Andanh.com

Pssst. Have you heard? I heard that Barack Obama once said there has to be "an end" to the Israeli "occupation" of the West Bank "that began in 1967." Yikes!

Pssst. I heard that Obama said that not only must Israel be secure, but that any peace agreement "must establish Palestine as a homeland for the Palestinian people." Yikes!

Pssst. I heard that Obama once said "the establishment of the state of Palestine is long overdue. The Palestinian people deserve it." Yikes! Yikes! Yikes!

Those are the kind of rumors one can hear circulating among American Jews these days about whether Obama harbors secret pro-Palestinian leanings. I confess: All of the above phrases are accurate. I did not make them up.

There's just one thing: None was uttered by Obama. They are all direct quotes from President George W. Bush in the past two years.

Get back, get back. Get back to where you once belonged.--The Beatles

The Republican Party is in distress. Doomsayers are everywhere. Republican National Committee chairman Robert M. Duncan complains that conservative, pro-life, pro-gun Democrats won three special elections by stealing GOP issues.

"We can't let the Democrats take our issues," Duncan told the New York Times. "We can't let them pretend to be conservatives and co-opt the middle and win these elections. We have to get the attention of our incumbents and candidates and make sure they understand this."

Democrats didn't steal your issues, sir. You abandoned them. Your party discarded them. Democrats simply engaged in Dumpster harvesting.

Unable to win by labeling Democrats "liberals," Republicans don't know what to do. Labeling worked before. Why isn't it working now? The answer is that it only works in combination with superior ideas, which you then contrast to those of your "liberal" opponent. You can't do that credibly unless you have embraced those ideas and sought to implement them. Republicans traded in their ideas in favor of gaining and keeping power as their sole objective. The party wants credit for giving lip service to its abandoned ideology while it practices cave-in politics.

Since taking office, I have made serious efforts to identify underserved areas in our state and the individuals or groups that need additional assistance or protection. I have focused on Internet crime and consumer protection, because there was a lack of resources and focus being directed to those areas.

Working with the Abuse, Neglect and Exploitation Unit in my office, I have identified other Kansans who often are underserved: senior citizens. Seniors often become the victims of scams or other abuse.

During the unit's first year, we made a disturbing discovery. Financial exploitation or fiduciary abuse of the elderly is not always viewed as a crime. In fact, many people do not realize it is against the law.

My office is working on several fronts to make sure our loved ones are protected and to guarantee these crimes are taken seriously.

Of the 1,785 reports of abuse, neglect and exploitation received by our unit last year, 80 percent were child abuse and 20 percent were adult abuse. Surprisingly, almost half of all reported adult abuse involved financial exploitation.

Race has been in the room since the beginning. It was there in Philadelphia, where the Founding Fathers debated slavery in the Declaration of Independence and Constitution. It is there now, two centuries later, still playing a central, if sometimes hidden, role in politics.

But in the election of 2008, the first in which a black person stands a reasonable chance of becoming president, the role of race will be far from hidden.

In ways large and small, the weeks and months ahead will test just how far we've come as a nation.

For some individuals, the answer will be not very far at all. In Marietta, Ga., for example, a tavern owner has been proudly selling T-shirts depicting Barack Obama as a monkey holding a banana. Naturally, the owner professes to see nothing racist in the image.

Likewise, a few months ago a minor Republican Party official in Georgia sent a mass e-mail to fellow party members and others featuring digitally altered images of top Democrats.

George Washington, the father of the nation, warned us that this day would come. No one questioned Washington's motives.

Everything Washington did in his public life, he did for the good of the country.

He gave up a comfortable life to lead 13 British colonies to victory over eight years of hardship during the American Revolution.

Washington could have become king of the new nation. He turned it down. He could have been appointed president for life. He turned that down, too.

But Washington did have a few suggestions at the end of his presidency that he passed along in his Farewell Address, published in newspapers on Sept. 19, 1796. Chief among them was warning against political parties and the divisive partisanship that he felt inevitably accompanies party politics.