Chicago Daily Observer

Barack Obama made one shrewd move this week, along with one risky one.

In talking with reporters after the Supreme Court ruled that criminals who rape children may not be executed, Mr. Obama moved smartly to the political center. “I think that the rape of a small child, six or eight years old, is a heinous crime and if a state makes a decision that under narrow, limited, well-defined circumstances, the death penalty is at least potentially applicable, that does not violate our Constitution,” he said, siding with conservative dissenters in the case.

Mr. Obama was on shakier ground when he insisted that none of the burgeoning scandals in Illinois politics have anything to do with him.

His father was a stern, law-and-order man whose 21-year tenure as Chicago mayor will forever be associated with the 1968 Democratic convention protests over the Vietnam War.

But his son, current Mayor Richard M. Daley, has a much more conciliatory view about that history than you might expect. In an interview with the Financial Times, he declared off-limits attempts to make political capital out of links between two of his constituents – Barack Obama and Bill Ayers, a former leader of the Weather Underground radical group that bombed the U.S. Capitol and other targets in the 1970s. Mr. Obama has declared that he and Mr. Ayers have a “friendly” relationship and served together on a foundation board. Mr. Ayers has become controversial again because, in a newspaper interview that happened to be published on 9/11, he declared not only that he didn’t regret setting bombs but that he and his ... Read More...