Although the MSM, with the exception of CNN, has been notoriously silent about the following, if Palin goes forward attacking Obama on the Wright issue, she leaves herself vulnerable to a similar, possibly even more damning attack.

On August 17, 2008 Sarah Palin attended an event at the Wasilla Bible Church where she is a member. Just take a look at these two characterizations of the exact same event; the first from CNN.

“Palin now attends the Wasilla Bible Church. She was there on August 17, just days before entering the national spotlight. David Brickner, the founder of Jews for Jesus, was a speaker. He told congregants that terrorist attacks on Israel were God's "judgment" of Jews who haven't embraced Christianity. Brickner said, "Judgment is very real and we see it played out on the pages of the newspapers and on the television. When a Palestinian from East Jerusalem took a bulldozer and went plowing through a score of cars, killing numbers of people. Judgment -- you can't miss it."” CNN, Sept. 9, 2008 http://edition.cnn.com/2008/POLITICS/09/08/palin.pastor/index.html

Now take a look at the NYT’s coverage of the same event.

“Last month, a leader in the group Jews for Jesus, which advocates converting Jews to Christianity — but which has been accused by some Jews of anti-Semitism — spoke at the church. The speaker, David Brickner, spoke enthusiastically about the “miracle” of conversions in Israel by the group’s missionaries.” NYT, Sept. 6, 2008 http://www.nytimes.com/2008/09/06/us/politics/06church.html?_r=2&pagewanted=2&oref=slogin&oref=slogin

It's curious that the NYT leaves out: 1) the fact that Palin was in attendance, 2) that the event happened just days before she was to be announced as the V.P. candidate or 3) the Brickner rant, referring simply to "some jews" who accuse him of anti-Semitism. The one time they choose to quote him, it's to refer to the "miracle" of conversions about which he spoke enthusiastically.

What's more, when asked in a televised interview by CNN if he concurred with Brickner's assessment, Palin's pastor nodded solemnly and said "yes," another fact not in evidence in the NYT coverage.

Palin should tread very carefully here. Although it's true that she has had a free ride up until now, by taking the role of attack dog on the Wright issue, the MSM cannot continue to ignore her own religious . . . peculiarities? Those of us who've bothered to dig a little deeper on Palin know the treasure trove of material that has yet to make its way into the MSM.

I’m struck by the tenor of this article. The entire focus is on whether a costly and cumbersome prosecution would bear fruit in terms of convictions of the various players within the Bush administration who, in spite of all advice and international norms to the contrary, engaged in the worst kind of tortures in direct contravention of the Geneva Convention. I’m also struck by the fact that neither the Geneva Convention nor the Supreme Court decision Hamdan v. Rumsfeld was mentioned in this article.

Basically, what one comes away with from Benjamin’s assessment is that, because of the difficulty imposed by the passage of amendments to the War Crimes Act in 2006 – amendments that were pushed by the administration as a direct result of the Supreme Court’s Hamdan decision to uphold and invoke Article 3 of the Geneva Convention -- the option to prosecute the crimes committed by the Bush administration would possibly be viewed, as Benjamin characterizes, as “wrongheaded, partisan retribution.”

He further goes on to quote Kermit Roosevelt of the University of Pennsylvania School of Law who opines that perhaps, for the sake of “healing the country and moving forward,” a blanket pardon of the thousands of actors involved “followed by something like a truth and reconciliation commission . . . might not be such a bad outcome.”

I guess I have a very different definition of “healing the country.” It seems to me that, not content simply to continue the more than 100 year tradition of undermining democracies all over the world, the United States has now set its sights on itself, subverting and auto-cannibalizing its own democratic principles to the point of burlesque.

The decision is this: To prosecute such heinous acts and uphold democratic principles (and thereby truly take our medicine), or take the expedient route of treating the rule of law like an “etch-a-sketch” and simply turn it on its head and shake it till there’s nothing left but a blank slate.

I have no doubt what choice will be made. I also have no doubt that the actions employed by the Bush administration, actions that literally subvert our own democracy and international law, will continue to be the American modus operandi for many years to come.

The following line from this interview sent a chill up my spine:

"The solution that is going to get us back on track to be the majority party is the same solution that Ronald Reagan rode into power after losing in '76 and gaining elective office in 1980."

I wrote an article right after the vice-presidential debates that dealt with this very theme.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/kj-dwyer/a-shudder-of-recognition_b_131753.html

Basically, using this analogy, it seems clear to me that Palin will be the Republicans' candidate of choice. Already 64% of the their electorate want her to run in 2012 and she's cut right out of the Reagan mold.

Hopefully, we as a country will be smarter this next time around.