Fausta's blog

But it is a mistake to conflate his African identity with his Muslim heritage. Senator Obama is half African by birth and Africans can understandably identify with him. In Islam, however, there is no such thing as a half-Muslim. Like all monotheistic religions, Islam is an exclusive faith.

As the son of the Muslim father, Senator Obama was born a Muslim under Muslim law as it is universally understood. It makes no difference that, as Senator Obama has written, his father said he renounced his religion. Likewise, under Muslim law based on the Koran his mother's Christian background is irrelevant.

Of course, as most Americans understand it, Senator Obama is not a Muslim. He chose to become a Christian, and indeed has written convincingly to explain how he arrived at his choice and how important his Christian faith is to him.

His conversion, however, was a crime in Muslim eyes; it is "irtidad" or "ridda," usually translated from the Arabic as "apostasy," but with connotations of rebellion and treason. Indeed, it is the worst of all crimes that a Muslim can commit, worse than murder (which the victim's family may choose to forgive).

Obama's Indonesian family: His stepfather, Lolo Soetoro, was also a Muslim. In fact, as Obama's half-sister, Maya Soetoro-Ng explained to Jodi Kantor of the New York Times: "My whole family was Muslim, and most of the people I knew were Muslim." An Indonesian publication, the Banjarmasin Post reports a former classmate, Rony Amir, recalling that "All the relatives of Barry's father were very devout Muslims."

The Catholic school: Nedra Pickler of the Associated Press reports that "documents showed he enrolled as a Muslim" while at a Catholic school during first through third grades. Kim Barker of the Chicago Tribune confirms that Obama was "listed as a Muslim on the registration form for the Catholic school." A blogger who goes by "An American Expat in Southeast Asia" found that "Barack Hussein Obama was registered under the name 'Barry Soetoro' serial number 203 and entered the Franciscan Asisi Primary School on 1 January 1968 and sat in class 1B. ...Barry's religion was listed as Islam."

The public school: Paul Watson of the Los Angeles Times learned from Indonesians familiar with Obama when he lived in Jakarta that he "was registered by his family as a Muslim at both schools he attended." Haroon Siddiqui of the Toronto Star visited the Jakarta public school Obama attended and found that "Three of his teachers have said he was enrolled as a Muslim." Although Siddiqui cautions that "With the school records missing, eaten by bugs, one has to rely on people's shifting memories," he cites only one retired teacher, Tine Hahiyari, retracting her earlier certainty about Obama's being registered as a Muslim.

Koran class: In his autobiography, Dreams of My Father, Obama relates how he got into trouble for making faces during Koranic studies, thereby revealing he was a Muslim, for Indonesian students in his day attended religious classes according to their faith. Indeed, Obama still retains knowledge from that class: Nicholas D. Kristof of the New York Times, reports that Obama "recalled the opening lines of the Arabic call to prayer, reciting them [to Kristof] with a first-rate accent."

Mosque attendance: Obama's half-sister recalled that the family attended the mosque "for big communal events." Watson learned from childhood friends that "Obama sometimes went to Friday prayers at the local mosque." Barker found that "Obama occasionally followed his stepfather to the mosque for Friday prayers." One Indonesia friend, Zulfin Adi, states that Obama "was Muslim. He went to the mosque. I remember him wearing a sarong" (a garment associated with Muslims).

Because no government is likely to allow the prosecution of a President Obama — not even those of Iran and Saudi Arabia, the only two countries where Islamic religious courts dominate over secular law — another provision of Muslim law is perhaps more relevant: it prohibits punishment for any Muslim who kills any apostate, and effectively prohibits interference with such a killing.

At the very least, that would complicate the security planning of state visits by President Obama to Muslim countries, because the very act of protecting him would be sinful for Islamic security guards. More broadly, most citizens of the Islamic world would be horrified by the fact of Senator Obama's conversion to Christianity once it became widely known - as it would, no doubt, should he win the White House. This would compromise the ability of governments in Muslim nations to cooperate with the United States in the fight against terrorism, as well as American efforts to export democracy and human rights abroad.

There are security issues as well as the idea for many that America is run by a Muslim apostate. It doesn't matter if they are wrong, perception is reality.

Labels: Barack Obama, Democrats, Election2008, Islam, politics

Labels: Barack Obama, Democrats, Election2008, John McCain, Patrick Stewart, politics, Republicans

Labels: Blog Talk Radio, Democrats, Election2008, Hillary Clinton

The "black" Barack would get what the white Barry couldn't: a sense of uniqueness, the benefits of affirmative action, the embrace of the "multiculturalists" in academia, and later the path to personal power and riches he sought in the overwhelmingly black wards of Chicago.

But simply calling himself "Barack" would not be enough to win him admittance to and support from the leftists in the universities where he first taught and then amongst the power brokers in the political movements whom he’d need to underwrite his thirst for power. To win their trust, allegiance, and support, Barack needed to do more than call himself "black" - after all, people like Condoleezza Rice and Bill Cosby call themselves black - he'd have to prove he was "authentically" black (i.e., held radical leftist positions).

Barry, always quick on the uptake, realized there could be no better way to prove his "true" identity as a black man than by joining the Afrocentric, anti-white, anti-Jewish church of Jeremiah Wright. In fact, he would, as always, go one step further; he’d become Wright's protege. Similarly, Barry knew there was no better way to prove his leftist credentials to the folks in academia than to sidle up to terrorists - both foreign and domestic.

Soon he would become friends and colleagues with William Ayers - whose group had murdered Americans in the 1960s and, as recently as just a few years ago, in the wake on 9/11, proclaimed that the only regret he had is that it didn't succeed in murdering more of his fellow citizens. And, just in case his resume wasn't strong enough, he'd cozy up to Edward Said, the Islamist/Arab apologist who sought to wipe the Jews off the face of the earth.

It's not that Barry necessarily believed in any of these causes — it's hard to know if Barry believes in anything other than Barry — it's that these are the kinds of things you did if you wanted money, power, and fame. And Barry wanted money, power, and fame.

Whatever doubts Barry — now insisting on only being called by his father's African name, "Barack" - may have had about kicking in with hate-mongers, racists, and terrorists were quickly assuaged as the benefits began to roll in. In what seemed like no time Barry was teaching law, and then they made him a state senator and then a U.S. senator! His wife was given a cushy job at the university and the couple's income rose to nearly half-a-million a year while they slept comfortably each night in a mansion purchased only with the "help" of Chicago mobster Tony Rezko.

And Barry’s friends, colleagues, and co-conspirators invested wisely. The young, handsome, articulate “black” man was good to his mentor at the church of hate, making sure to “kick back” a taste — nearly twenty-thousand dollars (virtually every penny the “caring” Obamas gave to charity) in 2007 alone. The university’s kindness to Ms. Obama was repaid by her husband’s advancing their radical agenda first in the state legislature and then in the United States Congress, where Barry would soon become the single most leftist of all U.S. senators. The terrorists, who would hold fundraisers for Barack, would be repaid by Barry in droves, with him not only supporting their agenda as a legislator, but using his first major national exposure — the nationally televised keynote address at the Democratic National Convention — to spread the canard of an evil and bigoted America picking on the innocent Muslims, a standard tactic of the terrorists to dissuade legitimate investigation into their plots.

Yes, Barry’s arrangements were working out well for all.

Labels: Barack Obama, Democrats, Election2008

One of the most inviting is the near certainty that the Obama campaign would agree to pay back the $11.4 million she has loaned her own bid, along with an estimated $10 million to $15 million in unpaid campaign expenses.

If Al Gore is the model, Hillary can stay in past the convention, demand a recount, and wait until the Supreme Court tells her it’s over. Which, come to think of it, might be exactly her plan.

Labels: Democrats, Election2008, Hillary Clinton

With a decisive loss in North Carolina and just a narrow win in Indiana, I don't see how Clinton can even make a straight-faced argument to the superdelegates that she should be the real winner in this nomination fight.

Is this the end of the line for Hillary Clinton? The consensus among the talking heads on cable appears to be coalescing around the idea that she should wind her campaign down and get out of Obama’s way. No doubt it will be an extremely difficult and emotional decision. She has fought as hard as any candidate I have ever seen for the nomination. But the votes aren’t there, the money’s not available, and time has run out.

Hillary's decision will probably hinge on whether she can afford to give up now, having gone so far. In the early days of aviation, pilots who attempted to cross oceanic distances would calculate a "point of no return" beyond which it made no sense to turn back. Hillary crossed that line long ago. Against the uncertainties of going on against Obama is the equally bleak prospect of returning to a diminished political future -- sans reputation, sans friends, and sans the protection of the Oval Office.

"The man I met in Pennsylvania who lost his job but can't even afford the gas to drive around and look for a new one. He can't afford four more years of an energy policy written by the oil companies and for the oil companies; a policy that is not only keeping gas at record prices but funding both sides of the war on terror and destroying our planet... He needs us to take a permanent holiday from our addiction for oil by making automakers raise their fuel standards, corporations pay for their pollution and oil companies invest their record profits in a clean energy future. That's the change we need."

Labels: Barack Obama, Democrats, Election2008, Hillary Clinton

The Clintons' tax returns show that Bill Clinton earned nearly $51 million from 2004 through 2006. His wife informed the Senate of about $27 million of it, consisting almost entirely of fees from his globe-trotting speaking tours, from which he has fetched as much as $400,000 for a single appearance.

Reporting rules for senators and presidential candidates allowed Hillary Clinton to describe the amounts of her husband's other income sources as ``over $1,000." These included his more than $10 million in advances and royalties from two book deals, as much as $11.5 million from offshore partnerships that invested in a Chinese media company and more than $2 million from a Nebraska firm whose chairman reportedly spent $900,000 flying the Clintons aboard corporate jets for personal, business and campaign trips.

The sketchy disclosures on Clinton's statements might help explain why many Americans were surprised to learn, upon release of the couple's tax returns and a summary of their 2007 income, that they earned $109 million over the last eight years after leaving the White House buried in debt in 2001.

Labels: Democrats, Election2008, Hillary Clinton

With good friends like Jeremiah Wright, Bernardine Dohrn and Bill Ayers, dinner at the Obama household must be a rockin' event on any given night...

Labels: Barack Obama, Democrats, Election2008

On the 9/11 destruction of the World Trade Centre, in February 2002: "I had not the slightest emotional reaction. I thought: 'This is a really strange art project.' It was a most amazing sight in terms of sheer elegance. It fell like water. It just slid, like a turtleneck going over someone's head...I just felt, like, everyone was overreacting. People were going on about it. That part really annoyed me."

As for Mr. Obama's friends, the Weathercouple: By all accounts, Bernardine Dohrn and Bill Ayers are unfathomably charming, brilliant and comely people, absolutely irresistible. Everybody who meets them is taken and forgets what they should know.

Mr. Obama expects us all to understand this, because we understand everything else. He is doing something most unusual: He's acting as if the American people are thinking with their brains. He's giving all of us a lot of credit. Could it be that we deserve it?

Larry Johnson notes that Obama has been less than honest about his relationship with unrepentant domestic terrorist William Ayers. We already knew that Ayers held the first fundraiser at his home to help launch Obama's state senate campaign in 1995, and that they served together on the board of the Woods Fund for years, giving grants to people like former PLO flack Rashid Khalidi. What we did not know is that Obama was the director of the Chicago Annenberg Challenge – a school reform organization co-founded by Ayers. He also links to a piece by Steve Diamond, law professor on the faculty of Santa Clara University School of Law, providing further background as to why this suggests Obama and Ayers may go back as far as the late 1980s. Granted, Johnson is famous for downplaying the threat of Islamic terrorism in the summer of 2001, but he has backup material this time.

So we should all just forget about Obama's very bad judgement in befriending the likes of Rezko and Auchi, Odinga, Ayers, The New Black Panther Party, La Raza, Farrakhan, Mr. Wright, and the homophobe Rev. James T. Meeks.

Labels: Barack Obama, Democrats, Election2008

Chelsea Clinton just bagged a superdelegate for her mother. The youngest Clinton is campaigning today in San Juan, Puerto Rico. A few moments ago, at the Universidad del Sagrado Corazon, Luisette Cabanas, an unpledged superdelegate, announced her support for Clinton, giving the campaign the majority of automatic** delegates on the island.

Chelsea and her entourage are being hosted by superdelegates Fransisco Domenech and Senate President Kenneth Mclintock.

a. Puerto Rico has only 8 superdelegates and 55 delegates.
b. Puerto Ricans living in the island do not vote in the US Presidential elections. Puerto Ricans living in the fifty states do.

So here we have the Democrat party candidate for President possibly being decided by people who aren't voting for him/her.

Labels: Democrats, Election2008, Puerto Rico

If there was any lingering doubt over which branch of the Democratic Party will drive message in the General Election campaign - it has been removed.

Labels: Democrats, Election2008, politics

"We're going to need to see who is going to be the strongest candidate against Senator McCain. And I believe that is Senator Obama with his emphasis on change and bringing people together, a fresh voice internationally, somebody that is able, in my judgment..to bring... at least I just got back from Latin America, from Venezuela, where he has enormous support, where people really want to see a change in American foreign policy and they see Obama as that agent of change."

In other words, Richardson just delivered the Hugo Chavez endorsement.

Obama needs not just to distance himself from Wright's views; he needs to disown him at this point. Wright himself, it seems to me, has become part of what Obama is fighting against: the boomer, Vietnam era's obsession with its red-blue, white-black, pro and anti-America fixations. That is not what this election needs to be about; and Wright's massive, racially divisive and, yes, bitter provocation requires a proportionate response.

Labels: Barack Obama, Democrats, Election2008, politics

Rather than do something silly like, say, cut waste in Trenton or perhaps not add thousands of people to the state payroll our glorious bloated bureaucracy has instead chosen to charge people for what they already pay for.

TRENTON — New Jersey State Police have patrolled the state's rural areas for 87 years at no extra cost to smaller towns that never created police departments.

In fact, the law that created the state police agency stated it would "primarily'' be used to protect rural areas.

But times have changed, and free rural New Jersey state police patrols may soon end.

As the state grapples with chronic state budget woes, Gov. Corzine has proposed requiring municipalities that get free state police patrols to pay a quarter of the estimated patrol cost to raise $20.5 million for the cash-strapped state.

"These are difficult times, and the decisions and choices we must make are difficult,'' state Attorney General Anne Milgram said.

Labels: Democrats, Jon Corzine, New Jersey, NJ, politics

Yes, as many have pointed out, Martin Luther King Jr. gave some angry, angry sermons--especially about the obscenity of the war in Vietnam--but for Wright to say the attacks on him are an attack on the black church is to offer a straitened and solipsistic view of that grand institution. Black liberation theology is not the black church.

No matter how much he "denounces" etc. it will never be enough for his detractors on the right and it won't matter for his supporters, so why bother?

Labels: Barack Obama, Democrats, Election2008

Gov. Bill Richardson, D-N.M., told The Associated Press in a telephone interview that he plans to put forward a proposal for the release of the three U.S. defense contractors in the coming weeks and that Chavez is willing to work with him as a "primary mediator."

The Democratic governor met with Chavez on Saturday night to discuss the issue. The president did not release any statements following the meeting.

Bill Richardson had an hour and a half meeting with Venezuelan dictator Hugo Chavez - whose goons were beating up Venezuelan student dissidents in the streets this morning. Richardson had nothing but praise for the dictator, and said he was key to freeing three Americans held hostage in Colombia. Now, Hugo is famous for paying their kidnappers $300 million or at least pledging it, according to information found in the FARC computer. He's no impartial player, he's the FARC's best friend on earth. That makes him a state sponsor of terror. Why Richardson is consorting with such a person is beyond us - we called President Uribe's office a few weeks ago and were told they did not want Hugo Chavez involved in any way shape or form with the hostage release. But still Richardson goes to meet the dictator. Question: What did he promise the dictator? Did he promise to cut off Colombia's military aid if Obama is elected, as one of the 'gringos' named in the FARC computer passed on secretly to FARC terrorist Raul Reyes? These thugs don't give things away for free. What did Richardson promise Chavez? And why is Richardson defying President Uribe and involving Chavez at all?

Labels: Bill Richardson, Democrats, FARC, Hugo Chavez, Venezuela

How does one explain campaigning throughout 2007 on a platform of transcending racial divisions, while in that same year contributing $26,000 to a church whose pastor incites race hatred?

What is Obama to do? Dismiss all such questions about his associations and attitudes as "distractions." And then count on his acolytes in the media to wage jihad against those who have the temerity to raise these questions. As if the character and beliefs of a man who would be president are less important than the "issues." As if some political indecency was committed when Obama was prevented from going through his latest -- 21st and likely last -- primary debate without being asked about Wright or Ayers or the tribal habits of gun-toting, God-loving Pennsylvanians.

Labels: Barack Obama, Democrats, elections, politics

It turns out that we don't have to go back as far as 2001 to find that Obama's friends are as unrepentant as ever. Just last year, Ayers and Dohrn attended a reunion--no kidding--of what must have been the tiny remnant of SDS members who still haven't figured out that they were wrong about everything. Listen to what Bill Ayers, who hosted Barack Obama's first fundraiser, has to say about the United States.

Barack Obama complains that he's been unfairly attacked for a casual political and social relationship with his neighbor, former Weatherman Bill Ayers. Obama has a point. In the ultraliberal Hyde Park community where the presidential candidate first earned his political spurs, Ayers is widely regarded as a member in good standing of the city’s civic establishment, not an unrepentant domestic terrorist. But Obama and his critics are arguing about the wrong moral question. The more pressing issue is not the damage done by the Weather Underground 40 years ago, but the far greater harm inflicted on the nation's schoolchildren by the political and educational movement in which Ayers plays a leading role today.
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Chicago's liberals have chosen to define deviancy down in Ayers's case, and Obama can't be blamed for that.

What he can be blamed for is not acknowledging that his neighbor has a political agenda that, if successful, would make it impossible to lift academic achievement for disadvantaged children. As I have shown elsewhere in City Journal, Ayers's politics have hardly changed since his Weatherman days. He still boasts about working full-time to bring down American capitalism and imperialism. This time, however, he does it from his tenured perch as Distinguished Professor of Education at the University of Illinois, Chicago. Instead of planting bombs in public buildings, Ayers now works to indoctrinate America's future teachers in the revolutionary cause, urging them to pass on the lessons to their public school students.

Indeed, the education department at the University of Illinois is a hotbed for the radical education professoriate. As Ayers puts it in one of his course descriptions, prospective K–12 teachers need to "be aware of the social and moral universe we inhabit and . . . be a teacher capable of hope and struggle, outrage and action, a teacher teaching for social justice and liberation." Ayers's texts on the imperative of social-justice teaching are among the most popular works in the syllabi of the nation’s ed schools and teacher-training institutes. One of Ayers's major themes is that the American public school system is nothing but a reflection of capitalist hegemony. Thus, the mission of all progressive teachers is to take back the classrooms and turn them into laboratories of revolutionary change.
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Ayers's influence on what is taught in the nation's public schools is likely to grow in the future. Last month, he was elected vice president for curriculum of the 25,000-member American Educational Research Association (AERA), the nation's largest organization of education-school professors and researchers. Ayers won the election handily, and there is no doubt that his fellow education professors knew whom they were voting for. In the short biographical statement distributed to prospective voters beforehand, Ayers listed among his scholarly books Fugitive Days, an unapologetic memoir about his ten years in the Weather Underground. The book includes dramatic accounts of how he bombed the Pentagon and other public buildings.

AERA already does a great deal to advance the social-justice teaching agenda in the nation’s schools and has established a Social Justice Division with its own executive director. With Bill Ayers now part of the organization's national leadership, you can be sure that it will encourage even more funding and support for research on how teachers can promote left-wing ideology in the nation's classrooms—and correspondingly less support for research on such mundane subjects as the best methods for teaching underprivileged children to read.

Think of the problems that we have today in teaching literacy and basic math skills. Would any of those problems be ameliorated by teaching "social justice and liberation?"

The issue, though, isn't what Ayers thought then; it's what he thinks now.

Read Ayers' memoir, Fugitive Days, which was published — in actual horrific irony — on Sept. 10, 2001. Though I have to admit it's pretty well written, it's filled with more paternalism ("A squad of cops in Cleveland had dragged Black men from a motel and shot them down in cold blood, and now we would, I thought, even the score.") and romanticism of what were ultimately terrorist acts. Ayers was also quoted in 2001 saying that he has no regrets for his past actions, but rather he feels that "we didn't do enough." Take a gander at his Web site and see if you find contrition or self-aggrandizement.

What someone did 40 years ago — within reason — should not damn that person forever. But that's assuming offending individuals pay their debt to society and repent. Ayers has done neither.

I genuinely hope Obama's got as much distance as humanly possible between himself and Ayers, and that Ayers is just, as Obama said in the debate, "a guy who lives in my neighborhood."

Labels: Barack Obama, Democrats, education, Election2008, politics, terrorism

* Will Obama disclose his full relationship with Ayers and Dohrn?
* Will Obama disavow his relationship with Ayers and Dohrn as well as return any money that they have donated to him in the past?
* Were Obama's representatives speaking directly or indirectly with the communist terrorists known as FARC?
* Will Obama completely denounce Marxist-Leninist ideology, which was espoused by his father as well as friends like Ayers and Dohrn and groups such as FARC?

In a Feb. 28 letter, FARC chieftain Raul Reyes cheerily reported to his inner circle that he met "two gringos" who assured him "the new president of their country will be Obama and that they are interested in your compatriots. Obama will not support 'Plan Colombia' nor will he sign the TLC (Free Trade Agreement)."

Aside from some interesting possibilities about who these "gringos" are — a congressional delegation did visit Ecuador and an international leftist "congress" was held in Quito around this time — the real question is why anyone secretly consorting with FARC would be able to speak for presidential candidate Obama.

Obama hasn't said a whole lot about Colombia other than to criticize President Bush's good relations with President Uribe. With this correspondence suggesting that FARC knows what he thinks, maybe the American voters have a right to know what he thinks, too. Five questions come to mind:

1. Is it true Obama would cut off Plan Colombia military aid to our ally, which would serve the terrorist group FARC's interests?

2. Does Obama still oppose a free trade agreement for Colombia, even though that puts him on the same side as FARC in the debate?

3. Does Obama know or care that one of his staffers or supporters is claiming to disclose his positions in secret meetings with FARC terrorists outside government channels?

4. Can he tell us why his supporters would pass on such information to terrorists, and what he or she could gain from it?

5. Will Obama, as president, treat FARC as the serious terrorists they are, given that they still hold three Americans hostage?

These aren't idle "gotcha" questions, by the way. Based on his campaign so far, Obama favors meeting and negotiating with rogue leaders without preconditions, passing secret messages to foreign countries at odds with his public positions and tolerating Che-flag wielding leftists among his supporters who advance a radical agenda in his name.

Labels: Barack Obama, Barak Obama, Colombia, Democrats, Election2008

Labels: Democrats, Election2008, Hillary Clinton, humor

Labels: corruption, Democrats, NJ, politics

Labels: Barack Obama, Democrats, Election2008, Pope Benedict

Two things: First, if Obama wants to put American workers first, why is he opposing a trade deal whose sole purpose is to open up Colombia's markets to American-made products? Over 90 percent of Colombian goods can already enter the U.S. duty-free. Second, violence against unionists in Colombia has fallen dramatically, from 275 killed in 1996 to 39 last year.
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Obama opposes the Colombia FTA because trade is a four-letter word among those "bitter" working-class Democrats to whom he sorely needs to build inroads. It's that simple.

Finally, here is how Latin Americans view the situation: Hugo Chavez beat the United States, and Colombia is now all alone. She got in bed with Tio Sam and has nothing but shame to show for it. We just gave every country down there an object lesson in why it is foolish to trust in our friendship. This is how we gain friends in Latin America?

Labels: Barack Obama, Colombia, Democrats, Election2008

Labels: Democrats, Election2008, Hillary Clinton

Former president Carter and former vice-president Gore have already held high-level discussions about delivering the message that she must stand down for the good of the Democrats.

Both Carter and Gore occupy the rarefied position of elder statesmen – in addition to their White House past, both are winners of the Nobel Peace Prize, giving them additional gravitas to carry the party with them.

But the party's top brass have concluded her further participation in the race can only harm the party as Republican nominee John McCain strives to take advantage of her increasingly bitter battle with Obama.

The campaign to force Clinton to make an early exit is being masterminded in Congress, home to the most influential of the superdelegates. Senate Leader Harry Reid and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi have called on superdelegates to hold an unofficial congress in early June to anoint a winner, rather than waiting for the convention in Denver.

Pelosi has drawn withering fire from the Clinton camp for saying that these superdelegates must follow the national vote, with Clinton insisting that they should "vote with their conscience".

Labels: Barack Obama, Barak Obama, Democrats, Election2008, politics

Pelosi's War
Congress: The cowardly start more wars than the courageous. Nancy Pelosi's craven altering of House rules to kill off Colombia's trade pact brings that danger to the Andes. If war breaks out, her name will be on it.

April 10 may end up as a date which will live in infamy. The Speaker of the House not only refused to step forward and be counted on approving the vital Colombia free-trade agreement, she ran away from letting anyone else vote on it.

After President Bush submitted the pact to a vote under fast-track rules, she changed them to ensure it wouldn't go anywhere anytime soon. By a 224-195 House vote, the voting timeline rule on trade pacts was changed from 90 days to whenever. Pelosi now can hold up Colombia's treaty however long her caprice dictates.

"The message Democrats sent today," a bitter Bush warned after Thursday's vote, "is that no matter how steadfastly you stand with us, we will turn our backs on you when it is politically convenient."

Pelosi's move leaves Colombia, an ally, in limbo and uncertainty. She may think her clever maneuver was done in a vacuum, but it wasn't. In Venezuela's capital of Caracas, where Hugo Chavez holds forth, and in the jungles of Colombia, where drug terrorists hide out, Pelosi's move was watched closely.

Indeed, within hours of the vote, Latin American media already were calling Pelosi's maneuver the "Chavez Rule."

The Venezuelan dictator is no doubt fascinated at how Pelosi could do this to America's best ally in Latin America, punishing a vibrant democracy by isolating it from all the other nations that have sought and won free trade.

Unlike, say, military aid, this deal costs the U.S. nothing, is too small to have much impact on the U.S. economy and is mainly about ending tariffs on U.S. goods sold in Colombia, matching the no-tariff trade that Colombian firms already get here.

Free trade was what Chavez's enemy, Colombian President Alvaro Uribe, considered his best weapon. And Pelosi knocke