http://www.ibdeditorials.com/IBDArticles.aspx?id=304210671922915

Among the alleged lies mentioned in the Obama campaign’s 40-page response to author Jerome Corsi’s book “Obama Nation” is the claim that when Obama ran for state senator, “instead of stepping aside in deference to (state Sen. Alice) Palmer, Obama decided to fight her for the nomination.”

The Obama campaign quotes a state representative who said Palmer “pulled her own plug.”

But as ABC News senior correspondent Jake Tapper notes on his blog, it is Obama who is the truth-challenged one. “This is not a lie, this is true,” Tapper says. “Palmer had decided to run for Congress, and Obama was tapped to run to replace her. When Palmer lost in the (U.S. House) primary, she wanted to stay as a state senator. Obama said no. He had every right to do so, but he decided to fight her for the nomination instead of stepping aside in deference to her.”

According to the Chicago Tribune, Obama operatives flooded into the Chicago Board of Election Commissioners on Jan. 2, 1996, to begin the tedious process of challenging hundreds of signatures on the nominating petitions of Palmer and three other lesser-known contenders for her Illinois state Senate seat. They kept challenging petitions until every one of Obama’s Democratic primary rivals was forced off the ballot.

As the Tribune noted, “The man now running for president on a message of giving a voice to the voiceless first entered public office not by leveling the playing field, but by clearing it.”

In 1995, Palmer introduced her chosen successor, Barack Obama, to a few of the district’s influential liberals at the home of two well-known figures on the local left: William Ayers and Bernardine Dohrn, former members of the terrorist Weather Underground.

“I remember being one of a small group of people who came to Bill Ayers’ house to learn that Alice Palmer was stepping down from the Senate and running for Congress,” says Quentin Young, a prominent Chicago physician and advocate for single-payer health care. “(Palmer) identified (Obama) as her successor.”

It was in 1995 that Palmer decided to pursue the opportunity of an open seat in the U.S. House of Representatives after Mel Reynolds of Illinois’ 2nd District resigned due to allegations of sex with an underage campaign volunteer.

But Palmer hit a speed bump in November of that year when Jesse Jackson Jr. defeated her in a special election for Reynolds’ empty seat.

Palmer then refiled to keep her state Senate seat and asked Obama to withdraw. Obama refused.

“I liked Alice Palmer a lot,” Obama would say later. “I thought she was a good public servant. It (the process by which Obama got Palmer off the ballot) was very awkward. That part of it I wish had played out entirely differently.”

Who Alice Palmer is and what she believed is the real story here.

Ten years earlier she was an executive board member of the U.S. Peace Council, which the FBI identified as a communist front group, an affiliate of the World Peace Council, a Soviet front group.

Palmer participated in the World Peace Council’s 1983 Prague Assembly, part of the Soviet launch of the nuclear-freeze movement. The only thing it would have frozen was the Soviet Union’s military superiority.

In June 1986, while editor of the Black Press Review, she wrote an article for the Communist Party USA’s newspaper, the People’s Daily World, now the People’s Weekly World. It detailed her experience attending the 27th Congress of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union and how impressed she was by the Soviet system.

Palmer gushed at the “Soviet plan to provide people with higher wages and better education” and spoke of the efficiency of the Soviets’ most recent five-year plan, attributing its success to “central planning.” She praised their “comprehensive affirmative action program, which they have stuck to religiously — if I can use the word — since 1917.”

Palmer also marveled that all Russian citizens were guaranteed a job matching their training and skills, free education, affordable housing and free medical care. Because Soviet school curricula were established at the national level, she said, “there is no second-class ‘track’ system in the minority-nationality schools as there is in the inferior inner city schools in my hometown, Chicago, and elsewhere in the United States.”

Obama and Palmer both oppose school choice and vouchers and successful programs like the D.C. Opportunity Scholarships. They prefer the central planning of education as dictated by the teachers unions and the commissars at the National Education Association.

When Obama won the Iowa caucuses, Frank Chapman, a member of the U.S. Peace Council Executive Committee, wrote a letter to the People’s Weekly World celebrating the victory of Alice Palmer’s former protege.

“Obama’s victory was more than a progressive move,” Chapman wrote. “It was a dialectical leap ushering in a new era of str

yep, pretty much.

This article was on the Timesonline. I've cut and pasted it on here.

From The Sunday TimesOctober 7, 2007

Muslim medical students get pickyDaniel Foggo and Abul Taher
Some Muslim medical students are refusing to attend lectures or answer exam questions on alcohol-related or sexually transmitted diseases because they claim it offends their religious beliefs.

Some trainee doctors say learning to treat the diseases conflicts with their faith, which states that Muslims should not drink alcohol and rejects sexual promiscuity.

A small number of Muslim medical students have even refused to treat patients of the opposite sex. One male student was prepared to fail his final exams rather than carry out a basic examination of a female patient.

The religious objections by students have been confirmed by the British Medical Association (BMA) and General Medical Council (GMC), which both stressed that they did not approve of such actions.

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Fear of offending is killing our culture
It will intensify the debate sparked last week by the disclosure that Sainsbury’s is permitting Muslim checkout operators to refuse to handle customers’ alcohol purchases on religious grounds. It means other members of staff have to be called over to scan in wine and beer for them at the till.

Critics, including many Islamic scholars, see the concessions as a step too far, and say Muslims are reneging on their professional responsibilities.

This weekend, however, it emerged that Sainsbury’s is also allowing its Muslim pharmacists to refuse to sell the morning-after pill to customers. At a Sainsbury’s store in Nottingham, a pharmacist named Ahmed declined to provide the pill to a female reporter posing as a customer. A colleague explained to her that Ahmed did not sell the pill for “ethical reasons”. Boots also permits pharmacists to refuse to sell the pill on ethical grounds.

The BMA said it had received reports of Muslim students who did not want to learn anything about alcohol or the effects of overconsumption. “They are so opposed to the consumption of it they don’t want to learn anything about it,” said a spokesman.

The GMC said it had received requests for guidance over whether students could “omit parts of the medical curriculum and yet still be allowed to graduate”. Professor Peter Rubin, chairman of the GMC’s education committee, said: “Examples have included a refusal to see patients who are affected by diseases caused by alcohol or sexual activity, or a refusal to examine patients of a particular gender.”

He added that “prejudicing treatment on the grounds of patients’ gender or their responsibility for their condition would run counter to the most basic principles of ethical medical practice”.

Shazia Ovaisi, a GP in north London, said one of her male Muslim contemporaries at medical school failed to complete his training because he refused to examine a woman patient as part of his final exams.

“He was academically gifted, one of the best students, but gradually he got in with certain Islamic groups and started to become more radical,” said Ovaisi.

“You could see there was a change in his personality as time went by. During the final exams he was supposed to treat a female patient in hospital. He refused to do it, even though it would have been a very basic examination, nothing intrusive.

“But he refused and as a result he failed his exams. I was quite shocked and disappointed about it because I don’t see there being anything in our religion that prohibits us from examining male and female patients.”

Both the Muslim Council of Britain and Muslim Doctors and Dentist Association said they were aware of students opting out but did not support them.

Dr Abdul Majid Katme, of the Islamic Medical Association, said: “To learn about alcohol, to learn about sexually transmitted disease, to learn about abortion, it gives us more evidence to campaign against it. There is a difference between learning and practising.

“It is obligatory for Muslim doctors and students to learn about everything. The prophet said, ‘Learn about witchcraft, but don’t practise it’.”
My opinion is that if they are not willing to treat every patient equally they should be thrown out of medical school.
ARFURCHANCE
I totally agree with you. My father fought in the war too. They all fought for freedom, but we are not the ones who are not free to say what we want.
This country acts as if it is under Muslim rule.
I wonder what would happen if a white doctor working in a Muslim country refused to treat one of their patients?
RIG66MAN
A truer word was never spoken.
DAWLEYMOUSE
Apology accepted. I was shocked and angry when I read it.
ITELLICAT
What a load of drivel. How on earth can you qualify as a doctor if you are not going to treat everyone. The code of practice in medicine is that you treat everyone the same. Even if the way they live their lives offends you. I once had to nurse a paedophile and it made me sick to the bones to go near him, but I had to treat him and try and forget who he was.
And the answers that you don't like shouldn't scare you….the people of Britain are all angry about this and that is OUR opinion…NOT the papers.
TOI ET MOI
if you find my additional details not to your liking then don't read them. They are my opionion which in this country is still allowed.
yes a work for the nhs and not this is not a heap of drivel.
i could tell you a lot more about what goes on in the nhs regards to muslim rights being respected but not ours.
in fact i will put that in my next question.
PLATO
the opt out of the abortion clause was totally different. That was the taking of a life…these doctors are not being asked to do that, they are simply being asked to do their job which is saving lives.

They are taking over UK under our very noses. Why weren't they doing this in the 60s or 70s – their religion hasn't changed dramatically in five years, but they have, they will kill and die to take over the UK and that's exactly what is happening. They hate the UK and they want to live here by their rules and unfortunately it will happen, is happening. If you say anything then you are labeled a racist, we are not allowed to fight for our country, yet they are allowed to get away with murder, literally. If I had the money I would emmigrate tomorrow – that is what they want, they want to run all white Christian people out of UK and it will turn into Iraq. Only somebody like Sadam Hussain could control them – but look what happened to him. I can now understand why Saddam ruled Iraq with a rod of iron and he should have been left to get on with it because that's the only way to stop them getting out of control.

Undergraduate medical education lasts 4yrs…and Grad lasts another 4yrs. When I researched the curriculum there wasn't any classes that you took during grad education. You do residency and subspecialty programs. Is that corrrect?

Medical school is a combination of classroom instruction and clinical hours. You may not recognize the classes as such, but they are there if it's a US medical school. Something there's something called "problem-based learning," which is basically learning through the case method. It's becoming more popular and you are learning but it's more self taught. And of course there is gross anatomy (you and 2-3 others students have a corpse to dissect during your med school years).

You also do clinical hours–when depends on the school. It is now a requirement to have clinical skills training (basically learning how to have a good bedside manner). You also go on rounds at a hospital, help with intake and workups (in 3-4th year) and do clinical rotations, often at community clinics.

Residency is after the four-year medical school program, and you pick a specialty at that time and there is a national placement process. Many students get their first choice for residency programs (where you work at a teaching hospital), but some get their second or third choice. The length of residency depends on the specialty.

I am in my first semester at University of Michigan and I plan to attend medical school 3 years from now. I am working hard but the curriculum is so downright tough that I dont know if I maintain a 3.5 which is usually a requirement to get into most medical programs. Would it be best for me to work hard at U of M for a year and if I cant get those grades transfer to a school that is a little less challenging where I could get those grades?

Not really. First, there is no gurantee pred-med at Ohio State, or any other school is going to be an easier. You will also have the issue of transferring over credits, which is never a sure thing.
However even assuming it is, would it be in your best long-term interest? While your GPA might seem a little lower, the added difficulty should help you do better on the MCAT.
So getting accustomed to it now could be an advatange, especially in Medical School.
Though you are right about one thing, you first need to be able to get into Medical school before you can worry about doing well there. So, see if you can maintain a GPA of 3.3 before doing something desperate.

I am in my first semester at University of Michigan and I plan to attend medical school 3 years from now. I am working hard but the curriculum is so downright tough that I dont know if I maintain a 3.5 which is usually a requirement to get into most medical programs. Would it be best for me to work hard at U of M for a year and if I cant get those grades transfer to a school that is a little less challenging where I could get those grades and learn alot of material?

If you go to a less prestigious school that can hurt you. The grades are important, but so are where they came from. A student with a 3.5 at community college is going to be looked at INCREDIBLY differently than a student at a well respected university with a 3.5. Stay at the better school and just really crack down on yourself, dont go out or anything until your grades are up, it might be hard, but if you want your dreams to be realised, its the price you have to pay.

I'm in high school and will have to pick my grade 11 courses soon. In order to apply for Medical School I need to get into the Faculty of Science plus other premed courses, is this correct? To get into Post-Secondary Science courses I will need Chemistry 12, Physics 12, Biology 12. I have the option to skip Biology 11 and jump to Biology 12 SINCE the curriculum for Bio 11 is different from Bio 12.

Bio 11 includes:
* Adaptation and Evolution
* Microbiology
* Mycology
* Plant Biology
* Animal Biology
* Ecology

while Bio 12 focuses on the human body. If I skip bio 11, I can reduce some stress and possibly do better on my other two science courses.

In order to gain entrance to medical school, you'll need to have (in college)

One year of English
One year of biology
One year of physics
1-2 years of chemistry (one year should be organic chem)
Some medical schools require a semester or year of a social science, most usually psychology.

Personally, my advice would be to take the biology 11. Biology is probably one of the most important pre-med courses you'll take, and it's good to have a good foundation in it in high school. You'll certainly need the foundation in microbiology, ecology, and adaptation and evolution, as those subjects also concern humans (in addition to animals).

Do you have to take chemistry, physics, and biology all in one year? That's rather unusual in high school, as they usually have them tiered (biology, chemistry, then physics, or whatever other order, but usually in different grades). I'm a little confused as to whether you'd simply not be taking biology at all this year, or whether you'd be taking 12 instead of 11 and then not taking anything at all your senior year. Just remember that your junior year is the most important year for college admissions, as it is the last full year that counselors will see when you apply. If you have to get into a science faculty, make sure that you appear to be a strong science student.