...and your point for suggesting change, Mr. Obama, is...??????
Posted on 09/11/2008 4:33:13 AM PDT by AmericaUnite
On the surface, at least, Barack Obama's single most impressive accomplishment has been his 1990 election to the presidency of the Harvard Law Review.
This position also provided Obama his only real executive experience as he supervised the law review's staff of 80 editors.
One has to wonder, then, why neither he nor wife Michelle emphasized this singular honor during the up-by-the-bootstraps biographical sections of their respective speeches in Denver.
In fact, neither of them so much as mentioned Obama's time at Harvard, this despite his vulnerability on the executive experience charge.
Their silence likely derives from one verifiable fact: Obama's record at Harvard was no more authentic than John Kerry's record in Vietnam.
Kerry was justifiably swift-boated because he fraudulently positioned himself as a war hero. Obama seems to have learned from Kerry.
In the age of the Internet, the less said about a dubious credential the better, and Obama's law presidency credential is dubious on any number of levels.
(Column continues below)
For starters, Obama did not do nearly well enough at his previous stop, Columbia University, to justify admission to Harvard Law.
According to the New York Sun, university spokesman Brian Connolly confirmed that Obama graduated in 1983 with a major in political science but without honors.
In the age of affirmative action and grade inflation, a minority in a relatively easy major like political science had to under-perform dramatically to avoid minimal honors. Obama apparently did just that.
The specifics we may never know. As the New York Times concedes, Obama "declined repeated requests to talk about his New York years, release his Columbia transcript or identify even a single fellow student, co-worker, roommate or friend from those years."
Would that Bristol Palin could get off so easily!
(Excerpt) Read more at worldnetdaily.com ...
Great article...very, very interesting!
Obama’s qualifications to be POTUS are non-existent. There are probably several thousand people in my metropolitan area who are better qualified. In contrast, McCain has been tested in war and politics. He is a man of high intellect, courage, sound judgment, and profound understanding of the principles upon which this country was founded.
The Obama history just becomes murkier and murkier. The more I hear about this guy the more I’m convinced he’s been “groomed” for what he’s doing now.
Well, that's psychologically revealing.
Great article, much on Obama's Moslem associations.
This needs some major legs ——— bump!
Both McCain and Palin should press the “Obama College” issue and release their own transcripts from their colleges.
Once McCain and Palin release their college transcripts Obama and Biden would have no choice but to release their college transcripts.
So What Did Obama Teach In Law School?
http://sweetness-light.com/archive/so-what-did-obama-teach-in-law-school
...and your point for suggesting change, Mr. Obama, is...??????
I am certainly no fan of Obama, but I think the author is making a big deal out of very little.
First, if Obama got into Harvard on Affirmative Action, that’s a reflection on them, not him.
Second, Harvard has always had spots for various kinds of people, and not just blacks.
Third, I really doubt that the applicants average in the 98-99% on the LSAT, that MIGHT be what is accepted on average, but last I heard, Harvard is mum on those numbers, because they can afford to be.
Fourth, the fact that he did his undergrad work at Columbia counts for A LOT. A B- at Columbia will mean more to Harvard than A+’s at SUNY.
Fifth, polysci is not that different from any other liberal arts degree (humanities, literature, sociology) and most of the people who apply to law school have those degrees, not degrees in advanced organic chemistry.
Sixth, there are honors courses and electives that can distinguish the student as well, also outside activities (both in the University and in the world at large.)
If the man got in and did the work and graduated, good for him. He might be a decent lawyer. Given history, I will pull for the University of Idaho and the Eureka Colleges over the Harvards and Yales any day.
staff of 80 editors (lemmings) - little executive experience.
From the article in Post #9: “On the national level, bipartisanship usually means Democrats ignore the needs of the poor and abandon the idea that government can play a role in issues of poverty, race discrimination, sex discrimination or environmental protection,” Mr. Obama said…
I would say that...to be honest none of the four candidates expanded any academic frontiers during their student years.
Mccain graduated very near the bottom of his class at the Naval Academy.
Sarah Palin went to multiple schools and finally graduated from the University of Idaho.
Biden graduated in the bottom third of his law school class at the (I think) internationally acclaimed University of Scranton.
I am totally opposed to an Obama presidency - don’t get me wrong - but I can see no academic excellence on the part of any of the candidates.
George Bush was a mediocre student at Yale - he got in because he was a legacy.
To give the devils their due - the true scholars were clearly the Clintons.
McCain and Biden have been forthcoming in releasing their academic records - as mediocre as they are.
Obama and Palin have not - to me - I don’t really care.
FIRST BLACK CHOSEN HEAD OF HARVARD LAW JOURNAL
Boston Globe - February 6, 1990
Author: Anthony Flint, Contributing Reporter
For the first time in its 102-year history, the Harvard Law Review , considered the country’s most prestigious legal journal, has a black student as its president.
Burack H. Obama , 28, a second-year student at Harvard Law School, was selected at 1 a.m. yesterday after an all-day meeting Sunday.
I’m honored by it, and I’m happy that my other editors have put that kind of confidence in me,” Obama said during an interview.
“It sends out a strong signal,” Obama said. “It says that when given the chance, African-Americans can excel in even the most competitive of circumstances.”
Being part of the Harvard Law Review — which is handled by 40 of the best and brightest of the law school’s 1,700 students — is determined by grades and a rigorous writing competition. Membership can translate into clerkships for federal judges and other jobs after graduation.
The Harvard Law Review is considered the country’s leading legal journal and the oldest publication of its kind. It is quoted in other journals, lawyers’ briefs, judges’ decisions and legislators’ bills.
In 1981 and 1982, the journal’s board struggled with affirmative action proposals to increase minority representation, which many said was lacking. The faculty opposed a proposed quota, saying candidates should be considered, as always, by their academic performance.
The quota proposal was eventually dropped, but minority candidates are allowed to include a brief statement identifying them as such and the selection committee monitors whether membership is sufficiently diverse.
The first woman to become president was Susan Estrich, former manager of Gov. Dukakis’ presidential campaign, who graduated from Harvard Law in 1977. The first Asian-American was Peter Yu, whom Obama will be succeeding.
Obama said he was “getting a lot of attention now, but really only benefiting from the hard work and attention of a lot of folks who came before me.”
He added, “People should still keep sight of the fact that for every one of me, there are a whole bunch of black kids out there who are not doing so well — whether because of poverty or drugs or cutbacks in financial aid — people just as talented and energetic and curious as I am.”
Born in Hawaii, Obama was the son of a Kenyan government minister and an anthropologist. His first job after graduating from Columbia University was at Business International, a New York financial newsletter.
He then went to Chicago to help found the Developing Communities Project, a church-based organization that provided job training for the unemployed and education counseling for disadvantaged youth. He entered Harvard Law in 1988 and wants to go into government and politics.
Obama ‘s selection as president “demonstrates the steady progress minority law students are making at Harvard,” said Charles J. Ogletree Jr., a professor at the law school.
Ogletree said the selection was also significant because members of the journal “broke down barriers without being forced to respond to some order of a judge, or some case or statute. They let their conscience and good judgment lead them.”
“It’s a wonderful event,” said Ansel B. Chaplin, vice chairman of the New England Board of Higher Education’s Commission on the Legal Profession and chairman of the state Supreme Judicial Court’s Committee on Legal Education. “The selection of a black as a leader of peers is obviously an enormously important symbol.”
(snip)
THE PRESIDENCY IS NOT
AN ENTRY LEVEL JOB FOR
AN AFFIRMATIVE
ACTION CANDIDATE
“Once McCain and Palin release their college transcripts Obama and Biden would have no choice but to release their college transcripts.”
Just like Kerry authorized the release of his military records, showing a less-than-honorable discharge? Dream on.
I am very interested in this stuff about Obama, but there is no way that much more hard information can be pried loose over the next two months. That’s ok, I’ll enjoy reading about Obama in the coming years, when he is no longer the Dems’ Manhattan Project and the security apparatus built to cover up his past switches over from paid to volunteer status.
First Black Elected to Head Harvard’s Law Review
New York Times, The (NY) - February 6, 1990
Author: FOX BUTTERFIELD, Special to The New York Times
The Harvard Law Review , generally considered the most prestigious in the country, elected the first black president in its 104-year history today. The job is considered the highest student position at Harvard Law School.
The new president of the Review is Barack Obama , a 28-year-old graduate of Columbia University who spent four years heading a community development program for poor blacks on Chicago’s South Side before enrolling in law school. His late father, Barack Obama , was a finance minister in Kenya and his mother, Ann Dunham, is an American anthropologist now doing fieldwork in Indonesia. Mr. Obama was born in Hawaii.
“The fact that I’ve been elected shows a lot of progress,” Mr. Obama said today in an interview. “It’s encouraging.
“But it’s important that stories like mine aren’t used to say that everything is O.K. for blacks. You have to remember that for every one of me, there are hundreds or thousands of black students with at least equal talent who don’t get a chance,” he said, alluding to poverty or growing up in a drug environment.
What a Law Review Does
Law reviews, which are edited by students, play a double role at law schools, providing a chance for students to improve their legal research and writing, and at the same time offering judges and scholars a forum for new legal arguments. The Harvard Law Review is generally considered the most widely cited of the student law reviews.
On his goals in his new post, Mr. Obama said: “I personally am interested in pushing a strong minority perspective. I’m fairly opinionated about this. But as president of the law review, I have a limited role as only first among equals.”
Therefore, Mr. Obama said, he would concentrate on making the review a “forum for debate,” bringing in new writers and pushing for livelier, more accessible writing.
A President’s Future
The president of the law review usually goes on to serve as a clerk for a judge on the Federal Court of Appeals for a year, and then as a clerk for an associate justice of the Supreme Court. Mr. Obama said he planned to spend two or three years in private law practice and then return to Chicago to re-enter community work, either in politics or in local organizing.
Professors and students at the law school reacted cautiously to Mr. Obama ‘s selection. “For better or for worse, people will view it as historically significant,” said Prof. Randall Kennedy, who teaches contracts and race relations law. “But I hope it won’t overwhelm this individual student’s achievement.”
Change in Selection System
Mr. Obama was elected after a meeting of the review’s 80 editors that convened Sunday and lasted until early this morning, a participant said.
Until the 1970’s the editors were picked on the basis of grades, and the president of the Law Review was the student with the highest academic rank. Among these were Elliot L. Richardson, the former Attorney General, and Irwin Griswold, a dean of the Harvard Law School and Solicitor General under Presidents Lyndon B. Johnson and Richard M. Nixon.
That system came under attack in the 1970’s and was replaced by a program in which about half the editors are chosen for their grades and the other half are chosen by fellow students after a special writing competition. The new system, disputed when it began, was meant to help insure that minority students became editors of The Law Review.
Harvard, like a number of other top law schools, no longer ranks its law students for any purpose including a guide to recruiters.
(snip)
This angle is is being investigated by Ken Timmerman of Newsmax. He was on Steve Malzberg's show the other day talking about this very grooming possibility. Jack Cashill has linked the previous article going over much of the same thing. "The Mansourian Candidate" http://www.worldnetdaily.com/index.php?pageId=74231 Timmerman spoke more about how Obama was fitting the bill for the Saudi Prince Al-Waleed bin Talal at home in Saudi Arabia. Apparently Obama had very little debt after college.
Well, at least Obama is as smart as Al Gore.
Yes, but look at how he applied his education as opposed to how Bambi has applied his!
bookmark
Pick a name at random from the phone book and chances are great that that person is more qualified to be POTUS than is Obama. The man has absolutely nothing.
There is no reason why each of the Candidates should not release all of their college transcripts.
In fact, it would be fun to compare McCain and Palin Grades and course loads against that of Obama and Biden.
It would make for one of the best threads in FR History!
I am sure the transcripts would show Obama getting a C in Intro to Sociology while McCain an Sarah received A’s in Physics and Chemistry,
Someone needs to go mining! Theres GOLD in them there years!
Probably had affiliated with some uderground islamic cult group that he probably doesn’t want to talk about. Activists do crazy things when they meet more crazys at the concentrated colleges.... the places of higher learning. Possibly hanging with farrakhan and the boys. AND he doestnt really want to boast up his anti american associations.....
who knows? He doesnt want to talk ,,,, and no one is coming forward. Rest assured...... there is a reason.
A BIG and JUICY detrimental reason.
Perhaps, If BHO has the election “stolen from him” like algore, he can start his own religion, since he is already
acclaimed as the MESSIAH.
barbra ann
>
Same here. Now, just who is handling the puppet strings.
This article raises some additional good points about the Obamessiah. If he were any kind of leader, his years at Harvard and his time as president of the Harvard Law Review would not be shrouded in mystery or cloaked in silence.
But, Obama’s silence on this time in his dubious background is deafening. Apparently, as president of the Harvard Law Review, he was mediocre at best. His record has him as one of the few presidents of this prestigious journal who never published an article. That, alone, raises the eyebrows and questions about his fitness to be a leader.
Considering the poor quality of Michelle’s thesis from Yale(?) and her inability to use it as an opportunity to explore anything new or different, she focused her thesis where she has always focused her attention - on herself. Perhaps, then, we find the attraction between these two people - they are and always have been self-centered and mediocre.
What else explains why a Harvard Law School graduate and former Harvard Law Review president’s first job out of college was “community organizer”? I find it hard to believe that no law firm would want to have him on their staff with those credentials.
The comparison between Obama’s background and Kerry’s experiences as a “war hero” in Vietnam are appearing more credible the more we expose these shrouded areas of Obama’s past.
You tube video from article
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8npeYfKI_ns
...........and Joe Plugs.
Take hussein’s melatin away, and you got nuthin.
Believe it or not, JFK was a mediocre student at Harvard. There was a traveling exhibit about the presidents at the Eisenhower Museum in Abilene. It had a blowup print of JFK’s grades. He was a C student. Most of the presidents were mediocre in the classroom.
I don't see why we want to go there. McCain was at the bottom of his class, and may have only gotten into the academy because of his father.
This is not an argument we're going to win.
And he did graduate in the top ten or fifteen percent of his class - at Harvard.
http://article.nationalreview.com/?q=OWMxNGUxZWJjYzg1NjA0MTlmZDZmMjUwZGU3ZjAwNmU=&w=MA==
September 8, 2008
What Did Obama Do As A Community Organizer?
And is it really a qualification to be president?
By Byron York
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2077121/posts
Obama was the perfect affirmative action candidate for any IVY League school or academic position at the schoold where merit was replaced by ‘deserved reparations’
A Black with an Arabic Muslim name and background all he had to do was show up and be acclaimed.
ACTIVIST IN CHICAGO NOW HEADS HARVARD LAW REVIEW
Chicago Tribune - February 7, 1990
Author: Michael J. Ybarra.
Just a few years ago, Barack Obama was helping residents of the Altgeld
Gardens housing development challenge the Chicago Housing Authority over
asbestos in their apartments.
On Monday, the 28-year-old Obama was named president of the Harvard Law
Review, the nation`s most prestigious student legal journal. Obama is the
first black elected to the post in its 104-year history.
The Review is considered one of the most authoritative of the law school
reviews and is a forum for judges and scholars. It is also a high-powered
springboard for aspiring lawyers. Its presidents usually go on serve as a
clerk for a judge on the U.S. Court of Appeals for a year and then as a clerk for an associate justice of the U.S. Supreme Court.
It took 91 years to elect a woman, and it wasn`t until last year that an
Asian was elected by his fellow editors to the position.
For Obama , it`s another victory in the fight against ``powerlessness.``
``People don`t feel that they can have much impact,`` he said in a phone
interview from the Review`s offices. ``I want to get people involved in having a say in how their lives are run. More and more of that needs to be done.``
As executive director of the Developing Communities Project, he had
attempted to persuade the residents of Altgeld Gardens to become more involved in their community. Obama worked for the Developing Communities Project for
four years.
(snip)
``Unbelievable talent is not cultivated; a lot of time it`s crushed,``
Obama said. ``Over the long run, the way to improve the conditions in the
cities and schools-to fight crime and drugs-is to work on the local level.``
To do that effectively, Obama said he wanted to know how the system works as only a lawyer can. To that end, he said he`ll spend a couple of years
practicing law after graduation next year and then it`s most likely back to
community organizing, maybe politics.
Probably back where he started.
``I`ll definitely be coming back to Chicago,`` he said. ``Chicago`s a
great town . . . an ideal laboratory.``
The Obama history just becomes murkier and murkier. The more I hear about this guy the more I’m convinced he’s been “groomed” for what he’s doing now.”
Think Goerge Soros.....
Nobama still hasn’t managed to come forth with a valid birth certificate, either. That’s plenty murky for me.
Not quite. According to a 1987 New York Times Article, Biden graduated number 76 out of 85 from Syracuse University School of Law, which puts him at the cusp of the bottom 10% of his class. This was after he was allowed to retake a course in which he received and "F" for plagiarism. According to the same article, Biden earned mostly C's and D's as an undergraduate at the University of Delaware, except for two A's in physical education and an F in ROTC.
http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9B0DE3DB143FF93BA2575AC0A961948260&sec=&spon=&pagewanted=print
I agree that academic achievement is seldom a good measure for predicting leadership and success as POTUS. Nevertheless, the left wing and their comrades in the MSM have bashed President Bush for the last eight years as being "dumb," "stupid," and "an idiot" because he earned mostly C's and B's at Yale, even thought he has an MBA from Harvard. If academic achievement is significant when reviewing President Bush's qualifications, then it ought to be equally significant when considering Barry's and Biden's qualifications.
Thank you for the corrections - my overall characterization of Biden as a less than stellar student still stands, which was my point.
I think the main point of the thread is the question of whether Obama is hiding MORE than a poor academic record - I got off track a bit - I apologize for that.
No need to apologise. The bottom line is that until Barry releases his complete academic records including SAT/ACT scores and proves othrwise, I am going to assume that neither Columbia nor Harvard would have accepted him if not for the fact that he is half black, just as I assume that Yale and Harvard would not have accepted GWB if not for the fact that he is a legatee.
I agree with your assumption - I don’t think there is any question that he would not have been admitted to any Ivy League institution on the basis of fair competition.
Would that Bristol Palin could get off so easily!
Needs to be repeated often.This is weird to just about anyone I tell it to.
Jack Cashill BUMP!
This guy is consistently good.
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