National Journal rated Sen. Barack Obama as the most left-wing member of the Senate. Some media have attempted to portray him as a moderate -- a moderate, as Powerline noted, with no one to his left.

Well, the guys at the Politico have dug up this survey [PDF format] from Obama's run for the Illinois State Senate in 1996.

The survey, which his campaign has alleged was the work of a rogue staffer, has Obama's own handwriting on it, putting the lie to the claims that the presidential candidate knew nothing about it.

Among the interesting bits of the survey are Obama's positions on law enforcement and gun control.

34. Do you support:
a. capital punishment? No.
b. criminal prosecution of juveniles as adults? No.
c. mandatory sentencing? No
d. work release,home monitoring, other alternative sentencing? Yes.

35. Do you support state legislation to:
a. ban the manufacture, sale and possession of handguns? Yes.
b. ban assault weapons? Yes.
c. mandatory waiting periods and background checks? Yes.

So, Obama holds the same anti-gun rights views that cost Al Gore his home state of Tennessee in 2000 and have made the Democrats who hold similar views largely unelectable outside of the Northeast and West Coast.

It would be good to know if Obama still holds the views expressed here on capital punishment. Generally Democrats who oppose the death penalty don't get elected nationally. It also says something about Obama that he has a blanket opposition to trying juveniles as adults. Most Americans probably believe that should be determined on a case-by-case basis.

For example, imagine a 17-year-old who brutally rapes and murders a child. If the government is prohibited from trying this individual as an adult, he'd serve no more than eight years in prison -- at least in California where juveniles convicted of committing crimes as juveniles cannot be held past their 25th birthday.

I'm not sure which is more troubling: That Obama is a knee-jerk liberal; or that he's never bothered to think the knee-jerk liberal positions through to their ultimate real-world conclusions.