Some are debating whether they should.

Speaking of which, the new issue of Voices is out, and I’ve got this piece continuing the examination of the state of that union in current affairs.

A snip:

Do faith and politics intersect?

No. They serve the public interest and the common good together. They are mutually supportive, or are intended to be by the Founding Fathers. That terminology of the two intersecting has been used in mainstream media essentially since the 2004 elections when the Democratic party began to see the need to appeal to the religious vote. But an “intersection” implies two separate roads meeting at a cross point, when in fact the Church teaches that faith informs everything we do. Communications, politics, voting are all moral acts.

Someone’s values, someone’s worldview and vision of what constitutes morality, will prevail in society.… click here to read whole article and make comments

The willingness to communicate privately with revolutionary forces? And favorably communicate, by the way…

The March 1 death strike by the Colombian army against FARC warlord Raul Reyes broke open a trove of contacts in his computer. So why did the name of Barack Obama turn up there?

Mighty good question. Here are more:

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… click here to read whole article and make comments

Barack Obama may be inevitable, though that’s a bit less clear at the moment.

But the Curt Jester has this great book suggestion that is headed for destiny.

Read the comments there. Love the one about Obama’s opportunity to claim the pope’s encyclical on hope as an endorsement.

Hey, it’s the weekend. It’s Wyoming, and who would have ever thought Wyoming would get any attention at this point? The ticker on TV shows how many hours before the polls close there. It also says “Nation’s least populous state becomes power player in race.”

Anything could happen still, folks. Except for a meeting between Obama (any candidates, really) and Pope Benedict when he comes to Washington in April. They’ll be too busy trying to wrap up Pennsylvania…

click here to read whole article and make comments

Though this article is about an Obama adviser insulting Hillary Clinton and the consequences she faced as a result, it actually says more. Here’s the basic context:

A former adviser to Barack Obama, who resigned Friday after calling rival Hillary Rodham Clinton “a monster,” said Obama may not be able to withdraw all U.S. combat troops from Iraq within a year as he has promised on the campaign trail.

Samantha Power, a Pulitzer Prize-winner author, made the comments in two separate interviews with foreign media while promoting her latest book. The comment that led to her resignation came in an interview with The Scotsman, and she immediately tried to keep it from appearing in print.

“She is a monster, too — that is off the record — she is stooping to anything,” The Scotsman quoted her as saying. A few hours after the comments were published, Power, an unpaid adviser… click here to read whole article and make comments

Now that the Michigan and Florida ‘lost delegates’ have become more critical to the Democratic race, there are all sorts of questions floating out there.

Q: What’s going on?

A: The Democratic National Committee (DNC) stripped Michigan of its 210 delegates and Florida of its 156 delegates to the party’s August convention because the states scheduled their primaries before Feb. 5. The candidates promised not to campaign in those two states.

Okay, but they knew that when they decided to go ahead and move it up anyway. So I’ve always wondered…..if the move stripped your state’s delegates of any meaning and wound up meaning nothing to your party’s candidates, why do it?

Haven’t heard anybody give a good and sensible answer to that.

So now, in the middle of the game, they want to change the rules.

Q: Why not allocate… click here to read whole article and make comments

Michelle Obama is talking, a lot, and her stream of consciousness is very revealing.

Take this snip, which is characteristic of her views:

Obama begins with a broad assessment of life in America in 2008, and life is not good: we’re a divided country, we’re a country that is “just downright mean,” we are “guided by fear,” we’re a nation of cynics, sloths, and complacents. “We have become a nation of struggling folks who are barely making it every day,” she said, as heads bobbed in the pews. “Folks are just jammed up, and it’s gotten worse over my lifetime…

Negative stuff, from spouse of the candidate of hope. Plenty more on this site. She’s really ventilating.

Then there’s this snip:

Listening to her speeches, with their longing for a lost, spit-shine world, one could sometimes mistake her, were it not for the emphasis… click here to read whole article and make comments

He probably gets a lot of mail. This letter is of particularly keen importance.

Dear Senator Obama:

As an immigrant from Kenya, your father found new hope in America’s noble principles and vast opportunities. The same promise brought my parents here from Egypt when I was still too young to thank them. Now you have inspired my generation with your vision of a country united around the same ideals of liberty and justice, “filled with hope and possibility for all Americans.”

But do you mean it?

As a legislator, you have opposed every effort to protect unborn human life. Shockingly, you even opposed a bill to protect the lives of babies who, having survived an attempted abortion, are born alive. Despite your party’s broad support for legal abortion and its public funding, most Democrats (including Senator Clinton) did not oppose the Born-Alive Infants Protection Act. You, however, opposed… click here to read whole article and make comments

Mike Huckabee bowed out graciously. He needed no teleprompter and had no visible notes. The media keep referring to another candidate as eloquent. This was eloquence.

“We kept the faith,” he told his end-of-the-road rally Tuesday after John McCain clinched the nomination. “I’d rather lose an election than lose the principles that got me into politics in the first place.”

Huckabee said the two most civil campaigns are the two Republican campaigns that were carried out with honor. Referring to the battle of the Alamo, he said the legendary account was not about those who fought. “It’s about our country, and what we do to maintain liberty and freedom.”

He focused on the party’s nominee now, and putting his resources into helping him.

Huckabee said he extended “my commitment to him and to the party to do everything possible to unite our party, but more importantly to unite our country.”

… click here to read whole article and make comments

Sen. Barack Obama says he understands that some people don’t agree with him on issues of abortion same sex unions, but he refers them to the Bible for his justification.

Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.) told a crowd at Hocking College in Nelsonville, Ohio, Sunday that he believes the Sermon on the Mount justifies his support for legal recognition of same-sex unions. He also told the crowd that his position in favor of legalized abortion does not make him “less Christian.”

That’s sure making truth relative, and convenient. To what might he be referring?

Obama’s mention of the Sermon on the Mount in justifying legal recognition of same-sex unions may have been a reference to the Golden Rule: “Do to others what you would have them do to you.” Or it may have been a reference to another famous line: “Do not judge, or you too will be judged.”

… click here to read whole article and make comments

How Catholics are trending in the Democratic race is a focus of more polls and news stories.

Barack Obama’s 11 straight Democratic primary and caucus victories have been marked by continued and impressive gains among women, lower-income workers, Hispanics and virtually every other demographic group.

Yet one potentially critical set of voters remains stubbornly resistant to his appeal—Catholics.

In state after state, with only a few exceptions, exit polling shows Hillary Rodham Clinton is the choice of Catholic voters. Clinton even defeated Obama among Catholics in his home state of Illinois. It seems the more Catholic the state, the more likely she is to have won it…

John Green, a political science professor at the University of Akron and a senior fellow with the Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life, said that while Clinton’s and Obama’s policy proposals are similar, her personal religious background gives her an advantage.

… click here to read whole article and make comments