Obama promoting homosexuality, report card reveals

Assessment outlines stark difference in leading candidates' positions

Democratic presidential candidate Sen. Barack Obama has a long and established record of promoting homosexuality in contrast to the presumptive GOP candidate, Sen. John McCain., according to a new report card issued by a pro-family organization in California. The report card, which has been posted online, was produced by the Campaign for Children and Families, which said it isn't taking a position on the political candidates but wanted people to see the "unrepudiated positions" of the candidates on issues including homosexual "marriage," teaching homosexuality to school children and adoption by homosexuals.

"Let the record show that John McCain and Barack Obama are polar opposites on partial-birth abortion, parental notification of abortion, marriage protection on the ballot, homosexual indoctrination of schoolchildren, gay adoptions, gun-owner rights, activist judges, and raising taxes," said Randy Thomasson, president of Campaign for Children and Families. "No one should base their vote on personality or mere feelings. Our carefully researched report card shows you exactly where Obama and McCain stand on issues of importance to voters, their families, and our nation's future."

Obama in June told a homosexual activist group he opposes the "divisive and discriminatory efforts" to install in the California constitution a definition of marriage limiting that status to one man and one woman, the report card says.

His wife, Michelle, told the Democratic National Commmittee's "Gay" and Lesbian Leadership Council, "Barack has made crystal clear his commitment to ensuring full equality for LGBT couples . that's why he opposes all divisive and discriminatory constitutuional amendments, whether it's a proposed amendment to the California and Florida constitutions or the U.S. Constitution."

McCain has said he supports California's marriage amendment proposal, which voters put on the November ballot. Obama also has supported teaching school children to think favorably about homosexuality, the report card said. During a Democratic presidential debate at Dartmouth last year, former Sen. John Edwards, responding to a question, said he would want children exposed to positive portrayals of homosexuality in the second grade. "You know, I feel very similar to John," Obama said. "That . you know, the fact is my nine-year-old and my six year olds, I think are already aware that there are same-sex couples. And my wife and I have already talked about it." Meanwhile, McCain voted against federal funding for schools that promote homosexuality to school children.

On a third issue, Obama opposes a ban on adoptions based solely on sexual orientation, according to his response to a questionnaire from the Human Rights Campaign. He said in a letter to the Family Equality Council "we have to extend equal treatment in our family and adoption laws" to LGBT families. McCain, who with his wife has an adopted daughter, said, "I don't believe in gay adoption."

The report card reveals additional opposite positions on allowing local governments to ban gun ownership, with Obama supporting a District of Columbia handgun ban that later was struck down by the U.S. Supreme Court. McCain has affirmed the 2nd Amendment "guarantees an individual right to keep and bear arms. And to argue anything else is to reject the clear meaning of our founding fathers."

Obama also has affirmed he would select judges because of their "heart" and "empathy" as well as their ability to have a "broader vision of what America should be." McCain has stated his desire for candidates with "a proven commitment to judicial restraint."

On taxes, the report card said Obama will raise them, while McCain "has pledged to veto any tax increase and says he supports making existing tax cuts permanent."

The two remaining assessments involve abortion, an issue that has enveloped the Obama campaign in recent days as reports have confirmed his statements as a state lawmaker appeared to express concern about the "burden" of offering medical assistance to a baby who survives an abortion. The report card said Obama has opposed government regulation of even partial-birth abortions, while McCain has sponsored a ban on the procedure he described as "odious." Obama also has opposed notifying parents before an abortion can be peformed on their minor daughters, while McCain co-sponsored legislation to prohibit taking minors across state lines to circumvent parental notification laws. "The American people have come together to say that partial-birth abortion offends our national conscience, that taxpayers should not be forced to pay for elective abortions, and that states should be allowed to enact parental notification laws," McCain told the National Right to Life convention in July.

The CCF, a leading California-based organization representing children and families in California and America, says it stands for marriage and family, parental rights, the sanctity of human life, religious freedom and back-to-basics education. The group said it provided the report to document candidates' positions "that matter to families."

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Obama's "lost" Thesis

Barack Obama wrote his senior thesis at Columbia University on Soviet nuclear disarmament. Inquiring people have sought a copy of this thesis to no avail. Columbia says it cannot be found; Barack Obama says he lost it.

How likely is that a person so impressed with himself that he writes an autobiography just a few years later would "lose" his senior thesis? After all, a Presidential Library must be filled. And as Jim Geraghty at National Review and others have noted there are a lot of blank spots -- missing records and the like -- having to do with Barack Obama.

But one question remains. If Barack Obama devoted a year researching and writing about Soviet nuclear disarmament, how could he fail to get the facts down about the Kennedy-Khrushchev meeting in Vienna?

Maybe there are good reasons he wants to bury this thesis. Did he get it wrong there,too? Did he just coast at Columbia on his interesting background and personal charm?

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Obama 'would drag US into depression'

JOHN McCain's White House campaign today dragged rival Barack Obama back to the domestic fray, scorning his economic plan as a recipe to plunge the US into a 1930s-style depression. Top aides to the Republican senator vied to steal the thunder from an illustrious panel of economic advisers being convened by Senator Obama - and recapture some of the headlines after the Democrat's much-acclaimed foreign tour. But with fewer than 100 days now to go before the November 4 election, Senator Obama had opened up a nine-point lead in the latest Gallup poll released yesterday - 49 per cent to 40 for Senator McCain.

Carly Fiorina, a key lieutenant to Senator McCain and former boss of computing giant Hewlett-Packard, said a recession triggered by the 1929 Wall Street crash became a depression through the imposition of higher taxes and trade barriers. "The reality is when an economy is slowing, if you raise taxes and you curtail free trade through isolationist policies, bad economic times become worse," she said. "We know this from history... and that is precisely the proposal that Barack Obama is making," Ms Fiorina said. "And that is why I say as a businesswoman, I hope Barack Obama continues to consult with experts because I think his understanding of the economy leaves a great deal to be desired."

Senator Obama, basking in the afterglow of his triumphant tour of Afghanistan, Iraq, the Middle East and Europe, was to pivot from that security-themed week to addressing the gathering cloud engulfing the world's largest economy. His high-powered panel of advisers meeting later today includes former treasury secretary Robert Rubin, ex-Federal Reserve chairman Paul Volcker, billionaire investor Warren Buffett and Google chairman Eric Schmidt. Campaign aides said two former top members of President George W. Bush's administration - treasury secretary Paul O'Neill and Securities and Exchange commissioner William Donaldson - were joining the Obama panel. "Participants in today's meeting will discuss how to restore balance to the economy so that entrepreneurship is encouraged and hard work is rewarded," a campaign memo said.

The Democratic senator from Illinois has laid out proposals for middle-class tax cuts while levying higher taxes on the rich, new federal stimulus spending, and additional measures to prop up the stricken housing market. The Obama campaign accuses Senator McCain of fuzzy arithmetic on his own vows to cut taxes across the board, balance the budget and sustain a hefty US military presence in Iraq. And it has ridiculed Senator McCain's admission in December that he knows more about national security than about the economy.

The Arizona senator suffered a setback just over a week ago with the resignation of his own top economic adviser, Phil Gramm, after the former senator had called the US a "nation of whiners" over the economy. "What is driving people all across the country right now are worries and concerns about inability to pay the gas bill, inability to buy food because prices have gone up so high," Senator Obama told NBC television. "We've got to fundamentally shift how we approach economic policy," he said, with polls giving Senator Obama a commanding lead over Senator McCain on the bread-and-butter issues that are now the top concern to US voters.

Despite Senator McCain's calls for a hands-off approach from the government, there is a new appetite for intervention in Congress as voters reel from job losses, home seizures and rocketing fuel prices. The Senate on Sunday approved a housing rescue plan designed to help thousands of homeowners avert foreclosure and bolster mortgage finance giants at risk of collapse. Mr Bush is set to sign the bill into law this week.

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Biden Backs US Oil & Islands to Russians

Senator Joseph Biden has supported for many years the giveaway of 8 American Alaskan islands and their oil-rich seabeds to the Russians. Senator Biden on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee favorably received the proposed giveaway maritime boundary treaty that the State Department had secretly negotiated with Russia. The maritime boundary puts eight American islands and their 200-mile exclusive economic zones on the Russian side: Wrangell, Herald, Bennett, Jeannette, and Henrietta Islands in the Arctic Ocean, and Copper Island, Sea Lion Rock, and Sea Otter Rock in the Bering Sea. Congress, the State of Alaska, and the American public were excluded from the negotiations.

Senator Ted Steven of Alaska presented the proposed giveaway treaty at the Senate hearing. Biden chaired the hearing and voted for it. He noted the giveaway feature in his question, ''can you think of any circumstance anywhere in the world where there is a maritime boundary where one of the countries that it is a party to that boundary has sovereign jurisdiction over a piece of land that is on the other side of the maritime boundary?' (Senate Hearing 102-190, 'U.S. Soviet Maritime Boundary Agreement', Treaty Document 101-22, p. 42., June 13, 1991)

Carl Olson, Chairman of State Department Watch, testified at the hearing, presenting numerous resolutions of opposition from the Alaska Legislature, the California Legislature, and many national organizations. 'Fortunately the giveaway treaty has not been put into force, but the underlying State Department giveaway maritime boundary agreement with Russia is being enforced. It could be reversed by a stroke of the pen of the President. Congress should be investigating.' Olson stated.

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Biden' convenient "illness"

Not a man but a mouth. And I CAN talk. I DID join the army in the Vietnam era and I DID volunteer for service in Vietnam -- JR

Democratic vice presidential nominee Joe Biden received five student draft deferments during the Vietnam War, the same number of deferments received by Vice President Dick Cheney, and later was disqualified from service because of asthma as a teenager.

Officials with Democratic presidential nominee Barack Obama's campaign released Biden's Selective Service records at the request of The Associated Press. Less detailed records were available from a National Archives facility in Philadelphia.

According to the documents, Biden, 65, received several deferments while he was an undergraduate at the University of Delaware and later as a law student at Syracuse University. A month after undergoing a physical exam in April 1968, Biden received a Selective Service classification of 1-Y, meaning he was available for service only in the event of national emergency. "As a result of a physical exam on April 5, 1968, Joe Biden was classified 1-Y and disqualified from service because of asthma as a teenager," said David Wade, a campaign spokesman.

In "Promises to Keep," a memoir that was published last year and became an instant best-seller after he was tapped as Obama's running mate, Biden never mentions his asthma, recounting an active childhood, work as a lifeguard and football exploits in high school. The Obama campaign pointed to media interviews from 1987, when Biden was making his first bid for the presidency, that mention his asthma.

Military service and questions about which presidential ticket would be stronger on national security are intertwined in the presidential race. Republican John McCain, a former Navy pilot who spent 5 years in a Vietnamese prison, has argued that he has stronger background to be commander in chief. Democratic nominee Barack Obama counters that McCain would continue a wrong-headed foreign policy from the Bush administration.

Biden has had extensive experience with national security issues in the Senate. McCain's running mate, Sarah Palin, has been Alaska governor for two years and before that was a small-town mayor.

Biden's five student deferments equal the number given to Vice President Dick Cheney, who has been quoted as saying he had "other priorities" than military service in the 1960s.

According to records AP obtained from the National Archives, Biden registered Feb. 15, 1961, with the Selective Service, when he was an 18-year-old student at Archmere Academy in Wilmington. The archives documents do not include any information about his classification or physical exam.

Documents provided by the Obama campaign indicate Biden received a classification questionnaire in October 1963, when he was enrolled at the University of Delaware, and received his first 2-S student deferment a month later. Additional deferments were granted in roughly 12-month intervals, the last coming in January 1968, shortly before he graduated from law school at Syracuse University.

Then in April 1968, when he was 25, Biden was disqualified from service due to asthma.

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