If ANOTHER Obama Scandal were to fall in the Forest ... ?

Glenn Reynolds notices more "Chicago Way" shady dealings surrounding Barack Obama...and his increasingly controversial wife:

THE CHICAGO WAY: Obama earmark goes to hospital where his wife works, shortly after his wife gets a big raise. If he were a Republican, this would be a scandal.

UPDATE: But there was also an earmark for the "High Explosive Air Burst Technology Program."

Meanwhile, Rick Moran takes us on a trip down His Holiness' Memory Lane of Corruption--it's not pretty:

For a United States Senator, Barack Obama has been doing a lot of explaining about the company he has kept for the last 17 years or so.

Take some Joe Blow Alderman off the streets of Chicago and examine his friends and acquaintances and you’re bound to come up with a couple of unsavory characters that straddle the line of legality with regard to city contracts or their business dealings.

But Obama is not some regular Machine pol juicing the way for his ward heeling friends so they can grow fat and rich at taxpayer expense. He is a United States Senator and the Democratic Party’s frontrunner for President of the United States. One would think a higher standard might be in order regarding such a man’s associates.

One would think.

The constant refrain of Obama defenders is that he is being unfairly criticized because his problematic friends and acquaintances represent nothing more than “guilt by association.” Taken on a case by case basis, such a defense might ring true. But Obama’s problem is that he has so many friends and associates where “guilt by association” is the explanation given by his campaign that one begins to wonder when we can declare the candidate just plain “guilty” of using horrendous judgment and question whether his connection to some of these characters actually goes beyond innocence of wrongdoing.

Then Moran proceeds to go down the list, one by one. You will definitely want to check it out.

And then you will want to ponder this: when this man--who has been a Senator for a year and a half, and prior to that whose only real experience was as an Illinois State Senator...for two years--is arguably within striking distance of the most powerful office on Planet Earth. And when this is happening at what just might be the nation's most critical juncture of its 200+ year history; well you would think that our national media just might want to vet the guy, instead of acting like a screaming teeny-bopper watching the Beatles at Shea Stadium. There is a bit more at stake here than whether the crowd can hear "She Loves You".

The Obama candidacy has probably gotten less real scrutiny--with fewer big media journalists probing deeply into the many disturbing questions surrounding Obama--than anyone in recent memory. Yet paradoxically, it is difficult to remember an election where the stakes have ever been higher. A country on the precipice of economic disaster; a country at War with a wordwide enemy bent on its destruction.

Isn't it about time we demanded more from the very "free press" that is supposed to protect the public trust? , Shouldn't we know everything we need to know before setting foot into that voting booth, no matter where it leads?

Instead, big media's kid gloves treatment of Obama has been nothing short of disgraceful. Is it because he is half-black, and the big bad media is afraid to offend the sensibilities of Politically Correct academics and the like? Is it because Elvis gives a good canned speech (provided he doesn't have to answer any hard questions or think on his feet)? Or is it simply that the trade of journalism has become so decrepit, so corrupt, that even a corrupt politician hailing from a corrupt city, surrounded by corrupt friends looks good in comparison?

The peril that the nation and world are in at this crossroads in history ought to be enough cause any real journalist to take very seriously the stories that Glenn and Rick are pointing to above; or at least enough so that they would doggedly follow each lead to wherever it might go--before a candidate that no one seems to want to ask any questions about gets his hands on the most powerful office in the world.

Now of course, getting the story is only half of the equation; the other half is actually reporting the story to the public. In this area, Obama's own home-town newspapers seem to think his record has some serious enough questions to warrant intense scruitiny. But among the National media, finding anyone with the curiosity of the local Chicago reporters seems to be the exception rather than the rule. And this fact is just as disturbing as are the highly questionable associations of a "Messianic" candidate that no one seems to want to vet properly.

I'd say this election was just a teeny bit more important than that. But it does give one pause: is the blogosphere going to have to do all of the heavy lifting for this, the most important election in our lifetimes?

Probably so. And that, my friends is the real tragedy here.

UPDATE: Wretcherd adds yet another disturbing twist, which speaks volumes about the character of both Obama and Hillary:

When Paul Krugman complained that the bitter internecine conflict between Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton meant that "a large part of the progressive movement seems to have lost its sanity" he must have meant Crazy Like a Fox. It would be more accurate to say that progressive politics has now come to resemble extremist politics. Consider the tactic of plausible deniability.

Plausible deniability refers to informal arrangement through which a person may deny any connection to a disreputable activity he actually orders. The two ends to this clever arrangement are the protected principal and the secret agent acting on the mastermind's behalf. When Geraldine Ferraro said that "if Obama was a white man, he would not be in this position" only to resign after Hillary Clinton expressed her high-minded indignation, were the two acts unrelated?

Or consider how hijackers and hostages takers get the authorities' attentions by demonstrating their seriousness.

The principle followed by kidnappers in Baghdad who sent five severed fingers belonging to "four Americans and an Austrian taken hostage more than a year ago in Iraq" was that if you want to be taken seriously you have to demonstrate how far you are willing to go in order to get what you want. And although neither Barack Obama nor Hillary Clinton have sent anyone actual severed fingers yet, both have amply shown their astonished supporters that they are willing to ignite race war, tear the Party apart or engage in political cannibalism to serve their own individual ambitions. What's really awesome about Hillary and Barack is not their resumes but the lengths to which they are willing to go.

Plausible deniability. Severed political fingers. These tactics are not a demented application of rational rules but the rational application of the demented rules of left-wing politics. The problem with the axiom "by any means necessary" is that it means "by any means necessary". Neither Hillary nor Barack have lost their sanity. But the rules themselves have been taken to their own inevitable conclusions.