In an interview this week with “Relevant,” a Christian magazine, Obama said prohibitions on late-term abortions must contain “a strict, well defined exception for the health of the mother.”

Obama then added: “Now, I don’t think that ‘mental distress’ qualifies as the health of the mother. I think it has to be a serious physical issue that arises in pregnancy, where there are real, significant problems to the mother carrying that child to term.”

Last year, after the Supreme Court upheld a federal ban on late-term abortions, Obama said he “strongly disagreed” with the ruling because it “dramatically departs form previous precedents safeguarding the health of pregnant women.”

The health care exception is crucial to abortion rights advocates and is considered a legal loophole by abortion opponents. By limiting the health exception to a “serious physical issue,” Obama set himself apart from other abortion rights proponents.

The official position of NARAL Pro-Choice America, the abortion rights group that endorsed Obama in May, states: “A health exception must also account for the mental health problems that may occur in pregnancy. Severe fetal anomalies, for example, can exact a tremendous emotional toll on a pregnant woman and her family.”

The 1973 landmark abortion case, Roe v. Wade, established a right to an abortion, and a concurrent case, Doe v. Bolton, established that medical judgments about the need for an abortion could include physical, emotional and psychological health factors.

“Senator Obama has consistently maintained that laws restricting abortions must contain exceptions for the health and life of the mother,” Obama spokesman Tommy Vietor said Thursday. “Obviously, as he stated in the interview, he has consistently believed those exceptions should be clear and limited enough to ensure that they don’t undermine the prohibition on late-term abortions.”

In a statement, NARAL Pro-Choice said Obama’s magazine interview is consistent with Roe v. Wade.

“Sen. Obama has consistently said he supports the tenets set forth by Roe, and has made strong statements against President Bush’s Federal Abortion Ban, which does not have an exception to protect a woman’s health,” the organization’s statement said.

A leading abortion opponent, however, said Obama’s rhetoric does not match his voting record and his previously stated views on abortion rights.

David N. O’Steen, the executive director of National Right to Life, said Obama’s remarks to the magazine “are either quite disingenuous or they reflect that Obama does not know what he is talking about.”

“You cannot believe that abortion should not be allowed for mental health reasons and support Roe v Wade,” O’Steen said.

In the interview with Relevant, conducted on Tuesday, Obama also defended his opposition to restrictions on induced abortions where the fetus sometimes survives for short periods. Obama voted against such a bill when he was in the Illinois Senate. He has said he supported a federal version of the law that contained more specific language because he feared the Illinois proposal would have applied to all abortions.

“There was a bill that came up in Illinois that was called the ‘Born Alive’ bill that purported to require life-saving treatment to such infants. And I did vote against that bill,” Obama said Tuesday. “The reason was that there was already a law in place in Illinois that said that you always have to supply life-saving treatment to any infant under any circumstances, and this bill actually was designed to overturn Roe v. Wade, so I didn’t think it was going to pass constitutional muster.”

DARRELL DELAMAIDE’S POLITICAL CAPITAL
By Darrell Delamaide

WASHINGTON (MarketWatch) — The two presidential candidates spend a lot of time chastising us for our “addiction to oil,” warning that our dependence on foreign oil threatens our energy security.

They are going to put us on the path to “energy independence” — Barack Obama with alternative energies and John McCain with offshore drilling.

But there’s another addiction that both candidates so far have ignored — one that also poses a serious threat to our national security. In fact, the two presumptive nominees have not only failed to address the issue, they have flaunted their disdain for it.

The United States under the Bush administration has developed an addiction to foreign credit. The federal government’s willingness to run up massive budget deficits — an estimated $400 billion to $500 billion this year alone — and to let China and other foreign countries finance those deficits have contributed to the deflation of the dollar and put this country at the mercy of these foreign governments.

More here

Answered prayer vs. random chance or human intervention

July 1, 2008 From d-C

CHICAGO - Reaching out to evangelical voters, Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama is announcing plans to expand President Bush’s program steering federal social service dollars to religious groups and — in a move sure to cause controversy — support some ability to hire and fire based on faith.

Obama was unveiling his approach to getting religious charities more involved in government anti-poverty programs during a tour and remarks Tuesday in Zanesville, Ohio, at Eastside Community Ministry, which provides food, clothes, youth ministry and other services.

“The challenges we face today … are simply too big for government to solve alone,” Obama was to say, according to a prepared text of his remarks obtained by The Associated Press. “We need all hands on deck.”

Obama’s announcement is part of a series of events leading up to Friday’s Fourth of July holiday that are focused on American values.

The Democratic presidential candidate spent Monday talking about his vision of patriotism in the battleground state of Missouri. By twinning that with Tuesday’s talk about faith in another battleground state, he was attempting to settle debate in two key areas where his beliefs have come under question while also trying to make inroads with constituencies that are traditionally loyal to Republicans and oppose Obama on other grounds.

But Obama’s support for letting religious charities that receive federal funding consider religion in employment decisions could invite a protest from those in his own party who view such faith requirements as discrimination.

Obama does not support requiring religious tests for recipients of aid nor using federal money to proselytize, according to a campaign fact sheet. He also only supports letting religious institutions hire and fire based on faith in the non-taxypayer funded portions of their activities, said a senior adviser to the campaign, who spoke on condition of anonymity to more freely describe the new policy.

Rev. Barry Lynn, executive director of Americans United for Separation of Church and State, criticized Obama’s proposed expansion of a program he said has undermined civil rights and civil liberties.

“I am disappointed that any presidential candidate would want to continue a failed policy of the Bush administration,” he said. “It ought to be shut down, not continued.”

Bush supports broader freedoms for taxpayer-funded religious charities. But he never got Congress to go along so he has conducted the program through administrative actions and executive orders.

David Kuo, a conservative Christian who was deputy director of Bush’s Office of Faith-Based and Community Initiatives until 2003 and later became a critic of Bush’s commitment to the cause, said Obama’s position on hiring has the potential to be a major “Sister Souljah moment” for his campaign.

This is a reference to Bill Clinton’s accusation in his 1992 presidential campaign that the hip hop artist incited violence against whites. Because Clinton said this before a black audience, it fed into an image of him as a bold politician who was willing to take risks and refused to pander.

“This is a massive deal,” said Kuo, who is not an Obama adviser or supporter but was contacted by the campaign to review the new plan.

Obama proposes to elevate the program to a “moral center” of his administration, by renaming it the Council for Faith-Based and Neighborhood Partnerships, and changing training from occasional huge conferences to empowering larger religious charities to mentor smaller ones in their communities.

Saying social service spending has been shortchanged under Bush, he also proposes a $500 million per year program to provide summer learning for 1 million poor children to help close achievement gaps with white and wealthier students. A campaign fact sheet said he would pay for it by better managing surplus federal properties, reducing growth in the federal travel budget and streamlining the federal procurement process.

Like Bush, Obama was arguing that religious organizations can and should play a bigger role in serving the poor and meeting other social needs. But while Bush argued that the strength of religious charities lies primarily in shared religious identity between workers and recipients, Obama was to tout the benefits of their “bottom-up” approach.

“Because they’re so close to the people, they’re well-placed to offer help,” he was to say.

Kuo called Obama’s approach smart, impressive and well thought-out but took a wait-and-see attitude about whether it would deliver.

“When it comes to promises to help the poor, promises are easy,” said Kuo, who wrote a 2006 book describing his frustration at what he called Bush’s lackluster enthusiasm for the program. “The question is commitment.”

Obama also planned to talk bluntly about the genesis of his Christian faith in his work as a community organizer in Chicago, and its importance to him now.

“In time, I came to see faith as being both a personal commitment to Christ and a commitment to my community; that while I could sit in church and pray all I want, I wouldn’t be fulfilling God’s will unless I went out and did the Lord’s work,” he was to say.

Not a hint of shame
Charles Krauthammer

“To be clear: Barack will support a filibuster of any bill that includes retroactive immunity for telecommunications companies.” —Obama spokesman Bill Burton, October 24, 2007 -
That was then: Democratic primaries to be won, netroot lefties to be seduced. With all that (and Hillary Clinton) out of the way, Obama now says he’ll vote in favor of the new FISA bill that gives the telecom companies blanket immunity for post-9/11 eavesdropping.

Back then, in the yesteryear of primary season, he thoroughly trashed the North American Free Trade Agreement, pledging to force a renegotiation, take “the hammer” to Canada and Mexico, and threaten unilateral abrogation. Today, the hammer is holstered. Obama calls his previous NAFTA rhetoric “overheated” and essentially endorses what one of his senior economic advisers privately told the Canadians: The anti-trade stuff was nothing more than populist posturing.

Nor is there much left of his primary season pledge to meet “without preconditions” with Iran’s Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. There will be “preparations,” you see, which are being spun by his aides into the functional equivalent of preconditions.

Obama’s long march to the center has begun.

Prepare to be disappointed by someone new

And why not? What’s the downside? He won’t lose the left, or even mainstream Democrats. They won’t stay home on Nov. 4. The anti-Bush, anti-Republican sentiment is simply too strong. Election Day is their day of revenge—for the Florida recount, for Swiftboating, for all the injuries, real and imagined, dealt out by Republicans over the last eight years.

Normally, flip-flopping presidential candidates have to worry about the press. Not Obama. After all, this is a press corps that heard his grandiloquent Philadelphia speech—designed to rationalize why “I can no more disown [Jeremiah Wright] than I can disown my white grandmother”—then wiped away a tear and hailed him as the second coming of Abraham Lincoln. Three months later, with Wright disowned, grandma embraced and the great “race speech” now inoperative, not a word of reconsideration is heard from his media acolytes.

Worry about the press? His FISA flip-flop elicited a few grumbles from lefty bloggers, but hardly a murmur from the mainstream press. Remember his pledge to stick to public financing? Now flush with cash, he is the first general-election candidate since Watergate to opt out. Some goo-goo clean-government types chided him, but the mainstream editorialists who for years had been railing against private financing as hopelessly corrupt and corrupting, evinced only the mildest of disappointment.

Indeed, the New York Times expressed a sympathetic understanding of Obama’s about-face by buying his preposterous claim that it was a pre-emptive attack on McCain’s 527 independent expenditure groups—notwithstanding the fact that (a) as Politico’s Jonathan Martin notes, “there are no serious anti-Obama 527s in existence nor are there any immediate plans to create such a group” and (b) the only independent ad of any consequence now running in the entire country is an AFSCME-MoveOn.org co-production savaging McCain.

True, Obama’s U-turn on public financing was not done for ideological reasons, it was done for Willie Sutton reasons: That’s where the money is. It nonetheless betrayed a principle that so many in the press claimed to hold dear.

As public financing is not a principle dear to me, I am hardly dismayed by Obama’s abandonment of it. Nor am I disappointed in the least by his other calculated and cynical repositionings. I have never had any illusions about Obama. I merely note with amazement that his media swooners seem to accept his every policy reversal with an equanimity unseen since the Daily Worker would change the party line overnight—switching sides in World War II, for example—whenever the wind from Moscow changed direction.

The truth about Obama is uncomplicated. He is just a politician (though of unusual skill and ambition). The man who dared say it plainly is the man who knows Obama all too well. “He does what politicians do,” explained Jeremiah Wright.

When it’s time to throw campaign finance reform, telecom accountability, NAFTA renegotiation or Jeremiah Wright overboard, Obama is not sentimental. He does not hesitate. He tosses lustily.

Why, the man even tossed his own grandmother overboard back in Philadelphia—only to haul her back on deck now that her services are needed. Yesterday, granny was the moral equivalent of the raving Reverend Wright.

Today, she is a featured prop in Obama’s fuzzywuzzy get-to-know-me national TV ad. Not a flinch. Not a flicker. Not a hint of shame. By the time he’s finished, Obama will have made the Clintons look scrupulous.

Charles Krauthammer, who has won the Pulitzer Prize for commentary, writes for the Washington Post Writers Group.

From The Wall Street Journal:

Anyone wondering why U.S. energy policy is so dysfunctional need only review Congress’s recent antics. Members have debated ideas ranging from suing OPEC to the Senate’s carbon tax-and-regulation monstrosity, to a windfall profits tax on oil companies, to new punishments for “price gouging” – everything except expanding domestic energy supplies.

Amid $135 oil, it ought to be an easy, bipartisan victory to lift the political restrictions on energy exploration and production. Record-high fuel costs are hitting consumers and business like a huge tax increase. Yet the U.S. remains one of the only countries in the world that chooses as a matter of policy to lock up its natural resources. The Chinese think we’re insane and self-destructive, while the Saudis laugh all the way to the bank…

While energy “independence” is an impossible dream, there’s no doubt the U.S. has vast undeveloped fossil-fuel deposits. A tiny corner of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge contains an estimated 10.4 billion barrels of oil and would be the largest producing oil field in the Northern Hemisphere. Yet the Senate blocked that development as recently as last month. The Outer Continental Shelf is estimated to contain some 86 billion barrels of oil, plus 420 trillion cubic feet of natural gas. Yet of the shelf’s 1.76 billion acres, 85% is off-limits and 97% is undeveloped.

Engineers recently perfected refining solid shale rock into diesel or gas, which may amount to the largest oil supply in the world – perhaps as much as 1.8 trillion barrels in the American West. That’s enough to meet current U.S. oil demand for more than two centuries. Yet as late as 2007, Democrats attached a rider to the energy bill that prohibits leasing the federal interior lands that contain at least 80% of America’s oil shale. The key vote was cast by liberal Senator Ken Salazar from Colorado, of all places…

Democrats are going to have to grow up. The oil-rich areas they want to leave untouched are accessible with minimal environmental disturbance, thanks to modern technology…. As for anticarbon theology, oil will be indispensable over the next half-century and probably longer, like it or not. Airplanes will never fly on woodchips, and you won’t be able to charge your car with a windmill for some time, if ever.

There is an ocean of oil waiting to be pulled from the ground lying beneath federal lands. But access to roughly 80 billion barrels is limited in some way by various government policies.

Chart by RICHARD L. WATSON, USDI-BLM, USDI-MINERALS MANAGEMENT SERVICE | Wednesday, June 18, 2008 4:30 PM PT

Maybe we can’t drill our way completely out of our energy dilemma, but we can get every drop of domestic oil we can. American oil for American cars, American factories and American jobs: The GOP wants to drill for it; the Democrats don’t.

What a simple choice this November.

Investor’s Business Daily

Gore’s personal electricity consumption up 10%, despite “energy-efficient” home renovations

NASHVILLE - In the year since Al Gore took steps to make his home more energy-efficient, the former Vice President’s home energy use surged more than 10%, according to the Tennessee Center for Policy Research.

“A man’s commitment to his beliefs is best measured by what he does behind the closed doors of his own home,” said Drew Johnson, President of the Tennessee Center for Policy Research. “Al Gore is a hypocrite and a fraud when it comes to his commitment to the environment, judging by his home energy consumption.”

In the past year, Gore’s home burned through 213,210 kilowatt-hours (kWh) of electricity, enough to power 232 average American households for a month.

In February 2007, An Inconvenient Truth, a film based on a climate change speech developed by Gore, won an Academy Award for best documentary feature. The next day, the Tennessee Center for Policy Research uncovered that Gore’s Nashville home guzzled 20 times more electricity than the average American household.

After the Tennessee Center for Policy Research exposed Gore’s massive home energy use, the former Vice President scurried to make his home more energy-efficient. Despite adding solar panels, installing a geothermal system, replacing existing light bulbs with more efficient models, and overhauling the home’s windows and ductwork, Gore now consumes more electricity than before the “green” overhaul.

Since taking steps to make his home more environmentally-friendly last June, Gore devours an average of 17,768 kWh per month –1,638 kWh more energy per month than before the renovations – at a cost of $16,533. By comparison, the average American household consumes 11,040 kWh in an entire year, according to the Energy Information Administration.

In the wake of becoming the most well-known global warming alarmist, Gore won an Oscar, a Grammy and the Nobel Peace Prize. In addition, Gore saw his personal wealth increase by an estimated $100 million thanks largely to speaking fees and investments related to global warming hysteria.

“Actions speak louder than words, and Gore’s actions prove that he views climate change not as a serious problem, but as a money-making opportunity,” Johnson said. “Gore is exploiting the public’s concern about the environment to line his pockets and enhance his profile.”

The Tennessee Center for Policy Research, a Nashville-based free market think tank and watchdog organization, obtained information about Gore’s home energy use through a public records request to the Nashville Electric Service.

For Further Information, Contact:
Adam King, 615.383.6431
adam@tennesseepolicy.org

By INVESTORS BUSINESS DAILY | Posted Friday, June 13, 2008 4:20 PM PT

Oil: Exxon Mobil is selling its gas stations because there’s no money in it. Meanwhile, two GOP congressmen do what John McCain should do — change their position on drilling in ANWR.

Exxon Mobil, proclaimed by the no-drill demagogues to be the poster child for gas gouging, recognizes this as well, deciding to unload its 800 company-owned stations and an additional 1,400 dealer-operated locations to distributors.

Still, Democrats will say Exxon and its unindicted co-conspirators still make obscene profits.

The fact is that American oil companies in 2007 had an 8.3% profit margin, compared with 8.9% for all U.S. manufacturing.

The cigarette and beverage companies’ profit margin was 19.1%. Drug companies made 18.4%.

Nobody complains about profits made by politically connected ethanol producers such as Archer Daniels Midland. Since February 2006, the congressionally mandated use of heavily subsidized and energy-inefficient ethanol has caused the price of corn, wheat and soybeans to increase more than 200%. Isn’t this price-gouging?

The ability of an Exxon Mobil to manipulate profits is a myth. As Stephen Simon of Exxon Mobil pointed out in the recent congressional show trial, America’s largest oil and gas corporation accounts for only 3% of global oil production and 6% of global refining capacity. It controls only 1% of global petroleum reserves.

Price — and profits — are driven by global supply and demand. Yes, price is also driven by speculators. But the way to increase supply, and punish speculators, is to drill wherever oil exists in the U.S.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, on whose watch gas prices have increased 75%, says “the fact is we can’t drill our way out of this problem.” Tell that to Joe Sixpack filling up his pickup on the way to work. Pelosi would rather continue to send $500 billion a year to the likes of Venezuela’s Hugo Chavez, who spends the money undermining U.S interests and funding an armed insurrection against U.S. ally Colombia.

We already drill in Alaska. More than 15 billion barrels of oil have been sent down the Alaska pipeline from Prudhoe Bay, just 60 miles west of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, over the last three decades, much more than the six months’ supply predicted by critics.

As Energy Secretary Samuel Bodman notes, the development “footprint” would be minimal: “ANWR, in its totality, is about the size of South Carolina, and the area where we believe the hydrocarbons are located is about the size of Delaware, not to mention the exploration site would be no larger than about the size of (Boston’s) Logan International Airport.”

As for the “pristine” wilderness, the tiny portion of ANWR where drilling would occur is what hell would look like if it ever froze over. Winter on the coastal plain lasts for nine months. Total darkness reigns for 58 days. The temperature drops to 70 degrees below zero without the wind chill. Your spit freezes before it hits the ground.

Unfortunately, GOP nominee John McCain’s energy policy has been, well, inconsistent. He opposes drilling in ANWR because he considers it a historical treasure like the Grand Canyon.

Two House Republicans previously opposed to drilling in ANWR, Reps. Jim Walsh of New York and Roscoe Bartlett of Maryland, announced Thursday that they’d now support drilling there. Some would call it flip-flopping. We’d call it coming to your senses.

Bartlett said: “There will be environmental impact (but) I believe the environmental impact pales compared to the need.”

Technology has advanced since we drilled the first well in Prudhoe Bay. Similarly, to get the trillion barrels in the shale rock in the Green River formation out west, we don’t have to strip-mine the Rockies. According to the Rand Corporation, the up to 1.8 trillion barrels of oil can be extracted safely with a new technology which uses superheated steam to extract the oil from the porous rock.

All John McCain has to do is do what his congressional colleagues have done — concede that the need and benefits to extract the huge reserves under American soil and in American waters for the American people exceed the risks.

The country will then say thank you, President McCain. A clear majority wants to drill here, and drill now. Otherwise, we all may be riding a caribou to work.