Permit me to point out that for all that Abraham Lincoln was a slippery politician (read Doris Kearns on how he managed his cabinet), a lawyerly lawyer (the famous Cooper Union speech which put him on the national map was mostly a legal argument), and that he famously flip-flopped (i. e. changed his mind as circumstances changed, e. g. he promulgated the Emancipation Proclamation as a war move -- with a beady eye on British public opinion --- after having long disavowed any intention to ban slavery), he was probably the greatest rhetorician ever elected to high office in this country. And what he said has echoed throughout our the subsequent history.

This is not to say that Obama is another Lincoln (I hope fervently that the times are not such that we will need one, although I fear that may become true all too soon) but that being a master of the spoken word was once considered to be an asset in public life (cf. the career of Winston Churchill). The Gettysburg speech --- which as Garry Wills said, redefined the meaning of the American experiment --- was considered a flop at first (even by Lincoln himself). So first evaluations don't mean much.

Only the by the moral midgets at NRO and the ilk of Michelle Malkin, whose contempt for ordinary people bleeds through every faux-populist breath they utter, could pretend to claim that Obama's gift of speech is a detriment. They must be afraid, very afraid. And they should be, because a very large chicken is coming to roost, and that baby will not be laying eggs on their heads.

And why not the bicycle riders too? And the aliens from Alpha Centauri...if you missed that, you should have your tinfoil hat checked.

And

@bgrasso

If I recall rightly (and I was a functioning adult at the time) when it came to trial it was revealed that many of the most "militant" --- i.e. enthusiastic about violence --- agitators were actually police (FBI, Army Intellgence) agents acting as provacateurs. Incidentally, this was a tactic if not pioneered then brought to extremes by the Czarist secret police before the Russian Revolution --- at one point the second highest leader of the Bolshevik party was revealed as such, and it is possible that Stalin himself was a paid police informer. So let's not be so quick to pin responsibility...in that world, little is quite as it seems and some things will never be known for certain.

Wasn't there a little thing called an impeachment that that took up some of his time and energy during the period of which the trolls speak? A witch-hunt -- well-financed by the same sterling characters that gave us the Swift-Boat smears --- looking for a cause that finally caught something not so savory but very little compared to say, yellow-cake, Valerie Plame, Ahmed Chalabi, etc. (Yes, BJC lied, but I guess his stance wasn't wide enough.)

And what was GWB doing when the report of a serious threat was brought to his wavering attention? "OK, you've covered your ass" and went on clearing brush.

Very nice piece. Mr. Steinberg is a real writer.

No surprise here that the loudest of the pious drink the hardest. (they've never read Jesus on prayer, as in Matthew).

To the "saved", "accepting Jesus as a personal savior" is like a get-out-of-hell-free card. No matter what you do, you are forgiven in advance. All you have to do is pray and send along those checks to the tele-evangelist -- mega-church --- faith-healer --- false-prophet of your current choice, until said prophet gets caught diddling his secretary or congregant, snorting coke, or meeting cheap prostitutes in seedy motels. And he gets forgiven too, so I gather. Anyway, with the End-Times fast approaching, who cares what anybody does, unless they are Democrats and/or atheists?

I've just read Susie Bright's blog...and a lively read it is.

I'm curious about the position on contraception taken by Feminists for Life and Palin herself. I've heard all sorts of statements about this from many sources, but nothing adds up. The FFL website doesn't seem to mention it at all, and the Wikipedia article claims that the organization has no stand on the issue. Of course this doesn't make it so. (In a saner world, contraception would seem to be one of the best ways of reducing abortion, but this is not that world.)

The FFL position, whatever it is, and Palin's may not be the same either. Can someone who has the investigative chops dig this out...public statements by Sister Sarah (remember the Clint Eastwood movie?) or any FFl officer, or something documented? And whatever the result is, can they make it public. There are enough real issues with Cheney-in-drag to risk a right-hack "gotcha" because someone makes a mistaken claim.