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POPSAnti-Obama Movie On The Way: Citizens United One prominent Citizens United movie is “Celsius 41.11,” which says it tells the “truth behind the lies” of the Michael Moore movie “Fahrenheit 9/11.” Other Citizens United movies are critical of the United Nations, illegal immigration, and the American Civil Liberties Union, while one movie promotes Newt Gingrich and his ideas. The conservative group is also looking to the U.S. Supreme Court for help in advertising the anti-Hillary movie. It is opposing a federal regulation, under the McCain-Feingold Act, requiring that a disclaimer that identifies the group be placed at the end of television ads promoting the movie and criticizing Mrs. Clinton. It is also arguing that it should not have to disclose how much it spent to produce the movie and the ads, nor who contributed to it. The Supreme Court is scheduled to decide next week whether it will hear the case.
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POPSMAKING IT: How Chicago Shaped Obama. There was also a more general belief that, after Obama won the 2004 United States Senate primary, he ignored his South Side base. Preckwinkle said, “My view is you have to bring your constituency along with you. Granted, you have to make some tough decisions. Granted, sometimes you have to make decisions that people won’t understand or like. But it’s your obligation to explain yourself and try to do your supporters the courtesy of treating them with respect.” Ivory Mitchell, who for twenty years has been the chairman of the local ward organization in Obama’s neighborhood—considered the most important Democratic organization on the South Side—was one of Obama’s earliest backers. Today, he says, “All the work we did to help him get where he finally ended up, he didn’t seem too appreciative.” A year ago, Mitchell became a delegate for Hillary Clinton. http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2008/07/21/080721fa_fact_lizza?printable=true
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POPSFreedom Rider: Obama's Iraq "Fairy Tale"
The latest case of buyer’s remorse concerns Obama’s statements about his plan to visit Iraq in the near future. “I’ve always said that the pace of withdrawal would be dictated by the safety and security of our troops and the need to maintain stability. That assessment has not changed. And when I go to Iraq and have a chance to talk to some of the commanders on the ground, I’m sure I’ll have more information and will continue to refine my policies.” It may be helpful to take a trip down memory lane and fully dissect the fairy tale of the anti-war candidate. In 2004 Senate candidate Barack Obama did not brag about being against the occupation of Iraq e was far more circumspect, criticizing president Bush only for badly managing a war of aggression, and emphasizing that he was not that much different. "There's not that much difference between my position and George Bush's position at this stage. The difference, in my mind, is who's in a position to execute."
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POPSABC Poll: A Careful Balance Between Left And Far-Left 3 for Obama and 2 for Clinton... No mention of the 54 for McCain. Maybe it wasn't bias --- maybe they just randomly picked five out of the 60 who didn't favor McCain. Never mind the odds of that happening are roughly 1 in 100,000. It was just luck of the draw! Luck of the draw, I tell you!
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POPSIt's All About Obama Americans overwhelmingly find it a hopeful, optimistic sign that the country could elect an African-American president. But they rightly want to know what kind of leader he might be. They may well reject as cynical any maneuver to discourage close examination of him by suggesting any criticism is racially motivated. The candidate's self-centeredness has been on display before. Having effectively sewed up the Democratic nomination, he could have agreed to seat the Florida and Michigan delegations (states Hillary Clinton had carried). While reducing his lead by 50 to 55 delegates, it would not have altered the outcome. But Mr. Obama supported cutting these battleground-state delegations in half. At a time when magnanimity was called for, the candidate decided he'd strut. In a contest over who is willing to put principle above personal ambition and self-interest, John McCain, a war hero and a former POW, wins hands down.
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POPSThe New Meaning Of "Politics Of Change" * Obama repeatedly vowed to meet with various heads of terror states - most notably Ahmadinejad of Iran - "without preconditions." Then, with the nomination in sight, he zigzagged: "There's no reason why we would necessarily meet with Ahmadinejad. He's not the most powerful person in Iran." * In October, he supported NAFTA expansion. In March, campaigning in the Ohio primary, he called for a "reopening" of the trade pact's terms. This week, he called his own primary rhetoric "overheated" and said NAFTA has had a positive effect on the US economy. Change, yes. But "change we can believe in"?
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POPSWhen Obama Is Off The Teleprompter I suspect this is why John McCain is so eager to get Obama into those town-hall meetings Obama seems intent on avoiding. McCain has been doing them for 25 years and is very good at them; it’s a mark of how good he is at them that he doesn’t make career-threatening gaffes during them. McCain wants Obama off that teleprompter, which is sound strategy. But he can’t make Obama go anywhere Obama doesn’t want to. The media pose a different challenge for Obama.
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POPS"Whiskey for my men, beer for my horses" The academicians' theme songs are "Kumbaya" and "Imagine," while Jacksonians prefer Toby Keith: "Whiskey for my men, beer for my horses." It was when they lost their warrior edge that Democrats started losing the White House, winning only in unusual circumstances such as the Watergate scandal or in that brief window in history (from the fall of the Berlin Wall through September 11) when foreign threats had faded out of the picture. "Priests . . . write books and sometimes verse," and indeed, Obama wrote two of them. Their campaigns become crusades, fueled as much by an inchoate longing for a 'new politics'. "Obama is not at all a warrior, and is something of an academic," writes Barone: He is all college campus and not at all boot camp. He has campaigned consistently as an opponent of military action in Iraq. He is up against John McCain, a true Jacksonian if ever there was one. Of course, he dispatched another Jacksonian in Hillary Clinton.
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POPSObama and Iran:The Democrats Modern-Day McGovern Judging from last week's address to the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), Sen. Barack Obama doesn't want voters to see him as soft on Iran and its genocidal President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. The Iranians "understand - sometimes, it seems, better than a lot of Americans do - that if American power collapses in Iraq, if we abandon our allies" then "our position throughout the region will become much weaker and Iran's position much stronger," Lieberman added. The Senate - including well over half of the Democrats - voted for the amendment, which passed 76-22. Obama, who was absent, said he opposed the amendment because it could be used as pretext to invade Iran. Obama denounced Kyl-Lieberman as "reckless" and criticized his chief rival, Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, for supporting it. However tough he tries to sound when talking to AIPAC, Barack Obama's real sympathies are with the George Soros/MoveOn.org wing of the Democrat Party.
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POPS"Vetters" Search For Obama Veep Jones, a Vietnam vet born in Kansas City, MO (swing state alert!), was a career military officer rising to one of the highest posts possible. Being the least known potential veep, it shouldn't be surprising that the vetters have to spend more time on him in their various conversations on the Hill. But the fact that he's being, um, added to the very long short list, is an interesting development. Besides Jones, the other names on the list bandied about with congressional Dems include (and not in any order): Hillary Clinton, John Kerry, John Edwards, Evan Bayh, Kathleen Sebelius, Ted Strickland, Mark Warner, Tim Kaine, Jim Webb, Bill Nelson, Jack Reed, Joe Biden, Chris Dodd, Tom Daschle, and Sam Nunn. You'll notice a few names NOT on this list (that's not my exclusion -- hint hint). Besides Jones, I'm told the two other names that invited extended discussion were Biden and Strickland. Take this chatter for what it is -- chatter.
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POPSHouse Liberals Want About $60 Billion In Defense Spending Cuts But McCain could feel some discomfort because his campaign views Hispanics as a crucial voting bloc. His support for shifting emphasis from defense to social programs could help him appeal to that group. The calls of liberal groups and lawmakers come at a particularly awkward time for Obama. During a speech to the American Israel Public Affairs Committee Wednesday, Obama proposed sanctions on Iran that analysts viewed as far tougher than what he suggested before. Now Obama must balance tough talk on national security with the desires of many Democrats to slim American military power. Specifically, they want to steer money away from what they call “Cold War-era” weapons systems, such as the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter. Liberals have also called for cuts to the ballistic missile defense program, the F/A-22 Raptor, the V-22 Osprey and the DDG 1000 Zumwalt Class Destroyer.
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POPSClimate Bill Underlines Obstacles environmental activists, resent having to vote for anything authored by Lieberman in light of his active support of the presidential bid of GOP Sen. John McCain (Ariz.). And several senators are questioning why they are being asked to vote on a lengthy substitute version of the bill that Boxer and her allies just introduced a week and a half ago. "This is just a money grab," said James E. Rogers, the chief executive of Duke Energy. Rogers says he supports a cap-and-trade system but argues that this bill raises too much revenue from coal users while diverting too much of it to other purposes. "Only the mafia could create an organization that would skim money off the top the way this legislation would skim money off the top," he said. Duke, with customers in Ohio, Indiana and the Carolinas, relies heavily on coal-fired plants.
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POPSFather Pfleger's Support For Farrakhan No wonder Barack Obama has not problem with the prospect of going on a "Great Haters of America" tour of the world. He appears to have no problem empathizing with their views of America-or Israel for that matter. Much more about Pfleger by David Kopel at Volokh Conspiracy and our own Rosslyn Smith.
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POPSVeterans’ Groups Pushs For More Predictable VA Funding “It is a lot cheaper to provide veteran care through the VA than it is to provide it by Medicare or Medicaid,” said Violante. “If we put the resources into the VA it would certainly be fiscally responsible.” Congress now appropriates VA medical care funds on an annual basis. Political squabbling has delayed VA funding in 13 of the past 14 years — something that has severely hampered the department’s ability to plan and manage its healthcare system, according to DAV’s talking points. Veterans’ groups say the change would ensure the agency can better handle the growing number of veterans dependent on it for medical care. An added benefit would be that advance appropriations would not fall under pay-as-you-go budgetary rules, which do cover mandatory funding. This means the advance appropriations would not have to be offset by spending cuts or revenue raisers, requirements that make it harder to move legislation.
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POPSSenate Votes To Roll Back Media Ownership Rule "Today the Senate stood up to Washington special interests by voting to reverse the FCC's disappointing media consolidation rules that I have fought against," he said. "Our nation's media market must reflect the diverse voices of our population, and it is essential that the FCC promotes the public interest and diversity in ownership." The FCC decision allows one company to own a newspaper and a broadcast station in the nation's 20 largest metropolitan areas. The TV station may not be among the top four in the market, and post-transaction, at least eight independent media voices must remain. The rule replaced an outright ban on cross-ownership. The FCC's media ownership decision has been met with opposition on both sides. The newspaper industry has complained that the FCC did not go far enough, while activists who want to keep big media companies from getting bigger said the agency went too far.
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POPSGoing After OPEC The real energy problem, in other words, isn't Big Oil; it's Big Government. As with so many other things, President Reagan got it right when, not even a week after taking office in 1981, he signed Executive Order 12287 decontrolling the price of oil and gas. He then ordered his secretary of energy to focus on encouraging U.S. companies to find and produce more. It worked like a charm, bringing oil prices down sharply and OPEC to its knees. By 1986, after a 74% drop in the price of oil, some even doubted OPEC could survive. Such would-be monopolies look invincible when demand rises and prices follow. But when supply increases, prices fall and members start cheating, they look pathetic. This pretty much describes the history of OPEC. Reagan's strategy of energy decontrol would work again today . But this time it's supplies, not prices, that need to be untethered.
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POPSHillary's Bitter Victory Is there any relief in sight? When will this thing end? The short answer to this question is no, there isn't. Watching this scene, I was struck suddenly by the genius of the Clinton campaign — and also felt myself beginning to understand why this Obama-Clinton contest may yet prove to be one of those defining cultural clashes that come along once a generation or so, like Bryan-Darrow or Ali-Frazier. what we have in Hillary Clinton: a once-in-a-generation political pugilist who, like her much smoother adversary, is amazingly capable of turning weakness into strength. Pitted against physical beauty and inspirational rhetoric, Hillary made herself the champion of everything stylistically ordinary, superficially unimpressive and ignored. And while her opponent won all the attention and admiration, all the teen-idol gushings of the beautiful people, she went for something deeper — resentment at the lack of those same things.
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POPSPrice Of Superdelegate Ybarra Vote $20M US, por favor The Democratic National Committee member doesn't parse his words when it comes to what he wants from Barack Obama or Hillary Rodham Clinton - an ironclad promise to spend that heady amount to register Mexican-American voters and get them to the polls in November. In a telephone interview Wednesday, he said he plans to remain undecided in the tight contest until "someone shows me the money." When will he settle on a candidate?
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POPS The Politics Of Freedom: David Boaz (continued) heading early Wednesday for a new round of speeches, rallies and town meetings in West Virginia, which holds its primary on May 13," The New York Times reports. "Highlighting the financial woes of her campaign, Mrs. Clinton has lent her campaign more than $6 million over the last month, according to campaign officials." "Republicans have been trying to drive libertarian voters out of their party. But so far Democrats aren't jumping on that opportunity."
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POPSSupreme Court Judges: Judge, Not Legislate But just as McCain has asked voters to check his opponents' track record, a glance at his is heartening. McCain, unlike a number of fellow GOP senators, voted in favor of Ronald Reagan's failed nomination of Robert Bork to the Supreme Court. And as National Review Online's Jim Geraghty notes, McCain characterized as "a largely unknown quantity" George H.W. Bush's nomination of Justice David Souter — who now usually votes with the high court's liberal contingent. We know that Sens. Clinton and Obama want the federal judiciary to be a liberal quasi-legislature. McCain this week committed himself to buttressing the federal courts' integrity as what they were meant to be: nonpolitical tribunals, dedicated to upholding the Constitution.
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POPSThe Democrats And Gun Control Mr. Obama's campaign Web site touts his belief in the Second Amendment rights to have guns "for the purposes of hunting and target shooting." Conspicuously absent is the right to have firearms to defend one's self, home and family. A presidential candidate could of course swear devotion to the First Amendment, while declaring that the amendment's purpose is to protect sports reporting and book collecting. And that candidate could still support government lawsuits against publishers, local bans on newspapers, and draconian restrictions on political commentary. Civil libertarians who supported such a candidate because of his alleged love for the First Amendment would be foolish. Civil libertarians who support Mr. Obama or Mrs. Clinton because of their purported fealty to the Second Amendment may be bitterly disappointed.
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POPSDemocratic Candidates Long To Renegotiate NAFTA U.S. manufacturing is not in decline. Quite the opposite is true. Output, revenues and profits in the sector all achieved records in 2006, and preliminary government data indicates that new records were set in 2007. American factories remain the world's most prolific, producing 2.5 times the value of Chinese output. ... Between 2000 and 2003 there was a pronounced manufacturing recession, during which 2.8 million jobs in the sector were eliminated. The two candidates extrapolate from that statistic to assert that 3 million manufacturing jobs have been lost since 2000 on account of bad trade deals, like NAFTA, as though the trend were continuing. That's wrong. ... If trade had something to do with the loss of those 2.8 million jobs between 2000 and 2003, imports weren't the culprit. Manufactured imports did not increase at all during those three years. U.S. exports, however, dropped off by 11 percent during that precise period.
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POPSHow Obama Fell To Earth Obama's Capital Gains response last night still has to be one of the stupidest--and most revealing--answers ever given in a televised debate. Yes, he understands that Capital Gains reductions raises more revenue for the Government---but that's not the point; it is just so...."unfair" to have businesses making profits, even if it means the Government gets more money: more investments and profits means businesses can hire more workers and distribute dividends to our 401K's. It is so utterly obvious that Obama does not care about how much revenue Government does or doesn't raise: the point is to punish business and the middle class, no matter what it does to revenue; revenue is just the convenient excuse. The beauty of last night's debate is that the rest of the country knows this, and also knows that Obama has spent his entire adult life hanging out with known Communists, anarchists, terrorists, racists, and crooks. Yet the media is not supposed to ask about these associations?
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POPSPresidential Bid By Georgia Ex-Congressman Instead of siphoning votes from Sen. McCain (R-Ariz.), Barr said that his support would come from “disaffected Republican voters, Ron Paul supporters and independent voters and Democratic voters who believe in a strong message of civil liberties.” To him, both the Republican McCain and Democratic Sens. Hillary Rodham Clinton (N.Y.) and Barack Obama (Ill.) fail to offer “a real choice” in November, especially on his No. 1 issue, reducing the size of government. Of course, there’s the chance that Barr’s campaign won’t make much of an impact. “I can’t imagine Bob Barr or any other Libertarian candidate making any difference in this election,” said Charlie Cook, editor of the Cook Political Report. “This is likely to be a massive-turnout election, which will wash out the impact of fringe candidates on either end of the spectrum.”
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POPSHillary Clinton Gushes Over Oregon's Green Leadership Clinton praised Portland for cutting its greenhouse emissions from 1990 levels. And she said she wants to get 25 percent of the nation's electricity from renewable energy such as solar and wind by 2025 -- which is called for in Oregon law. "Oregon is already doing it," she said. Michael Grainey, director of the state Department of Energy, said the 2005 federal law "clearly pre-empts" Oregon's authority to decide on an LNG project. But the state does have some ability under the coastal law to challenge the projects, such as the one proposed near Astoria.
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POPSCongress Is Full Of Bold-Faced Liars What’s the only thing worse than Republicans on a spending spree? Democrats on a spending spree. Or maybe Republicans on a spending spree when they know the Democrats are going to take the heat. Either way, your representatives in Washington D.C. are a bunch of dirty filthy liars. Take the time today, right now, to write to your representatives and let them know how you feel about what they are doing. They still need our votes to get elected, so what you say really does matter to them. How can the people who are supposed to be running the country on our behalf do such a crappy job and lie about it when the facts are so obvious. In 2004 the Democrats took control of congress promising to fix the earmark problem. Instead of fixing it, they are doing their best to outdo the spending of the Republican controlled congress before them. This isn’t a partisan problem, it’s a problem all Americans need to be aware of, and take action to fix.
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POPS58% Majority Of Voters View Clinton Favorably Or Neutrally…Media Refuses To Report It This is, of course, a fancy way of saying “we didn’t get the results we wanted the first time, so we went back and found some more black people who would tell us how much they hate the bitch.” With the right Wright answers finally in hand, the announced results found Mrs. Clinton with a 37% positive rating and a 48% negative rating. Obama had a 49% positive rating and a 32% negative rating. The national media spin of Obama thus continues with lame pundits convincing themselves that the country doesn’t mind the anti-White, anti-American rantings of the Democratic frontrunner’s chosen father figure and closest adviser since 1988. NBC, home of such translucent Hillary haters as Keith Blowbermann and the perpetually lipless Chris Matthews — joined with conservative mouthpiece The Wall Street Journal to produce a poll — prObama (in the case of NBC) and anti-Clinton (in the case of the WSJ).
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POPSBill To Open Refuge To Drilling If Crude Hits $125 "The goalposts of what's reasonable have moved quite a bit lately," Halff said. "One hundred and twenty-five dollars is just $15 away. It doesn't sound quite as farfetched as it did a few months ago." But environmentalists say they're confident that Murkowski and Stevens simply don't have 60 votes in the Senate to overcome a filibuster that would allow the bill to be heard. It's equally unlikely that a Democratic-led House of Representatives would even consider hearing the legislation, said Myke Bybee, a spokesman for the Sierra Club. "No amount of oil and no amount of money is worth despoiling the Arctic Refuge," Bybee said. "I don't think there's support for opening up a special place like the Arctic Refuge at any cost, at any amount of oil or at any cost of oil."
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POPS Judicial Watch: Obama ‘Intended To Leave No Paper Trail’ However, the Obama campaign said the senator’s records are available. “All of Sen. Obama’s correspondence with state agencies and records of requests Obama made to them on behalf of his constituents are available to the public and have been accessed by our opponents and members of the news media,” said Obama spokesman Ben LaBolt. “Illinois State senators have limited staff – Obama did not have a scheduler – and so no detailed record exists of all of his daily activities in Springfield.” Fitton argues that Obama’s public accounts of what happened to his records do not mesh with information from the Illinois Office of the Secretary of State. Judicial Watch investigation “suggests” that the senator could have had his records archived in a way that would grant the public access to them. “It appears that Obama never kept records of his time in the Illinois state legislature, or he discarded them,” Fitton stated. “Either way, he clearly intended to leave no paper trail.”
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POPSGetting Poverty Wrong While they insist that strengthening labor unions or protecting homeowners from foreclosures will alleviate the hardships of the poor, the latest data from the U.S. Bureau of the Census remind us that the breakdown of the traditional two-parent, married family is a far greater contributor to poverty in America than many of the supposed shortcomings of our economy. It’s hard to imagine that America will make much more headway on reducing persistent poverty until it halts this long-term trend. The Census Bureau’s study on the living arrangements of American children appeared in mid-February. The data show that the number of children now living in two-parent families has dipped just below the 70 percent mark for the first time since the Census began collecting data on family formation nearly 130 years ago. Researchers estimate that the entire rise in poverty in America since the late 1970s can be attributed to the decline of families headed by two married parents.
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POPSJudicial Watch Scrutinizing Clinton White House Pardon Fitton says the Rich pardon was particularly scandalous because of "copious" financial contributions made by Denise Rich, Marc Rich's ex-wife, to Hillary Clinton's Senate campaign and the Clinton Presidential Library foundation in the months leading up to the pardon. According to Fitton, the scandal is still relevant today in light of Mrs. Clinton's current run for the White House because the pardons are part of the experience which she widely touts in terms of her days at the White House. "The pardon scandal involved the entire Clinton family -- Bill, Hillary, Hillary's brothers, Bill's brother. Hillary herself was involved in the scandals, conveying pardon applications to Bill Clinton," Fitton contends.
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POPSClinton, McCain, Obama's Passport Files Snooped State Department spokesman Sean McCormack said the violations of McCain and Clinton's passport files were not discovered until Friday, after officials were made aware of the unauthorized access of Obama's records and a separate search was conducted.
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POPSIs Obama Trying to Bamboozle Us We journalists merely opened it in the interest of providing voters with as much information about a candidate for president as could be found. And no journalist has put any words in Jeremiah Wright's mouth. Is Senator Obama suggesting that "we all come together" by burying the truth of his pastor's racism? This would seem to represent a rather chilling call to censorship, albeit delivered in a soothing, kind-mannered voice. When I visited Trinity United Church of Christ, I perused the titles in the church bookstore. Well, all of James H. Cone's books on black liberation theology were on prominent display, as were books by Malcolm X and black panther luminaries and Nation of Islam greats. Does Obama also expect us to believe that he never knew there were books glorifying violence and black supremacy racism in his own church's bookstore, even though he was a prominent member there for more than 20 years.
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POPSThomas Sowell ‘Non-Judgmental’ Nonsense Nor is his 20 years of going to a church whose pastor has praised Louis Farrakhan and condemned the United States in both sweeping terms and with obscene language. The Obama camp likens mentioning such things to criticizing him because of what members of his family might have said or done. But it was said, long ago, that you can pick your friends but not your relatives. Obama chose to be part of that church for 20 years. He was not born into it. His “personal” character matters, just as Eliot Spitzer's “personal” character matters -- and just as Hillary Clinton's character would matter if she had any. We cannot risk all that for the sake of the fashionable affectation of being more non-judgmental than thou.
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