Libertarian Leanings

The Broken Record

That would be me.  As we continue to marvel at the slow motion, never ending train wreck that is ObamaCare, we shouldn't lose sight of its purpose.  I've said it before, and I'll say it again.  ObamaCare is not about health care.  It's about power.  When, you may ask, might I have said that before?  Actually, I it was before ObamaCare was even passed.  For instance, August 15, 2009:

[W]hy go blindly along on health care reform when so often the president's arguments are not correct?  Why, when nearly every Obama claim is questionable or false, from the number of Americans who are uninsured, to scare stories about people currently being denied care, to his imagined cost savings.  What is the point?  And why are progressives so hot for a single payer system, when single payer systems have been shown time and again to result in reduced quality of care and government directed rationing?

It so happens, Bill Clinton delivered the answer at a convention for progressive bloggers in Pittsburgh.

PITTSBURGH - Former President Bill Clinton told an audience of liberal online activists Thursday evening that the nation has “entered a new era of progressive politics” that could last for decades if Democrats can pass ambitious measures such as health care reform and climate change.

In a nearly hour-long keynote address to the fourth annual Netroots Nation convention in Pittsburgh, a gathering of roughly 1,500 progressive bloggers and activists, Clinton said the nation—and public opinion—has dramatically changed in the 16 years since he took office. But he noted that President Barack Obama and the Democratic-controlled Congress needed the support of the online community to achieve their agenda.

“We have entered a new era of progressive politics which, if we do it right, can last 30 or 40 years,” Clinton said. “America has rapidly moved to another place on a lot of these issues.”

“The president needs your help,” he said, “and the cause needs your help.”

As we all know, ObamaCare passed, and the results were as expected, which means ObamaCare is nowhere close to what was promised.  Contrary to its billing, under the "Affordable" Care Act premiums are higher, deductibles are higher, choices are fewer, and the uninsured for the most part remain uninsured.  ObamaCare doesn't just fail to fix any of those problems.  It makes them worse.

We also know that when Obama promised, "If you like you plan, you can keep your plan — period," he was lying.  And he knew he was lying.  So what is the point of making an absolute mess of health care in America?  In one of his "Rule of Law" columns a couple of days ago J. Christian Adams gave us a concrete example of what is the point.:

A settlement between California and left-wing groups begins to reveal the political architecture of Obamacare.  From the ACLU press release: 

In a victory for voting rights, the state of California has agreed to mail voter registration cards to nearly 4 million Californians who have signed up for health insurance through the state health exchange, Covered California, and to ensure that Californians who apply for health benefits through the exchange going forward are provided voter registration opportunities...

Here’s the simple version:  Obamacare requires millions of people to interact with the government who never would have done so before. At the point of interaction, NVRA requires them to be pushed to register to vote.  Presto.  Millions of people are now touched by a political touch when they just wanted to see a doctor.  The politicization of health care has a GOTV component for the Democrat party.

That's my emphasis above.  In one way or another, that is what the Affordable Care Act was always intended to do — increase the number of voters who are more inclined to vote for a Democrat.  If it costs the rest of us an arm and a leg and our healthcare, so be it.

If you happen to be one of those people who knew that ObamaCare couldn't possibly add millions to the insurance rolls without making healthcare more expensive and less available, guess what.  You're the enemy.  Defeating you is the cause that Bill Clinton urged the Netroots Convention to get behind when he envisioned those 30 or 40 years of progressive politics. 

Now, you might be tempted to think progressives have embarked on their campaign to defeat you so that they can more easily implement their ever compassionate policies like ObamaCare.  You have it backwards.  ObamaCare is the means to defeat you.  It provides a taxpayer funded recruitment mechanism that is intended to keep Democrats in power by overwhelming the voices of Americans who might be averse to wasteful spending in Washington.  Democrats intend to keep the gravy train running.  And isn't it funny how the money seems to rub off.

Update:  The link I've been looking for! 

The fact that Harry Reid’s political and influence operation includes his five children has been established for some time. A few weeks ago, when I first heard Reid accuse private citizens of being un-American, I dredged up a Los Angeles Times article from 2003 with the headline, “In Nevada, the Name to Know Is Reid.” Chuck Neubauer and Richard T. Cooper’s meticulously researched and reported article begins with the story of the “Clark County Conservation of Land and Natural Resources Act of 2002,” a land bill of the sort that puts people to sleep. “What Reid did not explain” when he introduced the bill in the Senate, Neubauer and Cooper wrote, “was that the bill promised a cavalcade of benefits to real estate developers, corporations, and local institutions that were paying hundreds of thousands of dollars in lobbying fees to his sons’ and son-in-law’s firms.” I wonder why he left that part out.

Firms tied to the Reid family, the Los Angeles Times reported, earned more than $2 million from 1998 to 2002 “from special interests that were represented by the kids and helped by the senator in Washington.”

Does it ever rub off!  This, along with that mess called ObamaCare, is what you get when you vote for a Democrat.

The Left's Affinity For Corruption

The Wall Street Journal notes the disparity in the treatment afforded to former IMF head Dominique Strauss-Kahn and that of former World Band head Paul Wolfowitz.

Whatever becomes of the sexual assault charges against Dominique Strauss-Kahn, DNA evidence and all, it is now clear that the former head of the International Monetary Fund treated the organization as his sexual fiefdom. "Despite my long professional life, I was unprepared for the advances of the managing director of the IMF," wrote Piroska Nagy, an IMF staff economist whom Mr. Strauss-Kahn pursued until she agreed to a brief affair in 2008. "I did not know how to handle this," she added in a letter to a law firm investigating the affair. "I felt, 'I was damned if I did and damned if I didn't.'"

Ms. Nagy's letter—which added that Mr. Strauss-Kahn was "a man with a problem that may make him ill-equipped to lead an institution where women work under his command"—has received considerable media attention in recent weeks, and rightly so. But perhaps its real interest lies in the way none of Ms. Nagy's points seem to have found their way into the firm's October 2008 report to the IMF Executive Board.

On the contrary, the report, conducted by three lawyers at the firm of Morgan, Lewis & Bockius, concluded that "there is no evidence that the MD [managing director], either expressly or implicitly, threatened the female staff member in any way to induce her to engage in the affair or to keep it confidential." The IMF board gave Mr. Strauss-Kahn merely a wrist slap for a "serious error of judgment," along with board assurances that the episode would "in no way affect the effectiveness of the Managing Director in the very challenging and difficult period ahead."

Compare that whitewash job to the what happened to Mr. Wolfowitz.

Remember that Mr. Wolfowitz's alleged sin was that he had arranged a job transfer, along with a substantial raise, for his companion Shaha Riza, a bank employee at the time Mr. Wolfowitz took the helm in 2005.

But any suggestion that favoritism had been involved quickly fell apart when it came to light that Mr. Wolfowitz had disclosed the relationship with the bank's board before taking the job; that he had sought to recuse himself from the matter; that the bank's ethics committee had forbidden him from recusing himself; and that the committee had also directed him to arrange a promotion and pay raise for Ms. Riza "on the basis of her qualifying record" and out of concern for the "potential disruption" to her career for a conflict of interest that was not of her own making.

That was it. Yet outside of these columns, few other news outlets could be bothered to report the facts. Was it because Mr. Wolfowitz, as one of the most prominent advocates for deposing Saddam Hussein, was such a convenient media villain? Or because the board and management of the bank were so resistant to Mr. Wolfowitz's aggressive anti-corruption agenda, and all too happy to leak selective and bogus information to suggestible journalists?

I vote for the corruption angle.  Sure, his advocacy for deposing Saddam Hussein may have made Paul Wolfowitz a more tempting target, but everything the left does is about getting the leverage to maintain power, and that leverage is found in the discretion to bestow favors.  That's corruption. 

Pick an issue.  Voter identification requirements are opposed.  Democrats want the voter fraud option.  Illegal immigration is promoted.  There's a constituency there and the left wants those new potential voters.  Bailout money went to the politically connected with labor unions favored over bondholders. 

The left depends upon the power to grant favors to their friends.  With such an unappealing philosophy, how else do they hold on?

Update:  Speaking of voter fraud, the Democratic governor of Minnesota, Mark Dayton, just vetoed a law requiring Minnesota voters to provide an ID in order to vote.  Power Line's take:

The law provided for issuance of free voter IDs to any legitimate voters who, for whatever reason, have no driver's license or other form of identification. Minnesotans, aware that voter fraud has likely played a key role in recent elections, overwhelmingly support the law: the Star Tribune's Minnesota Poll, which routinely tilts left, found 80 percent support.

Nevertheless, Governor Mark Dayton vetoed the bill yesterday. That a Democratic governor is willing to fly in the face of overwhelming public opinion, even as he is fighting a budget battle with the legislature that likely will lead to a slowdown in state government, says volumes about where the Democratic Party stands on the issue of voter fraud.

Democrats stand strongly in favor of voter fraud.  It's one of the imnportant ways they win elections.

Protecting Its Own

The Washington Times reports that Senate Democrats Christopher Dodd and Kent Conrad were cleared of any ethics violations by the Senate Ethics Committee. 

'The committee, after a yearlong investigation, said it found "no substantial credible evidence" that the home loans secured with Countrywide Financial Corp. violated Senate ethics rules.

Mr. Dodd of Connecticut, who is chairman of the Senate banking committee, and Mr. Conrad of North Dakota vehemently have denied any wrongdoing or ethical lapse in the mortgage deals. Both said they knew they got low mortgage-rate deals in Countrywide's VIP program but thought the special treatment was a "courtesy" on par with "frequent flier" discounts.'

Although Dodd and Conrad claim otherwise, in secret testimony before the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, former Countrywide employee Robert Feinberg said they both knew they were getting special treatment.

'Asked by a House Oversight investigator if Conrad, the North Dakota senator, "was aware that he was getting preferential treatment?" Feinberg answered: "Yes, he was aware."

Referring to Dodd, the investigator asked:

"And do you know if during the course of your communications" with the senator or his wife "that you ever had an opportunity to share with them if they were getting special VIP treatment?"

"Yes, yes," Feinberg replied.

Bryan DeAngelis, Dodd's spokesman, said Feinberg has repeatedly made allegations of special treatment that were not true.'

As it turns out, the Senate Ethics Committee decided that the senators did not receive special treatment, but even if they did it was OK.  Here is an excerpt from the Committee's letter to Dodd giving him the good news.

'To reach the conclusion that you did not violate ethics rules, the Committee carefully examined whether your conduct violated the Senate Gifts Rule, which states: “No Member, officer, or employee of the Senate shall knowingly accept a gift except as provided in the rule.” The rule provides an exception for opportunities and benefits “in the form of loans from banks and other financial institutions on terms generally available to the public, “thereby allowing Senators to accept opportunities offered only to a group that is not defined on the basis of one’s status as a Senate employee. The Committee also considered whether your conduct violated Senate Rule 37, which prohibits Senators from using their position for personal gain.'

For one thing, there was at least one person who was not in the Senate who got a special deal as a "Friend of Angelo."  That takes care of the public availability part.  And second, there is an exception to the ethics rule against receiving gifts if the gift is a loan from a bank or other financial institution.  Finally, the senators say they didn't know they were getting special treatment.  Bingo!  It's all OK!

Or not.  Here is an AP description of some of the terms Dodd and Conrad got.  You decide if the senators might have gained personally, or if these terms sound like they're generally available to the public.

'In Conrad's case, an e-mail from Feinberg to Mozilo indicates Feinberg informed Conrad that Countrywide had a residential loan limit of a four-unit building. Conrad sought to finance an eight-unit apartment building in Bismarck that he had bought from his brothers.

"I did advise him I would check with you first since our maximum is 4 units," Feinberg said in an April 23, 2004, internal e-mail to Mozilo.

Mozilo responded the same day that Feinberg should speak to another Countrywide executive and "see if he can make an exception due to the fact that the borrower is a senator."

Feinberg said in his deposition with House Oversight investigators last month that exceptions for the type of loan Conrad received were not allowed for borrowers outside the VIP system.

"If there was a regular customer calling, and of course you say, 'No, we're a residential lender. We cannot provide you with that service,'" Feinberg said.

Feinberg also told House investigators that Countrywide counted both of Dodd's homes as primary residences.

"He was allowed to do both of those as owner-occupied, which is not allowed. You can only have one owner-occupied property. You can't live in two properties at the same time," he said.

Normally, Feinberg said, a second home could require more equity and could have a higher mortgage rate.'

It's clear that both Dodd and Conrad gained personally by their relationships with Angelo Mozilo.  It's also clear that they got special treatment.  So how did Senate Ethics Committee conclude that it was OK?

'First, your mortgages were made in a commercially-reasonable manner based on terms and conditions available to borrowers with similar loan profiles. While your Countrywide loans were handled through the V.I.P. loan unit and designated as F.O.A. loans, the service you received was available to thousands of other non-Senate customers at Countrywide and the loans you received appear to have been available industry-wide to borrowers with comparable loan profiles.'

In other words, because there were other influential people receiving special treatment from Countrywide, it's OK for the Chairman of the Senate Committee on Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs to get special treatment as well. Never mind that Countrywide was in a business that was directly affected by the Dodd's committee.

'Second, there is no credible evidence that you sought or knowingly received any financial benefits not available to other borrowers with similar loan profiles.'

In other words, the good senator did not have to ask for special treatment.  Angelo just gave it to him on his own, so it's all good.  And again, since Senator Dodd was well aware that there were other special borrowers, there was nothing wrong with cashing in himself.   "Similar loan  profiles" refers to other "Friends of Angelo."

'Third, there is no credible evidence that you used your official position for personal gain. The Committee found no evidence that you fully understood the scope of the V.I.P. program, knew that you were in the “Friends of Angelo” program, or attempted to use your status as a Senator to receive loan terms not available to the public.'

In other words, the good senator may have gotten special treatment because he has great fluffy white hair.  Who knows?  The Committee doesn't.  Committee members only know that there's no proof that Dodd's position as Chairman of the Senate Committee on Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs had anything to do with it.  Angelo just gave him the deal, and it's all quite ethical in the Committee's view because Dodd made a point of knowing nothing.  I mean, why would the Chairman of the Senate Committee on Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs be interested in any first hand knowledge of industry lending practices?  What an absurd thought!

The Senate Ethics Committee has acquitted itself admirably in protecting its own.  They rationalize the routine influence peddling that goes on among senators and shield them when they get caught at it.  And of course, it doesn't hurt to be a Democrat.  There's no surprise at the timing of Committee's announcement.  So what if it's taken them a year to come to a decision.  The important thing is that the Committee was able to wrap it up with over a year to go before Dodd stands for re-election.  That gives Connecticut voters plenty of time to forget about all this.

Weather Now Subject to Congressional Oversight

Jim Lindgren put it well.

'As you undoubtedly know by now, Congress voted on Friday to change the weather — or more accurately, the climate. The idea that a government of one country could appreciably change the world's climate over the next 40 years is the ultimate hubris.'

Less hubris than scam. it's a huge power grab intended to further entrench the political class.  Businesses and individuals to come hat in hand before the governing powers seeking permission to breath.  Lest we exceed our CO2 allotment.

Friends in Congress

As is pretty well known, Senators Chris Dodd and Kent Conrad received very favorable mortgage terms from Countrywide Financial because of their "friendship" with former Countrywide CEO Angelo Mozilo. Republican Congressman Darrell Issa of California wants to know what other "Friends of Angelo" might be sitting in Congress.

'A March report by Congressman Darrell Issa (R., Calif.) highlighted internal Countrywide emails in which executives debated whether the mayor of Billings, Montana, was influential enough to warrant a waiving of his mortgage insurance premium. The company ultimately decided that he was. We can only imagine what Countrywide's internal emails might say about the benefits of "friendship" with Mr. Dodd, who chairs the Banking Committee of the U.S. Senate, or about others who benefited from the program.

Mr. Issa doesn't want to imagine; he wants to discover the facts. He's asked Rep. Edolphus Towns (D., N.Y.), Chairman of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, to subpoena records of the "Friends of Angelo" loan program from Bank of America, which bought the failed subprime lender last year. So far, Mr. Towns is noncommittal, and perhaps he is hoping that the issue will fade into the background during the long August recess.'

This was supposed to be the most ethical Congress in history, if we take Democratic Majority Leader Nancy Pelosi at her word.  Unfortunately, she has never shown any appetite for investigating corruption among Democrats, and since she has the final say in the matter subpoenas, we can expect she will do what she can to make this issue fade away.

Machiavellian

A liberal relative of mine recently told me I ought to read Machiavelli's The Prince, explaining that the parallels to today are scary.  I asked him if it would be describing Obama.  His face registered an expression of shock, shock that I could suggest such a thing.  But he quickly recovered and said no, no of course not, The Prince is really cut throat.  As if to say, that Obama is not.

So this morning in a very roundabout way, I found my way to this essay by Jim Geraghty that raised a very similar parallel.  Mr. Geraghty wrote his essay about a month ago, and the parallel was not between Obama and The Prince, but Obama to Saul Alinsky and his Rules for Radicals.

'After Obama took office, the pundit class found itself debating the ideology and sensibility of the new president — an indication of how scarcely the media had bothered to examine him beforehand. But after 100 days, few observers can say that Obama hasn’t surprised them with at least one call. Gays wonder why Obama won’t take a stand on gay marriage when state legislatures will. Union bosses wonder what happened to the man who sounded more protectionist than Hillary Clinton in the primary. Some liberals have been stunned by the serial about-faces on extraordinary rendition, indefinite detention without trial, military-tribunal trials, the state-secrets doctrine, and other policies they associate with the Bush administration. Former supporters of Obama, including David Brooks, Christopher Buckley, Jim Cramer, and Warren Buffett, have expressed varying degrees of criticism of his early moves, surprised that he is more hostile to the free market than they had thought.

Obama’s defenders would no doubt insist this is a reflection of his pragmatism, his willingness to eschew ideology to focus on what solutions work best. This view assumes that nominating Bill Richardson as commerce secretary, running up a $1.8 trillion deficit, approving the AIG bonuses, signing 9,000 earmarks into law, adopting Senator McCain’s idea of taxing health benefits, and giving U.K. Prime Minister Gordon Brown 25 DVDs that don’t work in Britain constitute “what works best.” Obama is a pragmatist, but a pragmatist as understood by Alinsky: One who applies pragmatism to achieving and keeping power.'

That last sentence pretty well captures Obama.  He is pragmatic about getting and keeping power.  It is the common thread to all of his policy pronouncements, and it explains the ease with which he glides from one "deeply held" position right over to the opposite side of it.

'During the campaign, Obama’s critics laughed and marveled at how quickly the candidate threw inconvenient friends, allies, and supporters under the bus once they became political liabilities. Over on the Campaign Spot, it’s been easy to compile a list of quickly forgotten promises. But it is unlikely that Obama would consider any of this a character flaw; instead, it is evidence of his adaptability and gift for seeing the big picture.

Alinsky sneered at those who would accept defeat rather than break their principles: “It’s true I might have trouble getting to sleep because it takes time to tuck those big, angelic, moral wings under the covers.” He assured his students that no one would remember their flip-flops, scoffing, “The judgment of history leans heavily on the outcome of success or failure; it spells the difference between the traitor and the patriotic hero. There can be no such thing as a successful traitor, for if one succeeds he becomes a founding father.” If you win, no one really cares how you did it.'

In Obama the true face of liberalism begins to stand out, and it just may be that some Democrats who recognize what they see in it, will become disenchanted, put off, although I expect my liberal relative will not be among them. 

Proceed leftward along the political spectrum and the further you go the more you find acceptance, and even approval, that liberalism is a con job.  Those in the know, those in the in crowd, accept that the rubes have to be fooled into what's good for them.  Liberal "truths" are just so much pap for the rubes.

'It’s not about liberalism. It’s about power. Obama will jettison anything that costs him power, and do anything that enhances it — including invite Rick Warren to give the benediction at his inauguration, dine with conservative columnists, and dismiss an appointee at the White House Military Office to ensure the perception of accountability.

Alinsky’s influence goes well beyond Obama, obviously. There are many wonderful Democrats in this world, but evidence suggests that rising in that party’s political hierarchy requires some adoption of a variation of the Alinsky philosophy: Power comes first. Few Democrats are expressing outrage over Nancy Pelosi’s ever-shifting explanation of what she knew about waterboarding. Those who screamed bloody murder about Jack Abramoff’s crimes avert their eyes from John Murtha. The anti-war movement that opposed the surge in Iraq remains silent about sending additional troops to Afghanistan. Obama will never get as much grief for his gay-marriage views as Miss California.'

It's all about the power.  No doubt there are lefties galore who believe fervently in Obama's power to do good, and their own as well.  But what happens when Obama uses his power for something that is clearly not good. 

The video below describes the kind of power we can expect President Obama to exercise.  Gerald Walpin is the AmeriCorps Inspector General who was fired for investigating Kevin Johnson, a friend and supporter of Obama.  Watch the whole thing.

So how long will the moderate Democrats make allowances for this kind of abuse of power?  It's corruption pure and simple.  Can they believe there is some greater good to be achieved by it?  The liberal true believers can, and they can also be reliably blind to to the abuse, believing it unimaginable that they would ever be in disagreement with the One.  But what about the moderates?  How many are willing to jettison principles in order to avoid being the next Gerald Walpin?  And when our Democratic congress has acquiesced, ceded power to this Democratic White House precedent will have been set, putting even the true believers at risk.  It means they must never relinquish power. 

What The Tea Parties Are All About

According to Charles R. Kesler Obama's prime goal is to build an enduring Democratic majority that will impose a more socialized democracy upon America.  In the course of achieving it, Obama has made unprecedented intrusions into the free market.  Coupled with his wild "stimulus" spending, this will very likely hamstring the American economy for years to come.  A struggling economy, however, is the least of our worries.

'What Obama hopes for is a similar breakthrough for the forces of liberalism in this generation.

An enduring Democratic majority is not out of the question. The wild scramble to stop the economic and financial downturn may well leave America with a politically controlled economy that would corrupt the relationship between citizens and the federal government – sapping entrepreneurship and encouraging new forms of dependence on the state, as in much of Europe. That would be consistent with the more socialized democracy that liberalism has been striving for ever since the Progressive Era.

Obama likes to emphasize that America is more like the world than we realize, and must become still more like it if the US is to remain the world's leader. Despite his summoning oratory, his sense of American exceptionalism thus is far less lofty, far more constrained, than Reagan's or FDR's. The greatest stumbling block to Obama's ambition is likely to be the inability of this exceptional president to persuade Americans to follow him into so unexceptional a future.'

I would take issue with Mr. Kesler's characterization of our crisis as a "wild scramble to stop the economic and financial downturn."   There is certainly a wild scramble but the objective is not to stop the downturn.  The downturn itself serves Obama's purpose.  It provides cover for much more government intrusion for the ostensible purpose of creating social justice.  The real danger we face will come if he continues to be successful legitimizing the destruction of personal and economic freedoms which are the source of American power.

As with the GM bailout, which is less a bailout of GM than of the United Auto Workers, the Obama administration will continue to make the best of this crisis.  A continuing downturn provides opportunity to spend massively on the Democrats' favored constituencies.  According to Kevin Hassett, it's not just failing firms like GM and Chrysler that Obama plans to rescue.  He plans to rescue the successful ones as well.

'I’ve finally figured out the Obama economic strategy. President Barack Obama and his team have been having so much fun wielding dictatorial power while rescuing “failed” firms, that they have developed a scheme to gain the same power over every business. The plan is to enact policies that are so anticompetitive that every firm needs a bailout.

Once that happens, their new pay czar Kenneth Feinberg can set the wage for everybody and Rahm Emanuel can stack the boards of all of our companies with his political cronies.'

Economics 101 students already understand that the policies Obama advocates won't revive the economy.  Why would he do that?  What will assuredly be a bust for the economy will be a boon for the Democrats who yearn for more complete control.  The tea parties are grass roots protests that hope to prevent that from happening, hope to preserve our liberty.

Charles R. Kesler is a senior fellow at The Claremont Institute, editor of the Claremont Review of Books, and a professor of government at Claremont McKenna College.

Kevin Hassett is director of economic-policy studies at the American Enterprise Institute, a Bloomberg News columnist, and an adviser to Republican Senator John McCain of Arizona in the 2008 presidential election.

Good question

John Hinderaker wonders, "...how does a profane, corrupt moron become governor of one of our largest states?" He's talking about Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich, who has just been indicted for putting President-elect Barack Obama's Senate seat up for sale.

Public interest will center, naturally, on the fact that it was Barack Obama's Senate seat that Blagojevich allegedly tried to sell. I don't think for a moment that Obama had anything to do with it, of course, for many reasons. Still, Obama's proximity to the scandal highlights a basic fact about his career: Obama's political career began, and was lived until very recently, in the very dirty pond of Chicago politics. It is quite remarkable that Obama has been able to emerge not only intact but ostensibly pristine from that political swamp. In part, this is because his history and associations have been too little scrutinized.

Today, Obama answered just one question, in his trademark stammer. He managed to get out these words: "I had no contact with the governor or his office and so we were not, I was not aware of what was happening."

But, as Jake Tapper points out, Obama's claim to have kept aloof from the Senate selection process was contradicted two weeks ago by his spokesman David Axelrod, who said:

I know he's talked to the governor and there are a whole range of names many of which have surfaced, and I think he has a fondness for a lot of them.

So already Obama has been caught in a contradiction.

Remember when everybody was talking about that Republican culture of corruption?  Democrats have their own, but the media are less willing to talk about it.  That fact may offer a clue into the mystery of how morons get elected.  What happens when the media watchdogs turn out to be media advocates?

One Democrat's open letter to the press

Orson Scott Card, a Democrat and newspaper columnist, accuses the press of dishonesty and dishonor in an open letter to the local daily papers in America.

So I ask you now: Do you have any standards at all?  Do you even know what honesty means?

Is getting people to vote for Barack Obama so important that you will throw away everything that journalism is supposed to stand for?

You might want to remember the way the National Organization of Women threw away their integrity by supporting Bill Clinton despite his well-known pattern of sexual exploitation of powerless women.  Who listens to NOW anymore?  We know they stand for nothing; they have no principles.

That's where you are right now.

It's not too late.  You know that if the situation were reversed, and the truth would damage McCain and help Obama, you would be moving heaven and earth to get the true story out there.

If you want to redeem your honor, you will swallow hard and make a list of all the stories you would print if it were McCain who had been getting money from Fannie Mae, McCain whose campaign had consulted with its discredited former CEO, McCain who had voted against tightening its lending practices.

Then you will print them, even though every one of those true stories will point the finger of blame at the reckless Democratic Party, which put our nation's prosperity at risk so they could feel good about helping the poor, and lay a fair share of the blame at Obama's door.

You will also tell the truth about John McCain: that he tried, as a Senator, to do what it took to prevent this crisis.  You will tell the truth about President Bush: that his administration tried more than once to get Congress to regulate lending in a responsible way.

This was a Congress-caused crisis, beginning during the Clinton administration, with Democrats leading the way into the crisis and blocking every effort to get out of it in a timely fashion.

If you at our local daily newspaper continue to let Americans believe — and vote as if — President Bush and the Republicans caused the crisis, then you are joining in that lie.

If you do not tell the truth about the Democrats — including Barack Obama — and do so with the same energy you would use if the miscreants were Republicans — then you are not journalists by any standard.

You're just the public relations machine of the Democratic Party, and it's time you were all fired and real journalists brought in, so that we can actually have a news paper in our city.

Where the press has really outdone itself for craven corruption is in its glossing over of ACORN's ongoing voter registration fraud.  We are witnessing a challenge to the integrity of our electoral process casually dismissed by journalists who evidently fear that honest reporting on it might reflect badly on the candidate of their choice.  Not only are our media luminaries dismissive of ACORN's admitted criminal activity, they become positively vicious when a Republican voices alarm over it.  I couldn't agree more with Mr. Scott.  In this election year the liberal press has gone well beyond bias to outright dishonesty and dishonor.

ACORN

As former community organizer, Barack Obama, inches ever closer to the presidency, we begin to find out what community organizers do.

According to a 2006 report from the Employment Policies Institute (EPI), Acorn has been on the federal take since 1977. For instance, Acorn's American Institute for Social Justice claimed $240,000 in tax money between fiscal years 2002 and 2003. Its American Environmental Justice Project received 100% of its revenue from government grants in the same years. EPI estimates the Acorn Housing Corporation alone received some $16 million in federal dollars from 1997-2007. Only recently, Democrats tried and failed to stuff an "affordable housing" provision into the $700 billion bank rescue package that would have let politicians give even more to Acorn.

All this money gives Acorn the ability to pursue its other great hobby: electing liberals. Acorn is spending $16 million this year to register new Democrats and is already boasting it has put 1.3 million new voters on the rolls. The big question is how many of these registrations are real.

The Michigan Secretary of State told the press in September that Acorn had submitted "a sizeable number of duplicate and fraudulent applications." Earlier this month, Nevada's Democratic Secretary of State Ross Miller requested a raid on Acorn's offices, following complaints of false names and fictional addresses (including the starting lineup of the Dallas Cowboys). Nevada's Clark County Registrar of Voters Larry Lomax said he saw rampant fraud in 2,000 to 3,000 applications Acorn submitted weekly.

Officials in Ohio are investigating voter fraud connected with Acorn, and Florida's Seminole County is withholding Acorn registrations that appear fraudulent. New Mexico, North Carolina and Missouri are looking into hundreds of dubious Acorn registrations. Wisconsin is investigating Acorn employees for, according to an election official, "making people up or registering people that were still in prison."

Then there's Lake County, Indiana, which has already found more than 2,100 bogus applications among the 5,000 Acorn dumped right before the deadline. "All the signatures looked exactly the same," said Ruthann Hoagland, of the county election board. Bridgeport, Connecticut estimates about 20% of Acorn's registrations were faulty. As of July, the city of Houston had rejected or put on hold about 40% of the 27,000 registration cards submitted by Acorn.

At one time Obama sung the praises of Acorn's leaders for their get-out-the-vote efforts.  Now Obama claims he never organized with ACORN, and he has nothing to do with illegal voter registration.  Of course not.  But the Obama campaign did pay an Acorn affiliate $832,000, which it said was for "staging, sound, lighting," admitting later that it was cash to get out the vote.