Here's a possibility nobody seems to have considered in all the Obama/FISA brouhaha.

Maybe Obama isn't jumping to the right for political expediency.  Maybe Obama isn't afraid of Republicans calling him soft on terrorism.  Maybe he's not cynically using the terrorism card to scare up votes.

Maybe he just honest-to-god thinks that the American people are safer if the legislation passes.

....in new book.

Graffiti critical of Veolia, a European company building a tram on illegally possessed Palestinian land in East Jerusalem.

Bill Kristol on Fox News Sunday (this weekend) speaking of Obama:

"Its just factually true that electing someone with the policies he's articulated, I think, increases the risk of enemies testing him in his first months in office and allies being worried that he's too weak..."

...on the 60th anniversary of Israel's independence.

Starting with the ethnic cleansing of the Palestinians from their ancestral lands in 1948, which entailed the killing of at least 10,000 civilians, the killing of Palestinians has continued, especially after the military occupations of the West Bank and Gaza in 1967, and the beginnings of their colonialism. The `intentional killing' of Palestinian children during the first and second Intifadas is a particularly gruesome phase of Israeli militarism that is still going on, constituting as it does: state terrorism. Since Israel and the US State Department have broadened the definition of terrorism to include all conditions in which civilians are intentionally killed, the term `state terrorism' deserves similar expansion: a state which intentionally kills civilians.

I am indebted to Lawrence of Cyberia for doing the legwork in pulling together this brief overview and permitting republication. Her article begins here:

Please read the following statement by Osama Bin Laden from a 1998 fatwa and answer the question that follows.

No one argues today about three facts that are known to everyone; we will list them, in order to remind everyone.

First, for over seven years the United States has been occupying the lands of Islam in the holiest of places, the Arabian Peninsula, plundering its riches, dictating to its rulers, humiliating its people, terrorizing its neighbors, and turning its bases in the Peninsula into a spearhead through which to fight the neighboring Muslim peoples.

If some people have in the past argued about the fact of the occupation, all the people of the Peninsula have now acknowledged it.

The best proof of this is the Americans' continuing aggression against the Iraqi people using the Peninsula as a staging post, even though all its rulers are against their territories being used to that end, but they are helpless. Second, despite the great devastation inflicted on the Iraqi people by the crusader-Zionist alliance, and despite the huge number of those killed, which has exceeded 1 million... despite all this, the Americans are once against trying to repeat the horrific massacres, as though they are not content with the protracted blockade imposed after the ferocious war or the fragmentation and devastation.

So here they come to annihilate what is left of this people and to humiliate their Muslim neighbors.

Third, if the Americans' aims behind these wars are religious and economic, the aim is also to serve the Jews' petty state and divert attention from its occupation of Jerusalem and murder of Muslims there.

....my vote in the GE.

For the last 7 years, democrats, republicans, independents, and everyone else in between has been forced to respond to a politics of fear in America. The Bush Administration and many of its most ardent supporters have used fear (the fear of others, the fear of terrorism, the fear of the ill-understood) to threaten us. GW Bush has applied this politics to every debate on Capitol Hill. XXXXX will make us safer. XXXXX will make us weaker. XXXXXX and the terrorists win.

Now Hillary Clinton - who shocked democrats (and others) - with her 3 am call, has once again found it necessary to lower the dialogue of American politics. Hillary is playing with fire. She is engaging in 'guilt by association' tactics that should make all of us cringe at our core. She is using 9-11 and Osama bin Laden as a way of drumming up votes. Many have noted her reference to Hamas in the debate and her newly-found desire to exploit 9-11...not just for her own purpose, but to hurt a fellow democrat.

For those of you who have forgotten...this is exactly why we fought in 2006 to win back Congress.  

She has not only played on the politics of fear. She has played the 'terror card'.

Mark Halperin has the story:
http://thepage.time.com/2008/04/21/clint on-up-with-new-tv-ad/

After 2004, I thought we were tired of this kind of politics. We used to think this was how Republicans campaigned. Now this is how Hillary is campaigning. She has sunk to a new low that I think will play into the hands of Republicans in the Fall. Moreover, I think she insults America (and our superdelegates) with this ad.

This is not about solutions to gas prices or foreclosures. This is not about a change in Washington. This is about her. This is about 'doing antyhing, saying anything'.

She will win PA...but if she manages to secure the nomination, she is in for a long, tough road to win back over democrats (and others) who are tired of being told that they should be afraid.

And to pile on, exponentially, the disingenuous rhetoric that her campaign has promoted over the last month or so...I leave you with one of the more memorable political quotes of the late 20th century:

"Now, one of Clinton's laws of politics is this. If one candidate is trying to scare you and the other one is try get you to think, if one candidate is appealing to your fears and the other one is appealing to your hopes, you better vote for the person who wants you to think and hope."

Bill Ayers, Obama's friend and benefactor, was introduced to the public during Wednesday's Democratic debate, much to the chagrin of the Obama campaign and his supporters.

Let's get one thing out of the way: Ayers was not a radical; he is a domestic terrorist (Ayers once suggested that young people should "Bring the war home. Kill your parents."). There's a big distinction between having radical ideas and violent plans. Gloria Steinem, Tom Hayden, and Todd Gitlin were radicals. The desire to kill innocent Americans makes Ayers a terrorist.

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