Obama is now a Patriot

Barack Obama has been sighted wearing a U.S. flag lapel pin, according to the LA Times' Top of the Ticket blog

You may recall Obama removed the lapel flag pin last fall as something of a gesture of independence if you're an Obama fan -- or an act of defiant antiwar non-patriotism if you're not.

At the time Obama simply removed the pin, which most politicians had worn on their suit coats since 9/12 as a sign of patriotism, solidarity with 9/11 victims and their families and national support for American troops.

However, when a sharp-eyed local ABC-TV reporter in Iowa asked him, half-jokingly, about it in October, Obama went on seriously at some length:

"You know, the truth is that right after 9/11, I had a pin. Shortly after 9/11, particularly because as we're talking about the Iraq war, that became a substitute for, I think, true patriotism, which is speaking out on issues that are of importance to our national security, I decided I won't wear that pin on my chest.

 "Instead," Obama added rather grandiosely, "I'm going to try to tell....the American people what I believe will make this country great, and hopefully that will be a testimony to my patriotism."

 Everything's changed, now that he has a "patriotism problem." So the flag is back. And now there's even a touching, albeit shaky, story to explain Obama's grand old switch.

According to a touching-possibly-true-but-then-again-you-never-know-in-big-time-politics report circulating on several blogs during the night, the pin was reportedly given to Obama Tuesday morning by a disabled veteran whose name nobody seems to know right now.

 OK, I've had enough. I'm tuning it over to Lee Greenwood.

[youtube=http://youtube.com/watch?v=RssIN3ustUw]