The Vetting: Washington Examiner Publishes 10-Part Backgrounder On "The Obama You Don't Know"

Big story, which probably would have been better served being rolled out one chapter per day.

Chapter Two is good. As with the whole report, it rebuts Obama's media-crafted false biography with actual facts.

Time magazine gushed in 2008 about Barack Obama's 12-year tenure as a law lecturer at the University of Chicago Law School, saying, "Within a few years, he had become a rock-star professor with hordes of devoted students."

That may have been true during his first two years, when he ranked first among the law school's 40 instructors, with students giving him a rating of 9.7 out of a possible 10.

But law student evaluations made available to The Washington Examiner by the university showed that his popularity then fell steadily.

In 1999, only 23 percent of the students said they would repeat Obama's racism class. He was the third-lowest-ranked lecturer at the law school that year. And in 2003, only a third of the student evaluators recommended his classes.

His classes were small. A spring 1994 class attracted 14 out of a student body of 600; a spring 1996 class drew 13. In 1997, he had the largest class of his tenure with 49 students. But by then, his student rating had fallen to 7.75. Twenty-two of 40 faculty members ranked higher than Obama.

It is often claimed that Obama was a "Constitutional law professor." Well...

Obama has often cited his days at the law school as an important part of his preparation for the presidency. At a March 30, 2007, fundraiser, for example, he said, "I was a constitutional law professor, which means, unlike the current president, I actually respect the Constitution."

From 1992 until 2004, Obama taught three courses: "Current Issues in Racism and the Law," "Voting Rights and the Democratic Process," and "Equal Protection and Substantive Due Process."

Three areas of the law that do involve the Constitution. It should also be noted all three are areas where leftwingers try to make the most impact on America.

Obama, of course, wrote no scholarly articles while attached to the University (unlike any serious legal thinker). And he was generally... let us say the most Reaganesque part of him was his apparent agreement with Reagan's line, "Hard work never killed anyone, but why take chances?"

...

Senior lecturers were, however, still expected to participate in university activities. University of Chicago Law School Senior Lecturer Richard Epstein told The Washington Examiner that Obama did not do so.

Obama, Epstein said, "did the minimal amount of work to get through. No one remembers him. He was not a participant in luncheons or workshops. He was here and gone."

Robert Alt, a former Obama student, echoes Epstein, telling the Examiner that "I think it's fair to say he wasn't engaged in the intellectual life of Chicago outside of the classroom."

...

The pattern of minimal performance at the Chicago campus was not an exception to the rule for Obama. In the state Senate during the same years he was lecturing, Obama voted "present" nearly 130 times, the most of any legislator in the chamber.

The below FoxNews segment digests the report:

posted by Ace at 12:49 PM

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