Kicking and screaming or not, the political establishment is going to have to change the way in which they communicate with the American public. Barack Obama is making sure of that. The weekly radio address is a video podcast!!
Does anything that happens in this administration surprise you? It doesn’t surprise me. Not anymore. Not after ‘the surge’ happened even though public opinion was clear.
Now the State Department admits that three different people on three different occasions illegally accessed Barack Obama’s passport information.
Okay, I have a few questions. How were these “contractors” able to get access to a Senator’s passport? Why do contractors have access to that kind of information? With an administration who believes in politics first and the country second, how can we be sure that this wasn’t another political outing like Valerie Plame? If the first incident was in January, why weren’t safeguards put in place to prevent further breaches of protocol by mid-February or at least by March?
(video posted below)
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An excerpt from the Washington Post:
The State Department said last night that it had fired two contract employees and disciplined a third for accessing Sen. Barack Obama’s passport file.
Obama’s presidential campaign immediately called for a “complete investigation.”
State Department spokesman Tom Casey said the employees had individually looked into Obama’s passport file on Jan. 9, Feb. 21 and March 14. To access such a file, the employees must first acknowledge a pledge to keep the information private. (more…)
There are several reasons I liked Senator Barack Obama’s recent speech on race:
1. By correctly refusing to disown Pastor Jeremiah Wright, Obama showed loyalty.
2. By speaking at length about the good points and bad points of the black church, Obama acknowledged the basic humanity and complexity of the average person.
3. By addressing the historical experience of both blacks and whites in the United States, Obama asked us to consider context. Although this is something increasingly rare in our fragmented and quick-paced society, context is a starting point of seeing the lives of others in a humane and caring way.
4. By speaking in a reasonably forthright manner about a difficult subject, Obama respected the intelligence of the average voter.
5. By offering the opportunity to move past divisive racial concerns in the 2008 Election, Obama offered voters a positive choice.
Here is a good USA Today story on the speech (No, you don’t need to read the 11,821 comments so far made about the story).