Hillary Clinton may have received the endorsement of North Carolina’s governor for next week’s primary, but her rival Barack Obama may have done her one better by getting the implied support of University of North Carolina men’s basketball coach Roy Williams and his Final Four Tar Heel team. Yesterday, while Clinton was hobnobbing with Gov. Mike Easley, Obama scrimmaged with the Heels, at one point missing a layup after driving by consensus National Player of the Year Tyler Hansbrough. When Obama wasn’t getting enough passes his way, Williams yelled out from the sidelines : “You’ve got the future president of the United States wide open.”

In being present at such a pick-up game involving his players during the off-season, Williams was technically in violation of NCAA rules. The NCAA, however, made an exception in this case. “This was a unique situation and not an NCAA issue,” NCAA Media Relations Director Erik Christianson told The News & Observer. “It certainly was a great opportunity for the student-athletes to interact with a presidential candidate.”

It may not have concerned the NCAA, but rumors are now circulating that many of the Tar Heel faithful who are either Clinton or McCain supporters have gone over to the dark side and have become Duke fans.

If Barack Obama wins the Democratic nomination, Americans will have two presidential candidates who are open to school choice measures.

Barack Obama went on Fox News Sunday this week and said, “We should be experimenting with charter schools” and “different ways of compensating teachers” — beliefs he’s long held but not always trumpeted, The New Republic’s Josh Patashnik says. Obama advocated charter schools and performance-pay for teachers in Illinois, and has even hinted that he wouldn’t rule out the idea of school vouchers.

John McCain visited New Orleans Thursday on his “It’s Time for Action” tour, stopping in cities the campaign said the federal government has forgotten, but where local solutions are working.

New Orleans has become a proving ground for charter schools in the wake of Hurricane Katrina. According to the campaign, it has the highest percentage of students in charter schools among U.S. Cities. Most of the city’s students now attend charter schools. Last year, students in New Orleans charter schools out-scored their peers in traditional public schools on a standardized test.

A president friendly to charter schools could spur the already-growing charter school movement. The number of charter schools nationwide grew by 11 percent in 2006, serving a student body that is on average 53 percent minority and 54 percent low-income, according a survey from the Center for Education Reform.

In Grand Rapids, Mich., J.C. Huizenga, the founder of National Heritage Academies, a national chain of 55 K-8 charter schools located in six states, recently announced plans to started a college prep high school to go head-to head with a new public college prep school.

Chicago school teacher Will Okun recently described his frustrations with traditional city schools in an blog post entitled “The Mire.” The Chicago Public Schools have 27 charter schools on 48 campuses. Hundreds are on the waiting lists, and the city plans for more by 2010.

Okun, while cautioning parents and policy-makers to remember the students left behind in the public schools, describes parents desperate to pull their children from traditional schools:

Charter-school parents speak of higher graduation rates, better facilities, more extracurricular opportunities, caring teachers, and stricter discipline. Most importantly, these parents speak of charter schools with a sense of hope and purpose that no longer exists in most public high schools on the West Side. … I do not blame parents for wanting to surround their children with other children and parents who give education top priority.”

John McCain and Barack Obama have one thing in common—a pastor problem. McCain has come under fire for John Hagee’s comments regarding Catholics and Hurricane Katrina, while Obama is taking heat for anti-American sermons by his pastor, Jeremiah Wright.

Hagee’s endorsement of McCain has outraged many, and is arguably hurting McCain more than helping him. Recognizing this, McCain took a strong (albeit repetitious) stance against Hagee’s Katrina comments (in which he called the hurricane God’s judgment against the people of New Orleans) while visiting the Gulf Coast last week:

It’s nonsense, it’s nonsense, it’s nonsense, it’s nonsense, it’s nonsense. I don’t have anything additional to say. It’s nonsense, it’s nonsense, it’s nonsense, I don’t have anything more to say … it’s nonsense. I reject it categorically.

In response to controversy surrounding Wright’s comments, Obama delivered a speech on race in Philadelphia in March, and has called Wright’s words “divisive,” “racially charged” and “views that denigrate both the greatness and the goodness of our nation.”

On Monday, however, Wright fought back, accusing Obama of politicking:

He had to distance himself, because he’s a politician, from what the media was saying I had said, which was anti-American. He said I didn’t offer any words of hope. How would he know? He never heard the rest of the sermon.

Politics or not, quarantining himself from Wright is a necessity for Obama, especially since polls show Wright’s comments are costing the Obama campaign.

But these candidates vs. pastor problems mark a growing trend. Men of the cloth are increasingly taking on the role of political adviser, not just spiritual leader. This past fall, Robert Jeffers, pastor of First Baptist Church of Dallas, campaigned against Mitt Romney, encouraging his congregation not to elect the former governor. Kenneth Taylor, a pastor in Algoma, Wis., might soon be fighting for his tax exempt status because of a politically-charged sermon he gave during the last election.

Because pastors are the shepherds of the flock, it is reasonable to expect them to point out danger and keep their parishioners from it. But increasingly, conservative pastors are sounding more like infamous Reverends such as Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson. Such comments also leave many Christian conservatives fumbling to defend language similar to Wright’s—a glaring hypocrisy to many.

The freeway between the “city of God” and the “city of man” keeps expanding. With the number of pastors preaching politics from the pulpit, we can probably expect more controversy.

While most of the attention in Pennsylvania yesterday was on the battle for the Democratic nomination, the Republicans also held a primary in the Keystone State (as NJLawyer commented in last night’s results thread). The presumptive GOP nominee, John McCain, of course, won, capturing nearly 73 percent of the vote. But what about that other 27 percent? Ron Paul, who has not officially stopped running, picked up 16 percent, while Mike Huckabee, who has dropped out of the race, accounted for a little more than 11 percent of the vote.

Is this a protest vote against McCain, meaning that he still has a lot of work to do to unite his party? It will be interesting to chart this in the few primaries that remain.

Barack Obama’s personal connections are causing him grief again. Now it’s Bill Ayers – a 1960s radical connected to a bomb-setting anti-war group called the Weather Underground – who’s creating problems. This time, though, the connection is far shakier than Obama’s connection to Rev. Jeremiah Wright.

Ayers was never convicted of terrorism (unlike the two Weathermen whose sentences Bill Clinton pardoned or commuted), and claims that his infamous New York Times quote, “I don’t regret setting bombs. … I feel we didn’t do enough” was a “deliberate distortion.” He’s called his choices “complex, sometimes extreme and despairing” and explains his current views on his blog. Newsbusters.org notes that Ayers’ politics are still leftist, but according to the Washington Post, Chicago liberals at least consider Ayers “mainstream.”

The Obama-Ayers link has been bouncing across the blogosphere for several months now. Then Sean Hannity urged George Stephanopoulos to press Obama for details, and Stephanopoulos obliged (a fact that irks liberals) during Wednesday’s debate.

Obama replied, “The notion that … me knowing somebody who engaged in detestable acts 40 years ago when I was 8 years old, somehow reflects on me and my values, doesn’t make much sense.” Then (in a statement that offends pro-lifers), he noted that he doesn’t apologize for Sen. Tom Coburn, who believes in the death penalty for abortionists.

Just how close is the Ayers-Obama connection? The Fact Checker calls it tenuous. Ayers hasn’t endorsed Obama but gave a small contribution to Obama’s Senate campaign, met with him and others approximately twelve times when they served on a charity board together, hosted a party for him in 1995, and is Obama’s neighbor.

No one suggests that Obama applauds Ayers’ views. “I’m sure he’s very patriotic,” John McCain said of Obama yesterday. “But his relationship with Mr. Ayers is open to question.” In the Wall Street Journal, John Fund admits, “No one suggests that Mr. Obama has ever endorsed any of the actions of the Weathermen, which occurred when he was still a child.”

The question seems to be the same demanded of McCain after he sought the endorsement of anti-Catholic evangelist John Hagee: Just how vehemently and vocally does he disagree? Obama already called the acts “detestable,” but McCain asks, “Does he condemn them? Would he condemn someone who says that they’re unrepentant and wished that they had bombed more?”

On National Review’s Media Blog, Kevin D. Williamson says Obama’s connection to Wright and other radicals still makes a difference. Daily Kos responds to the whole story with a bitingly satirical post.

Remember the McCain Girls singing “Raining McCain” in a YouTube video about a month ago? (I know, you’d rather not remember it.) Back then, no one could agree whether it was meant to be taken serious or not, or whether or not it was put out by Democrats to embarrass the GOP contender. Well, today’s New York Times reports:

The creators of the McCain Girls turn out to be the comedy team behind 23/6, a five-month-old Web site owned by an affiliate of IAC/InterActiveCorp that parodies the news. The site, at 236.com, uses the motto “Some of the news, most of the time.”

The McCain Girls apparently had one fan: “I think they’re wonderful,” John McCain told the Fox News Channel last week. “I have watched that video several times.”

But watch out, they have a follow-up video out now: “Here Comes McCain Again.”

(If I were Annie Lennox and Dave Stewart, I think I’d sue. )

Shelby Steele, author of A Bound Man: Why We Are Excited About Obama and Why He Can’t Win, sat down with Dennis Prager; Rudy Giuliani makes the case for John McCain for president; Hillary Clinton caught in another lie? Mike Gallagher explains; Harry Reid says that paying taxes is voluntary. Dennis Prager breaks down the lunacy. Listen here.

Last Sunday, at a private fundraising event in San Francisco, Barack Obama commented on the problems his campaign has had wooing working class voters frustrated with the current economic conditions: “So it’s not surprising then that they get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren’t like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations.”

The comments, which were posted on The Huffington Post website yesterday, were immediately challenged by Obama’s Democratic rival Hillary Clinton and the John McCain campaign. “It’s being reported that my opponent said that the people of Pennsylvania who faced hard times are bitter; well, that’s not my experience,” Clinton said. “Pennsylvanians don’t need a president who looks down on them; they need a president who stands up for them, who fights for them, who works hard for your futures, your jobs, your families.” Steve Schmidt, a senior adviser to McCain, added, “It shows an elitism and condescension toward hard-working Americans that is nothing short of breathtaking. It is hard to imagine someone running for president who is more out of touch with average Americans.”

This morning, Obama admitted, “I didn’t say it as well as I should have.” He then went on to put a positive spin on what he said: “When you’re bitter you turn to what you can count on. So people, they vote about guns, or they take comfort from their faith and their family and their community. And they get mad about illegal immigrants who are coming over to this country or they get frustrated about you know how things are changing.”

Focus on the Family founder and social conservative commentator James Dobson has baffled his followers and pundits at large with his statements about the presidential campaign. Dobson has said he will not vote for Sen. John McCain, at one point suggested he would not vote in the presidential election, and more recently said he “will certainly vote,” without indicating whom he will support. When WORLD On the Web writer Alisa Harris called Dobson’s various stances a “flip-flop,” however, Focus on the Family took issue with her characterization. See Focus on the Family Action Vice President of Media and Public Relations Gary Schneeberger’s response at the end of Alisa’s updated post here.

The McCain campaign has come out swinging against Obama campaign, calling “absolutely dishonest” the misrepresentation that McCain not only foresees a U.S. troop presence in Iraq for another 100 years, but that he wills it to happen.

McCain’s original comments come from a New Hampshire town hall meeting where he spoke about the possibility of keeping a non-combat presence in Iraq for many years—along the lines of the U.S. military bases in post-war Korea and Germany. Obama himself has indicated the possibility of leaving a long-term strike force in Iraq, despite his intention to begin withdrawing troops immediately.

Voices in the blogosphere denounced Obama’s rhetoric as intentionally misleading, insincere demagoguery and anticipate the Obama campaign will use this particular “talking point” to paint McCain as a war monger in the upcoming Presidential race.

Obama doesn’t need to misrepresent McCain’s position in Iraq to appeal to anti-war voters. Merely telling the truth about their dramatically different positions provides ample ammunition to sway voters on either side of the issue. While Obama has opposed the war from the beginning, McCain — vocally hawkish throughout his political career — was always a strong advocate of preemptive military action. Not only did McCain figure as a vociferous proponent of the 2003 invasion, the LA Times reports that he cosponsored an act in 1998 that made “regime change” in Iraq an official U.S. policy. He repeated his conviction that the Iraqi threat be eliminated in a letter to President Bush in 2001.

In light of the real differences here, it seems an unnecessary exercise in dissemblance and distortion to harp on such a paltry point, unless, of course, someone just wants to play dirty. For Obama, the self-styled candidate of political transcendence, this intentional misrepresentation smacks of the old-school politics he purports to eschew. If his devotees are following this hundred-years hoax, they are apt to be disappointed.