gatherers, working at a per-signature pay rate, may have cheated him by signing many of the petitions themselves, making them easy to disqualify.

In the end, Mr. Obama disqualified all four opponents -- including the incumbent state senator, Alice Palmer, and three minor candidates. Ms. Palmer, a former ally of Mr. Obama, had gathered 1,580 signatures, more than twice the 757 required to appear on the ballot. A minor, perennial candidate had gathered 1,899 signatures, suggesting the Obama team invested much time working even against him.

The act of throwing an incumbent off the ballot in such a fashion does not fit neatly into the narrative of a public-spirited reformer who seeks to make people less cynical about politics.

But Mr. Obama's offenses against the idea of a "new politics" are many, and go well beyond hardball election tactics. It is telling that, when asked at the Saddleback Forum last weekend to name an instance in which he had worked against his own party or his own political interests, he didn't have a good answer. He claimed to have worked with his current opponent, John McCain, on ethics reform. In fact, no such thing happened. The two men had agreed to work together, for all of one day, in February 2006, and then promptly had a well-documented falling-out. They even exchanged angry letters over this incident.

The most dramatic examples of Mr. Obama's commitment to old-style politics are his repeated endorsements of Chicago's machine politicians, which came in opposition to what people of all ideological stripes viewed as the common good.

In the 2006 election, reformers from both parties attempted to end the corruption in Chicago's Cook County government. They probably would have succeeded, too, had Mr. Obama taken their side. Liberals and conservatives came together and nearly ousted Cook County Board President John Stroger, the machine boss whom court papers credibly accuse of illegally using the county payroll to maintain his own standing army of political cronies, contributors and campaigners.

The since-deceased Stroger's self-serving mismanagement of county government is still the subject of federal investigations and arbitration claims. Stroger was known for trying repeatedly to raise taxes to fund his political machine, even as basic government services were neglected in favor of high-paying county jobs for his political soldiers.

When liberals and conservatives worked together to clean up Cook County's government, they were displaying precisely the postpartisan interest in the common good that Mr. Obama extols today. And Mr. Obama, by working against them, helped keep Chicago politics dirty. He refused to endorse the progressive reformer, Forrest Claypool, who came within seven points of defeating Stroger in the primary.

After the primary, when Stroger's son Todd replaced him on the ballot under controversial circumstances, a good-government Republican named Tony Peraica attracted the same kind of bipartisan support from reformers in the November election. But Mr. Obama endorsed the young heir to the machine, calling him -- to the absolute horror of Chicago liberals -- a "good, progressive Democrat."

Mayor Richard M. Daley -- who would receive Mr. Obama's endorsement in 2007 shortly after several of his top aides and appointees had received prison sentences for their corrupt operation of Chicago's city government -- was invested in the Stroger machine's survival. So was every alderman and county commissioner who uses the county payroll to support political hangers-on. So was Mr. Obama's friend and donor, Tony Rezko, who is now in federal prison awaiting sentencing after being convicted in June of 16 felony corruption charges. Rezko had served as John Stroger's finance chairman and raised $150,000 for him (Stroger put Rezko's wife on the county payroll).

Mr. Obama has never stood up against Chicago's corruption problem because his donors and allies are Chicago's corruption problem.

Mr. Obama is not the reformer he now claims to be. The real man is the one they know in Chicago -- the one who won his first election by depriving voters of a choice.

Mr. Freddoso is the author of the just-published "The Case Against Barack Obama" (Regnery).

From The New York Post:
THE PEACE-AT-ANY-PRICE PERIL
By RALPH PETERS

August 20, 2008 --

WAR doesn't change anything! How many times have we heard the claim from self-righteous leftists protected by their betters?

Tell the dead in Georgia that war changes nothing. Tell it to the 100,000 or so people driven from their homes. For that matter, tell it to Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin - he may finally crack a smile.

Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice flew to Brussels to huff and puff, but NATO isn't about to blow Putin's house down. We'll get an earnest statement of concern, the cancellation of military exercises with the Russians and an easy-to-retract suggestion that, just maybe (if the astrologers approve unanimously), there might be a place in the Atlantic alliance for Georgia and Ukraine in the distant future.

In an act of breathtaking daring, NATO ministers even put down their teacups and agreed to term the Russian invasion "disproportionate." Boy, Putin's scared now.

Meanwhile, Russian troops and their mercenary auxiliaries remain on Georgian soil - and the West doesn't have a single means of moving them.

War doesn't change anything? Wish it were true - but war has been humankind's preferred means of effecting change.

We're all - right and left - getting an in-your-face lesson about how the world really works. Passive resistance only has a chance when your opponent believes in the rule of law and respect for human rights. Gandhi was effective against law-abiding Britain, but he would've frozen to death in the Soviet gulag - if he'd lived long enough to reach the camps.

I'd love it if we lived in a world where war truly didn't work. But war does work. That doesn't mean we shouldn't pursue other means of resolving international crises - but effective idealism has to be grounded in a practical grasp of present reality.

To make the world a better place, we have to begin with a clear-eyed assessment of what kind of place the world is.

Putin just showed us what stirring words about democracy and freedom are worth in the face of tanks and combat aircraft. The Georgians had the noble ideas and lofty dreams; the Russians had the troops and ammunition. Guess who won?

Over the years, as I've tried to explain the human reality I've encountered, the leftist response has been "Shoot the messenger!" (presumably, with a water gun). When I wrote that a dangerous minority of men enjoy tormenting and killing others, the response was that I obviously believed killing was good.

I've never even kicked a cat. But the critics didn't want to face a reality that contradicts their pleasant campus theories. Berkeley radicals don't take midnight strolls through the toughest streets in Oakland. They know that some human beings are innately violent - but admitting it would be unbearable.

Does it really make you a warmonger if you recognize that war is the collective activity at which human beings are most adept? Does telling the truth make the truth-teller guilty?

In the twisted, pretzel-logic world of the hardcore Left, it does.

Well, what solutions does the war-doesn't-change-anything Left bring to the party now, in Georgia? We've seen how earnestly Putin & Co. take negotiations and cease-fire agreements, how carefully the Russians observe UN resolutions and international law. What measures should we take to remove Russia's boot from Georgia's neck? Send yet another diplomat or publicity-hound senator? They've done a great job in Darfur . . .

The bitter truth is, none of us can move Russia. Only force could do the trick - and, brutally put, we don't deem Georgia worth any serious risks. For the record, I don't think a military response at this point would do any good - only more harm. But the West has no alternative tools that impress the Russians.

Putin believes in force. Just because we don't share his values doesn't mean he's going to see the light. (Imagine a President Barack Obama pitted against Putin - the Left's new messiah would be gobbled up in one bite.)

Putin doesn't think we're naive fools. He knows it.

Ralph Peters' latest book is "Looking for Trouble: Adventures in a Broken World."

From USA TODAY:
Glen Campbell is still on the line
with a rocking new CD
By Brian Mansfield

Glen Campbell might not spend a lot of time listening to Foo Fighters and the Velvet Underground, but on Meet Glen Campbell, out today, the 72-year-old country crossover singer shows he knows how to sing their songs.

Working with producer Julian Raymond, Campbell also covers tunes by Green Day, Tom Petty, Jackson Browne and U2 for his first studio album in a decade.

He recalls one session when Raymond played him Sadly, Beautiful by The Replacements. "I said, 'Where did you find these songs?' Because I'd stopped looking."

Though Campbell had more than 20 singles from 1967 to 1978 that reached the top 40 on both the pop and country charts, including the 1975 chart-topper Rhinestone Cowboy, most of his recordings over the past 20 years consisted of Christmas albums, gospel material and live recordings.

When Raymond approached him with the idea of recording a new album, Campbell decided to let the producer pick the material. "First off, to see where he was headed," Campbell says. "Then, when I saw, I turned it over to him."

Raymond wanted to create an updated version of the records Campbell made with producer Al De Lory in the '60s, such as Wichita Lineman and By the Time I Get to Phoenix. "That era of stuff is what we really focused on," Raymond says.

So Campbell's version of Petty's Angel Dream is modeled on Gentle on My Mind, and Foo Fighters' Times Like These has a touch of Wichita Lineman.

Once Campbell picked a song, Raymond would create an elaborate demo, often making significant changes to the song's structure. A couple of tracks "were virtually rewritten," Raymond says.

Some of the new material, particularly Campbell's version of Green Day's Good Riddance (Time of Your Life), has received a smattering of play on alternative and active rock radio stations. Yoko Ono wrote Campbell to thank him for his cover of John Lennon's Grow Old With Me. And longtime fan Keith Urban called to say how much he enjoyed the new music. ("This disc is on high rotation in my car," Urban told USA TODAY.)

Meet Glen Campbell also returns the singer to Capitol Records, where he recorded his biggest hits. Campbell left the label in the early '80s in a disagreement over the direction his music should take.

"They played me My Sharona and said, 'This is the kind of stuff we want you to do,' " he says. "That's when I told them what they could do with their ideas."

Even though he still wound up remaking pop songs, Campbell says he's thrilled to return to the label where he enjoyed his greatest successes.

"I'm just so pleased with the album," he says. "To get back on Capitol feels good. I'm getting revenge."

From Real Clear Politics:
Obama Lying About His Abortion Record
By Rich Lowry

Barack Obama had a mini Bob Dole moment after the Saddleback presidential forum the other night. Asked on the Christian Broadcasting Network about a controversy over his opposition to legislation in Illinois protecting infants born alive after surviving abortions, an irked Obama replied, "I hate to say that people are lying, but here's a situation where folks are lying."

Obama's line recalled Dole's plaint on national TV after the first George Bush beat him in New Hampshire in 1988, "Tell him to stop lying about my record." Dole's outburst would live in infamy as evidence of his distemper. Obama's problem isn't his temperament, but the unsustainable exertions necessary to attempt to square his reasonable-sounding rhetoric on abortion with the extremism of his record.

Asked by Pastor Rick Warren when a baby gets rights, Obama said, "I'm absolutely convinced that there is a moral and ethical element to this issue." This is a crashing banality couched as thoughtfulness. If Obama is so sensitive to the moral element of the issue, why does he want to eliminate any existing restrictions on the procedure?

In 2007, Obama told the Planned Parenthood Action Fund that the Freedom of Choice Act would be the first piece of legislation that he would sign as president. The act would not only codify Roe v. Wade, but wipe out all current federal, state and local restrictions on abortion that pass muster under Roe, including the Hyde Amendment prohibiting federal funding of abortion. This is not the legislative priority of a man keenly attuned to the moral implications of abortion.

At Saddleback, Obama said determining when a baby gets rights is "above his pay grade." Leave aside that presidents usually have an opinion about who deserves legal rights. If Obama is willing to permit any abortions in any circumstances, he'd better possess an absolute certainty about the absolute moral nullity of the fetus.

He told Warren that he favors "limits on late-term abortions, if there is an exception for the mother's health." But the exception he wants is so broad it makes the restriction meaningless. Obama opposed the partial-birth bill that passed the House and the Senate, 281-142 and 64-34 respectively, and has criticized the Supreme Court for upholding the law.

It's not just partial-birth abortion where Obama is outside the mainstream, but on the Born-Alive Infants Protection Act -- the occasion for his televised accusation of lying.

In 2000, Congress took up legislation to make it clear that infants born alive after abortions are persons under the law. The National Abortion and Reproductive Rights Action League opposed the bill as an assault on Roe, but it passed the House 380-15. Back in the Illinois state Senate in 2001, Obama spoke out against and voted "present" -- effectively "no" -- on a similar bill, aligning himself with the tiny pro-abortion rump of 15 congressmen.

In 2002, Congress considered the legislation again, this time adding a "neutrality clause" specifying that it didn't affect Roe one way or another. The bill passed without any dissenting votes in the House or the Senate and was signed into law. In 2003 in Illinois, Obama still opposed a state version of the law. He long claimed that he voted against it because it didn't have the same "neutrality clause" as the federal version. But the National Right to Life Committee has unearthed documents showing that the Illinois bill was amended to include such a clause, and Obama voted to kill it anyway.

Confronted about this on CBN, he said the pro-life group was lying. But his campaign has now admitted that he had the legislative history wrong. Obama either didn't know his own record, or was so accustomed to shrouding it in dishonesty that it had become second nature.

Here's one of the central dilemmas of Obama's candidacy. Nothing in his career supports his contention that he's a post-partisan healer. So, as someone as splenetic as Bob Dole might put it, he's forced to lie about his record.

From The Australian:
Satan Loves the Olympics
Janet Albrechtsen

NOTHING makes Satan happier than the Beijing “bikini” Olympics says Saudi cleric Muhammad Al-Munajid. In an interview aired on Al-Majd TV on August 10 and translated by the Middle East Media Research Institute, the unhappy cleric slammed the Olympic Games - past and present - for its debauched display of women’s bodies. “The world’s worst display of women’s clothing is the women’s Olympics,” he said. “No exposure of women’s private parts on a global scale could make Satan happier than Olympic games that include women’s sports.”

“What women wear in the Olympic games are among the worst clothes possible. The inventions of Satan, with regard to the exposure of the body in gymnastics, in swimming, in whatever, in tennis… Women have never got naked for sports like they do in the Olympics. It is aired to billions of people worldwide. The problem is not just with the spectators who are present. The whole thing is aired on TV...”

As the Wall Street Journal’s Olympics blog pointed out, with record numbers of women competing in Beijing, Satan must be one very happy man. Forty two per cent of the 11,000 athletes competing in Beijing are women, a nice scorecard for equality given that only 26% of competitors in 1988 were women.

The cleric is entitled to his views – and to express them.

It’s a pity then that Sherry Jones was not given the same chance to express hers. Her first novel, The Jewel of Medina, due to be published in early August was pulled by Random House after concerns were raised that the book would offend Muslims and become a new “Satanic Verses.” The publishing house described the book as `a fascinating portrait of Aisha, child bride of the prophet Mohammed, who overcame great obstacles to reach her full potential as a woman and a leader’’.

Then it spiked the book. Not after receiving threats from radical Muslims, mind you. Just “cautionary advice” said Random House deputy publisher Thomas Perry, from “credible and unrelated sources” that “publication of this book might be offensive to some in the Muslim community… [and]…incite acts of violence by a small, radical segment.” Notice how we no longer wait for actual death threats or violence to erupt, as was the case with Salman Rushdie’s Satanic Verses and the Danish cartoons, before we chisel back the right to freedom of expression? Now our western sensitivities lead us to anticipatory surrender - just in case.

History professor and Islam scholar Denise Spellberg, who was asked to review Jewel of Medina described it as “a very ugly, stupid piece of work” which made fun of Muslims and their history. She said “there is a long history of anti-Islamic polemic that uses sex and violence to attack the Prophet and his faith” and claimed the novel “follows in that oft-trodden path, one first pioneered in medieval Christian writings.” So The Jewel of Medina was quickly canned in the name of political correctness, the principle of free speech once again sacrificed at the modern altar of hurt feelings.

Christianity and its believers are robust enough to endure vigorous criticism – be it serious or salacious. Think Nietzsche’s The Antichrist. Or Freud’s Future of an Illusion. Or Bertrand Russell’s essay “Why I am a not a Christian”. Or the endless scribbling about Christian fascism. Or the enchanting work of Andres Serrano who stuck a plastic crucifix in a glass of his urine to create Piss Christ. The journal, Arts & Opinion, described the ensuing controversy as “a clash between the interests of artists in freedom of expression on the one hand, and the hurt such works may cause to a section of the community on the other.”

It’s a shame that each time a clash of interests involves Muslim hurt, the West raises the white flag with increasing alacrity. When does Western surrender end? Fencing off Islam from critique and curtailing the West’s long-cherished right to freedom of expression won’t help anyone. If aspects of Islam need to confront modernity, it won’t happen by tiptoeing around Muslim sensibilities, treating them like children too vulnerable to deal with the tough questions. That treatment will only encourage victimhood and more censorship. And it will undermine the core reason for the West’s success: its commitment to testing ideas – and religion is just that, after all - by holding them up to challenge.

One blogger had this to say: “Listen, Christianity is central to my life, but if you want to write a novel attacking it or dump a crucifix in urine and call it art, my feeling is: knock yourself out, you brave thing, you. I’ll argue with you here, and again at the gates of heaven, in perfect faith that the truth will win out in a free market of ideas.”

Let cleric Muhammad Al-Munajid talk about Satan smiling about skimpy bikinis at Beijing all he wants. And, please, let Ms Jones write about Muhammad’s child bride. If not for the sake of Islam, then for the sake of the West.

From The Wall Street Journal:
Obama on Clarence Thomas

August 18, 2008

Barack Obama likes to portray himself as a centrist politician who wants to unite the country, but occasionally his postpartisan mask slips. That was the case at Saturday night's Saddleback Church forum, when Mr. Obama chose to demean Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas.

Pastor Rick Warren asked each Presidential candidate which Justices he would not have nominated. Mr. McCain said, "with all due respect" the four most liberal sitting Justices because of his different judicial philosophy.

Mr. Obama took a lower road, replying first that "that's a good one," and then adding that "I would not have nominated Clarence Thomas. I don't think that he, I don't think that he was a strong enough jurist or legal thinker at the time for that elevation. Setting aside the fact that I profoundly disagree with his interpretation of a lot of the Constitution." The Democrat added that he also wouldn't have appointed Antonin Scalia, and perhaps not John Roberts, though he assured the audience that at least they were smart enough for the job.

So let's see. By the time he was nominated, Clarence Thomas had worked in the Missouri Attorney General's office, served as an Assistant Secretary of Education, run the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission and sat for a year on the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals, the nation's second most prominent court. Since his "elevation" to the High Court in 1991, he has also shown himself to be a principled and scholarly jurist.

Meanwhile, as he bids to be America's Commander in Chief, Mr. Obama isn't yet four years out of the Illinois state Senate, has never held a hearing of note of his U.S. Senate subcommittee, and had an unremarkable record as both a "community organizer" and law school lecturer. Justice Thomas's judicial credentials compare favorably to Mr. Obama's Presidential résumé by any measure. And when it comes to rising from difficult circumstances, Justice Thomas's rural Georgian upbringing makes Mr. Obama's story look like easy street.

Even more troubling is what the Illinois Democrat's answer betrays about his political habits of mind. Asked a question he didn't expect at a rare unscripted event, the rookie candidate didn't merely say he disagreed with Justice Thomas. Instead, he instinctively reverted to the leftwing cliché that the Court's black conservative isn't up to the job while his white conservative colleagues are.

So much for civility in politics and bringing people together. And no wonder Mr. Obama's advisers have refused invitations for more such open forums, preferring to keep him in front of a teleprompter, where he won't let slip what he really believes.

Ah, the City by the Bay. If you thought their indulgence
of degeneracy couldn't get any worse....
Pimps, Pedophiles: Welcome to S.F.
By Debra Saunders

A quick reading of the measure that will go before San Francisco voters in November to decriminalize prostitution easily could leave you with the misimpression that the measure is an exercise in fairness that demands that prosecutors go after men who abuse prostitutes and implement policies "to reduce institutional violence and discrimination against prostitutes." A careful reading of the initiative, "Enforcement of Laws Related to Prostitution and Sex Workers," however, shows a measure that shields child prostitution and traffickers of human beings.

"If I had just heard from the proponents, I would probably vote for it myself," said the Rev. Glenda Hope, whose San Francisco Network Ministries helped found the Tenderloin AIDS Resource, in the mistaken belief the measure is meant "to protect women." But as the executive director of SafeHouse, a residential center that helps women get off the streets, Hope knows too much.

Hope knows that the average age of entry into prostitution is 12 to 14. The office of San Francisco District Attorney Kamala Harris, who opposes the initiative, has encountered prostituted children as young as 9 years old.

Yet the San Francisco ballot measure completely ignores the prostitution of children. The measure simply states, "Law enforcement agencies shall not allocate any resources for the investigation and prosecution of prostitutes for prostitution." Astonishingly, there's no exemption that encourages police to enforce the law for minors.

If the measure passes, the city is likely to become an international haven for pimps who peddle girls and boys, and perverts seeking sex with minors.

And where does that leave Bay Area youth? "They want new and young," Jasmine, a former teen prostitute from Oakland who now volunteers for the nonprofit SAGE Project, which fights sexual exploitation, explained to me.

The life, which she entered at age 14, was "like a drug." She felt wanted. She brought in $4,000 to $5,000 a week. Sure, she knew girls who were selling themselves against their will. But she could buy things. "I was supposedly involved in a relationship" -- one that ended when police prosecuted her pimp.

The other big problem: The measure prohibits city law enforcement from applying for grants to prosecute human traffickers. That's right, this measure gives a free pass to the human sex-slave trade -- in a city that is a central stop for international sex-trade rings.

A proponent of the measure told Fox News that she believes that it will pass with 75 percent of the vote because the city is "sex-positive."

The SAGE Project's Allen Wilson fears that the measure may prevail because the city has no shortage of rootless residents who "will vote for this because they think it's cool." For them, San Francisco is "one big sandbox."

Let me be clear. I don't want city cops wasting their time prosecuting workers at the discreet bordello that hires healthy adult prostitutes who get regular medical checkups. I would rather see law enforcement focus on serious crimes.

But there is nothing broad-minded about looking the other way when 14-year-old girls and boys sell themselves on the street and massage parlors are staffed by women who are being held against their will. These are not consenting adults.

The measure takes a tone that suggests it will protect women by demanding that San Francisco law enforcement prosecute "coercion, extortion, battery, rape and violent crimes, regardless of the victim's status as a sex worker."

Of course, state law already requires that. More to the point, battery, rape, assault and even murder are crimes that befall prostitutes because they work in an inherently dangerous field bankrolled largely by men who like to demean women and girls.

Violence and pain are the inevitable outcome for those steeped in this dehumanizing way of life. Young women wooed into the life quickly age to the point where they cannot net the high-incomes their pimps demand. They become addicted to drugs. They learn to commit new crimes. Until the day they find they are disposable.

Or as Wilson noted, "We treat animals better."

So do not tell Jasmine that if San Francisco decriminalizes prostitution, it will do so because the city cares about prostitutes. This measure really is a gift, not so much to so-called sex workers, as to pimps, pedophiles and human traffickers. As Jasmine sees it, if the ballot initiative passes, "That's basically saying the city does not care."

dsaunders@sfchronicle.com