Those who comment on History are so often ignorant of it. Peggy Noonan is certainly no exception. While I was impressed with her analysis of Hillary Clinton (I plead guilty to admiring most negative assessments of Mrs. Clinton), Noonan is not only all wrong about Obama, her history is cockeyed, thereby undermining the very basis for her opinions.

If the "losers and brigands" she refers to are to be held up as an example, one best ought to refer to the proper "losers and brigands" and place them in their correct historical whereabouts. The cry, "There's gold in them thar hills!" has nothing whatsoever to do with Sutter's Mill or anyplace in California. It rightly belongs to Dahlonaga, Georgia and the very first - one might even say the original - American gold rush. This tiny town, in the foothills of North Georgia, still attracts tourists to this day. It's an hour's drive from Atlanta, located in the very heart of what was once Cherokee country. Many will tell you it was the gold that forced the Cherokee to walk from Georgia to Oklahoma. The Trail of Tears is still wet. If Charlie Gipson wants to find a real American patriot, he might look for one wearing a Cherokee flag lapel pin. No more than a couple of thousand people live in Dalonaga today, but at the height of the Georgia gold rush, more than a quarter of a million "losers and brigands" descended upon "Them thar hills" in search of their fortune. I'm not sure, but I suspect none of them wore flag pins.

I can't speak for Mrs. Clinton (although, if one strolls down the main street of Dahlonaga, with an open mind to conditions a hundred and-fifty years ago, one can easily see her husband standing on the wooden planks guarding him from the mud, hollering out his call for whatever snake oil he would have been peddling), but I am certain Senator Obama would not have received a warm welcome in Dahlonaga, except in its most recent few years.