Here’s a beautiful matched set:

The first part of the set is Daniel Henninger’s truly brilliant article about the way in which President Kennedy’s 1962 executive order allowing federal workers to unionize “transformed the Democratic Party into a public-sector dependency.”  Henninger thinks this dependency broke down yesterday in Massachusetts.

The second part of the set is the Supreme Court’s decision to break the back of McCain-Feingold, prompting this petulant outburst from President Obama:

“With its ruling today, the Supreme Court has given a green light to a new stampede of special interest money in our politics,” Obama said.

“This ruling gives the special interests and their lobbyists even more power in Washington — while undermining the influence of average Americans who make small contributions to support their preferred candidates.”

I’ve been hitting on Obama about his lying for months now. The latest example is his reneging on his repeatedly stated promise to use federal financing for the election. Here are a slew of links discussing this most recent lie.

First, the lie itself. Truth be told, he’s good, but narcissists always are (think Bill Clinton). And now some comments on that lie from Richard Baehr; Rick Moran; Jake Tapper; Ed Lasky; David Brooks; and FactCheck.org. Obama is clearly attempting to check the principle that, with the media behind you, you can fool all of the people all of the time.

I purposely didn’t read the news stories headlined “McCain’s wife sells off” something, something, something Sudan.  I knew what I’d find there, once I got passed that smear headline implying that McCain & Co. are profiting off of people’s misery in Africa.  The actual facts would show that Mrs. McCain is a wealthy woman who has assets invested all over the place, and by some chain of investments, there’s a tie to Sudan.  Heck, I own Fidelity Mutual Funds and I’m sure that my funds make money through investments in lots of things that would disturb me if I looked too closely.

Unlike me, Terry Trippany (who hosts Webloggin and is one of my valued friends) did take the time, not only to read the article, but to consider its implications for everyone — Democratic and Republican — in the current election:

It’s a strange one sided sort of game the Associated Press is playing in its latest attack against John McCain. AP writer Jim Kuhnhenn is applying a six degrees of separation style standard in trying to accuse John McCain of investing in the Sudan because his wife owned some mutual funds that had holdings in an Indian company that allegedly does business in the Sudan. The far left has picked up on this “AP newsbreak” as evidenced by its front page status at The Huffington Post.

So I decided to play the game myself by looking at the mainstream media’s favorite target of obsessive adulation, Barack Obama. My my, would you look at that? When I applied the McCain standard to Barack Obama I quickly discovered that Obama’s top contributors are being targeted by activists that are targeting financial companies to divest in the Sudan. Surprised?

You can — and should — read all the details here.  What Terry shows is that AP’s outrage is surprisingly one sided because, if one uses the attenuated approach AP applies to show a McCain taint, Obama’s top contributors have money equally tainted by Sudanese blood.