Editor's note. Have a great weekend. Hope to hear from you at daveandrusko@hotmail.com.

"I hope that this book will do voters a service by telling the story of the man's political life in one place, in a manner that is appropriately critical and free of hyperbole."
      From the introduction to "The Case Against Barack Obama: The Unlikely Rise and Unexamined Agenda of the Media's Favorite Candidate," by David Freddoso.

The front page headline over the lead stories in USA Today this morning reads, "Two Weeks to make their case." The reference is to the back-to-back Democratic and Republican national conventions where pro-abortion Sen. Barack Obama and pro-life Senator John McCain will make their respective cases to the American people.

For Obama, we read this summary introduction:  "For newer face, a need to 'tell my story.'" This reminds us that Obama knows that even though this election cycle has gone on seemingly forever, a significant proportion of the electorate is just now tuning in.

But while the junior senator from Illinois still receives preposterously favorable coverage in the "mainstream media," there are at least a few reporters who have looked behind the curtain. One is David Freddoso, author of "The Case Against Barack Obama." Next week I will write about my interview with Freddoso, an investigative reporter and political reporter for National Review online.

Let me make a few but important points here about the 244-page book, published by Regnery Publishing, and available at all major bookstores and through Amazon.com. First let me say what it isn't.

Aside from an inherent commitment to fairness and accuracy, Freddoso understands that every time an undocumented, out of the blue, slanderous allegation is made about Sen. Obama, it feeds into one of the pivotal strategies of the Obama campaign: to rule any substantive disagreement out of order in advance. In other words, when blatantly untrue things are said, it allows the Obama campaign to do what it is tried to do from day one: tar all legitimate criticism with the same "they're all a pack of lies" brush.

Freedoms' book is calm, in most places almost matter of fact, in its devastating critique of Obama. The "just the facts, Madam" tenor makes the story he tells even more compelling. Despite what Obama supporters will say, the book is not some free association, off-the-wall attack, but a carefully documented critique of "the least experienced politician in at least one hundred years to obtain a major party nomination for President of the United States."

Nor is "The Case Against Barack Obama" unwilling to acknowledge Obama's strengths as an orator. The man can read a teleprompter with the best of them.

Freddoso helps those just now turning an ear to the presidential election to understand who Obama is and the environment--Chicago-style politics--where he cut his political teeth. As you might imagine the story he tells is quite different than the "Story" (as the brief history of  Obama's life is reverentially referred to by his admirers) with which Obama regales his audiences.

To take one example, Freddoso illuminates the unbelievably charmed political life Obama has lived.

"Prior to this year, Obama has run in just one seriously contested election--for Congress, in 2000," Freddoso writes. "He lost in a landslide. His victories, right up until his foray into the presidential primaries, have come almost effortlessly, owing largely to incredible good luck and the fact that is opponents' faults were much greater than his own. This makes him an unknown quantity, even now as he runs for President."

That virtually unbroken string of successes has hit a few bumps in the road. The only pothole to date is one that Obama dug for himself: his hard-core anti-life record which he is now desperately trying to cover up.

Freddoso does an admirable job re-tracing Obama's steps. And by comparing him to Sen .Barbara Boxer, he helps us see how far out to sea Obama is on the life issues. Boxer, the Democrat from California, "was the greatest ally any legalized-abortion advocate had ever had in the United States Senate. Or at least she was until 2005. That is the year Barack Obama was sworn in."

Now isn't that an example of the hyperbole that Freddoso has vowed to avoid? It would be, if it were untrue. But it is true. Obama has explored regions of the anti-life territory that even Barbara Boxer feared to tread.

The classic example is legislation to protect born-alive survivors of abortion. Obama was not in the United States Senate when it considered the Born-Alive Infants Protection Act.

The act simply required that for all federal law purposes, any baby who was entirely expelled from his or her mother, and who showed any of the specified signs of life, was to be regarded as a legal person for however long he or she lived, and that this applied whether or not the birth was the result of an abortion or of spontaneous premature labor. Even Boxer gulped and voted for that.

Illinois had a virtual clone of the federal BAIPA. Obama worked on stage and off to kill the bill and has spent the last four years denying what he had done. NRLC recently produced unassailable document proving his role in killing the bill.

Obama first said NRLC was "lying. " His campaign later conceded he had voted against the state BAIPA, although it wrapped the grudging admission in a package of further bogus justifications for his votes.

Next week we'll talk about my interview with Mr. Freddoso. Let me end with this question from "The Case Against Barack Obama," which I hope to answer next week:

"Moreover, how is it that so many Americans have such unrealistic hopes and dreams wrapped up in a man who in any other context would be considered just another inexperienced freshman senator whose time to run for president is eight to twelve years hence?"