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Welcome to Adlai Stevenson High School's first-ever online journal!

While the Marksman has existed in prevous school years as a student political journal, http://marksman.wikispaces.com/ will allow students to use this wiki as a collaborative writing experience.

Journal entries will be updated every Friday, but you must be a registered member of the Marksman Club to join the collaborative experience. To get access to the collaborative process of writing these wikis, email your name and SHS student ID # to Mr. Conneen (aconneen@district125.k12.il.us) or drop by one of our club meetings on the first Tuesday of each month in Room 7066 from 3:30-4 p.m.

Please remember that the Marksman is part of the Stevenson High School Student Activities program, and the expectations are that club members will respect the extra-curricular guidelines established by Stevenson in regards to their communications on this website.

Senator Barack Obama got a rude awakening this week in his attempt to win the Democratic presidential nomination in 2008.
 * Essay for the Week of 1.29.2007**: __**Team Barack v. Team Hillary**__

With two best-selling books and Oprah on his side, Barack Obama entered this political race free of the stains that mark typical candidates who have been through tough, mud-slinging campaigns. Some even dubbed him as St. Obama http://www.citizenu.org/2007_01_01_citizenu_archive.html (January 11, 2007) for the way in which the media treated this rising star.

It was inevitable, but it certainly didn't take long for Obama to feel the sting of media barbs.

Almost as soon as Barack announced his formation of a presidential exploratory committee, an internet rumor started circulating on [|http://www.insightmag.com] that Obama had been educated in a militant Islamic Indonesian school between the ages of 6+8.

While this rumor turned out to be purely untrue, Team Obama proved to be disorganized and slow to discredit the rumor allowing it to spread for days--a huge no no in contemporary campaigning.

Some say Team Obama countered the rumor as soon as the news broke. Others claimed the rumor festered due to the recent revelation that Barack's middle name is Islamic-sounding middle name "Hussein" and that he briefly lived in Indonesia, home of the largest Muslim population in the world, as a child. Of course these loyal supporters claim the rumors never even really made much of a difference, and only served to discredit his opponents. According to these supporters, their political "rock star" can do no wrong.

Meanwhile a secondary rumor was reported at [|http://www.insightmag.com] that Team Hillary was behind the ugly rumour about Barack's schooling.

In all liklihood, this is the more damaging of the two rumors but even if Obama was educated in a militant elementary school, it would still get a big "who cares?"

Americans are generally forgiving about peoples' childhoods. Just looks at Obama's memoir //Dreams of my Father// where he admitted to experimenting with drugs as a young person. People applauded his honesty rather than critisize his decisions.

Chances are--if he was educated as a militant young Muslim-- people would applaud the Senator for overcoming intolerance. For many, this rumor would not be a blow to Obama at all.

But the rumor about Hillary could turn out to be damning. People already see her as brash, and her response after finding that Sen. Obama was running was less than stellar. This could be used by her opponents to show that she's "dirty" and willing to fire some low blows to win. A misstep on Hillary's part is not as forgivable. She is not quite "rock star" material-- and she has strikes against her for a) staying with Bill, and b) her senate voting record.

So in the end we already know 3 facts in the 2008 Presidential election: Team Hillary vehemently denies spreading the rumor; InsightMag stands by its story; and Barack Obama is in for one tough fight in the year to come!

But from inside the fog, what we all forget is one simple fact about the Presidency: Senators don't win. Whenever a senator has run in the last sixty years (possibly longer), he has lost--of course with the exception of Kennedy, who had a little more than a bit of help, depending on who you listen to. Even with all this talk of Edwards, Clinton, and Obama, I'm predicting that they will face their stiffest competition from a Republican governor, like Huckabee, although they don't have the exposure that we have seen with the bidders from the Hill.