haha People in glass houses shouldn't throw stones right?

Check this out. A republican said that.

I guess republicans are associating with Ayers too. Even paying him to speak.

Obama camp cites SC school invites to Ayers
By SEANNA ADCOX Associated Press Writer

Oct 7th, 2008 | COLUMBIA, S.C. -- Barack Obama's campaign is citing the University of South Carolina's speaking invitations to William Ayers and Republican Gov. Mark Sanford's role as school trustee to counter GOP efforts to link the presidential candidate to the 1960s radical.

The governor dismissed the effort as "totally bogus" and said he never heard of Ayers.

Republican vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin has said Obama was "palling around with terrorists" and referred to Ayers, an education professor. Ayers helped found the violent Weather Underground group, whose members were blamed for several bombings when Obama was 8. Obama has denounced Ayers' radical views and activities.

The two men live near each other in Chicago, and once worked on the same charity board. Ayers hosted a small, meet-the-candidate event for Obama in 1995, at the start of his political career, but multiple news accounts have said they are not close.

In an e-mail to reporters, the Obama campaign said Ayers is a "distinguished scholar" at the University of South Carolina, where Sanford serves as the ex-officio trustee while governor.

"By Governor Palin's standards, that means Governor Sanford shares Ayers' views," the e-mail read.

Sanford rejected the argument.

"This is a totally bogus story. I've never even heard of the guy" until this weekend, Sanford said Tuesday. "This is a guy I don't know, I've never met."

But the campaign did not back down, saying the connection in both cases is equally tenuous.

"The point is that by Sarah Palin's logic, serving on a board with someone establishes an association with them," said campaign spokeswoman Melanie Roussell. "Obama has served on the board but did not have a relationship with William Ayers. He only met him a few times.

"If her logic is to stand, it could be said that Gov. Sanford has been palling around with William Ayers," she continued.

Ayers has spoken six times over the last 13 years at the University of South Carolina's Museum of Education, but he has "no ongoing connection or relationship with the university," said school spokesman Russ McKinney Jr.

He said Ayers sometimes received travel reimbursements or a stipend for the events sponsored by the university's school of education.

yeah right



This article or section has been nominated to be checked for its neutrality.
Discussion of this nomination can be found on the talk page. (September 2008)

The Obama–Ayers controversy arose during the 2008 U.S. presidential campaign regarding Democratic Presidential nominee Barack Obama's contact with Bill Ayers, a Distinguished Professor at the University of Illinois at Chicago, and a former leader of the Weather Underground.[1] He served on two nonprofit boards with Barack Obama. Both Ayers and his wife, Bernardine Dohrn, hosted a meet-and-greet for Obama at their home in 1995,[2] where Alice Palmer introduced Obama as her chosen successor in the Illinois State Senate.[citation needed] However, investigations by journalists concluded that Obama does not have a close relationship with Ayers.[3][4]

The matter was brought up by the campaign of competing candidate Hillary Rodham Clinton in February 2008, revisited during a debate between Clinton and Obama in April 2008, then subsequently picked up by Republican presidential candidate John McCain and vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin as an issue in the general election campaign. Obama condemned Ayers's past,[5] and stated he does not have a close association with Ayers.[2]

Contents [hide]
1 Underlying circumstances
1.1 William Ayers
1.2 Interaction between Obama and Ayers
2 Presidential campaign issue
2.1 Primary debates
2.2 General election campaign
3 Reaction to the controversy
4 References
5 External links



[edit] Underlying circumstances

[edit] William Ayers
Ayers and Dohrn are fixtures of their Chicago neighborhood, "embraced, by and large, in the liberal circles dominating Hyde Park politics", according to Ben Smith, a writer for The Politico.[6] Ayers has been described as "very respected and prominent in Chicago [with] a national reputation as an educator."[1] But they have not been embraced everywhere due to their past leadership of the Weather Underground, a 1960s radical organization that placed bombs at a number of government institutions, causing damage, but no deaths or injuries.[7] Ayers and Dohrn were members of the five-member central committee of the Weathermen in the late 1960s and early 1970s.[8] Since the September 11 terrorist attacks, some alumni of the University of Illinois at Chicago, where Ayers is a tenured professor of education, and Northwestern University, where Dohrn is a law professor, have protested their presence, though colleagues believe their achievements since overshadow those actions.[citation needed]


[edit] Interaction between Obama and Ayers
Obama and Ayers served together for three years on the board of the Woods Fund of Chicago, an anti-poverty foundation established in 1941. Obama had joined the nine-member board in 1993, and had attended a dozen of the quarterly meetings together with Ayers in the three years up to 2002, when Obama left his position on the board,[1] which Ayers chaired for two years.[9] Laura S. Washington, chairwoman of the Woods Fund, said the small board had a collegial "friendly but businesslike" atmosphere, and met four times a year for a half-day, mostly to approve grants.[2] The two also appeared together on academic panel discussions, including a 1997 University of Chicago discussion on juvenile justice. They again appeared in 2002 at an academic panel co-sponsored by the Chicago Public Library.[1] One panel discussion in which they both appeared was organized by Obama's wife, Michelle.[10]

Obama served as president of the board of directors for the Chicago Annenberg Challenge, a large education-related nonprofit organization that Ayers was instrumental in starting.[11] The board disbursed grants to schools and raised private matching funds while Ayers worked with the operational arm of the effort. Both attended some board meetings in common starting in 1995, retreats, and at least one news conference together as the education program started. They continued to attend meetings together during the 1995-2001 period when the program was operating. [11]

Ayers and Dohrn hosted a "meet-and-greet" for Obama at their home in the Hyde Park section of Chicago, where the Ayers and the Obamas lived. [11] It was at this meeting that then State Senator Alice Palmer introduced Barack Obama as her candidate for the 1996 Democratic primary.[11] Although the exact date of the meeting is not known, it was sometime in the second half of 1995, according to Ben Smith, a reporter for The Politico.[6]

In 2008, a spokesman for the Obama campaign said the last time Obama and Ayers had seen each other was when Obama was biking in the neighborhood in 2007 and crossed paths with Ayers. The spokesman said "The suggestion that Ayers was a political adviser to Obama or someone who shaped his political views is patently false".[12]

The New York Times reported that Obama did not have a significant relationship with Ayers.[11] According to several people, Ayers played no role in starting Obama's career which was primarily launched when Deborah Leff, then president of the Joyce Foundation, suggested Obama be appointed as chairman of the board of the six-member board that oversaw the distribution of grants in Chicago.[11]


[edit] Presidential campaign issue
Obama's contacts with Ayers had been open to public knowledge in Chicago for years.[13] Mainstream British news organizations and blogs began covering the matter in the context of the 2008 Presidential campaign beginning with conservative British writer Peter Hitchens of the Daily Mail in early February, 2008.[14][13][15]

The connection was soon picked up by blogs and newspapers in the United States, including the Huffington Post.[16] In a February 15, 2008 article, a Bloomberg L.P. reporter quoted Obama's rival, Hillary Clinton, who stated that the Republican Party might use the supposed connection with Ayers to discredit Obama if he were chosen as the nominee of the Democratic Party.[17]


[edit] Primary debates
Howard Kurtz has written that the connection between the two Chicagoans was "all but ignored by the news media, other than Fox" until it was raised in a presidential debate.[18] At the Democratic Party primary debate in Philadelphia on April 16, 2008, moderator George Stephanopoulos (after Sean Hannity suggested the question the day before[19]) questioned Obama about his association with Ayers, asking the candidate: "Can you explain that relationship for the voters, and explain to Democrats why it won't be a problem?"[9] Obama responded as follows:

This is a guy who lives in my neighborhood, who's a professor of English in Chicago who I know and who I have not received some official endorsement from. He's not somebody who I exchange ideas from on a regular basis. And the notion that somehow as a consequence of me knowing somebody who engaged in detestable acts 40 years ago, when I was eight years old, somehow reflects on me and my values doesn't make much sense, George.[20][2]

Obama's response led to an exchange between him and Clinton, in which Clinton said, "Senator Obama served on a board with Mr. Ayers for a period of time, the Woods Fund, which was a paid directorship position." [9] Obama then referred to President Bill Clinton's pardoning of Linda Sue Evans and Susan Rosenberg,[21] two former Weather Underground members convicted for their actions after joining the splinter group May 19 Communist Organization. The following Sunday, Stephanopoulos asked Republican presidential candidate John McCain about Obama's patriotism, and McCain responded: "I'm sure he's very patriotic", then added, "But his relationship with Mr. Ayers is open to question."[9]


[edit] General election campaign
In April, 2008 John McCain began to question Obama's interactions with Ayers[22] and it became an issue later in the general election campaign. In August, 2008, the Republican Party created website, barackbook.com, as a spoof of Facebook, on which Ayers is listed as one of Obama's "friends", and that contains a mocked-up user profile for Bill Ayers, which describes the controversy and Obama's alleged connections with Ayers.[23]

Also in August 2008, the American Issues Project began running an ad that emphasized the relationship between the two, which contained the following text: "Barack Obama is friends with Ayers, defending him as, quote, 'Respectable' and 'Mainstream.' Obama's political career was launched in Ayers's home. And the two served together on a left-wing board. Why would Barack Obama be friends with someone who bombed the Capitol and is proud of it? Do you know enough to elect Barack Obama?"[24] In response, the Obama campaign's attorney Robert Bauer wrote TV stations running the ad, saying, "Your station is committed to operating in the public interest, an objective that cannot be satisfied by accepting for compensation material of such malicious falsity," and wrote Deputy Assistant U.S. Attorney General John C. Keeney, describing the ad as a "willful attempt to evade the strictures of federal election law."[25]

The same month, the Obama campaign ran a TV ad in selected market that said in part, "With all our problems, why is John McCain talking about the 60s, trying to link Barack Obama to radical Bill Ayers? McCain knows Obama denounced Ayers's crimes, committed when Obama was just 8 years old."[26]

In late August 2008, Fox News reported on their examination of the University of Illinois at Chicago records for the Chicago Annenberg Challenge (CAC), for the period in the 1990s when both Obama and Ayers were employed there. Minutes from an October 1996 gathering show that Obama was concerned with the program's effectiveness. [27]

Stanley Kurtz, a conservative commentator and Senior Fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center, thinks Obama's association with Ayers should raise questions in the minds of voters. "The fact that Obama and Ayers were working together stems from the pretty sharp left-leaning ideology that both of them shared to some extent," Kurtz said. [27]

Kurtz has also examined the University's Annenberg records, and reported his findings and opinions in the Wall Street Journal in late September 2008. "The Obama campaign has cried foul when Bill Ayers comes up, claiming "guilt by association," Kurtz wrote. "Yet the issue here isn't guilt by association; it's guilt by participation. As CAC chairman, Mr. Obama was lending moral and financial support to Mr. Ayers and his radical circle." [28]

In October 2008, after the McCain campaign announced that it would step up attacks on the Democratic presidential candidate,[29] Sarah Palin delivered speeches claiming that Obama is "palling around with terrorists". For support, Palin cited a New York Times article that also concluded that Obama and Ayers were not close. The article stated that other "publications, including The Washington Post, Time, The Chicago Sun-Times, The New Yorker and The New Republic, have said that their reporting doesn't support the idea that Obama and Ayers had a close relationship."[3] CNN has independently deemed Palin's allegations false, saying: "There is no indication that Ayers and Obama are now 'palling around,' or that they have had an ongoing relationship in the past three years. Also, there is nothing to suggest that Ayers is now involved in terrorist activity or that other Obama associates are."[4]

Obama's response to the Palin speeches came on October 5, 2008 at an event in Asheville, North Carolina: "Senator McCain and his operatives are gambling that they can distract you with smears rather than talk to you about substance. They'd rather try to tear our campaign down than lift this country up. That's what you do when you're out of touch, out of ideas, and running out of time."[30]


[edit] Reaction to the controversy
Obama has condemned Ayers's past through a spokesman.[5] After the controversy arose Ayers was defended by officials and others in Chicago. Mayor Richard M. Daley issued a statement in support of Bill Ayers the next day (April 17), as did the Chicago Tribune in an editorial.[31][32] Ayers remains on the Board of Directors of the Woods Fund of Chicago[33] Washington said it was "ridiculous to suggest there's anything inappropriate" about the two men serving on the foundation board.[1]

Michael Kinsley, a longtime critic of Ayers,[34] argued in Time that Obama's relationship with Ayers should not be a campaign issue: "If Obama's relationship with Ayers, however tangential, exposes Obama as a radical himself, or at least as a man with terrible judgment, he shares that radicalism or terrible judgment with a comically respectable list of Chicagoans and others — including Republicans and conservatives — who have embraced Ayers and Dohrn as good company, good citizens, even experts on children's issues." "Ayers and Dohrn are despicable, and yet making an issue of Obama's relationship with them is absurd." [35]

In August, the Obama–Ayers contact was mentioned in Jerome Corsi's The Obama Nation, a book intended to defeat Obama's election campaign, and in conservative author David Freddoso's The Case Against Barack Obama, where he wrote that the situation raised questions about Obama's judgment and influences.[36] Chicago Tribune columnist and editorial board member Steve Chapman suggested that while Obama was "justly criticized for his ties" to Ayers, the coverage of that connection should be matched by equal coverage of John McCain's associating with convicted Watergate burglar Gordon Liddy.[37][38]

On September 9th, journalist Jake Tapper reported on the comic strip in Bill Ayers's blog explaining the misrepresented soundbite: "The one thing I don't regret is opposing the war in Vietnam with every ounce of my being....'When I say, 'We didn't do enough,' a lot of people rush to think, 'That must mean, "We didn't bomb enough s---."' But that's not the point at all. It's not a tactical statement, it's an obvious political and ethical statement. In this context, 'we' means 'everyone.'"[39]


[edit] References
^ a b c d e Drogin, Bob and Morain, Dan, "Obama and the former radicals", article, The Los Angeles Times, April 18, 2008, retrieved June 5, 2008
^ a b c d Slevin, Peter, "Former '60s Radical Is Now Considered Mainstream in Chicago", article, The Washington Post, April 18, 2008; p A04, retrieved June 6, 2008
^ a b New York Times article: "Obama and ’60s Bomber: A Look Into Crossed Paths".
^ a b "Fact Check: Is Obama 'palling around with terrorists'?", CNN (2008-10-05).
^ a b Scheiber, Noam, "Parsing the Ayers Allegation", blog post, The Stump blog at The New Republic website, February 22, 2008, retrieved June 5, 2008
^ a b Ben Smith (February 22, 2008). "Obama once visited '60s radicals", politico.com.
^ Berger, Dan, Outlaws of America: The Weather Underground and the Politics of Solidarity, AK Press: Oakland, California, 2006, ISBN 1904859410 pp 286-287
^ Montgomery, Paul L., "Last of Radical Leaders Eluded Police 11 Years", article, The New York Times, October 25, 1981, retrieved June 8, 2008
^ a b c d Berman, Ari, "Obama under the weather", The Nation, May 1, 2008
^ Becker, Jo and Drew, Christopher, "Pragmatic Politics, Forged on the South Side", The New York Times, May 11, 2008, retrieved August 24, 2008
^ a b c d e f Obama and ’60s Bomber: A Look Into Crossed Paths New York Times, October 3, 2008
^ Claiborne, Ron, "McCain Campaign Goes on Offense: Campaign Stepping Up Attacks on Obama", August 27, 2008, retrieved August 30, 2008
^ a b "How Obama and the radical became news:Story highlights the path from blog to mainstream", Boston Globe (2008-04-18).
^ Peter Hitchens (2008-02-02). "[The Black Kennedy: But does anyone know the real Barack Obama? The Black Kennedy: But does anyone know the real Barack Obama?]", The Daily Mail.
^ Michael Dobbs, Obama's 'Weatherman' Connection The Fact Checker, The Washington Post
^ Larry C. Johnson (2008-02-16). "No, He Can't Because Yes, They Will". Huffington Post. Retrieved on 2008-08-10.
^ Timothy J. Burger (February 15, 2008). "Obama's Ties Might Fuel `Republican Attack Machine'", bloomberg.com.
^ Kurtz, Howard, "The Military-Media Complex", The Washington Post, April 21, 2008, retrieved June 6, 2008
^ AUDIO: Hannity Feeds Stephanopoulos Debate Question On Weather Underground»
^ Transcript: Obama and Clinton Debate, April 16, 2008
^ An Almost Oppo Free Zone, The Hotline: On Call, National Journal Group, April 16, 2008
^ Cooper, Michael, "Republicans Focus on Obama as Fall Opponent", article, The New York Times, May 8, 2008, retrieved June 5, 2008
^ Carla Marinucci (2008-08-07). "Obama, McCain campaigns bust out the brass knuckles", San Francisco Chronicle.
^ http://nevada-rlc.org/2008-election/ad-ties-obama-to-60s-radical/
^ http://www.breitbart.com/article.php?id=D92PL7400&show_article=1
^ http://www.wtop.com/?nid=213&sid=1466240
^ a b "Newly Released Documents Highlight Obama's Relationship With Ayers", Fox News report, August 26, 2008
^ "Obama and Ayers Pushed Radicalism On Schools", Wall Street Journal editorial, published 9-23-08
^ "[http://www.cnn.com/2008/POLITICS/10/05/palin.obama.terrorist.claim/index.html Obama campaign rejects Palin 'terrorist' gibe]", CNN.
^ CNN article: "Obama accuses McCain of looking for distractions."
^ Mike Dorning and Rick Pearson, Daley: Don't tar Obama for Ayers The Chicago Tribune, April 17, 2008
^ Chicago Tribune editorial board, Guilt by association The Chicago Tribune, April 17, 2008
^ Board of Directors and Officers Woods Fund of Chicago
^ Smith, Ben (2008-05-30). "Kinsley on Ayers". Ben Smith's Blog. Politico. Retrieved on 2008-06-01.
^ Kinsley, Michael (2008-05-29). "Rejecting Obama's Radical Friends", Time. Retrieved on 2008-06-01.
^ Freddoso, David, The Case Against Barack Obama, Regnery Publishing Co., 2008, pp 122-123
^ Chapman, Steve, blog post, "Obama's radical friend", August 22, 2008, 10:37 AM, "Minority of One" blog, The Chicago Tribune website, retrieved August 28, 2008
^ Chapman, Steve, With friends like these ... The Chicago Tribune, May 4, 2008
^ Tapper, Jake In a Not-Remotely-Comic Strip, Bill Ayers Weighs In on What He Meant By 'We Didn't Do Enough' to End Vietnam War ABC News, Political Punch, September 9, 2008

August 14, 2008

Obama's "guilty" associations

By Michael Gaynor

Just as the Edwards family was trying to fool the voters about John Edwards' real character, the Obama campaign was trying to fool the voters into believing that Obama was a candidate who transcends race and not a faithful follower of a crazed anti-America black racist like Rev. Wright.

On one hand, Team Obama rails against presumptive 2008 Republican presidential candidate Senator John Sidney McCain's associations with lobbyists (even though McCain eschews earmarks and their candidate freely uses them) and solicitation of the political endorsement of Rev. John Hagee (as though that solicitation signified that McCain embraced all of Rev. Hagee's political and religious views instead of McCain's hope that Rev. Hagee would conclude that McCain is the best viable candidate).

On the other hand, Team Obama whines that their man's close associations with crazed "religious leaders" like Rev. Jeremiah A. "God damn America" Wright, Jr. and Father Michael Pflager, convicted criminals like Tony Rezko, radical terrorists like William Ayers, foreign extremists like Kenya's Raila Odinga and communists like Frank Marshall Davis should be ignored by voters.

The truth is that Obama has a huge guilty association problem of his own making and voters would be both foolish and derelict in their duty as voters if they ignored it.

Wikipedia defines "guilt by association" as "[a]n association fallacy is an inductive formal fallacy of the type hasty generalization or red herring which asserts that qualities of one thing are inherently qualities of another, merely by an irrelevant association."

A key word in that definition is "irrelevant."

Relevant associations SHOULD be considered.

In the old "Batman" television series starring Adam West, there was an episode in which the villainous Penguin ran for Mayor of Gotham City against Batman and campaigned on the theme that he regularly associated with police while Batman was to be found with criminals.

Of course, the Penguin did NOT point out that the police with whom he was shown in his ad were arresting him for his distardly crimes while Batman was fighting the criminals with whom he was depicted in the ad.

Context matters.

My article on presumptive 2008 Democrat presidential candidate Barack Hussein Obama, Jr.'s most known (NOT so well known these days) North Carolina supporters: the political phony former Senator John Edwards, now admittedly an adulterer and a liar; his wife Elizabeth, who, while knowing the truth, nevertheless enthusiastically promoted him as a moral values presidential candidate even as he publicly lied about his relationship with his mistress; and the despicable political opportunist and race card player, former Durham County, North Carolina District Attorney Michael B. Nifong, who used former position of public trust for the vilest of political and personal purposes by pretending that the members of the 2005-2006 Duke University Men's Lacrosse Team were either rapists/sexual assaulters/kidnappers or covering up for teammates whom they knew or had good reason to believe were rapists/sexual assaulters/kidnappers, because he desperately needed the black vote to win an election and keep his job, the ex-convict stropper who was claiming to be a victim happened to be black, all but one of the team members happened to be white and persecuting the innocent would provide him with (temporary) political salvation.

It's certainly true that (1) candidates often are supported by persons whose support they would rather not have (at least publicly) and (2) the inferences to be drawn from political and personal associations should be carefully considered.

Thus, I don't blame Obama because (as reported) white supremacists expect that if Obama is elected President, their number will increase. That surely is not Obama's goal. We know that Obama is no white supremacist. If white supremacist ranks ever increase, it will not be because Obama wanted that result.

Likewise, if the number of black supremacists increases, it will not be because either Obama or McCain wanted that result.

But the saying that "a person is known by the company he (or she) keeps" is a sensible one.

It IS relevant that Obama (1) chose the black liberation theology church of Rev. Wright as his church when he flipped from atheist/agnostic to Christian and (2) quietly stayed a member for so many years, until Rev. Wright had become a political albatross who absolutely had to be abandoned.

It is also relevant that at the time he left that church, he nevertheless praised it and Rev. Wright's chosen successor, Rev. Otis Moss, a defender, if not a disciple, of Rev. Wright.

It is especially relevant because Obama praised Rev. Wright so greatly in his biography, Dreams From My Father, and even took the title of his presidential campaign book, The Audacity of Hope, from the sermon by Rev. Wright that supposedly had moved him so powerfully.

It is especially relevant that Obama first invited and then dis-invited Rev. Wright to give the invocation when Obama announced his presidential campaign last year and prayer privately with Rev. Wright just before the announce after telling Rev. Wright not to appear in public with him because Rev. Wright's sermons could be "rough."

Just as the Edwards family was trying to fool the voters about John Edwards' character, the Obama campaign was trying to fool the voters into believing that Obama was a candidate who transcends race and not a faithful follower of a crazed anti-America black racist like Rev. Wright.

Likewise, Obama's association with William Ayers, an unrepentant domestic terrorist from the Vietnam War era, is telling.

It is telling that Obama married the former Michelle LaVaughn Robinson, who wrote in her college senior thesis that she put the Black community "first and foremost." (No wonder she stayed with Rev. Wright so long!)

It is telling that the persons who selected Obama to deliver the keynote address at the 2004 Democrat national convention were the 2004 Democrat presidential candidate, Senator John Kerry of Massachusetts, and his colleague, Senator Ted Kennedy.

It is telling that Obama was slow to support Georgia as a victim of Russian aggression, especially when his reaction is contrasted with his strong support of unsuccessful Kenyan presidential candidate and current Kenyan Prime Minister Raila Odinga, especially during the New Hampshire primary campaign. (Odinga was educated in then Communist East Germany, named his first child after Fidel Castro and contracted with Muslim extremists to impose Sharia law in Kenya in return for their political support. He claims to be Obama's cousin. Obama campaigned for him the last time he visited Kenya and warned of the possibility of sending American troops to Kenya after Odinga complained that the Kenyan presidential campaign had been stolen from him.)

It is telling that Obama's childhood mentor, Frank Marshall Davis, was a communist.Cliff Kincaid, Accuracy in Media, "Obama's Communist Mentor," February 18, 2008:

"In his books, Obama admits attending 'socialist conferences' and coming into contact with Marxist literature. But he ridicules the charge of being a 'hard-core academic Marxist,' which was made by his colorful and outspoken 2004 U.S. Senate opponent, Republican Alan Keyes.

"However, through Frank Marshall Davis, Obama had an admitted relationship with someone who was publicly identified as a member of the Communist Party USA (CPUSA). The record shows that Obama was in Hawaii from 1971-1979, where, at some point in time, he developed a close relationship, almost like a son, with Davis, listening to his 'poetry' and getting advice on his career path. But Obama, in his book, Dreams From My Father, refers to him repeatedly as just 'Frank.'

"The reason is apparent: Davis was a known communist who belonged to a party subservient to the Soviet Union. In fact, the 1951 report of the Commission on Subversive Activities to the Legislature of the Territory of Hawaii identified him as a CPUSA member. What's more, anti-communist congressional committees, including the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC), accused Davis of involvement in several communist-front organizations.

"Trevor Loudon, a New Zealand-based libertarian activist, researcher and blogger, noted evidence that 'Frank' was Frank Marshall Davis in a posting in March of 2007.

It is telling that at a private fund raiser in San Francisco earlier this year Obama was taped denigrated Americans for "clinging" to religion and guns and explaining this attitude toward religion in Marxist terms.

It is telling that Obama voted NOT to confirm either Chief Justice John Roberts or Associate Justice Samuel A. Alito, Jr. and was rated the most liberal United States Senator by non-partisan National Journal.

It is telling that Obama is an abortion absolutist who wanted to deny Fourteenth Amendment protection to babies born alive as a result of botched abortions.

It is telling that Father Pfleger was an official part of the Obama campaign until the nation learned what kind of person Father Pfleger when excerpts from Father Pflger's outrageous sermon (by invitation of his friend Rev. Wright) at Rev. Wright's church (Trinity United Church of Christ in Chicago, Illinois) was broadcast and repeatedly rebroadcast on national television.

It is telling that Obama was part of the Million Man March of Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan (a good friend of both Rev. Wright and Father Pfleger).

The key is whether an association is relevant.

Choices of mentors, spiritual and political, are relevant.

So are a person's political alliances.

© Michael Gaynor



--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
The views expressed by RenewAmerica columnists are their own and do not necessarily reflect the position of RenewAmerica or its affiliates.

(See RenewAmerica's publishing

One of my professors at college is an Iranian Muslim and she is a granddaughter of an influential Mullah. She told me that she gets stopped and searched everytime she goes to the airport and she's pretty sure that her house phone is tapped by the U.S. and Iranian intelligence. She catches a LOT of discrimination, even from some of the students at college, but she is one of the finest, upstanding women I have ever met in my life. Just because the government labels someone dont mean nothing.

Wouldee

Whats wrong with academic Marxism? We have to learn about Marx and his Conflict Theory in Sociology. He is considered a credible scholar in the realm of academia. Only someone who is ignorant and uneducated would make an issue of this. (Not referring to you personally).