She is an Obama shill.
Danielle Allen:
“On each policy issue, Obama has identified specific policy goals as well as explaining how citizens will be expected to take responsibility; we might, for instance, note his insistence on involving the American people in the practical negotiations over health care.”
“He has proved his capacity to convert potentialities into actualities. The proof lies in his campaign. He diagnosed the dominance of incumbents as a problem in our political life. He designed a strategy to resolve it: a grass-roots campaign that would deploy the new social-networking technologies to unsettle the complacency of incumbency.”
“Finally, he has done all this with grace, good judgment, and integrity.”
http://www.philly.com/inquirer/opinion/20080406_It_s_Obama_s_maturity_for_his_age_that_matters.html
And to that very question:
~snip~
There are, however, other documents in the past of the Democratic nominee that would be worth a close examination. For example, they may not even exist anymore – a convenient destruction – but Obama’s office records from his service in the state legislature, particularly the correspondence, would be an interesting resource in learning more about his efforts in state government.
The Illinois State Archives told Judicial Watch that they never received any request from Senator Obama to archive any records in his possession. Similarly, in 2007, Obama said to Tim Russert that his records were “not kept.”
MR. RUSSERT: You talked about Senator Clinton having records released from the Clinton Library regarding her experience as first lady, and yet when you were asked about, “What about eight years in the state senate of Illinois,” you said, “I don’t know.” Where, where are the—where are your records?
SEN. OBAMA: Tim, we did not keep those records. I...
MR. RUSSERT: Are they gone?
SEN. OBAMA: Well, let’s be clear. In the state senate, every single piece of information, every document related to state government was kept by the state of Illinois and has been disclosed and is available and has been gone through with a fine-toothed comb by news outlets in Illinois.* The, the stuff that I did not keep has to do with, for example, my schedule. I didn’t have a schedule. I was a state senator. I wasn’t intending to have the Barack Obama State Senate Library. I didn’t have 50 or 500 people to, to help me archive these issues. So...
MR. RUSSERT: But your meetings with lobbyists and so forth, there’s no record of that?
SEN. OBAMA: I did not have a scheduler, but, as I said, every document related to my interactions with government is available right now. And, as I said, news outlets have already looked at them.
MR. RUSSERT: Is your schedule available anywhere? Are—the records exist?
SEN. OBAMA: I—Tim, I kept my own schedule. I didn’t have a scheduler.
I have no idea how Obama’s statement that “every document related to state government was kept by the state of Illinois and has been disclosed and available” can be in line with the statement from the Illinois State Archives. Is there some separate archive for state legislators?
06/26 08:45 AM
http://campaignspot.nationalreview.com/
And the next day there’s more from the Campaign Spot:
Did Obama Keep Any Records From His Years in the State Legislature?
Very few Americans had heard of Barack Obama before his 2004 Democratic Convention speech. On his life and career before then, we have only a few sources to go on. Two autobiographical books written by Obama, one of which features composite and fictional characters; David Mendell’s biography Obama: From Promise to Power; and the coverage of the Chicago and other Illinois media from when Obama entered elected office in 1996 or so. The local press would probably admit that for many of the eight years Obama was in the state legislature, he was not a terribly high-profile figure.
Ordinarily in cases like this, those who wanted to know more about a candidate’s rise to the pinnacle of American politics would look at his record, or specifically, his records of what he did, what his actions were, as a legislator. Who did he contact within the state government, and what did he urge them to do? What were his priorities when he was not under such a glaring national spotlight? And in the past, Obama and his staff have encouraged just that:
Earlier this year, campaign spokesman [Ben] LaBolt asked The Associated Press to narrow a request for records on whether Obama had ever urged clemency for a convicted criminal.
“You’re asking us to do an extremely exhaustive search into every record we have from the U.S. Senate and state Senate offices,” LaBolt said at the time. At the news conference in Iowa last week, Obama said he didn’t “have a whole bunch of records from those years,” but told reporters to “let us know” if there are “particular documents that you are interested in.”
Except later in 2007, the campaign stated those records no longer existed. “LaBolt said Obama did not keep any correspondence with the general public. Ditto for letters to or from state associations and lobbyists, memos on legislation and correspondence with Illinois state agencies. The campaign said Illinois agencies have copies of his requests for information or help, but accessing those records would involve contacting the agencies and asking them to comb though eight years of records to find correspondence from Obama.”
06/27 08:10 AM