Legal Commentary

Is Obama still smoking while hiding and denying it?

By Beldar

I've written very recently of my sympathy for Sen. Obama's difficulty in trying to quit his cigarette habit. It literally took a heart attack three years ago to get me to stop, and even so, the last time I had a craving for a cigarette was ... oh, about six seconds ago. I am certainly not one of those ex-smokers who's become completely intolerant of those who still indulge, or those who have tried to quit without success so far. And I am, and always will be, vulnerable to the possibility of resuming the habit. So I'm slow to condemn smokers.

But it's disturbing to have my suspicions renewed that Sen. Obama's not only a chronic smoker, but a chronic liar about whether he's been successful in quitting. Jake Tapper of ABC News blogged yesterday about an episode from last August in which he'd smelled cigarette smoke on Sen. Obama, despite the campaign's emphatic denials that he'd still been smoking. And Tapper was apparently reminded of that episode by Obama's vague and evasive statements on the topic of his smoking on MSNBC's Hardball Softball with Chris Matthews on Wednesday:

Full post as published by BeldarBlog on April 04, 2008 (boomark / email).