It is regrettable that FOX News is not reporting more often on substantive concerns about Obama such as his voting record and political history which provide a wealth of serious questions about his ability to lead. Given the refusal by many members of the liberal media to report on criticisms of Barack Obama, we rely disproportionately upon FOX News and other conservative outlets to provide valid criticisms of Barack Obama. And when FOX reports on frivolous and questionable issues, it becomes like the boy who cried wolf - people write off issues like these when they are presented.
The following are 3 question marks surrounding Barack Obama you're probably unaware of.
?1. Voting record on live birth abortion.
Too often this is written off as merely an attack on Obama because he supports abortion rights when an entirely separate topic. You see, it deals with the Illinois version of the federal Born Alive Infants Protection Act that made it illegal to leave children who survive late-term abortions to die unattended, a relatively common practice before the law. Star witnesses in the federal case were Jill Stanek and Allison Baker of Christ Hospital, IL who testified that it was occurring regularly at their workplace.
Obama, in the official senate record, is recording as asking about the bill,
"Senator O'Malley, the testimony during the committee indicated thatAfter being answered in the affirmative, he argued the following, that because they were born prematurely as the result of drug-induced abortions and not to a full 9-month term, they were previable fetuses who should not be protected even though outside the womb:
one of the key concerns was - is that there was a method of abortion, an
induced abortion, where the -- the fetus or child, as - as some might
describe it, is still temporarily alive outside the womb. And one of
the concerns that came out in the testimony was the fact that they were
not being properly cared for during that brief period of time that they
were still living. Is that correct?"
"Number one, whenever we define a previable fetus as a person that is protected by the equal protection clause or the other elements in the Constitution, what we're really saying is, in fact, that they are persons that are entitled to the kinds of protections that would be provided to a - a child, a nine-month-old -- child that was delivered to term. That determination then, essentially, if it was accepted by a court, would forbid abortions to take place. I mean, it - it would essentially bar abortions, because the equal protection clause does not allow somebody to kill a child, then this would be an antiabortion statute. For that purpose, I think it would probably be found unconstitutional. The second reason that it would probably be found unconstitutional is that this essentially says that a doctor is required to provide treatment to a previable child, or fetus, however way you want to describe it. Viability is the line that has been drawn by the Supreme Court to determine whether or not an abortion can or cannot take place. And if we're placing a burden on the doctor that says you have to keep alive even a previable child as long as possible and give them as much medical attention as - as is necessary to try to keep that child alive, then we're probably crossing the line in terms of unconstitutionality."The text of his remarks can be seen here in the official senate transcript (pages 84-90) at the Illinois government website. He also addressed the subject in this transcript also (pages 29-35), in which he argues for giving abortion doctors the benefit of the doubt about whether children who survive abortions are being left to die, rather than requiring a second physician to certify the child does not need care.
Sean Hannity actually addressed the issue in a broadcast of Hannity and Colmes in August 2008. Sarah Palin at the time also repeatedly hammered Obama over this, but the press by and large refused to cover it. The issue achieved publicity because a joint CBN/CNN airing focused on a long-time distortion of Obama's, that he would've voted for the popular federal Born Alive Infants Protection Act - revealing that the Illinois bill was made word for word identical to the federal bill and Obama voted it down in the Health and Human Services Committee he chaired.
As published by the New York Sun, it came out that the Obama campaign admitted he'd distorted his record, though he now claimed the Illinois law was already sufficient to protect children at the time (ironically not a point made when he was on the senate floor as seen from the previous transcripts). It was then addressed by the New York Times, FactCheck.org (whose article Obama and 'Infanticide' was featured in Newsweek), and the aforementioned FOX News as well as other prominent publications.
Also interesting is that his voting record had earlier been brought up on this issue by Hillary Clinton during the primaries. Hillary cleverly brought it out by accusing him of voting present on these controversial bills rather than no, suggesting the opposite, that he did not support women's rights enough. Because of this, CEO of the Illinois Planned Parenthood, Pam Sutherland, came to Obama's defense stating it was a tactic used by Obama, who spearheaded the Illinois Planned Parenthood movement to 'provide cover' to Congressmen to vote against the Born Alive bills without people knowing they did so, since most aren't aware present votes are the same as no votes in Illinois.
In Sutherland's own words as quoted by ABC News' Teddy Davis in Obama Abortion Dodges Blessed by Planned Parenthood:
"We at Planned Parenthood view those as leadership votes. We worked with him specifically on his strategy. The Republicans were in control of the Illinois Senate at the time. They loved to hold votes on 'partial birth' and 'born alive'. They put these bills out all the time . . . because they wanted to pigeonhole Democrats... He came to me and said: 'My members are being attacked. We need to figure out a way to protect members and to protect women, a 'present' vote was hard to pigeonhole which is exactly what Obama wanted. What it did was give cover to moderate Democrats who wanted to vote with us but were afraid to do so... A 'present' vote would protect them. Your senator voted 'present.' Most of the electorate is not going to know what that means."Sutherland also repeatedly defended Obama with varying similar statements as seen in articles by PolitiFact, the Chicago Tribune, the Huffington Post, and the Washington Post (this is a great article by the Washington Post's Fact Checker with info on all Obama's abortion related votes - including several other 'Born Alive' ones).
Obama on his FighttheSmears website also has erroneously claimed that the now-retired Senator Richard Winkel, who sponsored the Born Alive bills Obama opposed, had said Obama did not support infanticide. As Time Magazine blog RealClearPolitics showed, however, Winkel's exact words in the letter were as follows:
"On March 12, 2003, I presented the neutrality amendment before the state Health and Human Services Committee chaired by then state Sen. Obama. All 10 committee members voted to add the amendment. Nevertheless, during the same hearing, the committee rejected the bill as amended on a vote of 4-6-0. Obama voted no.
I was stunned because the neutrality amendment addressed the concerns of opponents. It was the same neutrality language approved by U.S. Sens. Barbara Boxer, Ted Kennedy, Hillary Clinton and John Kerry in the federal bill.
None of those who voted against SB-1082 favored infanticide. Rather their zeal for pro-choice dogma was clearly the overriding force behind their negative votes rather than concern that my bill would protect babies who are born alive."In summary, Obama clearly, as seen from his own words, led a statewide Planned Parenthood movement not only to defeat bills which sought to protect newborn children that survived abortions, but has since sought to have the federal and state bills overturned (look into what the Freedom of Choice Act he supports does, or his statements about the Partial Birth Abortion Ban Act), and even spearheaded the Planned Parenthood movement to conceal the voting records of congressmen concerning these bills.
?2. Political History: Deal with Emil Jones, IL Senate Leader.
As pointed out by Todd Spivak in 'Barack Obama and Me', the legislative career of Barack Obama in the Illinois Senate occurred through a deal struck with Emil Jones, head of the Illinois Senate:
"It's a lengthy record filled with core liberal issues. But what's interesting, and almost never discussed, is that he built his entire legislative record in Illinois in a single year. [...]
Jones appointed Obama sponsor of virtually every high-profile piece of legislation, angering many rank-and-file state legislators who had more seniority than Obama and had spent years championing the bills. [...]
During his seventh and final year in the state Senate, Obama's stats soared. He sponsored a whopping 26 bills passed into law — including many he now cites in his presidential campaign when attacked as inexperienced.
It was a stunning achievement that started him on the path of national politics — and he couldn't have done it without Jones.
Before Obama ran for U.S. Senate in 2004, he was virtually unknown even in his own state. Polls showed fewer than 20 percent of Illinois voters had ever heard of Barack Obama. Jones further helped raise Obama's profile by having him craft legislation addressing the day-to-day tragedies that dominated local news *headlines."Another article citing Jones' influence as such is Obama's Political "Godfather" In Illinois by CBS News.
It started with a well-recorded conversation between Jones and Obama which is referenced in articles by NBC Chicago, Time Magazine, the Boston Globe, the Sunday Times, and the Chicago Sun-Times. Obama approached Jones, telling him "You have the power to make a U.S. Senator". When asked who he might make by Jones, Obama replied "Me."
And as Spivak reports, what followed was the appointment of Obama to bills previously worked on by other senators, even leading to terms like 'bill jacking' being bandied about by Congressmen like Rickey Hendon
and Donne Trotter. Jones also had him craft legislation to meet major tragedies in the news.
As Hendon, the original sponsor of the famous bill on racial profiling and videotaped police interrogations, would put it,
"I took all the beatings and insults and endured all the racist comments over the years from nasty Republican committee chairmen, Barack didn't have to endure any of it, yet, in the end, he got all the credit. I don't consider it bill jacking. But no one wants to carry the ball 99 yards all the way to the one-yard line, and then give it to the halfback who gets all the credit and the stats in the record book."As a result, Obama's legislative record was built in a year. He is the product of political deal-making, not sincerity and ability.
?3. Political History: Knocking Off Opponents in First Election; 1996.
Obama's first election, in 1996, was a messy one. Following a late decision by Alice Palmer, who'd previously named the young Obama her successor and supported him, to run for the state senate after her bid for Congress failed, her campaign asked Obama to step down. Not only did Obama not do so, but he used a trick of the Chicago political process; knocking off not only Palmer but the other 3 candidates using a team of lawyers including a former Harvard buddy to challenge their petition signatures, after the filing deadline had passed.
As Chicago Tribune writers would put it in Barack Obama Knows His Way Around a Ballot,
"A close examination of Obama's first campaign clouds the image he has cultivated throughout his political career: The man now running for president on a message of giving a voice to the voiceless first entered public office not by leveling the playing field, but by clearing it."How did they do it? According to the muddled rules of Chicago political filing procedures, if signatures are printed and not signed, they are disqualified. If they are otherwise valid but collected by someone underage, or otherwise an unregistered voter, they are disqualified. And in this case, perhaps most controversial was the elimination of candidate Marc Ewell, for according to the Tribune article,
"Little-known candidate Marc Ewell filed 1,286 names, but Obama's objections left him 86 short of the minimum, and election officials struck him from the ballot, records show. Ewell filed a federal lawsuit contesting the board's decision, but Johnson intervened on Obama's behalf and prevailed when Ewell's case was dismissed days later.
Ewell could not be reached for comment, but the federal judge's decision showed how he was tripped up by complexities in the election procedures.
City authorities had just completed a massive, routine purge of unqualified names that eliminated 15,871 people from the 13th District rolls, court records show.Ewell and other Obama rivals had relied on early 1995 polling sheets to verify the signatures of registered voters—but Obama's challenges were decided at least in part using the most recent, accurate list, records show."
Whereas Palmer had decided to run with just 2 days remaining before the deadline, and had hastily gathered her signatures, the others were hopefuls who'd used more time and prolonged effort.
The issue is addressed in depth by other news media as well, including CNN (see here as well), the New York Times, the Boston Globe, and Time Magazine.
Thanks to Obama, thousands of citizens were denied a choice in the election so he could run unopposed.
4. Miscellaneous
- Anita Dunn: How We Controlled the News Media - Dunn, as seen here, described in depth the Obama campaign's strategy of 'controlling' the news media to portray only a specific image of Obama, by avoiding unscripted events and carefully regulating the settings and words he would use. FOX News in October 2009 did cover the issue, but a few reminders wouldn't hurt.
- Health Care: Abortion Funding - Barack Obama in July 2007 promised Planned Parenthood as seen from this recorded video, that 'reproductive care' would be "at the center and at the heart of
the plan that I propose". Ironically he'd also promised the bill process would be bipartisan and broadcast publicly on C-Span. It was as partisan as it gets, with liberal Democrats, before pro-life Democrats revolted against the abortion agenda, thinking they had the upper hand and at one point even locking out Republicans from the meetings - literally. The health care bill was never about providing health care to all, or why did they ditch the public option and risk the chance at passing a
bill in December? They could have passed the House bill with its Stupak amendment, but they chose to create a whole new Senate bill to reinsert the abortion agenda and prolong the process rather than passing reform immediately. Why? Because it was never about health care reform or covering all Americans, but legislating more funds to Planned Parenthood and entrenching abortion into law. While we needed health care reform, we needed a good bill, which was not being created. - Public Financing - I am sure many recall Obama's promise to use public financing if McCain did, only to back out when he discovered he could raise more money apart from the public financing. A chance at winning has always been more important to Obama than honesty or his word. It's not even most about a moral compass gone awry or being out of touch with the American people. It's something far simpler and more disgusting; a complete lack of honesty, indeed the very embodiment of it
in a person. - The Patriot Act: Obama's Untiring Support - Okay, so maybe it was a coincidence he voted to extend the Patriot Act in 2005. And maybe it was a coincidence that he voted for Iraq War funding while in Congress also. But you know Obama, so quick to make sure everybody knows exactly where he stands on an issue - he had to remove ALL doubt. Obama once elected asked Congress to extend the Patriot Act - without changes, and ultimately extended it without a hint of his former rhetoric against the bill. This incurred criticism from liberal ranks. Not even the Huffington Post could take this one standing still. Will the real George Bush please stand up?
- He is a Lawyer.
