Michael Ramirez at IBD Editorials.

Andy McCarthy hammers Obama and Hillary in a great piece at Human Events. Profiles in Cowardice On Tuesday, we got a double-winner. First, the Senate voted to approve an overhaul of intelligence law which, though flawed, provides authority for American intelligence agencies to continue monitoring the savages trying to kill us. Second, we got inescapable confirmation that Senators Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama, the two contenders to be the Democrats’ nominee, are not fit to be president of the United States. Understand: this was the most important vote on national security in years. In 2007, a ruling of the court created by the ill-conceived 1978 Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) required the intelligence community to seek court permission before monitoring terrorists operating outside our country -- that is, outside the jurisdiction of United States courts. * * * It’s difficult to imagine more vital legislation.

Dan Henninger says Obama is depressing:

Pajamas Media's Roger Simon and Claudia Rossett sat down with John McCain for a wide-ranging video interview. He will make Obama look like a pretender (which he is) when the debates turn to foreign policy and what needs to be done to keep America safe. Some highlights: ROSETT: On a somewhat related topic, North Korea, would you remove North Korea from the terrorism list? MCCAIN: I would not. I didn’t believe in the KEDO agreement that President Clinton made, and I don’t believe in this one. I’d like to. I wish that I could, but it’s the old Reagan thing about “Trust, but verify.” The North Koreans have a very clear record. And, look, I’m ...

“Any man who is under 30 and is not a liberal has no heart; and any man who is over 30 and not a conservative has no brains.” — Winston Churchill From Red Planet Cartoons  

You thought it was Romney didn't you? How about Obama? Obama's Church By INVESTOR'S BUSINESS DAILY | Posted Tuesday, January 15, 2008 4:20 PM PT Election 2008: Since we first drew attention to Barack Obama's Afrocentric church a full 12 months ago, other media have weighed in. And additional disturbing information has come to light. At the core of the Democratic front-runner's faith — whether lapsed Muslim, new Christian or some mixture of the two — is African nativism, which raises political issues of its own. In 1991, when Obama joined the Trinity United Church of Christ in Chicago, he pledged allegiance to something called the Black Value System, which is a code of non-Biblical ethics written by blacks, for blacks. It encourages blacks to group together and separate from the larger American society by pooling their money, patronizing black-only businesses and backing black leaders. Such racial separatism is strangely at odds with the media's portrayal of Obama as a uniter who reaches across races. The code also warns blacks to avoid the white "entrapment of black middle-classness," suggesting that settling for that kind of "competitive" success will rob blacks of their African identity and keep them "captive" to white culture. In short, Obama's "unashamedly black" church preaches the politics of black nationalism. And its dashiki-wearing preacher — who married Obama and his wife and now acts as his personal spiritual adviser — is militantly Afrocentric. "We are an African people," the Rev. Jeremiah Wright reminds his flock, "and remain true to our native land, the mother continent." Wright once traveled to Libya with black supremacist Louis Farrakhan to meet with terrorist leader Muammar Qaddafi. Last year at a Chicago gala, Wright honored his old pal Farrakhan, who's fond of calling whites "blue-eyed devils," for lifetime achievement. It comes as little surprise then that Wright would think Israel a "racist" occupier of Palestinians, while describing the 9/11 attacks as a "wake-up call" to "white America" for ignoring the concerns of "people of color." Wright makes the Rev. Jesse Jackson look almost moderate and patriotic. Yet this is whom Obama picked to baptize his daughters, plus to act as his "sounding board" during his presidential run.

Planned Parenthood must be elated. Terrence Jeffrey makes the case that Barack Obama is the most pro-abortion candidate ever. That is saying a lot: Obama is the Most Pro-Abortion Candidate Ever By Terence Jeffrey Wednesday, January 9, 2008 Barack Obama is the most pro-abortion presidential candidate ever. He is so pro-abortion he refused as an Illinois state senator to support legislation to protect babies who survived late-term abortions because he did not want to concede -- as he explained in a cold-blooded speech on the Illinois Senate floor -- that these babies, fully outside their mothers' wombs, with their hearts beating and lungs heaving, were in fact "persons." "Persons," of course, are guaranteed equal protection of the law under the 14th Amendment. In 2004, U.S. Senate-candidate Obama mischaracterized his opposition to this legislation. Now, as a presidential frontrunner, he should be held accountable for what he actually said and did about the Born Alive Infants Bill.

Michael O'Hanlon, one of the leading scholars on the Iraq War and no fan of the President's pre-surge strategies, writes in the Wall Street Journal that Sen. Obama is naive and wrong on Iraq: Obama and Iraq By MICHAEL O'HANLON January 7, 2008; Page A13 One of Sen. Barack Obama's many strengths is his ability to inspire beyond party lines. Because he lacks the baggage of the past, and because his melodic message of hope speaks to many, he garnered much more support from independents in Iowa than either Hillary Clinton or John Edwards. But if he truly wants to be the candidate of inclusiveness, Mr. Obama has some work to do. This is particularly evident on the central national security challenge of the day, the Iraq war. Mr. Obama's problem is not his initial opposition to the war. At this point, that stance strikes many voters as prescient. Even for those of us who believe the main problem in Iraq was shoddy planning by Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and others, Mr. Obama's position is hard to dismiss. But there are nonetheless two problems with Mr. Obama's Iraq views that call into doubt his ability to build a truly inclusive American political movement. First, he seems contemptuous of the motivations of those who supported the war. While showing proper respect for the heroic efforts of our troops, he displays little regard for the views of those many Americans who saw the case for war in the first place -- even as he has called for a more civil and respectful political debate. This is unfortunate. Saddam Hussein was one of the worst and most dangerous dictators of the late 20th century. The basic proposition of unseating him was hardly an unconscionable idea, even if President Bush's approach to doing so was unilateralist, arrogant and careless. With our last image of Saddam a resigned figure heading for the gallows, it is easy to forget who this monster was.

Mark Strichertz, author of "Why the Democrats are Blue: Secular Liberalism and the Decline of the People’s Party." writes today at NRO that the "new" candidate, Obama, is singing the same old song for the Dems: The party continues to deny pro-life Democrats from reaching a national audience, the most famous victim being former governor Robert Casey of Pennsylvania. Also, Obama, seemingly the most tolerant of the party’s major candidates, does not embrace diversity when it comes to social and cultural issues. Besides his unwavering support for abortion rights, he struggled to connect with rural Iowa voters: “[a]t many stops,” the New York Times reported, “he would face questions from conservative Democrats about gun control ...

James Taranto at Opinionjournal.com whacks Barack Hussein Obama for his outrageous statement this week about genocide: Barack Obama's latest pronouncement on Iraq should have shocked the conscience. In an interview with the Associated Press last week, the freshman Illinois senator and Democratic presidential candidate opined that even preventing genocide is not a sufficient reason to keep American troops in Iraq. "Well, look, if that's the criteria by which we are making decisions on the deployment of U.S. forces, then by that argument you would have 300,000 troops in the Congo right now--where millions have been slaughtered as a consequence of ethnic strife--which we haven't done," Mr. Obama told the AP. "We would be deploying unilaterally and ...