BLUNTNESS, AND RARE CLARITY – AT 10:21 A.M. ET:   Andrew Malcolm, of Investor's Business Daily, in a blunt and brave column, writes what a lot of other people are thinking, about President Obama.  From IBD: 

Once again Barack Obama, who entered American public life a decade ago as a real good talker, has created another unnecessary verbal mess for himself by dragging the medieval Crusades into the contemporary discussion of terrorism by Islamic extremists.

But what his tortured comparison also did was add fuel to the widespread suspicion that this American president who professes to be Christian harbors some dark, hidden affinity or allegiance to Islam.

That's a faith with 1.7 billion followers, the overwhelming number of whom have nothing to do with the senseless and bloody terrorism that seared the American psyche on 9/11 and most days since.

And being a president named Barack Hussein Obama, the Democrat sees no need to address these suspicions even as, like the stubborn secrecy he wrapped around his birth certificate, the allegedly false impression is embedded in many minds.

According to at least one understandably unidentified speechwriter, Obama personally wrote the Crusade reference into his remarks to the National Prayer Breakfast Thursday.

And...

Obama is quite fond of such convenient but superficial moral equivalencies. In this case, he's comparing as equals Islamic State barbarism to the Spanish Inquisition, which occurred more than five centuries ago, and to two centuries of Crusades that began almost a millenia ago.

Such facile phrasing drew immediate rebukes across a wide spectrum, including not surprisingly political opponents.

"We will be happy to keep an eye out for runaway Christians," said Gov. Bobby Jindal. "But it would be nice if he would face the reality of the situation today. The Medieval Christian threat is under control, Mr. President. Please deal with the radical Islamic threat today.”

Deborah Lipstadt, a professor of Jewish history at Emory University, said: “He has bent over backwards to try to separate this from Islam. Sometimes people try to keep an open mind. And when you have too open a mind, your brains can fall out.”

COMMENT:  Indeed, one sees falling brains all over Washington.  They often belonged to people who were only too happy to announce their own brilliance, and to coin phrases like "smart power" to call attention to their College Board scores.

Obama belongs to a class, now in charge in Washington, that believes that education equals wisdom, and that where you went to school determines your abilities and morality. 

In fact, in my lifetime I have never detected any connection between alma mater and competence, or educational pedigree and greatness.  Remember, please, that Lincoln had one year of schooling, and Reagan went to a tiny, obscure college in Illinois.

February 9,  2015