Here's an example of what I was pointing out yesterday (Obama's "Liar Charge Crumbles"); that is, that it was Barack Obama himself who ratcheted up the story of his gruesome votes against the Born Alive Infant's Protection Act by calling his pro-life opponents liars. In so doing, he was creating pressure on the MSM to cover a story they had been keeping a lid on.
In this case, Jeremy Manier of the Chicago Tribune tries to help Obama out of the mess (it's not that big a deal, it doesn't really hurt his candidacy, etc.) and yet even Manier's story admits that the evidence proves the pro-lifers were right on.
...So what's the controversy? Ultimately, it may lie in the tug-of-war that is Illinois politics and some conflicting statements Obama has given over the years about why he opposed various versions of the bill...
Gotcha, Obama? Abortion opponents are highlighting a specific Obama vote in 2003, in which he came out against a "born alive" bill that was before the Illinois legislature.
Obama has said he opposed that bill because it lacked assurances that it would not affect women's existing rights to choose abortion. He said he would have supported the 2002 federal version of the bill because it had a provision saying it would not "expand or contract" the rights of fetuses prior to their birth.
That language was absent from most versions of the "born alive" legislation that Illinois lawmakers considered and rejected between 2001 and 2005. But last week, the National Right to Life Committee released newly uncovered records showing that in one committee meeting in 2003, Obama voted against a version of the bill that did contain the key language.
The committee said in a statement that the find "[sheds] new light on Senator Obama's four-year effort to cover up his real record of refusing to protect live-born survivors of abortion."
In an interview Saturday with David Brody of the Christian Broadcasting Network, Obama said he opposed the Illinois measure because the federal version "was not the bill that was presented at the state level."
In fact, records show that at one point the two bills were nearly identical in wording...
