During the Saddleback interview with pastor Rick Warren Barack Obama quoted the passage from Matthew where Jesus says that "whatsoever you do for the least of these my brothers you do for me" in order to illustrate his view of social justice.
Unfortunately, while Democrats everywhere check their cell phones to see if the glorious text message has arrived heralding the senator's choice for running mate, and the television networks are giddy with speculation about who it will be, few among them seem to be able to find the time to ask the question how Obama has applied this verse in his own life. How does a millionaire who lectures us on alleviating the suffering of our brothers allow his own brother to live on a dollar a week? How does a man who expresses compassion for the least of us, the weakest, the most vulnerable, vote against a bill that would protect children born alive after a failed abortion? These questions don't seem to have occurred to those in the media whose hearts pound with excitement over The Text Message, but they have occurred to Andy McCarthy at National Review Online.
McCarthy lays out Obama's history of protecting the weakest among us in Illinois:
In the Illinois senate, he opposed Born-Alive [the bill that would have made it illegal to allow infants to perish from inanition] tooth and nail.
The shocking extremism of that position - giving infanticide the nod over compassion and life - is profoundly embarrassing to him now. So he has lied about what he did. He has offered various conflicting explanations, ranging from the assertion that he didn't oppose the anti-infanticide legislation (he did), to the assertion that he opposed it because it didn't contain a superfluous clause reaffirming abortion rights (it did), to the assertion that it was unnecessary because Illinois law already protected the children of botched abortions (it didn't - and even if it arguably did, why oppose a clarification?).
What Obama hasn't offered, however, is the rationalization he vigorously posited during the 2002 Illinois senate debate. When it got down to brass tacks, Barack Obama argued that protecting abortion doctors from legal liability was more important than protecting living infants from death.
McCarthy adduces into evidence the transcripts of the senate debate and concludes that Obama's rationalization then and now is indefensible morally and logically. Read the entire piece at the link, and ask yourself whether the media would be so disinterested had John McCain voted, say, to allow torture at Guantanamo.
Senator Obama offers hope and change for the weakest among our brothers but he offers little hope or change for his brother George languishing in a hovel in a Nairobi slum, and he offers no hope or change for children dying a slow death of thirst and hunger in hospital closets. Given the chance to choose to protect the lives of poor infants or the convenience of wealthy doctors he chose to sacrifice the children so that the doctors wouldn't have to miss their tee times and wouldn't have to be pestered by lawyers.
I suppose for his devoted followers that's the sort of change you can believe in.
RLC