ABC News reports that Obama’s campaign is “taking issue” with a comment made by President Bush during remarks he made in Israel to the Knesset on the 60th anniversary of Israel’s statehood.

“Some seem to believe we should negotiate with terrorists and radicals, as if some ingenious argument will persuade them they have been wrong all along,” the President said to the country’s legislative body, “We have heard this foolish delusion before. As Nazi tanks crossed into Poland in 1939, an American senator declared: ‘Lord, if only I could have talked to Hitler, all of this might have been avoided.’ We have an obligation to call this what it is –- the false comfort of appeasement, which has been repeatedly discredited by history.”

In a statement, Sen. Barack Obama, D-Ill., shot across the bow: “It is sad that President Bush would use a speech to the Knesset on the 6Oth anniversary of Israel’s independence to launch a false political attack. It is time to turn the page on eight years of policies that have strengthened Iran and failed to secure America or our ally Israel. Instead of tough talk and no action, we need to do what Kennedy, Nixon and Reagan did and use all elements of American power — including tough, principled, and direct diplomacy – to pressure countries like Iran and Syria. George Bush knows that I have never supported engagement with terrorists, and the President’s extraordinary politicization of foreign policy and the politics of fear do nothing to secure the American people or our stalwart ally Israel.”

Perhaps it’s just Obama’s massive ego, but what makes him think that remark was direct at him? As the story points out, those words from the President are hardly new.

ABC News’ White House troops point out that the President has made similar statements in the past and Bush did not specifically cite Obama by name, though he did reference Sen. William Borah’s immortal reaction upon hearing that Hitler had invaded Poland and begun World War II, something he has not highlighted in the past.

“(The President) has said similar things before,” a White House official told ABC News’ Martha Raddatz. “But it is in reference to a number of people, think Carter, others who have engaged in this or suggested it.”

White House spokesperson Dana Perino was asked if Bush’s line was a slam against Obama and she insisted, “It is not.”

“I understand that when you are running for office sometimes you think the world revolves around you. That is not always true and it is not true in this case,” Perino added, though the White House is keenly aware of how such statements might play during a heated political season and has steadfastly avoided commenting on the 2008 race.

It sounds to me that Obama is trying to score points with Jewish voters who are understandly wary of supporting a candidate who has the endorsement of Hamas, and whose own advisor had talks with the terror group.

The fact is that President Bush is 100% correct. Appeasement and containment don’t always work – and its dangerous to assume they do. As inexperienced as Obama may be, he should be able to recognize that. But, if he wants to have coffee and doughnuts with terror groups, then that’s his position… but don’t expect me to vote for someone like that.

UPDATE: More from Matt DiBari.

Someone is looking for that VP slot.

Democrat John Edwards is endorsing former rival Barack Obama, fresh signs of the party establishment embracing the likely nominee even as Hillary Rodham Clinton refuses to give up her long-shot candidacy.
ADVERTISEMENT

Edwards was to appear with Obama in Grand Rapids, Mich., as Obama campaigns in a critical general election battleground state.

The endorsement comes the day after Clinton defeated Obama by more than 2-to-1 in West Virginia. The loss highlighted Obama’s work to win over the “Hillary Democrats” — white, working-class voters who also supported Edwards in large numbers before he exited the race.

The media is calling it a symbolic victory. What do you think? Looks like Camp Hillary sees things differently.

Clinton’s aides contended that her strength with blue-collar voters—already demonstrated in primaries in Ohio, Pennsylvania and Indiana—makes her the more electable candidate in the fall.

“After tonight, we will have one more proof point, if you will, that Hillary Clinton is the strongest candidate Democrats can nominate,” said Ann Lewis, an aide to the former first lady. “We’re going to go back starting tomorrow and talk to those superdelegates who are still uncommitted and say, ‘You know what? She is the candidate who expands the electoral map.’ You look at West Virginia, you look at Kentucky, you look at Arkansas, you look at Tennessee. You look at what’s at stake and that’s a very powerful argument.”

Clinton arranged a meeting with superdelegates for Wednesday.

And so it goes.

UPDATE, by Mark Noonan: In my view, Democrats are very scared. All over TV and radio and even here on the blog, the endlessly repeated talking point is that if we GOPers want to win, we have to stop talking about Obama’s questionable past and associations…meaning that the Democrats have done polling and focus groups and found out that Obama’s past and associations are radioactive when brought up against McCain. Democrats have to get Obama’s past off the table – one might think this would turn them towards Hillary, but she’s got her own radioactive past and failure to nominate Obama would probably mean a collapse in the number of black voters in November, with incalcuable consequences down ballot for the Democrats.

UPDATE, by Mark Noonan: From Patrick Ruffini via NRO’s The Corner:

Wow. Obama only wins 53% of WV DEM PRIMARY VOTERS in a matchup with McCain

This means that Obama can’t win West Virginia…and likely means that he won’t be able to win a single Southern State, all else being equal and nothing massive changes between now and November (which is a loooong way off). Bad news for Obama – and for the Dems, who may have picked a loser.

Sounds like Obama is the one losing his bearings.

And before our friends on the left attempt to explain what Obama “meant,” I think it’s obvious that if President Bush ever made the same comment, the same people who are about to defend Obama would mercilessly attack Bush.

…and now Obama’s campaign is on damage control, “severing ties” with the advisor.

A Middle East policy adviser for Barack Obama has left the campaign after acknowledging having held talks with Hamas, FOX News confirms.

The Times newspaper in London first reported Friday that the campaign was severing ties with the adviser, Robert Malley.

Malley said he had been in contact with the Palestinian group, but only through his work for a “conflict resolution think tank,” and not on behalf of the Obama campaign, the newspaper reported.

While the Obama camp attempts to downplay the role the advisor had in the campaign, it hardly seems coincidence that one of his advisors would engage in talks with the terrorist organization, afterall, Hamas did endorse Obama.

Hamas, which is labeled a terrorist organization by the State Department, is a touchy issue for the Obama campaign.

Hamas adviser Ahmed Yousef said in a recent interview, “We like Mr. Obama, we hope that he will win the election,” and presumptive Republican nominee John McCain has poked fun at Obama for the apparent endorsement.

The Associated Press reports that an enemy combatant formerly held at Guantanamo carried out a suicide attack in Iraq last month.

But, I’m sure Democrats will swallow the story from the terrorist’s lawyer, who blames his incarceration for the former prisoner’s attack.

Last week, America’s Election HQ blog reported on whining Democrats who think that John McCain “got a pass” over his so-called association with Pastor John Hagee. In the weeks that followed the widespread release of Obama’s pastors anti-American/racist/anti-Semitic sermons, liberal pundits and bloggers kept referring to Hagee as “McCain’s pastor” — an obvious “misery loves company” strategy that was as ridiculous as Wright’s rhetoric.

It doesn’t take a genius to understand the differences between Hagee’s endorsement of John McCain (as well as McCain’s subsequent repudiation of Hagee’s anti-Catholic views) and Barack Obama’s 20-year relationship with Jeremiah Wright, who not only officiated Obama’s marraige, but baptized his kids. And of course, Obama’s book title, The Audacity of Hope, comes from one of Wright’s sermons.

There have been a number of polls done assessing the impact of the Jeremiah Wright story on Obama’s presidential bid. While some suggest most voters say he handled it well, others showed Obama significantly damaged by it. All the while Obama supporters have been trying to argue that Wright isn’t a legitimate issue.

The thing is, Wright is a legitimate issue. Even if you choose to believe Obama’s claim that in the 20 years he was attending Wright’s church services that he never once heard anything like what we saw clips of on television or heard on the radio, no reasonable person could believe that Obama wasn’t aware of Wright’s anti-American, racist, and anti-Semitic views. Yet, he still went to the church and gave it thousands of dollars in contributions. That tells you a lot of about Barack’s character and true values… and none of what it says is good.

Still, Democrats know this is an issue that won’t go away. If Wright wasn’t a liability for Obama’s candidacy, you wouldn’t be hearing John Hagee’s name being brought up as a common rebuttal. If Obamaniacs think that Hagee is a liability for McCain, then they know with absolute certainty that Wright is a huge liability for Obama. And if Democrats think bringing up Hagee will neutralize the Wright impact on Obama’s candidacy then they are wrong. The Hagee story came and went because there was “no there there” as far McCain’s candidacy is concerned. As long as Democrats try to regurgitate that non-story then it only reminds people of Obama’s longtime connection to and acceptance of Jeremiah Wright.

Some may argue that last night’s primary results show that Barack Obama has effectively moved beyond Jeremiah Wright. Perhaps as far as the Democratic Primary is concerned, maybe he has. Afterall, Democrats probably agree with Jeremiah Wright on many levels… But in the general election? No question… big negative for Obama… no matter how much our friends on the left want to pretend it’s not.

But hey, let them pretend.

I’m sorry, but I just don’t see her accepting the bottom of the ticket.

Clinton vowed to fight on today, despite a growing chorus that says Sen. Barack Obama, D-Ill., has just about wrapped up the Democratic presidential nominaton.

ABC’s Chief Washington Correspondent George Stephanopoulos told Charles Gibson on “World News” that Clinton is staying in the race to negotiate a spot on the Democratic ticket in November.

Hillary is staying in because she wants to go for the gold. Does anyone really think she’d settle for the VP slot?

UPDATE, by Mark Noonan: This article indicates the lengths to which the Democratic leadership and its MSM lapdogs are going to force Hillary out of the race. Essentially, the MSM story-line is that its over and Obama won…which is a great theory, but he hasn’t won. Personally, I wouldn’t quit if I were in Hillary’s position – the much weaker candidate who risks a McGovern-like loss in November is ahead, and will probably end up the nominee, but if I had a shot at it, I’d keep going until the other guy actually had the number of delegates needed to win.

Who can forget when former Clinton National Security Advisor Sandy Berger went into the National Archives during the 9/11 Commission investigation and stole documents by stuffing them into his pants and socks? Since then people have wondered what information was on those documents that Clinton’s inner circle didn’t want the public to know about… More evidence supporting claims that Bill Clinton was offered Osama bin Laden on a silver platter and refused? More evidence that Clinton missed the opportunity to strike bin Laden because he was golfing?

Well, if the Clinton Library apparently has copies of the documents, but has refused a FOIA request to release them.

The William Jefferson Clinton Presidential Library will not make available to the public the documents that former National Security Advisor Sandy Berger illegally took from the National Archives in 2003.

A letter from the library said the total 502 pages from the Millennium Alert After Action Review (MAAR) are “restricted in their entirety,” under federal law and that the documents are “classified in the interest of national defense or foreign policy.”

Further, the library stated the documents contain “confidential communications requesting or submitting advice between the president and his advisors, or between such advisors.”

The library’s letter was in response to a Freedom of Information Act request from Cybercast News Service . The library has responded to several other requests, but in those cases it was to inform CNSNews.com that library staff was processing the request.

Berger, who was national security advisor for President Clinton from 1997 to 2001, took five different copies of pages from the classified MAAR out of the archives by stuffing them in his suit and exiting the archives building. Berger did that at a time (September-October 2003) when the 9/11 Commission was beginning to investigate both the Clinton and Bush administrations’ handling of the terror threat in the led up to the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.

Where is the outrage?

That darn recession.

Employers cut far fewer jobs in April than in recent months and the unemployment rate dropped to 5 percent, a better-than-expected showing that nonetheless reveals strains in the nation’s labor market.

For the fourth month in a row, the economy lost jobs, the Labor Department reported Friday. But in April the losses totaled 20,000, an improvement from the 81,000 reductions in payrolls logged in March. Job losses for both February and March turned out to be a bit deeper than previously reported.

The latest snapshot of the nationwide employment conditions — while clearly still weak — was better than many economists were anticipating. They were bracing for job cuts of 75,000 and for the unemployment rate to climb to 5.2 percent.

Now, I’m sure someone on the left will rebut about the faults in how unemployment is calculated, and while it is a fair point of debate, if they’re going to dismiss the way unemployment is calculated today, then they have to dismiss the jobless rate in the late 1990’s under Clinton as well — when it is certainly a valid point that the dotcom boom skewed the numbers drastically — and ultimately didn’t sustain itself very long as the economy went into a recession during the Clinton’s final fiscal year.