The OBAMA motto: We've got what it takes, to take what you've got!

 ---
The Archbishop of Canterbury and
The RoyalCommission for Political Correctness
announced today that the climate in the UK
should no longer be referred to as'English Weather' Rather than offend a sizeable portion of the
UK population, it will now be referred to as:

'Muslim Weather' ( Partly Sunni, but mostly Shi'ite )
----
Morsi only to visit U.N. while here? (See 1 below.)
---
My market assessment for what it is worth: "

We could be experiencing a Romney Rally as he improves in the polls but nothing has changed on the economic front.

Housing is making some improvement but the world economic picture remains tenuous.

I suspect American Corporate earnings have peaked and the Fed remains tentative knowing they are under the gun to do something but reluctant because it would/could be seen as influencing the election. Being a theoretically independent agency they do not like to be seen taking partisan actions.

I continue to maintain Romney and Ryan win hands down for reasons I have explained in previous memos and that would be positive psychologically for the market but there would  still remain the problems and the pain associated within addressing them. That said, the market is a forward looking mechanism.

I am less sanguine about the health care stocks after their recent rally and remain circumspect about the market in general though  recognize various World Banks are committed t providing the liquidity as the pressure on them mounts."

---

Not sure he was birthed anywhere.  You decide: "Obama admits birthplace--ml---short list

  If this is true - I don't understand it!

Scroll all the way down and watch the video. It is Obama after he became a Senator. How come it never came out before now.  Obama admits not being born in Hawaii...  Can one doubt his own admission? Where is Sixty Minutes?  Obama is actually on this video admitting he was not born in Hawaii but was born in Kenya and is not even a citizen.

If you just watch the first 30 seconds your mouth will drop open.

Obama admits he is not a citizen  Hmmm.... Maybe the "birthers" are on to something....  THE  AMAZING  PART  OF  THIS  TRAVESTY  IS  AMERICANS CONTINUE  ALLOWING  THEMSELVES  TO  BE  RULED  BY  AN  ILLEGAL  ALIEN !!! Ouch !! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MwhKuunp8D8&feature=player_embedded His first speech is apparently just after his election to the US Senate."

---
Ask yourself who is best able to solve the many problems Obama has created? (See 2 below.)
---
And the lying continues. (See 2 below.)

---

It is conservative governors who are ahead of the curve. (See 3 below.)

---

A rational discourse is valuable.  (See 4 below.)

---

Arthur Davis' father was one of my father's most respected friends and a very respected lawyer.  (See 5 below.)

---

Dick
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
1)

Foreign visits of Morsi illustrates restructuring foreign relations - visit to US limited to UN

It would appear from this article that the  United State is not on President Morsy's "dance card". He visited the Saudis and will visit China and Latin America without any excuses. But the visit to the US is being explained as to "only be to attend the UN ". In fact, while Morsy's visit to Iran of just "a few hours" includes the NAM, the item makes clear that he is also going to Iran in order to interact with Iran itself.] Egypt will restructure its foreign relations to base them on collaboration and mutual interests, presidential spokesperson Yasser Ali said. Meeting with foreign reporters at the State Information Service building in Nasr City, Ali said President Mohamed Morsy's visit to China Monday would seek to open channels of cooperation and attract investment opportunities, state news agency MENA reported. Ali added that the president's visit to China would not tackle Beijing's funding of dams built by Nile Basin countries on the Nile, stressing that Egypt respects every country's right to seek its interests according to its discretion. Ali also addressed the crisis in Syria. He said Egypt included Iran in its proposed four-state panel, also consisting of Egypt, Turkey and Saudi Arabia, to work on solving the crisis because the problem cannot be resolved without engaging all active regional parties. He said Morsy's visit to Iran would only last for a few hours, during which Egypt is set to hand over the chairmanship of the Non-Aligned Movement — a group of countries that say they are not aligned with a particular power bloc — to Iran. Additionally, Ali said Morsy's visit to the US on 24 September will only be to attend the UN General Assembly meeting in New York, adding that Egypt is considering arranging presidential visits to Latin American countries, particularly Brazil. Meanwhile, Essam al-Erian, acting chairman of the Freedom and Justice Party, said that President Mohamed Morsy’s visit to China and Iran would help press the Syrian regime to bring bloodshed in Syria to an end. On his Facebook page, Erian said Morsy's success in convincing China and Iran to press the regime of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad to cease his bloody crackdown on his people will represent a starting point for the four-state panel that Morsy had proposed to solve the Syrian crisis. Iran is widely believed to have been providing the Syrian regime with all means of support, including weaponry, in its bloody campaign on pro-democracy protesters. Russian and Chinese vetoes in October, February and July stonewalled discussions of the Syrian crisis at the UN Security Council. The three states strongly oppose any military intervention in the war-torn country. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 2)“Issues” or America? By Thomas Sowell There are some very serious issues at stake in this year's election -- so many that some people may not be able to see the forest for the trees. Individual issues are the trees, but the forest is the future of America as we have known it. The America that has flourished for more than two centuries is being quietly but steadily dismantled by the Obama administration, during the process of dealing with particular issues. For example, the merits or demerits of President Obama's recent executive order, suspending legal liability for young people who are here illegally, presumably as a result of being brought here as children by their parents, can be debated pro and con. But such a debate overlooks the much more fundamental undermining of the whole American system of Constitutional government. The separation of powers into legislative, executive and judicial branches of government is at the heart of the Constitution of the United States -- and the Constitution is at the heart of freedom for Americans. No President of the United States is authorized to repeal parts of legislation passed by Congress. He may veto the whole legislation, but then Congress can override his veto if they have enough votes. Nevertheless, every President takes an oath to faithfully execute the laws that have been passed and sustained -- not just the ones he happens to agree with. If laws passed by the elected representatives of the people can be simply over-ruled unilaterally by whoever is in the White House, then we are no longer a free people, choosing what laws we want to live under. When a President can ignore the plain language of duly passed laws, and substitute his own executive orders, then we no longer have "a government of laws, and not of men" but a President ruling by decree, like the dictator in some banana republic. When we confine our debates to the merits or demerits of particular executive orders, we are tacitly accepting arbitrary rule. The Constitution of the United States cannot protect us unless we protect the Constitution. But, if we allow ourselves to get bogged down in the details of particular policies imposed by executive orders, and vote solely on that basis, then we have failed to protect the Constitution -- and ourselves. Whatever the merits or demerits of the No Child Left Behind Act, it is the law until Congress either repeals it or amends it. But for Barack Obama to unilaterally waive whatever provisions he doesn't like in that law undermines the fundamental nature of American government. President Obama has likewise unilaterally repealed the legal requirement that welfare recipients must work, by simply redefining "work" to include other things like going to classes on weight control. If we think the bipartisan welfare reform legislation from the Clinton administration should be repealed or amended, that is something for the legislative branch of government to consider. There have been many wise warnings that freedom is seldom lost all at once. It is usually eroded away, bit by bit, until it is all gone. You may not notice a gradual erosion while it is going on, but you may eventually be shocked to discover one day that it is all gone, that we have been reduced from citizens to subjects, and the Constitution has become just a meaningless bunch of paper. ObamaCare imposes huge costs on some institutions, while the President's arbitrary waivers exempt other institutions from having to pay those same costs. That is hardly the "equal protection of the laws," promised by the 14th Amendment. John Stuart Mill explained the dangers in that kind of government long ago: "A government with all this mass of favors to give or to withhold, however free in name, wields a power of bribery scarcely surpassed by an avowed autocracy, rendering it master of the elections in almost any circumstances but those of rare and extraordinary public excitement." If Obama gets reelected, he knows that he need no longer worry about what the voters think about anything he does. Never having to face them again, he can take his arbitrary rule by decree as far as he wants. He may be challenged in the courts but, if he gets just one more Supreme Court appointment, he can pick someone who will rubber stamp anything he does and give him a 5 to 4 majority.   ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ 2) Who's the Extremist? By Jeffrey Folks Over the weekend, the president unleashed a new charge against his opponent.  Not only is Gov. Romney rich (apparently considered a fatal defect in and of itself), not only has he fired American workers, not only has he transported the family pet on the rooftop of his station wagon, but now he has been found to hold "extreme" views. The president was not too specific about what these extreme views might be.  Presumably they relate to Medicare, abortion rights, gay marriage, climate change, welfare, or whatever specific issue might be on the minds of voters.  The president has left it to his surrogates to fill in the blanks.  Meanwhile, he hopes to benefit from the Big Lie he has sown -- the idea that it is Romney and not the president himself who is an extremist. Apparently, someone at the White House sat down and decided that that "extremist" worked with focus groups.  In an interview with the Associated Press, Obama let it be known that he thinks Romney is an extremist, and suddenly the entire liberal media jumps into action.  On Sunday'sMeet the Press, DNC Chairperson Debbie Wasserman Schultz charged Romney with taking an "unrealistic and extreme position" on immigration.  On Monday, the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee announced an effort to tie twenty GOP House members to Rep. Akin's "extreme agenda."  Predictably,  every liberal hack from Chris Matthews on down chimed in with attacks, including Matthews's charge that Romney had played the "race card" with his birth certificate joke. Suddenly, the idea that there should by any restraint on illegal immigration is "extreme."  The notion that there should be limits to abortion rights and to the requirement that taxpayers and religious institutions pay for abortion is "extreme."  The idea that seeking work should be a requirement for welfare is "extreme."  Any suggestion of balancing the federal budget or even of cutting the rate of growth in federal spending is "extreme."  In other words, any statement that conflicts with those of the most liberal administration in American history is "extreme." The fact, of course, is that Barack Obama is an extremist through and through.  He has never offered a convincing refutation of the charge that he is a socialist.  He has refused to enforce existing law on illegal immigration.  He has attempted to compel religious institutions to pay for abortion services -- a clear violation of First Amendment rights.  He has increased the national debt by $5 trillion and attempted to increase it by more.  He has no plan for saving Medicare other than cutting benefits by $700 billion and increasing premiums for seniors.  He has blocked oil and gas exploration, resulting in a 37% decline in new drilling since he took office.  And his policies of high taxes and increased regulation have brought about the highest level of sustained unemployment since the Great Depression.  So who is the real extremist? By contrast, Gov. Romney has proposed cutting taxes, reducing regulation, and unleashing entrepreneurial activity by encouraging American businesses.  To address excessive regulation, for example, he would repeal ObamaCare and Dodd-Frank, amend Sarbanes-Oxley, and review and eliminate unnecessary regulations imposed over the past four years.  This does not sound particularly "extreme."  It sounds like an end to the madness that has brought about the current economic malaise.  It sounds like a return to the values that made America a great nation. On the budget, Romney would return federal spending from its current level of 24.3% to its historical level of 18% to 20%.  He would immediately cut non-discretionary spending by 5% and return spending to below 2008 levels.  When one considers the danger that the mounting federal debt poses to our economy, these proposals are far from extreme.  What is extreme is the president's approach of adamantly refusing to cut any federal program while demanding increases every year.  Obama's fiscal policy is so extreme, in fact, that not a single member of his own party voted to enact his FY2012 budget proposal. At the same time that he charged Gov. Romney with extremism, Obama asserted that, if re-elected, he would reach across party lines and govern in a bipartisan manner.  This claim was even more astounding than the ludicrous suggestion that Romney is an extremist.  Over the past four years, Obama has rejected every effort of Republicans to compromise on the budget, including the August 2011 negotiations with Speaker Boehner.  He passed ObamaCare with no attempt to work with Republicans in Congress.  He rejected the report of his own bipartisan deficit commission (the National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform) headed by Alan Simpson and Erskine Bowles; none of that committee's recommendations has been implemented. I suppose that, during an election year, the president's  arrogant partisanship is meant to appeal to his liberal base.  Liberal donors seem to be enthralled when the president blusters about how far he has come in transforming the country and about the work that remains to be done.  That vision of America -- as a helpless, benighted land, dependent on government welfare and crying out to be transformed with or without the consent of Congress -- is exactly what Obama has embraced -- not just during the campaign, but over the past four years.  And that view of America really is extreme. In the Ppesident's mind, America is a backward and benighted country that must be reconstructed along the lines of social equality and secularism, and his  re-election campaign follows from this conviction.  In his "Romney Hood" speech of August 6, 2012, delivered in Stamford, Connecticut, Obama spoke of "the courage to keep working and to keep fighting and to keep moving forward."  That is the classic liberal line -- the call to reform and change a nation that in the liberal view of things is in dire need of reform.  The speech drew applause from the partisan audience that showed up for the event.  But it betrays the same contempt for ordinary Americans and for America itself that we have heard for the past four years.  And that speech really was extreme. Obama's charge of extremism is a classic example of the sort of rhetorical manipulation that Orwell called the Big Lie.  Like Bill Clinton, who campaigned for re-election as a "family man" with Hillary at this side (even as he carried on an affair with Monica Lewinsky and sought to discredit other reports of extramarital affairs), Obama has identified his own greatest weakness and is attempting to turn it against his opponent.  Obama believes that if the lie is big enough -- and the suggestion that Romney, not Obama, is an extremist certainly qualifies as a Big Lie -- the public will swallow it.  The Romney campaign must not let him get away with it.  Jeffrey Folks is the author of many books and article on American culture, including Heartland of the Imagination (2011). -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

3)Kimberley Strassel: The Reform Governors Who Led the Way

To understand today's Republican Party, look to the state houses.

Republicans meet at the Tampa Bay Times Forum this week to spell out their vision for the country. It needn't be an exercise in imagination.

The party's transformative spirit is already on vivid display, thanks to a crop of reformist Republican governors. With the GOP stymied in Washington, these state leaders—from Chris Christie in New Jersey to Scott Walker in Wisconsin—have become the heart of the conservative movement, many pursuing the sort of thorough overhauls of government once considered impossible. In many cases, the changes are already showing dramatic, positive economic results. Think of the reform governors as the vanguard of the far-reaching policy reforms that Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan now want to bring to the national arena.

"If you want a sense of what the party is, what it really stands for, and what it can do, this is the right place to start," says one of the trailblazers, Indiana Gov. Mitch Daniels. He has cut his state's budget, reduced property and inheritance taxes, overhauled education and created free-market health-care options for state employees and the uninsured.

Related Video

Columnist Kim Strassel on the club of GOP reformist governors. Photos: Associated Press

Credit Barack Obama for the revival of GOP fortunes. Voter backlash to the president's liberal policies gave Republicans the House in 2010, but the more immediate effects were in the states. Of the 29 current Republican governors, 21 have taken office since 2010. Midterm voters also gave the GOP unified control of 26 state legislatures, providing their newly elected leaders the firepower to pursue their reform agendas.

A crisis situation also provided opportunity. For all the talk of Washington rushing headlong toward a fiscal cliff, the states have already arrived there. Years of overspending and accounting gimmicks to paper over growing state pension and health costs have collided with the economic downturn and a sudden drop-off of federal stimulus funds.

"The fiscal reality hit the states sooner, and hard, because—unlike Washington—they have to balance their budgets," says Jonathan Williams, director of tax and fiscal policy at the American Legislative Exchange Council. "The problems were simply too big to ignore anymore, and it set the stage for reforms that not long ago weren't even on the table."

Nowhere have the changes been more striking than in the budget and structural reforms enacted by Mr. Christie (who took office in 2010) and Mr. Walker (who hit the ground running in January 2011). Their high-profile wins over state legislatures and unions were the first signs of reformist Republican governors taking on the public entitlements that are crowding out more vital budget priorities.

Mr. Walker's singular achievement was limiting collective bargaining, which had given unions a lock on state spending. The end of union control has liberated local governments to use competitive bidding to reduce costs for public-school health-insurance plans, to rationalize state employment, and altogether to save taxpayers more than $1 billion annually and reduce property taxes.

The success of these reforms, and Mr. Walker's victory in the recall battle that his measures provoked, has inspired like-minded governors across the country. Mr. Daniels in Indiana, Tennessee's Bill Haslam, Idaho's Butch Otter, Oklahoma's Mary Fallin and Ohio's John Kasich are among those who enacted their own curbs on collective bargaining (though in the case of Ohio, they were reversed a year later). The National Conference on State Legislatures reported that, overall, some 820 bills to restrict a variety of bargaining practices were introduced in 2011 alone.

As notable were the Walker and Christie victories in getting public workers to contribute more to their pensions and health premiums. In 2011, some 18 states followed suit and required increases in pension contributions; 16 states raised their state-worker retirement ages. And then there have been Republican innovators like Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal, who in June signed legislation to move new state hires into the sort of 401(k)-style retirement plan that will finally allow states to manage their long-term liabilities.

The economic downturn has likewise inspired a wave of job-creating tax-policy revisions. GOP governors have not only cut budgets to close deficits but have accompanied these trims with tax cuts. Kansas Gov. Sam Brownback in May signed the biggest income-tax reduction in the state's history, reducing the rate to 4.9% from 6.45%. His move followed income-tax cuts from Maine's Paul LePage and Nebraska's Dave Heineman. Tennessee eliminated its gift and estate taxes. Arizona enacted a historic capital-gains cut.

The bigger revolution has come in corporate-tax reform. Michigan Gov. Rick Snyder in 2011 enacted the most far-reaching of these, replacing the state's complex gross-receipts tax with a straight corporate income tax of 6%. Florida's Rick Scott has chipped away at his state's corporate income tax, and he is among a number of governors trying to cut or eliminate damaging property taxes on business machinery and equipment. South Carolina's Nikki Haley and a half-dozen other conservative governors are working on equally ambitious business-tax rewrites.

Michigan's corporate-tax reform instantly shot the state into seventh place in the Tax Foundation's state corporate tax ranking (from 49th). Since early 2011, Michigan has created an estimated 140,000 jobs and improved its credit rating.

Education reform has flourished in more than a dozen states. In the past two years, Mr. Jindal of Louisiana and Mr. Daniels of Indiana have signed laws that serve as national models for competition and parental choice—making hundreds of thousands of children eligible for vouchers, fast-tracking charter schools, and tackling the once-taboo subject of teacher tenure. Mr. Christie only this month joined them in that effort, scrapping New Jersey's tenure law (the oldest in the nation) and finally tying teachers' employment to merit.

The threat of ObamaCare has inspired a flurry of state efforts to reform Medicaid, many of them building on or similar to federal waivers the Bush administration granted to states like Rhode Island and Florida. These reforms—which often involve contracting Medicaid to managed-care organizations to lower costs and increase quality—are putting intense pressure on Washington to grant more waivers or to move on the Paul Ryan proposal to block-grant Medicaid money to states.

The magnitude of change on the state level is beginning to cause a striking "bifurcation" in state fiscal management, says Chris Edwards, who since 2008 has produced the Cato Institute's report card on governors. While fiscal conservatives have moved to shore up their states for a generation, liberal-dominated states such as California, Illinois and Connecticut have adhered to the deadly cycle of more spending, greater taxes and bigger future liabilities. The contrast between the policies—and results—of conservative and liberal governors is so stark that it will help underline for voters what's at stake in the presidential election.

And that gets us to the politics. Policy aside, Republican reform governors have served as potent local resistance movements to the Obama agenda. Conservative governors have spurned stimulus and ObamaCare dollars, defying federal intrusion. Governors such as Mrs. Haley have called out the administration's union payoffs, like the National Labor Relations Board decision blocking Boeing's new plant in South Carolina. It was the states that led the legal charge against ObamaCare—and passed initiatives rejecting pieces of the health law.

Most important, these governors' leadership, and their ability to survive the left's onslaughts, have inspired followers and emboldened the party to continue tackling the tough stuff. "We like to talk about political capital, and how to spend it wisely," says Mr. Daniels of Indiana. "But it happens that—just like other capital—if it is invested wisely, it returns to you, and you can put into the next effort, and the next, and the next."

The Republican convention here is headlining no fewer than a dozen of these reform governors, and rightly so. Their ideas and economic successes are proof that free-market reforms work in practice. And they indicate the seriousness that a Romney-Ryan ticket could bring to the White House.

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------4)A Rational Discussion of the Federal Budget

By Thomas Sowell 

For those of us who like to believe that human beings are rational, trying to explain what happens in politics can be a real challenge.

For example, that segment of the population that has the least to fear from a reform of Medicare or Social Security is the most fearful -- namely, those already receiving Medicare or Social Security benefits.

It is understandable that people heavily dependent on these programs would fear losing their benefits, especially after a lifetime of paying into these programs. But nobody in his right mind has even proposed taking away the benefits of those who are already receiving them.

Yet opponents of reforming these programs have managed repeatedly to scare the daylights out of seniors with wild claims and television ads such as one showing someone -- who looks somewhat like Paul Ryan -- pushing an elderly lady in a wheelchair toward a cliff and then dumping her over.

There are people who take seriously such statements as those by President Barack Obama that Republicans want to "end Medicare as we know it."

Let's stop and think, if only for the novelty of it. If you make any change in anything, you are ending it "as we know it." Does that mean that everything in the status quo should be considered to be set in concrete forever?

If there were not a single Republican, or none who got elected to any office, arithmetic would still end "Medicare as we know it," for the simple reason that the money in the till is not enough to keep paying for it. The same is true of Social Security.

The same has been true of welfare state programs in European countries that are currently struggling with both financial crises and riots in the streets from people who feel betrayed by their governments. They have in fact been betrayed by their politicians, who have promised them things that there was not enough money to pay for. That is the basic problem in the United States as well.

We are not yet Greece, but we are not exempt from the same rules of arithmetic that eventually caught up with Greece. We just have a little more time. The only question is whether we will use that time to make politically difficult changes or whether we will just kick the can down the road, and keep pretending that "Medicare as we know it" would continue on indefinitely, if it were not for people who just want to be mean to the elderly.

In both Europe and America, there are many people who get angry at those who tell them the truth that the money is just not there to sustain huge welfare state programs indefinitely. But that anger might be better directed at those who lied to them by promising them benefits that were inherently unsustainable.

Neither Social Security nor Medicare has ever had enough assets to cover its liabilities. Very simply, there has never been enough money put aside to do what the government promised to do.

These systems operate on what their advocates like to call a "pay as you go" basis. That is, the younger generation pays in money that is used to cover the cost of benefits for the older generation. This is the kind of financial pyramid scheme that got Charles Ponzi put in prison in the 1920s and got Bernie Madoff put in prison in our times.

A private annuity cannot play these financial games without its executives risking the fate of Ponzi and Madoff. That is why proposed Social Security and Medicare reforms would allow young people to put their money somewhere where the money they pay in would be put aside specifically for them, not used as at present to pay older people's pensions, with anything left over being used for whatever else politicians feel like spending the money on.

It is today's young people who are going to be left holding the bag when they reach retirement age and discover that all the money they paid in is long gone. It is today's young people who are going to be dumped over a cliff when they reach retirement age, if nothing is done to reform entitlements.

Yet the young seem not to be nearly as alarmed as the elderly, who have no real reason to fear. Try reconciling that with the belief that human beings are rational.

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

5)Artur Davis’s Conversion 

The former Democratic congressman is a threat to his old party.

By John Fund

Former Democratic congressman Artur Davis of Alabama

John Fund 

Only about 3 to 5 percent of voters are truly undecided between Mitt Romney and Barack Obama. Focus groups run by Republicans have found that some of the most effective ads appealing to those voters feature Democrats and independents speaking candidly about how they voted for Obama in 2008 but are now disappointed.

That’s one of the reasons that Republicans have decided to showcase former Democratic congressman Artur Davis of Alabama as a “headline” speaker at their convention. Davis, a moderate black Democrat who voted against Obamacare in 2010 and was crushed later that year in a Democratic primary for governor, has since left the Democratic party and is backing Mitt Romney. He was an early Obama supporter — the first Democratic congressman outside Illinois to endorse the candidate in 2007. He seconded Obama’s nomination for president at the 2008 Denver convention.
“The Obama I endorsed was the constitutional-law professor who said he supported the rule of law,” Davis explained to me. “Instead, we got someone who always went to the left whenever he reached a fork in the road.” Now Davis spends a great deal of time describing his conversion to Republican audiences. Even Jamelle Bouie, a writer for the left-wing American Prospect who doesn’t find Davis’s conversion story all that compelling, acknowledges its power. “Davis, like Joe Lieberman before him (and Zell Miller before that), can tell a credible story of ideological alienation,” Bouie wrote in theWashington Post. “He thought the Democratic Party was a big tent, but now — under Barack Obama — it is a haven for intolerant leftism.”

Davis himself puts it very simply. He wanted to get beyond race and run as a moderate who would unite people of all kinds behind a reform agenda. “Democrats know that only a moderate can win for their party now in Alabama — the legislature even went GOP in 2010 — but I was a threat to their interest groups. The teachers’ union knew I backed charter schools and they preferred to have a Republican elected rather than a Democrat who might move that party to the center.”

He says he is surprised at the reaction he’s gotten from conservative audiences. “You have a converted sinner who’s standing in front of you right now, and I thank you for letting me stand here,” he told a tea-party group in Falls Church, Va., this summer. “I used to go to the Baptist church in Birmingham, and Baptists are good folks. But they won’t let nobody preach on week one, or month one, like y’all will.”
A major reason Republicans have embraced Davis with such enthusiasm is the manner in which he abandoned liberalism. He wrote an op-ed piece for his hometown newspaper, theMontgomery Advertiser, in October 2011, endorsing a voter-ID law being debated in the Alabama legislature.
Requiring a photo ID in order to vote may be supported by a large majority of Americans — 74 percent in the latest Washington Post poll (including 65 percent of African Americans) — but it has been portrayed by liberal elites as a discriminatory tool designed to suppress black turnout.
One of those voices was Bill Clinton, who in July 2011 excoriated the nationwide movement to pass voter-ID laws as the return of Jim Crow. “There has never been in my lifetime, since we got rid of the poll tax, and all the other Jim Crow burdens on voting, the determined effort to limit the franchise that we see today.”
Davis took his party’s former president on. He wrote: “I was disappointed to see Bill Clinton, a very good president and an even greater ex-president, compare voter ID to Jim Crow, and it is chilling to see the intimidation tactics brought to bear on African-American, Democratic legislators in Rhode Island who had the nerve to support a voter ID law in that very liberal state.”
The former congressman had real credibility in blowing the whistle on this preposterous rhetoric. The two-thirds black district Davis had represented from 2003 to 2011 included Selma, home of the National Voting Rights Museum, and other landmarks of the 1960s struggle for racial equality and voting rights. He had been an active member of the Congressional Black Caucus, and his career had begun with an internship at the Southern Poverty Law Center, an iconic civil-rights group.
So it was startling to read Davis’s mea culpa:

I’ve changed my mind on voter ID laws — I think Alabama did the right thing in passing one — and I wish I had gotten it right when I was in political office. When I was a congressman, I took the path of least resistance on this subject for an African American politician. Without any evidence to back it up, I lapsed into the rhetoric of various partisans and activists who contend that requiring photo identification to vote is a suppression tactic aimed at thwarting black voter participation.

Davis recognized that the “most aggressive” voter suppression in the African-American community “is the wholesale manufacture of ballots, at the polls and absentee, in parts of the Black Belt.” A predominantly black region in Alabama known for its dark, rich soil, the Black Belt comprises some of the poorest counties in the state — and some of the most prone to voter fraud.
“Voting the names of the dead, and the nonexistent, and the too-mentally-impaired to function, cancels out the votes of citizens who are exercising their rights — that’s suppression by any light,” continued Davis in his op-ed. “If you doubt it exists, I don’t; I’ve heard the peddlers of these ballots brag about it, I’ve been asked to provide the funds for it, and I am confident it has changed a few close local election results.”

The reaction to Davis’s column intrigued him. Some people were angry. “I saw it and was frustrated by it,” Representative Emanuel Cleaver, chairman of the Congressional Black Caucus, told Roll Call last fall. “I don’t know what that’s all about. There are some people who believe he’s getting ready to switch parties. I have no idea. Needless to say, he doesn’t confide in the CBC.” Davis said he was disappointed that some critics claimed he was speaking out over bitterness that he had lost the Democratic primary for governor. “I gave it my best shot, but they should be concerned that in defeating a moderate like me they handed Republicans every single statewide elected office,” he told me. “But rather than look in the mirror, they prefer to cast stones.”

They are still casting them. Last Thursday, the Democratic National Committee posted a YouTube video showing Artur Davis seconding Obama back at the 2008 convention. The video ends as follows: “The Artur Davis speech at the GOP convention isn’t about Barack Obama. It’s about Artur Davis.”

Davis isn’t concerned. “My old Democratic friends are reminding me of an old rule: In politics, if you fear someone is getting through and people are listening, attack them as fast as you can,” he says.

Davis’s future as a Republican is unclear. He has given thought to running for Congress in northern Virginia, his new home. He also has said he might be interested in a post in a Romney administration. As a former prosecutor and Harvard Law School graduate, he would be qualified for many positions. One possible job might be head of the Civil Rights Division at the Department of Justice. Putting Davis in charge of the federal office that monitors voter-ID laws passed by states and enforces civil-rights laws would be a clear signal that the hyper-politicized Eric Holder era was over at Justice.

— John Fund is national-affairs columnist for NRO and a co-author of the newly 

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------