I have a lot of respect for Doug Kmiec, but with respect to his latest missives on Catholics and Obama, he is, respectfully, off his rocker. Whatever can be said of John McCain, I fail to see how his perceived imperfection would lead faithful Catholics to support a candidate who has a zero rating on life issues from the National Right to Life Committee, who voted against a state ban on partial-birth abortion, who has supported expanded stem-cell research, who emphatically supports Roe v. Wade, and who opposes even reasonable restrictions like parental notification or even a state version of the Born Alive Infants Protection Act (which passed the federal Senate 98-0). Faithful Catholics would seem to have an obligation to consider Sen. Obama’s positions on the sanctity of life, and Professor Kmiec’s recent response to Ramesh, while acknowledging Obama’s general pro-abortion positions, fails to offer any hope that this particular “vineyard” would yield any fruit. There is no indication in Obama’s record that he has anything but a reflexive pro-abortion bias or that he would not further ingrain the “culture of death” into our political and legal institutions. I appreciate Professor Kmiec’s enthusiasm for “change,” but think this is an area where Obama would be as status quo as any Democrat.