Amidst Obama mania, a small news item came and went last week.

Ironically, it had to do with the assasination of the man many are comparing Obama to - President John Fitzgerald Kennedy.

Documents reportedly hidden away in the darkness of a court-house safe were ordered to see the light of day by Dallas County District Attorney Craig Watkins.

While many of the items in the safe have yet to be released, one tantalizing piece was purported dialogue between alleged long assasin Lee Harvey Oswald and his killer, Jack Ruby.

It went down about seven weeks prior to the assasination, according to reports, like this:

Ruby meets Oswald in his nightclub, the cheesey Carousel Club, and he tells Oswald that the "boys in Chicago" want to get rid of JFK's brother, Bobby, who was the U.S. Attorney General with an axe to grind against the same mob that help JFK get elected.

Oswald then says: "There's a way to get rid of him without killing him."

Ruby: "How's that?"

Oswald: "I can shoot his brother."

They then talk about logistics and blood money for the chore and Oswald innocently asks Ruby if he is mobbed-up.

Ruby: "You're asking too many questions."

Ruby then warns Oswald of the life-or-death ramifications of turning rat if things go wrong.

Even a firm believer in a conspiracy like myself finds this conversation silly and rather unlikely to have occured.

It is believed that the papers belong to former Dallas DA Henry Wade, who was believed to have been toying with the idea of a screenplay about the assasination.

So, while the dialogue is probably the product of a poor writer, the fact that Wade believed there was a connection between Ruby and Oswald is high-caloried food for thought.

Was Wade culling together bits and pieces of conversations he had behind closed doors with Oswald and Ruby and trying to lay them out in a crude script?

Just as interesting is the RFK angle.

I recently watched a show on The Discovery Channel wherein several independent experts analyzing a tape recording of his 1968 assasination that was unwittingly recorded by a foreign journalist and deemed unusable by the FBI.

Each expert determined that more than eight shots were fired, with one having as many as 13 going off. RFK's accused assasin, Sirhan Sirhan, only had an 8-shot revolver on him.

Hmmmmmm ....

When my carefully chosen candidate John Edwards exited the campaign before Super Tuesday - despite initially promising to hang on and hang in until after the gargantuan political event (designed to cure E.D. for all the talking heads at CNN and FOX) - I promised to go through some long nights and then let the two or three of you who care what I think in on ... well ... what I think.

Following my midnight at the oasis, I have reached a decision on who of the two remaining candidates - Hillary Clinton or Barack Obama - the Gordonville Post is endorsing as the Democratic nominee.

It wasn't an easy decision, particularly because I'm aware of the consequences, and I could've played it safe and waited.

But I felt I owed it to the two or three of you before Super Tuesday.

But first, before I'm skewered alive, some history.

The year was 1988 and the G2 you endure these days was taking form.

On the student-run newspaper at Temple University's Ambler campus, I make a mercurial ascension from sports writer to sports editor. I wrote my share of album and concert reviews to build up my clip file, but was made Op-Ed Editor for my final semester.

And I had my own weekly column that contained much of the same vibes of my current Sunday offering in The Times Herald. I dubbed the column "For What It's Worth" after the Buffalo Springfield song from the 1960s that some want us to forgive, forget and regret.

I usually leaned so far to the left - touting the virtues of the Sandinistas in Nicaragua and writing about my newfound friendship with 1960s activist Abbie Hoffman (who I dragged to campus for a well-attended speech) - that the FBI and CIA probably built files on me.

You think I'm bad now, you should have read what I wrote then.

But there was one instance when I broke form. Jesse Jackson was running for president and, to be blunt, I couldn't stand the guy. I was still fuming over the whole "Hymie/Hymie Town" controversy and, I'm proud to say, was among the first to see through all his rhyming with no reasoning.

I've recently excavated my basement for the original column to no avail, so I'll have to paraphrase. My premise was that a black man as president, given all that has happened, would be a beautiful thing. But Jesse Jackson was the wrong man at the wrong time.

That was 20 years ago.

Barack Obama isn't Jesse Jackson.

Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton, working in unison, couldn't carry Sen. Obama's tie clip.

But is it the right time?

I'm not so sure.

One day, a black man or woman will be in the ring against an old white man battling for president and I'll be in his or her corner with a bucket of water and words of advice between rounds.

But not this time around.

I'm going with Hillary.

I see no other option.

John McCain and his intimations about being in Iraq for another 100 years are almost as disconcerting as Obama's broad-stroke, cause-for-applause pronouncements about ending the war and bringing the troops home.

Despite how nice it sounds on college campuses, we do need to maintain a war on terror. Sen. Clinton knew this when she voted for the Iraq invasion. The fact that it has been bungled is not her fault. It is the fault of the current joke of a president and the Republicans, like McCain, who kept rubber-stamping the failed strategies while singing refrains of "whatever will be will be" while our soldiers died.

We can't, under any circumstances, keep the likes of McCain in the White House. He's not as ridiculous at Mitt Romney or as off-the-wall as Mike Huckabee, but that merely equates to being the prettiest girl at Boys Town.

And I don't care what any pollsters are telling us during this time of fleeting Obama mania, there is no way Obama wins a national election unless Romney stages such a dramatic comeback - which would mean some major Super Tuesday upsets - that New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg jumps in the race and takes away some moderate GOP vote (maybe 6-10 percent, a lot for a Jew in America, according to polls).

Even if Obama narrowly wins the popular vote over McCain, which is all current polls are showing us, there is no way he takes the Electoral College.

And the more he says "change" for a Pavlovian response from the Starbucks crowd, the more he is going to alienate many moderate Republicans and Independents - not to mention myself and other longtime Democrats - who don't exactly know what it entails beyond sounding groovy.

The current president made a lot of changes, too. And the country, sadly, may never be the same.

The Clinton Machine, for better or worse, is best equipped for the 500-lap race that will be the general election.

She is not perfect, but she is NOT the anti-Christ. Republicans just say her name and automatically recoil. I don't get it, but I don't think I want to get it. I'm tired of trying to pry my way inside their narrow minds.

My mind is open. It allows for the possibility of a black president, but it is more for a woman who has the best interests of her country at heart.

Let be written that today - Monday, Feb. 4 - be declared a day of mourning across the nation.

OK, not the whole nation.

Just Eagles Nation.

Another team - in this case, the New York (expletive deleted) Giants - has passed us by.

A year ago, we were 10-6 and they were 8-8. A year ago, we beat them in the playoffs.

A year later, we're watching celebrate the discovery of pro football's holy grail.

There is one silver lining.

I called it, did I not?

In my column on the morning of Super Bowl Sunday, I wrote that a victory by the New York Giants of the supposedly invincible New England Patriots was not a stretch of the imagination that required some LSD.

Who's your football daddy?

Me, that's who!

The 17-14 final was a surprise, yes. The stunner of all time? Nope.

Please, please, please don't fall for it.

If you do, you'll fall for anything - like WMDs in Iraq and the need to raise gas and oil prices when the big oil companies are showing record gains.

You probably heard the Giants' players were already singing the same old song after the game. You know how it goes: "Nobody gave us a chance. Everybody dissed us. It was us against the world."

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Yada. Yada. Yada.

Athletes have to tell themselves these things to get psyched up.

We don't have to listen.

The team that came into the game playing better football of late won what I hate to admit was a terrific game, period.

Give the Giants credit.

Ouch. My fingers hurt just from typing that.

Double ouch. My brother-in-law, a Giants fan, is going to have a grin affixed to his face forever.

But life goes on, as The Beatles say.

I watched the second half with my daughter on my lap. I'm not sure if she understands anything other than baby talk yet, but I told her that on one glorious Super Bowl Sunday when the Eagles actually reach the Promised Land (which I, like Moses, will probably not be allowed to see) to take a moment and think of her daddy.

The same daddy who was right when wrote of this purported earth-rocking upset.

NOTES: Were Tom Petty and The Heartbreakers amazing at halftime or what? From now on, only classic rockers who've proven themselves over decades should be allowed to take the stage. ... So I heard our buddy Sen. Arlen Specter, a frequent visitor to The Times Herald, is launching an investigation into the alleged wrongdoings of the New England Patriots during their era of dominance. Could we get a retroactive Super Bowl win out of it? I'll take the ring! ... My favorite commercial came early in the broadcast. It was for the Ronald McDonald House. If you missed it, I'm sure it'll remain in circulation. It shows a mother helping her baby take his or her first steps while the narrator explains some of the history of the Ronald McDonald House. The mother then picks up the baby and holds it closely while the screen reveals that the mother is a childhood cancer survivor. Yeah, I cried. I'm man enough to admit it. It's been one of those days.

'Tis the season for dumbest holidays our culture has seen fit to create for its pathetic self.

A week from this Thursday, we have St. Valentine's Day. That's when people who are insecure about their relationships have to flaunt it for the world while those who are single are made to feel like uninsured lepers in a leper colony run by a big HMO.

But first, we just had something called Groundhog Day. That's when we all emerge from our figurative holes in the ground to watch as a groundhog named Phil is coaxed out of his literal hole in the ground to tell us if it is going to be an early Spring or if there are going to be six more weeks of winter.

We don't need a groundhog who knows not of global warming for this tired old routine. My calendar says there actually seven more weeks of a winter that has been footloose and snow-free up until now.

I suppose no one really orders more oil or breaks out the sun-tan lotion based on the whim of a groundhog.

That's what weather forecasters, with all their computers and satellites, are for - supposedly.

So far, this winter, these bubble-headed bleach-blonds and/or pretty boys have used scare tactics that would put Karl Rove in a campaign to shame.

Unlike Rove, who deployed red and orange terror alerts to lead enough sheep to voting booth to get the worst president of our times re-elected, these white-out alerts are making even the most gullible chuckle.

The act goes something like this: Two children die in a house fire in Camden and a local soldier loses his life in Iraq, but the big story is ... some wintry weather is possibly headed our way in time for the morning rush.

Then they cut to the alleged meteorologist standing outside on a perfectly still and globally warmed winter's eve telling us that the nice weather you see will not last and they tell you stay tuned for the sordid details later in the broadcast.

We hang on, figuring this time is going to be the time when we really get something, and - following the latest developments with Britney Spears and Natalee Holloway and the results of a new study revealing that smoking is bad for our health and dogs show love - we get to hear if we are going to be slip-sliding our way in to work, school and play the following morning.

Following needless mumbo-jumbo about systems moving our way and film clips of schmucks in the upper Midwest digging out from a blizzard, we get to our forecast.


Increasing, it all turns out to be a tease to keep us watching.

Oh, they'll say that maybe - in the Lehigh Valley or Lancaster - some of the rain may begin as sleet. In the Poconos, a possible inch or two (the equivalent of flurries down our way) of snow. In our region, which is all that matters (they have their own sources of information in the Lehigh Valley and Poconos and the Amish don't watch television), we may get ... some early-morning rain.

That's it? The top story?

And it gets even worse when there is a 50-50 shot of getting a few flurries. On those days, we are told to tune in to their station beginning at 5:30 a.m. for all the emergency and school-closing information. And, of course, no such broadcast would be complete without the obligatory interview with a PennDOT guy.

I would actually pay the PennDOT talking head to say something like "it's not going to be that bad, so we're going sit back and watch everyone crash into one another."

But it doesn't go down that way. Instead, we hear of readiness as if an attack from Iran or North Korea were pending.

And then the day comes and goes with nary a flake in the sky.

It's enough to bring tears to my eye.

Tears? Yes, of laughter.

And that's saying something.

They used to be born out of panic.

There was a time when driving in adverse conditions became a phobia. I'm man enough to admit it. As a teen who somehow survived the years of believing he was invincible, I had enough close calls in ice and snow to scare me into wanting to run and hide from every flake of snow that didn't immediately melt when it hit the ground.

But I slowly got over it. The adage about going neither too slow nor too fast really holds true. And it helps if you're behind the wheel of a four-wheel drive vehicle.

Although I'm still teased about how pathetic I used to be, I shrug enough knowing I'm no more or less a wimp about it than the next person.

I'm careful when it snows (if it ever does). If there is no need to be on the roads, I stay off. But if I have to drive, I drive with care.

I don't need anyone trying to make me afraid with bogus forecast.

I don't need - as the great Bob Dylan once wrote and sang - a weatherman to know which way the wind blows.