"No, what I mean is to examine closely Obama's current proposals for tax increases, spending and judicial appointments. His plan to abandon the field in Iraq. His history of legislative votes in Springfield, IL and in Washington."

You said to start with Obama. You did not say that we should focus only on Obama. In order to have a substantive debate, you need to look at all the candidates. Since I am from Illinois, I have become very familiar with Obama over the past four years.

I think that L.W.M. already did a very good job addressing your topics, but since your note was addressed to me, I fell that I should put in my two cents.

Tax Increases and Spending: McCain can say that he is going to continue the Bush tax cuts, but when actually faced with a $9 trillion (or more) budget defecit, I think that McCain will be forced to pull a G.H.W. Bush and allow taxes to go up, most likely by letting the GWB tax cuts expire, as L.W.M. discussed. I will grant you that I am not enthusiastic about the "tax increases" of Obama or Clinton because they are talking about using the increased revenue to fund new federal programs or to create new programs instead of using the money to pay down the federal defecit. I have not heard any of the candidates explain how they will significantly decrease the debt while paying for their pet projects, be they the Iraq occupation (McCain) or universal health care (Obama and Clinton). If you have some information on that, please share. Frankly, I think that there needs to be a complete re-examination and overhaul of what functions the federal government should be carrying out. Again, however, I have not heard anything like that from the remaining candidates. As Glenn has ably pointed out in numerous previous posts, the actual topics up for debate in a presidential election are fairly well constrained by shared assumptions by candidates from both parties.

Judicial Appointments: Unfortunately, you do not state what your concerns are regarding Obama's potential judicial appointments. I presume your concerns relate at least in part to abortion. My concerns (and judging by the concerns of many other posters here) relate to the Bill of Rights, specifically the fourth amendment. My hope is that Obama or Clinton would first and foremost appoint judges who have a healthy respect for the Bill of Rights and who actively enforce the rights of each of us to be free from unreasonable searches and seizures. I have not heard much from either Obama or Clinton on this issue, but I have also not yet actively sought out that information. I believe that I heard McCain mention somewhere that his appointments to the Supreme Court would be in the mold of Alito or Roberts, thus buying into the Federalist Society claptrap regarding "strict construction" or "original intent." This concerns me because Alito, Roberts, Scalia and Thomas appear to have bought wholeheartedly into the Unitary Executive theory, which would seem to go against both the strict construction of the Constitution and the original intent of the drafters of the Constitution that the government be placed in three co-equal branches of government.

Iraq: You say that Obama plans to abandon the field in Iraq. John McCain says that he is willing to stay in Iraq for another 100 years, if necessary. Not as big a commitment for him as for others, since he will probably be dead in twenty years, at the most. To my mind, the case has been convincingly made that Saddam Hussein had nothing to do with 9/11 and had no WMDs with which to threaten us or any of our allies in the Middle East. Therefore, the entire basis for the was is a crock. It is costing us too much and streching us too far to keep over 100,000 troops in Iraq until some indefinite time when things become more stable. The next president will face an awful choice on how to proceed in Iraq; that choice is the fault of GWB, and he will have to answer to his God for that. I think the best thing that can happen is for the US to leave completely and work with the other countries in the region (and anyone else in the world who wants to contribute) to try to arrange for a peaceful resolution. It could be that Iran will step in right away and prevent the chaos about which many have been speculating, and that eventually Iran and Iraq will merge into one country. No less a sage than Tom Clancy wrote about such a scenario in one of his novels upon the assasination of a Saddam Hussein-like character. To bad GWB did not read that book prior to invading Iraq. In sum, if the US wants to be able to respond militarily to actual threats to our national security, then we need to leave Iraq ASAP.

Legislative Votes: Yes, we certainly should look at the voting records of all three candidates. However, we should also look at the legislation that each has introduced during their careers. For Obama, I would recommend you read the various reports from the Chicago Tribune. You will find that Obama has a very good reputation with both Republicans and Democrats in the Illinois General Assembly. Are there any votes in particular of Obama's that concern you? I myself am concerned about McCain's vote against the recent bill outlawing certain interrogation techniques as torture. He says that he voted against it based on his belief that these techniques are already illegal, but given Abu Grab and Gitmo he must know that the Bush Administration considers all techniques fair game.

I look forward to your response.