What this proves sis that he is just another politician. There would be nothing wrong with it except that his "urgency" of a Presidential run was
based on "changing Washington" and the "politics as usual"

If you think reform is an important and necessary priority and a prerequisite to real progressive change, as I do, then you ought to be pleased that Obama is at least being more transparent than he needs to be (again, unlike Hillary Clinton). He didn't need to reveal what he spent all his Senate earmarks on. But it's a good thing that he did. Obama has also worked on increasing government transparency while in the Senate, i.e. the bill he passed last year that organized all government spending in a searchable database online. So Obama's reform credentials are in fact real--not perfect, not ideal, but real. It is also one of the few areas where he really has a significant policy difference with Senator Clinton.

The front page post completely ignores this important and vital context to Obama's release of his earmarks. What it does focus on is one specific earmark that benefited one of his important financial contributers, with a charge of hypocrisy is heavily implied. Of course, the RELEVANT question is not this--the earmark has to benefit somebody. The relevant question is whether the specific earmark was or was not a good one, that is, whether it was a wise or appropriate use of government money or not. If it was, then good on Obama for being an effective legislator. If it was not, then bad on him. I have no opinion on the matter because I have no idea what a "High Explosive Air Burst Technology Program" is. However, it appears Jeralyn does not know either. Shouldn't we investigate a little before throwing around accusations of hypocrisy?

Now there is a double standard for reformers, and this is fair to some extent. But I think the double standard can go too far. Chris Bowers put this well in a post on Openleft a couple days ago:

Above all else, there is double standard for reformers. Even the faintest whiff of impropriety by politicians who seek to reform the political, economic, or media institutions in America automatically places that politician into a double-standard. The media even admits this [i.e. when they attack Obama for taking money from people who work at companies who have lobbying arms in Washington while claiming to be reforming the system]. The subtext here is that there is not wrong with accepting lobbyist money, but there is something wrong with no being hermetically sealed from lobbyists if you calim tyou want to reform the system. There have been dozens of articles in the press working to find some sort of hypocrisy in Obama's fundraising and lobbyist money. Nowhere in these articles will you find the obvious point that Obama has taken more steps to separate himself from lobbyists more than some of his opponents in the campaign. The point in these articles isn't that Obama while not perfect, is doing better according to the same standard, but rather that Obama is worse because he should be held to a higher standard [...] Ultimately, reforming our political, media and economic systems is a higher value than being perfectly, internally consistent. Unfortunately, it its attempt to be non-ideological, the media holds a concept like consistency as a far, far higher value than it holds reform. The media takes no position on reform, but does take a position on consistency. This necessarily leads to reformers being held to a higher standards, inevitable flaws being found in anyone, the reformer appearing like a hypocrite, and then reform not taking place. In the end, by valuing consistency above things like reducing the influence of corporate money in the political process, reformers are outed as hypocrites, necessary reforms never take place and the status quo is protected.

But, how do we tell which earmarks are good or bad when they're all secret? This is why all earmarks should be made public and why all our politicians should release their earmarks to the public--so we can judge for ourselves what they've been doing with them.