Miss Ann is talking

That means that YOU are listening!

This week, Barack Obama's challenge is to select a running mate who's young, hip, and whose accomplishments in life don't overshadow Obama's. Allow me to suggest Kevin Federline.

The only thing we can be sure of is that Obama will choose someone who is the polar opposite of all his advisers until now. In other words, it will be a very, very white male who was probably proud of his country even before being chosen as Obama's running mate.

Obama's got a lot of ground to make up following that performance last weekend at the Saddleback presidential forum with pastor Rick Warren.

After seeing Obama defend infanticide with the glib excuse that the question of when life begins is above his "pay-grade," Rev. Jeremiah Wright announced that although he's known Obama for 30 years, he only recently became aware of how extreme the senator's viewpoints were. Wright, after all, has his reputation to consider.

Network heads responded by dashing off an urgent memo: During the main presidential debates this fall, ask NO questions about abortion, ethics or evil! Morality isn't the Democrats' forte.

Obama's defenders spin his abominable performance in the Saddleback forum by saying he's just too smart to give a straight answer. As Rick Warren charitably described Obama's debate performance: "He likes to nuance things ... He's a constitutional attorney." The constitutional lawyer "does nuance," as Bill Maher said on "Larry King Live," "and you saw how well that goes over with the Rick Warren people."

If that's Obama's excuse, he ought to know a few basics about the Constitution.

Did the big constitutional lawyer whose "nuance" is too sophisticated for Rick Warren's audience see the letter his wife sent out on his behalf in 2004? Michelle Obama denounced a federal law banning partial-birth abortion, writing that "this ban on a legitimate medical procedure is clearly unconstitutional." Clearly!

The Supreme Court later found the law not "unconstitutional," but "constitutional" -- which I believe may have been the precise moment when Michelle Obama realized just how ashamed she had always been of her country.

But most stunningly, when Warren asked Obama if he supported a constitutional amendment defining marriage as between a man and a woman, Obama said he did not "because historically -- because historically, we have not defined marriage in our Constitution."

I don't care if you support a marriage amendment or not. That answer is literally the stupidest thing I've ever heard anyone say. If marriage were already defined in the Constitution, we wouldn't need an amendment, no?

Say, you know what else was "historically" not defined in the Constitution? Slavery. The words "slavery" and "slave" do not appear once in the original Constitution. The framers correctly thought it would sully the freedom-enshrining document to acknowledge the repellent practice. (Much like abortion!)

But in 1865, the 13th Amendment banned slavery throughout the land, in the first constitutional phrase ever to mention "slavery": "Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction."

On Obama's "historical" argument, they shouldn't have passed the 13th Amendment because the Constitution "historically" had not mentioned slavery.

Do we know for a fact Barack Obama has read the Constitution? Obama's Facebook profile: "I'm pro-infanticide, I love sunsets, and I don't get the 13th Amendment!"

This is the guy who thinks he can condescend to Clarence Thomas? Asked at the Saddleback forum which Supreme Court justice Obama would not have nominated, Obama said ... the black one!

In Obama's defense, he said he thought Thomas wasn't experienced enough "at the time." So I guess Obama thinks Thomas should have to "wait his turn."

By contrast, Obama has experience pouring out of those big ears of his. Asked last year by Robin Roberts on ABC's "Good Morning America" about his lack of experience in foreign policy, Obama took umbrage.

Swelling up his puny little chest, Obama said: "Well, actually, my experience in foreign policy is probably more diverse than most others in the field. I'm somebody who has actually lived overseas, somebody who has studied overseas. I majored in international relations."

He actually cited his undergraduate major as a qualification to be president.

But on Saturday night, Obama said he didn't think Clarence Thomas was a "strong enough jurist or legal thinker" to be put on the Supreme Court.

I bet Thomas has heard of the 13th Amendment!

Obama did hurt himself badly with his performance at the Saddleback Church event. His campaign spokesmen, both the official ones (those who are paid by his campaign) and the unofficial ones (those on the payroll of various mainstream media orgainzations) tried to spin his terrible performance by blaming it on the fact that McCain cheated.

Because McCain was a few minutes late to the event Democrats say that he might have heard some of the questions that pastor Warren asked Obama by listening to the event on the radio.

I don't believe this. This is one of the kinds of things that McCain tends to be obsessively honest about, believing that such things define his personal honor and integrity (promising the people back in Arizona that you will govern like Ronald Reagan then getting to Washington and governing like Lincoln Chafee apparently doesn't - violate McCain's sense of honor and integrity, but that's a rant for another post).

However let us stipulate for the sake of discussion that McCain had advance copies of all the questions - and that he got them several days in advance so that he had lots of time to study up.

I have two questions:

1. How does having more time to study help someone come up with answers like "life begins at conception" and "evil must be defeated"? These are things that one either believes or not. If you believe them you say them in plain language. If you do not believe them, but are afraid of the political consequences of admitting that you do not believe them, then you hem and haw and nuance until you sound like a know-nothing jackass.

2. Even if McCain did so well because he had the questions in advance how does that explain why Obama did so wretchedly? Obama, after all, went first. Nothing about McCain's performance could have had the slightest effect upon how Obama answered the questions. Obama blew the event all by himself.

This second point is the reason why Obama's kool-aid drinking sycophants (otherwise known as the mainstream media) have stopped talking about McCain's "cheating" and tried to shove the whole affair down the memory hole. Whether McCain knew the questions a few minutes early or not had nothing whatsoever to do with Obama's horrible performance. That was 100% due to the fact that Obama is an inexperienced know-nothing who can't speak coherently without a teleprompter and who must at all costs conceal his true beliefs from the American people if he is to have a hope of being elected.