Patrick Hynes is blogging the tour.  Read all of the posts, starting with this one.

Military families are different from civilian families, and multi-generation military families are extraordinary in ways difficult to comprehend.  I married into one, and as a civilian still find myself marveling at the sacrifices involved.  My wife's borther, George Philip, is an Annapolis grad and retired after a 20 year career as a Marine Corps officer.  Her dad, Col. Wilbur Helmer, retired as a colonel in the USMC,and fought in some of the toughest battles of the Pacific War.  Her grandfather and great grandfather were Annapolis men and admirals.  Her uncle, then-Ensign Joseph Taussig, left his leg on the Nevada.  Her mom's first husband, Commander George Philip, went down with his ship at Okinawa.  His cousin, John Waldron, led a famed torpedo bomber attack at the Battle of Midway.

All of which is to say that they are different from you and I, and that difference should be honored by civilians again and again.

Gaywired.com opens another line of attack against Barack Obama:

Just as the dust surrounding Sen. Barack Obama’s long-term association with controversial minister Rev. Jeremiah Wright has begun to settle comes new reports of the democratic presidential hopeful’s connection to another racially divisive public figure—the stridently homophobic Rev. James T. Meeks, an Illinois state senator who also serves as the pastor of Chicago’s 22,000 member strong Salem Baptist Church.

Described in a 2004 Chicago Sun Times article as someone Barack Obama regularly seeks out for “spiritual counsel”, James Meeks, who will serve as an Obama delegate at the 2008 Democratic convention in Denver, is a long-time political ally to the democratic frontrunner.

When Obama ran for the U.S. Senate in 2003, he frequently campaigned at Salem Baptist Church while Rev. Meeks appeared in television ads supporting the Illinois senator’s campaign. Later, according to the same Chicago Sun Times article, on the night after he won the Democratic primary, Sen. Obama attended bible study at Meeks’ church ‘for prayer’ and ‘to say thank you.’

Since that time, not only has Meeks himself served on Obama’s exploratory committee for the presidency and been listed on the Obama's campaign website as one of the senator’s ‘influential black supporters’, but his church choir was called on to raise their voices in praise at a rally the night Obama announced his run for the White House back in 2007.

Interestingly, the Chicago Sun Times has also reported that both Meeks and Obama share a history of substantial campaign contributions from indicted real estate magnate Tony Rezko.

Read the whole thing, but GayWired.com is an adult-themed site.  Key conclusion in the article:

But the question remains: At what point must a candidate for the highest office in the United States be held accountable for the small coterie of individuals who make up his or her inner circle and potentially bear influence on his interpretation of the constitution? And at what point does the benefit of the doubt give way to guilt by association?

Moreover, how can a candidate cultivate a constituency like that of Rev. James Meek, essentially espousing a shared belief in their value system, become an effective and powerful advocate on behalf of issues like LGBT rights that run counter to fundamental agenda of that constituency without experiencing severe repercussions? The answer is he can’t.

Just as Hillary Clinton cannot cherry pick the successes and pitfalls from her husband’s administration that suit her campaign, neither can Barack Obama divorce himself from the implications surrounding the bedfellows he has made over the course of his relatively short political career.

Put even more plainly... Barack Obama can’t have it both ways, which increasingly seems to be his campaign’s modus operandi.

While it is altogether plausible that, in the spirit of bringing hope and unity, a civil rights leader might sit down with members of white supremacist groups to address racial differences, it is another thing entirely to propose that the same civil rights leader could count any of those white supremacists among his closest friends because he finds them to be inspirational people if, you know, you take that pesky race thing out of the equation.

Similarly, while potentially capable of co-existing peacefully in an environment of mutual respect, the homophobe and the LGBT rights advocate aren’t likely to be found cooing at or canoodling with one another in private because they share so many other common interests. Yet these are precisely the kinds of scenarios that Barack Obama asks the American people to accept on faith each and every time unsavory questions arise about the associates with whom he has chosen to surround himself. Ultimately, it is this porous type of reaction that may be Sen. Obama’s undoing. But, then again, perhaps not.  

Politico has posted the questionnaire that Barack Obama filled out --look at his handwritten notes-- before running for Illinois State Senate in 1995.

Obama was hard left then, has been hard left in the U.S. Senate, and if elected president, will be the hardest left president by far in our history.

The Politico.com story is here.  Note the last set of questions and answers:

Do you support state legislation to:

a.  ban the manufacture, sale and possession of handguns?  Yes.
b.  ban assault weapons?  Yes.
c.  mandatory waiting periods and background checks?  Yes.

That's what Barack Obama said this weekend.  Full quote:

Look, I got two daughters -- 9 years old and 6 years old.  I am going to teach them values and morals, but if they make a mistake, I don't want them punished with a baby.  I don't want them punished with an STD at age 16, so it doesn't make sense to not give them information.

Not the sort of answer that will win over Pennsylvania Catholics.  Calling pro-life Senator Bob Casey who endorsed Obama last week: Any comment Bob?

UPDATE: Ed Morrissey's take here.

From The Hotline's Blogometer:

3/31: Strange Bedfellows

The political blogosphere is a weird place these days. First, we have conservative blogger Hugh Hewitt (a John McCain supporter) and liberal blogger Jeralyn Merritt (a Hillary Clinton supporter) promoting the same Clinton press release about "[Barack] Obama's Record of Exaggerations & Misstatements." Next, we have conservative blogger Glenn Reynolds repeatedly linking to anti-Obama blog posts from the liberal blog TalkLeft. Finally, we have various conservative bloggers buzzing about a controversial anti-Obama ad that combines Jeremiah Wright's sermons with graphic images of the 9/11 attacks. The kicker? This ad was disseminated by a pro-Clinton diarist at the liberal blog MyDD.

It's highly unlikely that pro-Clinton bloggers and pro-McCain bloggers are coordinating their attacks on Obama. Still, this phenomenon has to be disconcerting for Obama's netroots supporters, which is probably why so many of them are calling on the uncommitted superdelegates to endorse Obama and end the race.

Of course the MSM is laying down on the Obama-Wright story, and the senator is hoping the Kithbridge.com saliency meter drops this week (and that Rezkorama.com doesn't start spinning with new posts mentioning his name.)

But Pete Wehner shows that there is much more digging to be done.  The fact is that Senator Obama was a member of Trinity for two decades.  About the theology of the the church there is zero appropriate inquiries, but its political advocacy --and there was a lot of political advocacy-- illuminates Senator Obama's core beliefs.  Wehner points to the weekly church bulletins, and he is right to do so.  In one from June 10, 2007, an article titled "Open Letter To Oprah" accuses Israel of developing a bomb that would kill only Arabs.  This sort of extreme anti-Israel rhetoric should be put before Senator Obama and he should be obliged to rebut it in detail. 

Finally, Professor Althouse weighs in on the Obama resume padding:

If your title was "lecturer" and you're applying for a job, you shouldn't say "I was a law professor." Even though it can be defended as not a lie, you're exaggerating and not being strictly scrupulous about the facts.

Read the whole thing.  Obama's imagination and his very selective memory is going to be a source of smiles over the next few months.

George Weigel provides a comprehensive preview of what Americans can expect to hear when Benedict XVI arrives in the U.S. on April 16.  His core prediction:

Far from playing Jeremiah against the Great Satan Bush, Benedict XVI is going to teach the world a lesson about moral reason as the “grammar” by which the world can have a conversation about the world’s future. There are truths built into the world and into us, he will remind Americans and the U.N.; thinking together about those truths is one way to change noise into conversation and incomprehension into dialogue.

The public sector is full of bright and extremely hard working people. Firefighters, police, teachers and public health professionals as well as child protection workers, land planners, park rangers etc --all do fine jobs and jobs that must be done.

That's the context for this story from the San Francisco Chronicle on soaring salaries among various city employees in San Francisco, Oakland and elsewhere.  Much of this is overtime pay, and I don't blame individuals for working long hours and getting paid to do so.

The trouble comes with the underlying staffing agreements that compel certain levels of staffing and high overtime rates.

This sort of salary structure isn't sustainable.  The pension agreements for public employees aren't sustainable.

But the political effectiveness of the public employee unions is such that there won't be a gradual reform.  A huge bankruptcy of a public entity followed by the scissoring of the union contracts is coming, and it isn't going to be a surprise.

Allahpundit has a superb round-up of links concerning the situation in Basra, pivoting off of Anthony Cordesman's analysis. 

Guy Benson writes on the Dems' inability to land a hit on the GOP nominee.

Remember Joe Isuzu?  Or Jon Lovtiz's "That's The Ticket" Pathological Liar?  Or Al Gore and inventing the internet/flying with the FEMA director/the cost of his dog's medicine?

Barack Obama is making a bid to join that first circle of exaggerators.  "It is a touching story -- but the key details are either untrue or grossly oversimplified," concludes the Washington Post in a review of one claim Senator Obama has made about how his father got to the U.S.

Then's there's the question of resume puffery.  The University of Chicago Law School has put out this statement about Senator Obama's past teaching at the school.

In fact, thanks to Hillary, we have a list of many of Senator Obama's, ah, improvisations with facts. I reproduce the March 25 memo from the campaign here in case you missed it: