obama on race, abortion, and a hil bumper sticker

Richard John Neuhaus of First Things has written a piece on Obama's speech on the Reverend Wright. Here are a couple of standout passages:

On Obama's giving in to racial stereotyping, there is this:

"The senator lends his prestige to the claim promoted by sundry race hustlers that Colin Powell, Condoleezza Rice, Clarence Thomas, and Bill Cosby, along with millions of other black Americans, are not black enough to be part of 'the black community.' One can understand why a Harvard law-school graduate born in Hawaii with a black father from Kenya and a white mother from Kansas would, for political and perhaps personal reasons, seek the street credential of having 'roots' in a militantly black sector of the intensely race-conscious city of Chicago. But complicity in the explicit slander of America and the implicit slander of most blacks in America is a very high price to pay for a ticket of admission to 'the black community.'"

And on Obama's abortion stance, he has this to say:

"In this speech, he did not mention abortion, the single most polarizing question in our public life, but his promise is to move us beyond our divisions by taking a position so extreme that he refuses to support even the “born alive” legislation that would protect the lives of infants who survive the abortion procedure. Not for nothing is he rated the most liberal member of the Senate. His call for national reconciliation, however rhetorically appealing, is more believably a call for capitulation by those who disagree."

You can view the entire essay here.

And yesterday I saw a very amusing bumper sticker which read "Monica Lewinski's ex-boyfriend's wife for President." This is one of the little things that make the day brighter.