January 2008

Zorn on Obama/Rezko

ArchPundit January 31, 2008 10 Comments

Eric points out that a big part of the problem of the Rezko-Obama story is self-inflicted.

Rezko’s looming trial date (it’s next month) was bound to exhume any part of the story that had died. The national media was inevitably going to want to take a crack at the tale that places Obama squarely in the skeezy milieu of Illinois politics.

And if he became a top contender, his rivals were bound to look for ways to play the Rezko card and throw him off for at least a few news cycles.

Spring of last year would have been the time for Obama and his advisers to write “The Audacity of Tony,” a meticulous, utterly honest, month-by-month, day-by-day account of all his dealings with Rezko since 1990.

Then to scrub all his political accounts of any donations somehow attributable to Rezko (instead of doing this by conspicuous degrees).

And, finally, to sit with interested reporters until he’d addressed every last question they might still have about the legal work he did for non-profits who worked with Rezko and the granular details of the real estate deal.

His failure to have done this for 15 months doesn’t speak to a guilty conscience so much as it speaks to dubious crisis-management skills.

The real questions left are less to do with the house and more to do with the relationship.  In fact, the house seems somewhat settled by most who have looked into it, but the extent of Rezko’s fundraising is stuck in the fog of campaign finance reports.     As it stands now, everytime anyone with a bit of connection to Rezko surfaces Obama has to account for that person and it’s a never ending cycle.

Those Great Folks at Illinois NOW

ArchPundit January 31, 2008 2 Comments

Grabenhofer shows up at…Taylor Marsh’s

I thought I’d take a moment to try to add some clarity to the anti-choice Present votes in IL.

Lorna Brett was president of CNOW from 1996-1998. She was not president at the time we were lobbying on these bills. Five of those votes occurred in the 92nd General Assembly session in 2001. NOW records indicate that she hasn’t been a member since 1999. She was not there when we were lobbying against these bills. She is using her very old affiliation with NOW to try to validate her criticism of Hillary Clinton.

Voting Present on those bills was a strategy that Illinois NOW did not support. We made it clear at the time that we disagreed with the strategy. We wanted legislators to take a stand against the awful anti-choice bills being put forth. Voting Present doesn’t provide a platform from which to show leadership and say with conviction that we support a woman’s right to choose and these bills are unacceptable.

The Present strategy was devised to give political cover to legislators in conservative districts. Barack Obama did not represent a conservative district; he could have voted No with very little negative consequence in his district.

– Bonnie Grabenhofer
IL NOW State President

So we have Bonnie Grabenhofer of Illinois NOW against

Illinois Planned Parenthood
NARAL
Chicago NOW
Personal PACPerhaps someone could ask why Illinois NOW endorsed Lisa Madigan when she had also voted present on some of the bills. To further make the point NARAL hasn’t endorsed and Chicago NOW has endorsed Clinton.
Illinois NOW backed  Blair Hull over Obama in 2004 even after the domestic violence accusation. Given it wasn’t clear that Hull had a pattern I’m not sure that was so ridiculous, but it’s hard to understand how forgiving Illinois NOW is to Lisa Madigan and Blair Hull, but not Obama.

Then again, the site where the letter is posted seems to think they have the Zapruder film of the snub.