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During a campaign debate on April 16, Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton were asked if the District of Columbia's ban on gun possession, now facing a challenge before the Supreme Court, is constitutional. "I think a total ban, with no exceptions under any circumstances, might be found by the Court not to be. But I don't know the facts," said Clinton (Yale Law '73), dodging the question for the third and final time. Obama (Harvard Law '91) also pleaded ignorance, confessing he hadn't "listened to the briefs and looked at all the evidence." When moderator Charlie Gibson pointed out that...

In the poll of Jewish voters (conducted April 1-30), it showed Obama getting 61% of the Jewish vote against John McCain (32%). Yet in the same poll Hillary Clinton beat Obama among Jewish voters 62% - 38%. So obviously Jews are lifelong democrats who would vote for Obama, whom they rejected in the primaries, rather than vote for McCain. Thus, for them, party loyalty is preferable to Israel loyalty. Recently I posted two articles by Yarom Ettinger, former Israeli Ambassador to the US, The Prospects of a Palestinian State and National Interests of the United States and It’s American interests,...

Sen. John McCain really does want to tempt the Republican base. ... We've gotten our hands on an advanced transcript of this weekend's "The Chris Matthews Show" on NBC and the British Broadcasting Corporation's Katty Kay offered this nugget during the show's "Tell Me Something I Don't Know" segment: "John McCain is going to be doing more of these themed tours of America, and one of them is going to be on energy and global climate change. It could get him into trouble with Republicans, of course, and with the base, who don't think there is much climate change going...

ROCHESTER, Mich., May 7 (Reuters) - Republican U.S. presidential candidate John McCain said on Wednesday he would support incentives to encourage states to develop potential oil fields but would not try to force them to exploit potential resources, especially in environmentally sensitive areas. "I do believe that we should drill for it," he said when discussing oil exploration at a town hall meeting in Rochester, Michigan. "But I am a federalist and I believe in the rights of states to make those decisions." He said he believed the U.S. government could do more to encourage states to develop their resources....

“Tomorrow, we shall achieve the victory, that the kingdom of God may come on earth as it is in heaven, and all those who love the Lord and will vote for Obama, say Amen.” “AAAMMMMEEENNN!”

Wednesday, May 07, 2008 What's Wrong with Republicans? [Victor Davis Hanson] On this great debate, I tend to agree with Mark Levin and others that conservatives should reach out with conservative principles better framed and presented, rather than change the message for the perceived advantage of the hour. What the Republicans need is not an abandonment of conservative principles, but a smarter, more articulate defense of even more conservativism, not less. E.g., Gas Prices? More nuclear power, hydro-, refineries, clean coal, drilling off coasts and in ANWR. And why? As a necessary bridge to next-generation cleaner and non-petroleum energy so...

Monday, May 5, 2008 By: Dick Morris & Eileen McGann Bill O'Reilly asked Hillary Clinton the key question about the war in Iraq: What happens if we pull out and the Iranians move in? She talked around the issue, but never gave a convincing answer to O'Reilly's question. She said she would replace force with diplomacy. But, as Frederick the Great said, “Diplomacy without force is like music without instruments.” If our troops are long gone from Iraq, the Iranians will snub our diplomacy and laugh at our entireties. They will add Iraq to their other trophies in the region:...

WASHINGTON - The differences couldn't be more striking — and they go well beyond older, white and Republican vs. younger, black and Democratic. John McCain, more spontaneous and accessible, and Barack Obama, more disciplined and remote, are two unconventional presidential candidates, each with styles all their own. Contrasts on the campaign trail run the gamut, from the way they stage events and draw crowds to how they court voters and handle reporters. The two men even carry themselves differently. McCain, 5-foot-9 and spry at age 71, has a ramrod posture, quick movements and clenched fists; he darts from here to...

U.S. Sen. Hillary Clinton, D-N.Y., Sunday blamed market manipulation as the likely cause of record high gas prices in the United States. Appearing on ABC's "This Week With George Stephanopoulos," the Democratic presidential contender said if she is elected in November, she will immediately order an investigation into the industry. "We know that there's market manipulation going on. So I would launch an investigation if I were president right now by the Department of Justice and the Federal Trade Commission," Clinton said. The New York senator said any attempts to lower gas prices should require the participation of the Organization...

Is John McCain Ronald Reagan or Bob Dole? Or, more to the point, will McCain be perceived as the vigorous, wood-chopping proclaimer of “Morning in America” or as a cranky senior senator prone to gaffes and the occasional stage tumble? The sensitive question of age — one of the trickiest and most unpredictable in the political playbook — has been touched upon only glancingly since McCain became the de facto GOP nominee. But it is certain to hover over a candidate who will be 72 by Election Day. For all the ink spilled on whether the country is ready for...

I picked up a copy of Time magazine yesterday, in which a columnist declared that issues of "character" were a "distraction" in the Presidential race. Obama actually said the same thing in his North Carolina press conference, that the Reverend Wright affair has been a "distraction." Isn't this what liberals usually say when their own characters come under public scrutiny? What a heap of pure poppycock! Character is the primary issue in every Presidential election. Period. And we, the voters, have an inalienable right to know the specifics, as much as can be discerned, of a candidate's character.

America's tax code needs a serious overhaul. The last clean-up was in 1986, when Ronald Reagan turned away from his tax-slashing past to partner with a Democratic Congress and close loopholes, change rates, and broaden the tax base. Over the intervening decades, lobbyists have left their Gucci footprints all over the code, and our system is a bigger mess than ever -- one that should give both Democrats and Republicans pause. For instance, America taxes corporations at the second-highest rate in the industrialized world but collects the fourth-lowest amount of corporate tax revenue. Why? Loopholes, special deductions, tax credits, subsidies,...

On the day Democrats hold a crucial primary in North Carolina, John McCain will venture to the Tar Heel State to lay out his vision on what kind of judges he would appoint to the bench. The McCain campaign tells CNN's Dana Bash the Arizona senator will deliver a speech next Tuesday at Wake Forrest University designed to help bolster his standing among conservatives with regard to the issue of judges. Many conservatives took issue with McCain in 2005 for signing on to the so-called "gang of 14″ in the Senate — a bipartisan group of senators who sought to...

The day before John McCain's third domestic policy speech in as many weeks, his senior policy adviser sat down with reporters in Tampa, Fla., to preview McCain's health care proposals and try once again to dispel the persistent storyline that McCain's success in November hinges on Iraq. Health care isn't exactly a bread-and-butter topic for the presumptive Republican nominee. While campaigning in Iowa last December on his support for the surge, McCain told a reporter from the Boston Globe, "The issue of economics is not something I've understood as well as I should." Whether or not that now-infamous quote was...

Sen. Evan Bayh (D-Ind.) today praised Sen. Barack Obama for denouncing his former pastor, but warned that Republicans will use the association to try to "Swift Boat" the Illinois senator if he becomes the Democratic presidential nominee this fall. Bayh, who is supporting Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton for president, said he hoped other issues -- the economy, gasoline prices, health care and the cost of college -- will drive the decisions of most voters in Tuesday's Indiana primary. Obama has struggled in other states to win the votes of white, working class voters, and they could be the deciding vote...

One by one, Senator Barack Obama is passing the necessary tests for national leadership. Probing questions have been raised about his experience, race, early education, parents, voting record, statesmanship, and more. He has answered those questions with poise and respect. But when attention turns to Senator Obama’s faith, I get worried. As Martin Marty noted in a recent column (“Keeping the Faith at Trinity United Church of Christ,” April 2, 2007), some media hounds have focused on Obama’s home church of choice. Trinity United Church of Christ on Chicago’s south side is one of the nation’s most progressive African American...

Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) is proposing a greater federal commitment to people without health insurance on Tuesday, suggesting that it help funds states to set up non-profit risk pools to help Americans who are denied coverage or can’t afford it. McCain’s health-policy experts provided a ballpark estimate of $7 billion a year for the new federal commitment. “Cooperation among states in the purchase of insurance would … be a crucial step in ridding the market of both needless and costly regulations, and the dominance in the market of only a few insurance companies,” McCain says in remarks prepared for delivery...

Washington, DC (LifeNews.com) -- In a Sunday interview, pro-abortion presidential candidate Barack Obama defended his opposition to a ban on partial-birth abortions. Though he wasn't in Congress at the time it voted on the ban, he said he would have supported it had it contained a health exception. However, doctors and medical groups readily acknowledge that the three-day-long abortion procedure -- involving the killing of an unborn baby halfway through the birthing process - never helps women medically. Obama also claimed pro-life advocates only brought the partial-birth abortion ban forward only to "polarize" the abortion debate. Full story at: http://www.lifenews.com/nat3896.html

BARACK OBAMA SEEMED to have survived the blasphemous rants of his preacher and remained relatively untarnished by the perceived dissatisfactions of his privileged wife. But he may be less lucky with remarks he made recently about embittered, small-town Americans, who "cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren't like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations." Those words now cling to Obama like Styrofoam packing peanuts. The more he tries to brush them away, the more they seem to burrow into the American psyche. Being effete comes naturally to Democrats...

WASHINGTON – The Rev. Jeremiah Wright Jr., the longtime pastor of Sen. Barack Obama, said in a speech Monday that criticisms of his provocative sermons, and questions about his patriotism, were "an attack on the black church." At the National Press Club, the Rev. Jeremiah Wright says Sen. Barack Obama did not denounce him and only distanced himself from remarks he made. He also discusses his controversial words. Video courtesy of Reuters. (April 28) The address at the National Press Club was one of several made in recent days by the Chicago minister, breaking weeks of silence after broadcast video...