It's not about the specific issue, to which I am glad she has given her life.  Nor is it about a specific candidate or pol.

It's about Moore, and it;s about credibility.  I doubt that your mother made a movie and many other public statements that she then backtracked upon.  So I am sure that she retains her credibility.  Moore does not.

State Senate Candidate, Obama, had three other opponents, besides Alice Palmer, in that primary. (four, total) He got them ALL disqualified.
You must know, there is politics, and then there is "Chicago politics." While others have used petition challenges in the past, and Obama did nothing illegal, the length and breadth to which he went stunned even many veterans of Chicago politics.

Certainly there are rules, but there is also tradition and protocol. Alice Palmer was THE powerhouse in local politics, and was widely loved and admired. By her imprimatur, she "made" Obama, much as a Godfather "makes" a lieutenant." As painful as it would have been, tradition and protocol dictated he step aside and wait for another shot.  

Ah, but the first black editor of the Harvard Law Review was also the first editor to have NEVER written a paper during his reign. Since the founding of the society, I believe about 160 years ago, folks in legal circles looked forward to getting the editor's views as he (later he/she) supposedly represented the best and brightest of that years legal crop. Looking at it from another angle, and an angle he was to reproduce many times on his meteoric shot to the moon, he displayed his absolute lack of deception by stating publicly, " who's got time for papers, I got another election to plot." (o.k. I made that up)

Now, you used the pretext, "(on the other hand, if you renege on a deal and try to make the ballot with signatures that don't check out, who is playing dirty?)" Let's set aside for now the nobler approach of meeting your opponents on the battlefield of a campaign where you actually go out, meet the folks, and show them why you're the better candidate. Usually when you challenge petition signatures, you narrow down the scope of the charges to a group, or groups, of signatures that can be proven valid, or not, just in the interest of time. But that wouldn't have produced the numbers he needed. A guy with his mutated ego needs to do things Big. (Maybe you remember how he wanted to hold a rally; I think it was at the Pantheon in Rome (snark), or Jupiter?.......whatever.) No, he challenged fully three quarters of poor Alice's signatures, thousands upon thousands of signatures. I wonder sometimes at the colorful adjectives and/or nouns she gave birth to when she saw the onslaught of the demands. Thousands of (real) folks, hampered by limited education, but not civic pride, had their choice invalidated (dumped, chucked, tossed, thrown out) for committing what should, in my opinion,  be elevated to a felony,  didn't write their choice in "cursive." Unbelievable? Look it up; Alice Palmer's name, plain as a bell........but not in "cursive."......Out!

Feverishly, Alice put her legions of supporters to work re-instating the names. Another day or two, virtually all the names would have been validated. I guess Obama voted "present" when the catchy jingle, "count every vote" first breathed life. What became a standard in his later campaigns i.e., picking out a supporter in the crowd and using the poor schmuck's convenient personal tragedy-turned-triumph to wrench the last tear from the dehydrated eyes of the adoring throngs, he finally perfected "count every vote" in Florida and Michigan. Illustrating his core belief in "bi-partisanship," he also did to the other three candidates what he did to Ms Palmer.

Once he realized there were millions of Claire McCaskills in the country, out went his pledge to accept public financing. After all, bussing in thousands of Limbaugh Republicans from out-of-State to "be counted" in the primary states that allowed that chicanery costs really big bucks.

Anyway, there are too many examples of Obama's true, core beliefs (Zero, Nada, Zilch) that anyone with a single cell between the ears could see. To go on any further would betray my here-to-fore concealed dislike for the man.

Unfortunately, millions of my fellow citizens will suffer untold, and unecessary, tragedy and pain, simply for buying into one man's perfectly honed hubris.

The trade reference I do not know what you mean. Fo you mean the PTO? Then, I refer you to my comment on the NOAA.

Technology? What does that mean to you?

Standards? What standards do you think the Commerce Secretary gets involved in?

These are all civil service fields where the bureaucrats run the show.

A Commerce Secretary does nothing in these areas. Never has and never will.

Add to that custodians.

These are the people who can literally and figuratively open the doors, hold the keys, and turn on the power.  Or not, if you're not nice to them.  And they have networks throughout corporations and organizations that are incredibly effective at diffusion of information, also key to power.  And if that info is that you're not nice to your admin support staff and custodians, everyone soon will know.