First of all, he has taken the oath of office twice already. The first time, in front of just fewer than two million people at his inauguration, was unfortunately flubbed when Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts mistakenly misspoke part of the presidential oath of office. President Obama ended up misspeaking his part of the oath, which was painful to watch. Can you imagine how awful Chief Justice Roberts must feel, messing up the most important moment of both their lives? Anyway, conspiracy theories abound and in an effort to quash any legal challenges to the presidency, President Obama and Chief Justice Roberts met again, this time at the White House, to re-administer the oath of office, swearing in Obama, twice. The notable thing about the second swearing-in ceremony was that President Obama did not place his hand on a Bible during the oath. After all the hoopla surrounding his use of the Lincoln Bible at his inauguration, at his second swearing in, apparently the official one, not a single holy book could be found. I also found it remarkable that even though Obama felt the need to have his swearing-in repeated, he didn’t feel it necessary to re-issue all of the executive orders he signed beforehand.

At the end of the day, none of those things really matters. But President Obama has made some big decisions in his first 100 hours in office that do not bode well for our future. Beginning with his executive order to shut down the terrorist detention camp at our Naval base in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba; as it turns out former President Bush had already inquired about the logistics involved with shutting Gitmo down. It would be a safe bet to say that most Americans, including myself, would prefer not to have a prison camp at Gitmo. But I also think it would be a safe bet that, if asked, most Americans do not want the detainees currently being held in Guantanamo Bay moved to their state pens. Therein lays the problem. According to Secretary of Defense Robert Gates, he looked into shutting down Gitmo when he was first appointed by then-President Bush. The obstacle he repeatedly came back to was what to do with the detainees if we shut the prison down. Many of the home countries of the detainees do not want them back, and it would be a logistical disaster for our legal and penal systems if we allowed these men into prisons on US soil, so that doesn’t leave us with many other options. President Obama cannot just wave some kind of magic wand to deal with this problem, so I am very interested in what he is going to do over the next year to get this done. My prediction is that either the detainees will be moved to US prisons, granting them full access to all of our rights, or the best case scenario, Guantanamo Bay will still be around at the end of Obama’s first term, handing the new President his first failure.

AURORA, CO – As our nation prepares to swear in a new president, and God willing, a new era in Washington, DC, I thought it would be prudent to reminisce over the last eight years under the Bush administration. Besides, everyone else is doing it.

George Bush has been so brutalized in the press, that it is difficult to find criticism of the man that is not rooted in personal hatred or biased ignorance. As the leader of our country, he is definitely responsible for the problems we face, but it is unfair that he is blamed for things that are untrue. For instance, the far-left continues to decry that Bush’s anti-terror policies have taken away some of our most sacred rights. Yet they are always unable to provide examples of how they are being oppressed. The United States has very real problems to deal with, but if you believe the mainstream media, George Bush has turned our country into the former Soviet Union.

We are at war on two fronts in the Middle East, as well as on the precipice of another Cold War with Russia. Our economy is on the very real verge of collapse. Our political system is fraught with corruption and full of people who are more interested in furthering their own careers and agenda than bettering American lives. These are the problems that can be laid at the foot of the President. During the last eight years, our reputation around the world has declined. Much of the negative impressions are also unfairly attributed to Bush, but nonetheless, as the soon-to-be-former leader of our country it was his responsibility to do something about those misconceptions. I could go on and on about the problems, both real and concocted, we face, but I wanted to limit this column to two focal points that I think truly define the presidency of George W. Bush.

It was within the first nine months of the Bush presidency that our nation was attacked by al-Qaeda on September 11, 2001. This event was world-changing, and personally it changed my outlook on life. I have given President Bush a lot of lee-way in his decision-making because of the 9/11 attacks. Whether he made all the right moves following that fateful day or not, one thing I am absolutely certain of is that I thank God that Al Gore wasn’t president on September 11, 2001. There isn’t a single person I talked to who did not think we would be attacked again and again following the attacks on New York and Washington. But here we all are, seven and a half years later, without a single attack on American soil. President Bush did such a fantastic job at keeping us all safe that we have become complacent regarding national security again. It’s almost as if 9/11 never happened. And in this humble reporter’s opinion, that outweighs almost all of the bad President Bush has done.

Many Americans agreed with me as Bush was re-elected in 2004 because he had kept us safe. However, if 9/11 defined President Bush’s first term, his second term was defined by an event that devastated our country in a different way. Like 9/11, it was during the first year of his second term when Hurricane Katrina roared ashore east of New Orleans, LA. The days following the storm made it evidently clear to me what my father had told me for years – you cannot depend on the federal government for anything. It was almost unbelievable to see people stranded on their roofs for days waiting for help to come. The sight of thousands of Americans stranded in shelters without enough food or water or medicine, not to mention the dead bodies lining the side of the road because help never came, completely decimated any good will that President Bush had built up. The government’s slow and ineffective response to this horrible natural disaster, under the leadership of George Bush, was the proverbial nail in his coffin. I never forgave him for what happened to the Gulf States, and in particular New Orleans and he was never able to recover politically after that.

So there you have it… the good, bad, and ugly of President Bush. He kept us safe after 9/11. He left us stranded after Katrina. And all the other stuff will be debated by people much smarter than I for the next twenty years. In the end, I think history will find that George Bush did make the right decisions on Iraq and Afghanistan. I hope his recent handling of the economic collapse hasn’t turned us into a socialist country, but again time will tell. I wish him and his family well as he leaves for Texas to begin his life in the private sector.

AURORA, CO – Let me preface this column by saying that I love the Jews. This is not meant to be anti-Semitic in any way. I just have a few issues about Israel that I wanted to talk about, and in this day and age of hyper-political correctness, I’m quite sure some people will get offended even with my disclaimer. If it helps, I am not a religious person, so I am approaching this subject from a completely impious and non-judgmental point of view. A separation-of-church-and-state point of view, if you will. Now let’s get to the good stuff!

I have been researching the history of the state of Israel in preparation for this column, and although there is a lot of pro-Palestinian propaganda out there, as well as pro-Israeli rhetoric, I think I have been able to cut through the hyperbole. While it is difficult for me to factor in the religious significance of the Holy Land, the consensus among all the differing information out there is that Israel was founded in 1948 as a sort-of geographical apology to the Jewish people for the Holocaust.

In high school and college, the plight of the Jewish people in World War II always struck me very personally. I am not Jewish and neither is most of my family, but you would have to be inhuman to not feel anguish for the tragedy that was the Holocaust. There are extremists out there who deny the entire theory of a Holocaust, but even the most conservative of legitimate estimates number the dead at the hands of the Nazis at 6,000,000 (six million). It angered me then, and still does, that the world didn’t have the courage to end Hitler’s brutality until it was too late. It really pisses me off when Tom Cruise puts out a movie that paints Nazis in a compassionate light, because there are still similar sympathizers today with men like Mahmoud Ahmadinejad given credibility on the world stage.

At any rate, what I have never been able to understand is why the US and other allied victors of WWII thought it was in their power to carve out land in the Middle East to create the state of Israel when the second World War had virtually nothing to do with the Middle East. The infighting between the tribal factions in the Muslim world hasn’t stopped since the beginning of time, and it won’t end in my lifetime. Insinuating an entire country out of other people’s land – land that had very little, if anything, to do with the Nazis – has only stoked the hatred and unending violence in the region.

It seems to me that the logical thing to do if appeasement of the Jewish people was the reason for forming the state of Israel would be to call Germany Israel and call it a day. I think the world would be a much more stable place if that were the reality. I know it has something to do with the biblical Holy Land, and stories of Moses wandering through the desert for 40 years. But is that enough of a reason to displace an already unhinged populous? And after 61 years of increasing vehemence, is Israel still worth our seemingly unconditional loyalty and defense?

The recent war between Israel and Hamas in Gaza has re-awakened all these questions. While Israel certainly has the right to defend itself and its citizens from an unending barrage of rocket attacks, there is a valid argument concerning the questionable foundation of the nation, and in the humble opinion of this reporter, that is the root cause of most of the Middle Eastern unrest. After six decades, it seems time is way overdue to re-evaluate our foreign policy stance toward Israel. No longer are they our only ally in that region of the world, so it really doesn’t make sense to continue our extreme military support. I have talked to a lot of people in my age group (20-40) who feel that the United States treats Israel as if it were the 51^st state. We don’t give Nebraska as much military support as we give Israel, not that Kansas is lobbing bombs across the state line. But you get my drift.

I know I appear to be beating up on Israel a lot in this blog, and I am. I just think there is a time when every man, woman, child, and country has to grow up and leave the nest. But let’s be honest, there is plenty to be said about the other side in this conflict. There is no question that the Palestinians brought this upon themselves for democratically electing a terrorist organization into governance, knowing full well that Hamas’ primary objective is to destroy Israel. Hamas wouldn’t even have a place to hang their hat – or launch their Katyusha rockets – if Israel hadn’t conceded the Gaza Strip in the first place. And what thanks do they get?

Israel had no choice but to stop the daily attacks on their civilian population, but the only way to put an end to the bloodshed is to completely annihilate Hamas. Thanks to our tax dollars, Israel is certainly capable of accomplishing that goal militarily, but that will never happen. So I suppose this is not going to be the last time you hear me opining about the Middle East conflict. This violence is never going to end, not in my lifetime. And it would have been nice if someone had put a little more thought into this whole Israel thing in 1948.

AURORA, CO – So yet another Democrat bites the dust. It was reported all day Sunday that New Mexico Governor Bill Richardson may be involved in a “pay-for-play” scandal. The details are sketchy – aren’t they always in political scandals? – but there are allegations that the governor’s political action committees received funds from a corporation in New Mexico in exchange for sweetheart government contracts. Frankly, this kind of thing happens all the time. It is very much unethical, it is very much a conflict of interest, but it is also very much commonplace in politics. How else can you expect to get elected if you don’t make certain promises? It’s one of the reasons I have decided to report on politics instead of working in politics. At any rate, this news about Gov. Richardson could not have come at a more appropriate time. He was recently tapped to serve as Commerce Secretary in President-elect Barack Hussein Obama’s administration. While he says he is innocent of any wrong-doing, Richardson has removed himself from consideration for the Dept. of Commerce post.

Of course, Bill Richardson is only the, what, twentieth politician to get caught with his proverbial pants down so far this year? It seems like just yesterday that the Democrats were in an uproar over the “culture of corruption” that seemed to plague only the Republicans. It just goes to show how small the aisle is that separates the two parties in Washington. The “culture of corruption” is an equal opportunity destroyer.

“Pay-for-play” seems to be the political term du jour. It recently became popular again thanks to the incorrigible Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich, though instead of giving away government contracts, this guy gave away a Senate seat. What am I saying; he probably gave away contracts too. What a country! The more time passes, the more I think the good Reverend Jeremiah Wright may have had it right all along – God Damn America. The old adage that in a democracy we get the government we deserve is so true, which leads me to wonder: What the hell is wrong with us? Why do we keep electing the same people when they have proven innumerable times their incompetence? Why do we always have to choose the lesser of two evils when we walk into the voting booth? And how is it, more often than not, that we end up electing the worst choice in the end?

For the past several years I have worked behind the scenes in politics, as a blogger and advisor on numerous state and national campaigns and as a state Republican Party liaison. I have had the indistinct privilege of getting to know both elected officials and those who wish to be elected officials, and the one thing they all had in common was an unhealthy ability to hide their true personas from the public. The true test of a politician is that they can look you in the eyes and tell you what you want to hear, meanwhile pursuing their own agendas.

This is what makes this whole Bill Richardson scandal is so disheartening to someone like me. I put my heart and soul into my political career only to be burned over and over again. I met Bill Richardson when he first ran for governor of New Mexico. He was so kind and concerned and, as it turns out, just like so many other politicians, he was corrupt. Excuse me – allegedly corrupt.

I have had numerous opportunities to see the ugliness that indelibly accompanies governance. I even wrote a blog about it last year entitled “How Sausage is Made”. It is a heavy burden to know when a politician is lying to the people, while the people lap it up. It’s even more disappointing to believe in someone who ultimately lets you down; which brings me to my final thought.

Barack Obama was elected to the most prominent and important post in the world by millions of hopeful Americans who saw the Illinois Senator as the savior of US politics. In the short time I have gotten to know Obama via the media, which as we all know is completely unbiased and objective, all I have learned about the man is that the more questions he answers, the more questions I have. There is another adage that rings true in politics: If it sounds too good to be true, it is. I have never known another politician who fit this saying more than Barack Obama.

I pray that Barack Hussein Obama has a successful presidency. I hope that he can fulfill his campaign promises to bring about change to Washington, DC. But we are talking about a politician, not a messiah, and I predict within his first year in office, President Obama will prove himself to be like so many prior presidents – a disappointment.