That Sarah Palin really stuck it to the blame-America first crowd today.
“It sure would be nice if, just once, Barack Obama said he wants America to win,” she said, as the crowd cheered. “We are always proud to be Americans, and we don’t apologize for being Americans,” Palin added later.


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WASHINGTON: Barack Obama says he only had limited ties to ACORN, and they began in 1995. But other encounters with the group, plus a voter-registration drive he conducted called Project Vote three years earlier, calls his account into question.

Twice in the last week, Barack Obama has said his relationship with ACORN — the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now — began and ended with legal work he did for the group in 1995.

The Democratic presidential candidate made his remarks in an effort to distance himself from the low-income advocacy group, which is under investigation for voter fraud in several states.

But that assertion is subject to debate. Obama conducted training sessions for ACORN workers a decade ago, and his campaign also recently paid an ACORN subsidiary for canvassing efforts.

Plus his work with a group called Project Vote back in 1992 raises questions about whether he was involved with ACORN back then.

Project Vote was one of Obama’s earliest political successes. As director of Illinois Project Vote, Obama helped register 150,000 new voters in Chicago, and he was heralded for his efforts in local media.

ACORN was also registering voters at that time, and its relationship with Project Vote casts some doubt on Obama’s statement that his involvement with ACORN didn’t begin until three years later.

Obama’s campaign Web site — in a section called “Fight the Smears” that is devoted to shooting down harmful rumors about his candidacy — states as “fact” that “ACORN was not part of Project Vote, the successful voter registration drive Barack ran in 1992.”

The site also states, “Barack Obama never organized with ACORN.”

But accounts from the 1992 voter drive suggest the two groups were at least working alongside each other, if not together.

A blogger for Obama’s campaign Web site in February wrote: “When Obama met with ACORN leaders in November, he reminded them of his history with ACORN and his beginnings in Illinois as a Project Vote organizer … Senator Obama said, ‘I come out of a grassroots organizing background. … Even before I was an elected official, when I ran (the) Project Vote voter registration drive in Illinois, ACORN was smack dab in the middle of it.’”

Also, Chicago ACORN organizer Toni Foulkes wrote in the 2003 edition of the journal Social Policy that the two groups were working to register voters when Obama led the effort in Illinois.

She wrote that Obama and Project Vote made it possible for Carol Moseley Braun to win her Senate seat in 1992, and that “Project Vote delivered 50,000 newly registered voters in that campaign (ACORN delivered about 5,000 of them).”

But ACORN spokesman Lewis Goldberg told FOXNews.com “there was no work done between Project Vote and ACORN” during the 1992 Chicago drive.

“There was no financial intermingling,” he added.

Goldberg said the groups, rather, conducted “parallel” efforts to register voters.

Asked about the 1992 project, the Obama campaign referred FOXNews.com to a July letter to the editor in The Wall Street Journal from Sanford Newman, who was director of Project Vote in 1992.

Newman wrote that Obama worked for his organization, not ACORN, and that “it wasn’t until after Mr. Obama’s tenure had ended that it began to conduct projects more frequently with ACORN than with other community-based organizations.”

He wrote that Project Vote “remains a separate organization today.”

Goldberg also told FOXNews.com the two organizations are still separate, even though they now work together on voter registration.

On that issue, the two organizations seem to have maintained a close and open relationship in recent years.

Project Vote announced last week that together with ACORN they registered over 1.3 million people to vote. Project Vote is listed on the ACORN Web site as one of many “allied organizations.” The two organizations also share an office address in Arkansas and Washington, D.C. According to ACORN, the office-sharing is a cost-saving move done for “convenience.”

But as to Obama’s statement that his ties to ACORN are contained to his legal work, it has already been widely reported that his campaign paid more than $800,000 to a group called Citizens Services Inc., an ACORN subsidiary, to “augment” Obama’s grassroots organizing efforts in the Ohio, Texas and Pennsylvania primaries.

His campaign maintains those efforts were for getting voters to the polls and not for voter registration, which is the sticking point of ongoing ACORN probes.

Goldberg also confirmed to FOXNews.com that Obama gave two training sessions over the course of three years in the late ’90s. He said each session lasted an hour or less.

Republicans say Obama can’t deny his relationship with ACORN.

“[Obama's] relationship with ACORN is well-established,” said Republican National Committee spokesman Danny Diaz. “His comment is a fabrication.”

But Obama’s carefully worded statement regarding ACORN training on his “Fight the Smears” site appears to be true.

The statement says ACORN never “hired” Obama “as a trainer, organizer or any type of employee.”

And Goldberg said that, in fact, “Barack was not paid.”

Diaz noted that Obama changed his Web site to reflect the training sessions — it previously said the Illinois senator was never an ACORN trainer. The word, “hired,” was added later.

Ohio Secretary of State Jennifer Brunner filed an appeal with the U.S. Supreme Court Thursday, asking the high court to intervene in a dispute over whether the state must do more to help counties verify voter eligibility.

Brunner said a temporary restraining order preventing the state from offering witnesses to explain “how the complex database system works” will allow challenges at the county level to fully qualified voters and could “severely disrupt the voting process.”

In her court filing, Brunner, the state’s top elections chief, called the suit filed by the Ohio Republican Party “baseless” and suggested she can’t comply with the order from the lower court.

“As things now stand, the secretary must reprogram the statewide voter registration database by Friday — after Ohioans have begun voting, and as she and the 88 county boards of elections are undertaking other efforts to ensure that the general election in Ohio will be a smooth one,” she wrote.

On Tuesday, the 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Cincinnati sided with the GOP and ordered Brunner, a Democrat, to set up a system that provides names of newly registered voters whose driver’s license numbers or Social Security numbers don’t match records in other government databases.

The GOP contends the information will help prevent fraud. Brunner, a Democrat, has called the issue a veiled attempt at disenfranchising voters and that other checks exist to help determine eligibility.

In a statement released almost immediately after Brunner’s appeal, state GOP chairman Kevin DeWine said Brunner should’ve instituted changes long ago, before the time crunch of the election.

“This is a shameful mess, and Ohioans are rapidly losing confidence in Secretary Brunner’s ability to protect the integrity of this election,” DeWine said.

“Jennifer Brunner dropped a bombshell on Wednesday in revealing that as many as 200,000 registrations contain bad information, and she’s arrogantly fighting every effort to validate these questionable forms. She apparently lied to the media on Wednesday when her office vowed to comply with the district court’s order. It’s time to stop wasting valuable tax dollars and start fulfilling her legal obligations,” he continued.

Justice John Paul Stevens oversees the 6th Circuit and is in receipt of the filing. He has the option to deny the appeal outright or he can take it to the full court for consideration. If he rejects the appeal, the secretary of state has the option of sending it back under another judge.

In a statement accompanying the filing, Brunner blamed the ruling on politics. “Like so many recent controversies, this issue has been raised less than one month before the election — and it was only raised by one political party,” she said.

“Ohio has longstanding election law safeguards, such as confirmation cards for new registrants, and a bipartisan structure for boards and polling places. Ohioans can be confident that voter registration fraud by some paid registration workers will not translate into illegal voting in our state,” she said.

In noting that Ohio’s voter registration follows federal law, Brunner suggested that the bipartisan boards of elections in the state develop a means to protect election officials from litigation when they don’t purge mismatched data as well as “a solution” that includes a uniform process for all 88 counties to compare mismatched data; protect voters who are wrongly purged; and upgrade a voter query system that will guide counties on what to do with the information.

Click here to read Secretary of State Brunner’s appeal to the Supreme Court.

All through this period, the “gooks” were bombarding us with antiwar quotes from people in high places back in Washington. This was the most effective propaganda they had to use against us—speeches and statements by men who were generally respected in the United States.

They used Senator Fulbright a great deal, and Senator Brooke. Ted Kennedy was quoted again and again, as was Averell Harriman. Clark Clifford was another favorite, right after he had been Secretary of Defense under President Johnson.

When Ramsey Clark came over they thought that was a great coup for their cause.

The big furor over release of the Pentagon papers was a tremendous boost for Hanoi. It was advanced as proof of the “black imperialist schemes” that they had been talking about all those years.

In November of 1971 we came back from “Skid Row,” and they put us in one of the big rooms again in the main Hoala Prison area. This was “Camp Unity.” From that time on we pretty much stayed as a group with some other people who were brought in later. We ended up with about 40 men in there.

In May, 1972, when the U. S. bombing started again in earnest, they moved almost all the junior officers up to a camp near the China border, leaving the senior officers and our group behind. That was when President Nixon announced the resumption of the bombing of North Vietnam and the mining of the ports.

“Dogpatch” was the name of the camp near the border. I think they were afraid that Hanoi would be hit, and with all of us together in one camp one bomb could have wiped us out. At this time, the “gooks” got a little bit rougher. They once took a guy out of our room and beat him up very badly. This man had made a flag on the back of another man’s shirt. He was a fine young man by the name of Mike Christian. They just pounded the hell out of him right outside of our room and then carried him a few feet and then pounded him again and pounded him all the way across the courtyard, busted one of his eardrums and busted his ribs. It was to be a lesson for us all.

“I Was Down to 105 Pounds”

Aside from bad situations now and then, 1971 and 1972 was a sort of coasting period. The reason why you see our men in such good condition today is that the food and everything generally improved. For example, in late ‘69 I was down to 105, 110 pounds, boils all over me, suffering dysentery. We started getting packages with vitamins in them—about one package a year. We were able to exercise quite a bit in our rooms and managed to get back in a lot better health.

My health has improved radically. In fact, I think I’m in better physical shape than I was when I got shot down. I can do 45 push-ups and a couple hundred sit-ups. Another beautiful thing about exercise: It makes you tired and you can sleep, and when you’re asleep you’re not there, you know. I used to try to exercise all the time.

Finally came the day I’ll never forget—the eighteenth of December, 1972. The whole place exploded when the Christmas bombing ordered by President Nixon began. They hit Hanoi right off the bat.

It was the most spectacular show I’ll ever see. By then we had large windows in our rooms. These had been covered with bamboo mats, but in October, 1972, they took them down. We had about a 120-degree view of the sky, and, of course, at night you can see all the flashes. The bombs were dropping so close that the building would shake. The SAM’s [surface-to-air missiles] “were flying all over and the sirens were whining—it was really a wild scene. When a B-52 would get hit—they’re up at more than 30,000 feet—it would light up the whole sky. There would be a red glow that almost made it like daylight, and it would last for a long time, because they’d fall a long way.

We knew at that time that unless something very forceful was done that we were never going to get out of there. We had sat there for 31/2 years with no bombing going on–November of ‘68 to May of ‘72. We were fully aware that the only way that we were ever going to get out was for our Government to turn the screws on Hanoi.

So we were very happy. We were cheering and hollering. The “gooks” didn’t like that at all, but we didn’t give a damn about that. It was obvious to us that negotiation was not going to settle the problem. The only reason why the North Vietnamese began negotiating in October, 1972, was because they could read the polls as well as you and I can, and they knew that Nixon was going to have an overwhelming victory in his re-election bid. So they wanted to negotiate a cease-fire before the elections.

“I Admire President Nixon’s Courage”

I admire President Nixon’s courage. There may be criticism of him in certain areas—Watergate, for example. But he had to take the most unpopular decisions that I could imagine—the mining, the blockade, the bombing. I know it was very, very difficult for him to do that, but that was the thing that ended the war. I think the reason he understood this is that he has a long background in dealing with these people. He knows how to use the carrot and the stick. Obviously, his trip to China and the Strategic Arms Limitation Treaty with Russia were based on the fact that we’re stronger than the Communists, so they were willing to negotiate. Force is what they understand. And that’s why it is difficult for me to understand now, when everybody knows that the bombing finally got a cease-fire agreement, why people are still criticizing his foreign policy—for example, the bombing in Cambodia.

Right after the Communist Tet offensive in 1968, the North Vietnamese were riding high. They knew President Johnson was going to stop the bombing before the 1968 elections. “The Soft-Soap Fairy” told me a month before those elections that Johnson was going to stop the bombings.

In May of 1968 I was interviewed by two North Vietnamese generals at separate times. Both of them said to me, in almost these words:

“After we liberate South Vietnam were going to liberate Cambodia. And after Cambodia we’re going to Laos, and after we liberate Laos we’re going to liberate Thailand. And after we liberate Thailand we’re going to liberate Malaysia, and then Burma. We’re going to liberate all of Southeast Asia.”

“North Vietnamese Believe ‘Domino Theory’”

They left no doubt in my mind that it was not a question of South Vietnam alone. Some people’s favorite game is to refute the “domino theory,” but the North Vietnamese themselves never tried to refute it. They believe it. Ho Chi Minh said many, many times, “We are proud to be in the front line of armed struggle between the socialist camp and the U. S. imperialist aggressors.” Now, this doesn’t mean fighting for nationalism. It doesn’t mean fighting for an independent South Vietnam. It means what he said. This is what Communism is all about—armed struggle to overthrow capitalist countries.

I read a lot of their history. They gave us propaganda books. I learned that Ho Chi Minh was a Stalinist. When Khrushchev denounced Stalin in the late 1950s, Minh did not go along with it. He was not a “peaceful coexistence” Communist.

At this particular juncture, after Tet in 1968, they thought they had the war won. They had gotten General Westmoreland [commander of U.S. forces in South Vietnam] fired. They were convinced that they had wrecked Johnson’s chances for re-election. And they thought that they had the majority of the American people on their side. That’s why these guys were speaking very freely as to what their ambitions were. They were speaking prematurely, because they just misjudged the caliber of President Nixon.

To go back to the December bombing: Initially, the North Vietnamese had a hell of a lot of SAM’s on hand. I soon saw a lessening in the SAM activities, meaning they may have used them up. Also, the B-52 bombings, which were mainly right around Hanoi in the first few days, spread out away from the city because, I think, they destroyed all the military targets around Hanoi.

I don’t know the number of B-52 crewmen shot down then, because they only took the injured Americans to our camp. The attitude of our men was good. I talked to them the day before we moved out, preparing to go home, when they knew the agreements were going to be signed. I asked one young pilot—class of ‘70 at West Point—”How did your outfit feel when you were told that the B-52s were going to bomb Hanoi?” He said, “Our morale skyrocketed.”

I have heard there was one B-52 pilot who refused to fly the missions during the Christmas bombing. You always run into that kind. When the going gets tough, they find out their conscience is bothering them. I want to say this to anybody in the military: If you don’t know what your country is doing, find out. And if you find you don’t like what your country is doing, get out before the chips are down.

Once you become a prisoner of war, then you do not have the right to dissent, because what you do will be harming your country. You are no longer speaking as an individual, you are speaking as a member of the armed forces of the United States, and you owe loyalty to the Commander in Chief, not to your own conscience. Some of my fellow prisoners sang a different tune, but they were a very small minority. I ask myself if they should be prosecuted, and I don’t find that easy to answer. It might destroy the very fine image the great majority of us have brought back from that hellhole. Remember, a handful of turncoats after the Korean War made a great majority of Americans think that most of the POW’s in conflict were traitors.

If these men are tried, it should not be because they took an antiwar stance, but because they collaborated with the Vietnamese to an extent, and that was harmful to the other American POW’s. And there is this to consider: America will have other wars to fight until the Communists give up their doctrine of violent overthrow of our way of life. These men should bear some censure so that in future wars there won’t be a precedent for conduct that hurts this country.

By late January of this year, we knew end of the war was near. I was moved then to the “Plantation.” We were put together in groups by the period when we were shot down. They were getting us ready to return by groups.

By the way—a very interesting thing—after I got back, Henry Kissinger told me that when he was in Hanoi to sign the final agreements, the North Vietnamese offered him one man that he could take back to Washington with him, and that was me. He, of course, refused, and I thanked him very much for that, because I did not want to go out of order. Most guys were betting that I’d be the last guy out—but you never can fathom the “gooks.”

It was January 20 when we were moved to the “Plantation.” From then on it was very easy—they hardly bothered us. We were allowed out all day in the courtyard. But, typical of them, we had real bad food for about two weeks before we left. Then they gave us a great big meal the night before we went home.

There was no special ceremony when we left the camp. The International Control Commission came in and we were permitted to look around the camp. There were a lot of photographers around, but nothing formal. Then we got on the buses and went to Gia Lam Airport. My old friend “The Rabbit” was there. He stood out front and said to us, “When I read your name off, you get on the plane and go home.”

That was March 15. Up to that moment, I wouldn’t allow myself more than a feeling of cautious hope. We had been peaked up so many times before that I had decided that I wouldn’t get excited until I shook hands with an American in uniform. That happened at Gia Lam, and then I knew it was over. There is no way I can describe how I felt as I walked toward that U. S. Air Force plane.

Now that I’m back, I find a lot of hand-wringing about this country. I don’t buy that. I think America today is a better country than the one I left nearly six years ago.

The North Vietnamese gave us very little except bad news about the U. S. We didn’t find out about the first successful moon shot [in 1969] until it was mentioned in a speech by George McGovern saying that Nixon could put a man on the moon, but he couldn’t put an end to the Vietnam war.

They bombarded us with the news of Martin Luther King’s death and the riots that followed. Information like that poured continuously out of the loud-speakers.

I think America is a better country now because we have been through a sort of purging process, a re-evaluation of ourselves. Now I see more of an appreciation of our way of life. There is more patriotism. The flag is all over the place. I hear new values being stressed—the concern for environment is a case in point.

I’ve received scores of letters from young people, and many of them sent me POW bracelets with my name on it, which they had been wearing. Some were not too sure about the war, but they are strongly patriotic, their values are good, and I think we will find that they are going to grow up to be better Americans than many of us.

This outpouring on behalf of us who were prisoners of war is staggering, and a little embarrassing because basically we feel that we are just average American Navy, Marine and Air Force pilots who got shot down. Anybody else in our place would have performed just as well.

My own plans for the future are to remain in the Navy, if I am able to return to flying status. That depends upon whether the corrective surgery on my arms and my leg is successful. If I have to leave the Navy, I hope to serve the Government in some capacity, preferably in Foreign Service for the State Department.

I had a lot of time to think over there, and came to the conclusion that one of the most important things in life—along with a man’s family—is to make some contribution to his country.

Banjo Legend Plays on Operating Table During Brain Surgery

Eddie Adcock has plucked his banjo on many stages — but nothing probably came close to playing the instrument on an operating table during brain surgery.

The bluegrass legend, 70, underwent a three-part surgery at Vanderbilt Medical Center in Louisville, Ky. between Aug. 15 and 25 to correct a condition called “essential tremor” that has hampered his ability to perform everyday tasks as well as play his beloved banjo.

During stage two of the operation, Adcock was kept awake to perform while surgeons poked and prodded different areas of his brain.

“This is usually a routine procedure where electrodes are placed in thalamus, which is a kind of switchboard in the brain,” Dr. Peter Hedera, a neurologist specializing in movement disorders at Vanderbilt Medical Center, told FOXNews.com. “Usually people are asked to hold a cup or write — but in this case we had Eddie play the banjo because that was his main problem.”

During the deep-brain stimulation surgery, neurosurgeon, Dr. Joseph Neimet, and Hedera were able to place the electrodes in precisely the right place under the guidance of Adcock.

“He played the banjo delivering different currents to the thalamus,” Hedera said. “The whole time he was telling us whether he was playing better or worse.”

At one point, Adcock told surgeons he was plucking away like it was 10 to 15 years ago.

“He was very pleased and surprised,” Hedera said. “You could see the smile on his face. He was thrilled.”

His tremor is now controlled by a pacemaker implanted in his chest, which helps block the shaking. The device is expected to last 12 years before Adcock will need a replacement.

“It was risky but playing means that much to me,” Adcock said. “I never went through hell like this. But I couldn’t bear giving up the banjo.”

When Hedera was asked if the surgery was a success, he referred to a recent appearance by the music legend.

“He played to a big audience a few days ago at a bluegrass festival and we got feedback that people were blown away. They said he was playing like the “old Eddie.”

Adcock and his wife Martha, who often perform together, have been referred to as the “Sonny and Cher of Bluegrass.”