Gordon Klein Suspended by UCLA

The Leftist mob has bullied UCLA to suspend Gordon Klein, UCLA Accounting professor.



Utter insanity.

Joe Biden 2020 - Charlottesville

Joe Biden made it official yesterday. He's running for president, again.

Disgracefully, his announcement was grounded on the Charlottesville "fine people" hoax.

Biden even took it a step further, praising Antifa.

Good grief!

"We're in a battle for the soul of this nation"?

We are in a battle, but it's for truth.

For the love of God, tell the truth.

For the benefit of the press, I will include in this thread the many links debunking Biden's announcement gaffe-of-the-century about the "fine people" hoax. Starting with the transcript. Make sure you read the bottom part. #Biden2020 #FinePeopleHoax pic.twitter.com/3z8OJt3e8U

— Scott Adams (@ScottAdamsSays) April 25, 2019

Melania Trump and Venezuela

First Lady Melania Trump: “There is hope. We are free. And we pray together loudly and proudly that soon, the people of Venezuela will be free as well.” pic.twitter.com/bCPIcDQMqH

— Kyle Morris (@RealKyleMorris) February 18, 2019

Our First Lady is such a beautiful, intelligent woman.

She doesn't get anywhere near the recognition she deserves.

6 Fries Per Serving

You should only eat 6 fries per serving, Harvard professor says https://t.co/LttnhMNYoI pic.twitter.com/h8ccTvFXk7

— CBS46 (@cbs46) December 4, 2018

HAHAHAHA!

DePaul Censors Candace Owens

For the first time ever, my right to speak as a black conservative is being DENIED at @DePaulU in Chicago by VP Rico Tyler. He has referred to my words as “violent language”.

BLACK PEOPLE DO NOT HAVE TO BE DEMOCRATS is not “violent language”.

Depaul is enslaving black minds. pic.twitter.com/yjWABFbDWB

— Candace Owens (@RealCandaceO) October 9, 2018

My ideas are not violent.
In fact they are so sensible that they require censorship.
Censorship—because they threaten the entire liberal establishment which has been built upon a lie. @DePaulU, there is no event you can cancel that will stop this political awakening.

— Candace Owens (@RealCandaceO) October 9, 2018

Candace Owens and Charlie Kirk are not allowed to speak at DePaul. The Turning Point USA event has been cancelled due to concerns about "violent language."

That, of course, is absurd.

This is censorship, pure and simple.

Free speech is under assault on American campuses.

Russian Interference on Obama's Watch

These Russian individuals did their work during the Obama years. Why didn’t Obama do something about it? Because he thought Crooked Hillary Clinton would win, that’s why. Had nothing to do with the Trump Administration, but Fake News doesn’t want to report the truth, as usual!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) July 14, 2018

Nuclear Option

Senate deploys "nuclear option" to clear path for #Gorsuch Supreme Court confirmation. MORE: https://t.co/ax1IlsnU9g | #First100 pic.twitter.com/m2bOodOT0Z

— Fox News (@FoxNews) April 6, 2017

The Democrats were going to block every Supreme Court nomination by President Trump. Without question, Gorsuch is qualified. The Democrats' opposition to him is baseless.

Elections have consequences. Hillary Clinton lost. Democrats do not control the House or the Senate. The American people gave Republicans the power. Democrats need to deal with that.

The Democrats' partisan filibuster of Supreme Court nominee Judge Neil Gorsuch was unprecedented in U.S. history. The Democrats are responsible for the rule change.

Every single Republican voted to invoke the Reid Rule, including some who had expressed a strong hesitancy to do so; that's how indefensible Democrats' conduct has been. The Senate will now reach cloture on the nomination with 51 votes, setting up a final confirmation tomorrow. It's over. Neil Gorsuch will be the next Associate Justice of the United States Supreme Court.

Since that's what it takes, nuke it up!

There was no other option.

Rachel Slocum, UW-La Crosse Professor: Blame Tea Party

Wisconsin taxpayers are footing the bill for Assistant Professor Rachel Slocum to indoctrinate University of Wisconsin - La Crosse students with her politically biased drivel.

From FOX News:

A Wisconsin college professor warned her students they wouldn't be able to get all of their homework done because of the partial government shutdown, and put a partisan spin on the bad news.

“Some of the data gathering assignment will be impossible to complete until the Republican/tea party controlled House of Representatives agrees to fund the government,” University of Wisconsin La Crosse Assistant Geography Professor Rachel Slocum told students in an e-mail.

“The Census website, for instance, is closed,” she continued. “Please do what you can on the assignment. Those parts you are unable to do because of the shutdown will have to wait until Congress decides we actually need a government. Please listen to the news and be prepared to turn in the assignment quickly once our nation re-opens.”

...“It would be inappropriate to use partisan politics in a class, so we contacted the professor in question,” Chancellor Joe Gow told FoxNews.com. “We want to be sure our students feel that they can have a different opinion from others on campus,” Gow added. “She (Slocum) can have a personal conversation with someone, but this e-mail was for an online class so the message is more in an official capacity.”

"[T]he message is more in an official capacity"?

No, Chancellor. The email was sent in a completely official capacity.

It's from the professor to her students regarding an assignment.

This was totally out of line.

...In a subsequent e-mail from Slocum, also obtained by The College Fix, Slocum sought to downplay the politics of the partial government shutdown that has resulted from Congress' budget impasse.

“The e-mail I sent you all about the government shut down [sic] was not meant to be partisan, but it may have come across that way," she wrote. "It is true that I am dismayed that you cannot easily do the assignment. My opinion is that this shutdown is a bad idea.”

She even pleads with her students at one point, asking them not to forward her e-mails to others outside the class.

“If you want to discuss all of this, let me know and I can make an internal discussion board about it. But please don’t forward my emails to conservative blogs or list servs and I will make sure my emails explain things fully,” she wrote.

Slocum is supposedly an educated, intelligent woman; but she did a remarkably stupid thing.

She didn't blurt out her hatred for the Republicans and the Tea Party off-the-cuff. She wrote it in an email. She had plenty of time to edit herself. Really, really stupid.

Slocum's subsequent email is pathetic.

"The e-mail I sent you all about the government shut down [sic] was not meant to be partisan, but it may have come across that way."

Oh, come on!

It's possible this woman is so immersed in the Leftist culture and so entrenched in the Leftist bubble that she doesn't realize she's being a hack and lacking in terms of professionalism.

"[P]lease don’t forward my emails to conservative blogs."

Funny.

Afraid of accountability?

Would she mind her students forwarding emails to liberal blogs?

I'm glad Slocum was exposed.

Bottom line: There was no reason whatsoever for Slocum to spew her personal disdain for Republicans and the Tea Party when discussing that assignment with her students via email.

Busted.

Joy Behar, Sharron Angle: 'Bitch' a Term of Endearment

Joy Behar is classless.

After using a terribly inappropriate choice of words when referring to Sharron Angle on The View, Behar didn't have the decency to back off.

Video.



Transcript

JOY BEHAR: I called Sharron Angle a 'bitch' and I got a lot of flak for it, people basically objecting to my use of the word. I really shouldn't have called her a bitch 'cause to me, that's a term of endearment. I mean, I reserve that word for people that I know and love. So that was a mistake and I take it back. I mean, the fact that she approved a racist ad, that is the point that I wanted to get through to the people, not the word 'bitch.'

You girls are my bitches... Just to clarify a few things and get off my back on the word, you know.

That was no apology.

This "term of endearment" excuse has been used before.

Remember the controversy involving statements by Elizabeth Hoffman, president of the University of Colorado?

From the Washington Post:

When the Boulder County prosecutor charged that Colorado football coach Gary Barnett was using "sex and drugs" to recruit 17-year-old high school football stars, the regents held endless meetings and spent hundreds of thousands of dollars on a detailed investigation -- and then decided that nobody needed to be disciplined.

A lawsuit by two undergraduates who say they were gang-raped by Barnett's football players and recruits is pending. After a student athlete was accused of referring to a female student by a four-letter slang term referring to part of the female anatomy, President Hoffman declared that this "c-word" can sometimes be a "term of endearment." Students and faculty denounced the president for "hate speech." The regents again took no action.

That's sick.

Why is it Leftists like Behar and Hoffman get passes when they use these "terms of endearment" or defend their use by others?

Bill Ayers Denied Emeritus Status

This photo of domestic terrorist Bill Ayers showing his disdain for America appeared in the New York Times.

From the New York Times, September 11, 2001, read "No Regrets for a Love Of Explosives; In a Memoir of Sorts, a War Protester Talks of Life With the Weathermen."


The controversial Ayers, friend of Obama, isn't considered a controversial figure by some. The man who actively sought to overthrow the U.S. government, an enemy of the state, is admired by some, including his colleagues at the University of Illinois at Chicago.

Although Ayers has hero status in some extremist circles, the University of Illinois trustees denied the retired Professor Ayers emeritus status.

From the Chicago Tribune:

In a very unusual move, University of Illinois trustees Thursday denied giving emeritus status to controversial retired professor William Ayers.

The vote, at a U. of I. board meeting in Urbana, was unanimous and came after a passionate speech by board chair Christopher Kennedy, who invoked the 1968 assassination of his father, Sen. Robert F. Kennedy, in saying that he was voting his conscience.

The other trustees, without comment, also voted against the appointment.

Ayers, the Vietnam War-era radical, had been an education faculty member at UIC since 1987. He retired effective Aug. 31 and then sought the emeritus faculty status, a largely honorific title that includes some benefits such as library privileges.

While trustees regularly vote on emeritus appointments, they rarely comment about them.

But in an emotional statement, Kennedy discussed his reasons for voting against Ayers' request.

"I am guided by my conscience and one which has been formed by a series of experiences, many of which have been shared with the people of our country and mark each of us in a profound way," Kennedy said.

He said he could not confer the title "to a man whose body of work includes a book dedicated in part to the man who murdered my father."

Kennedy was referring to a 1974 book co-authored by Ayers, "Prairie Fire," which was dedicated to a long list of people including Robert Kennedy assassin Sirhan Sirhan and "all political prisoners in the U.S."

Read more about Ayers and Prairie Fire here.

...According to the UIC faculty handbook, the granting of emeritus status is "based on merit" and is "an extraordinary title that is given for extraordinary service."

Kennedy said he hoped faculty, staff and Illinois residents "understand my motives and my reasoning" and concluded: "How could I do anything else?"

Read the transcript of Chris Kennedy's comments regarding emeritus status for Ayers here.

Chris Kennedy and the trustees got it right.

It would be outrageous to grant Ayers emeritus status. To honor a man who dedicated his manifesto to Sirhan Sirhan, assassin of Robert F. Kennedy, and advocated the violent overthrow of the U.S. government would be an abomination.

However, some Ayers allies strongly disagree.

Ayers could not be reached for comment, and UIC School of Education Dean Vicki Chou did not return a call from the Tribune. She told the Tribune last month that Ayers has "been really a very good colleague here" and "the good far outweighs any negative press."

A UIC professor said Friday she was "shocked" by the trustees' decision not to grant Ayers emeritus status.

"Professor Ayers has a 47-page resume of academic accomplishments," Barbara Ransby, a professor of history and African-American studies, wrote in an e-mail response to the Tribune. "I am sure his publication and service record far exceeds that of many of our retired colleagues who have been granted emeritus status by the University in the past."

Ransby, who has publicly supported Ayers in the past, said decisions are supposed to be based on "academic merit."

"It is a real threat to academic freedom, and the foundation of a democratic university, when we begin to make professional and institutional decisions based on personal or political sentiments, however strongly felt they may be," she wrote.

Here we go with the "threat to academic freedom" crap. I suppose it's no surprise that the academic freedom card would be played. (It really comes in handy!)

The fact is Ayers was employed as an education professor at UIC since 1987. He chose to retire at the end of summer 2010.

Where's the threat to academic freedom?

UIC proudly had Ayers as a faculty member. He found a home in the Ivory Tower, in the country he intended to undermine via violence and bloodshed.

From Ayers' Prairie Fire:

We are a guerrilla organization. We are communist women and men, underground in the United States for more than four years. We are deeply affected by the historic events of our time in the struggle against U.S. imperialism.

Our intention is to disrupt the empire, to incapacitate it, to put pressure on the cracks, to make it hard to carry out its bloody functioning against the people of the world, to join the world struggle, to attack from the inside.

In spite of Ayers' radical views, the University of Illinois embraced him for decades.

I don't see how academic freedom is being threatened because the trustees made the decision not to HONOR Ayers.

If the Ayers allies were really concerned about freedom, they wouldn't be attempting to take away the freedom of the trustees.

Poor Bill Ayers was denied emeritus status. I guess he'll have to be satisfied with the hero status he enjoys among his fellow radicals.

Joel Rogers: Capitalism 'Monstrous'

Joel Rogers, Leftist professor at Madison, slams American capitalism.

He calls it "monstrous."

Really?

What's monstrous is that my tax dollars are helping to fund his way. Where does he think the government gets the money to pay his salary?

What's monstrous is Rogers' influence with Obama.

Video.

Quotes from the Obama-Khalidi Tape

I came across this on Little Green Footballs.


Doug Ross writes:

I received a tip from a person who has provided useful, accurate and unique data from LA before (e.g., "All six of CNN's 'undecided voters' were Democratic operatives"). Take it for what it's worth, but I believe this person is on target.

Saw a clip from the tape. Reason we can't release it is because statements Obama said to rile audience up during toast. He congratulates Khalidi for his work saying "Israel has no God-given right to occupy Palestine" plus there's been "genocide against the Palestinian people by Israelis."

It would be really controversial if it got out. Tha's why they will not even let a transcript get out.

If accurate, that would be damaging to Obama.

Ross provides some answers to questions about his post:

Update/FAQ on this post

Is there really a tape? Yes. The Times has acknowledged that the tape exists.

Why won't the Times release the tape? They've now come up with four reasons over the past few days for suppressing the video. None of the answers make sense.

Do you know who sent the tip? No.

Why believe the tip? While I receive a lot of tips and links, I seldom publish them. This particular email address has provided accurate and unique information in the past, as I noted above. No one else reported the information and I found it to be accurate in the past. As I said, take it for what it's worth.

Why doesn't the Times just publish a transcript? Why indeed.

Barack Obama should personally request that the Times release the video.

That would end all this speculation.

If Obama has nothing to hide, why not let the truth out?

The sooner the better.

L.A. Times Suppresses Obama Video

Show me the video.

It's newsworthy, but the Los Angeles Times won't release it.

In less than a week, Barack Obama could be the president-elect. The American people have a right to see the video.

The L.A. Times is engaged in a cover-up, withholding information.

"A major news organization is intentionally suppressing information that could provide a clearer link between Barack Obama and Rashid Khalidi," said McCain campaign spokesman Michael Goldfarb. " . . . The election is one week away, and it's unfortunate that the press so obviously favors Barack Obama that this campaign must publicly request that the Los Angeles Times do its job -- make information public."

The Times on Tuesday issued a statement about its decision not to post the tape.

"The Los Angeles Times did not publish the videotape because it was provided to us by a confidential source who did so on the condition that we not release it," said the newspaper's editor, Russ Stanton. "The Times keeps its promises to sources."

Jamie Gold, the newspaper's readers' representative, said in a statement: "More than six months ago the Los Angeles Times published a detailed account of the events shown on the videotape. The Times is not suppressing anything. Just the opposite -- the L.A. Times brought the matter to light."

Good grief.

The lib media splash the details of classified government reports and programs all over the place and the Times insists that it must keep its promise to the confidential source of the video?

That source would be wise to give the Times permission to release the tape. Right now, it seems that there's something to hide, something in it that's damaging to Obama.

This could turn into one of those cases of the cover-up being worse than the crime.

If there's nothing to suppress, don't.

It's the unknown that gives people reason to doubt and cause for concern.

That's bad for Obama.

Here's the original story:

It was a celebration of Palestinian culture -- a night of music, dancing and a dash of politics. Local Arab Americans were bidding farewell to Rashid Khalidi, an internationally known scholar, critic of Israel and advocate for Palestinian rights, who was leaving town for a job in New York.

A special tribute came from Khalidi's friend and frequent dinner companion, the young state Sen. Barack Obama. Speaking to the crowd, Obama reminisced about meals prepared by Khalidi's wife, Mona, and conversations that had challenged his thinking.

His many talks with the Khalidis, Obama said, had been "consistent reminders to me of my own blind spots and my own biases. . . . It's for that reason that I'm hoping that, for many years to come, we continue that conversation -- a conversation that is necessary not just around Mona and Rashid's dinner table," but around "this entire world."

Today, five years later, Obama is a U.S. senator from Illinois who expresses a firmly pro-Israel view of Middle East politics, pleasing many of the Jewish leaders and advocates for Israel whom he is courting in his presidential campaign. The dinner conversations he had envisioned with his Palestinian American friend have ended. He and Khalidi have seen each other only fleetingly in recent years.

And yet the warm embrace Obama gave to Khalidi, and words like those at the professor's going-away party, have left some Palestinian American leaders believing that Obama is more receptive to their viewpoint than he is willing to say.

Their belief is not drawn from Obama's speeches or campaign literature, but from comments that some say Obama made in private and from his association with the Palestinian American community in his hometown of Chicago, including his presence at events where anger at Israeli and U.S. Middle East policy was freely expressed.

At Khalidi's 2003 farewell party, for example, a young Palestinian American recited a poem accusing the Israeli government of terrorism in its treatment of Palestinians and sharply criticizing U.S. support of Israel. If Palestinians cannot secure their own land, she said, "then you will never see a day of peace."

One speaker likened "Zionist settlers on the West Bank" to Osama bin Laden, saying both had been "blinded by ideology."

Obama adopted a different tone in his comments and called for finding common ground. But his presence at such events, as he worked to build a political base in Chicago, has led some Palestinian leaders to believe that he might deal differently with the Middle East than either of his opponents for the White House.

"I am confident that Barack Obama is more sympathetic to the position of ending the occupation than either of the other candidates," said Hussein Ibish, a senior fellow for the American Task Force on Palestine, referring to the Israeli presence in the West Bank and Gaza Strip that began after the 1967 war. More than his rivals for the White House, Ibish said, Obama sees a "moral imperative" in resolving the conflict and is most likely to apply pressure to both sides to make concessions.

...Ali Abunimah, a Palestinian rights activist in Chicago who helps run Electronic Intifada, said that he met Obama several times at Palestinian and Arab American community events. At one, a 2000 fundraiser at a private home, Obama called for the U.S. to take an "even-handed" approach toward Israel, Abunimah wrote in an article on the website last year. He did not cite Obama's specific criticisms.

Abunimah, in a Times interview and on his website, said Obama seemed sympathetic to the Palestinian cause but more circumspect as he ran for the U.S. Senate in 2004. At a dinner gathering that year, Abunimah said, Obama greeted him warmly and said privately that he needed to speak cautiously about the Middle East.

Abunimah quoted Obama as saying that he was sorry he wasn't talking more about the Palestinian cause, but that his primary campaign had constrained what he could say.

Obama, through his aide Axelrod, denied he ever said those words, and Abunimah's account could not be independently verified.

Perhaps the video could shed some light on Obama's real positions on Israel and the Palestinian cause.

That may not be the issue at all. Obama and Khalidi may not be the real problem.

Perhaps the video clearly shows Obama palling around with Bill Ayers and Bernadine Dorn.

From FOX News:

The LA Times told FOXNews.com that it won't reveal how it obtained the tape of Khalidi's farewell party, nor will the newspaper release it. Spokeswoman Nancy Sullivan said the paper is not interested in revisiting the story. "As far as we're concerned, the story speaks for itself," she said.

The newspaper reported Tuesday evening in a story on its Web site that the tape was from a confidential source.

"The Los Angeles Times did not publish the videotape because it was provided to us by a confidential source who did so on the condition that we not release it," the Times' editor, Russ Stanton, said. "The Times keeps its promises to sources."

In recent months Obama has distanced himself from the man the Times says he once called a friend. "He is not one of my advisers. He's not one of my foreign policy people," Obama said at a campaign event in May. "He is a respected scholar, although he vehemently disagrees with a lot of Israel's policy."

But on the tape, according to the Times, Obama said in his toast that he hoped his relationship with Khalidi would continue even after the professor left Chicago. "It's for that reason that I'm hoping that, for many years to come, we continue that conversation -- a conversation that is necessary not just around Mona and Rashid's dinner table ... [but around] this entire world."

A number of Web sites have accused the Times of purposely suppressing the tape of the event -- which former Weather Underground terrorists Bill Ayers and Bernardine Dohrn reportedly attended.

Sullivan said she would not give details of what else may be on the tape, adding that anyone interested in the video should read the newspaper's report, which was its final account.

The report from FOX News ends with this:

The Los Angeles Times endorsed Obama for president on October 19.

One has to wonder how that plays into the Times' decision to sit on the tape.

The L.A. Times is pro-Obama.

What, if any, information is being kept from the public?

Again, there's a simple way to end the speculation: Release the videotape.

Barack Obama and Rashid Khalidi

UPDATE, October 27, 2008: "The L.A. Times Suppresses Obama’s Khalidi Bash Tape," by Andrew McCarthy.
________________

Gateway Pundit reports that the Los Angeles Times is refusing to release a video of Barack Obama celebrating with a group of Palestinians who are openly hostile towards Israel.

Barack Obama toasts former PLO operative, Rashid Khalidi, at that event.



Gateway Pundit notes, "By the way, Khalidi was also best friends with Bill Ayers."

What a coinkydink!

Chilling: Bill Ayers' Weather Underground

This clip from the 1982 documentary No Place to Hide is chilling.

Larry Grathwohl became a member of the Weather Underground organization as an undercover operative for law enforcement agencies in Cincinnati. His role was to carry directives from the Central Committee to the operating units in the field.

Transcript of the Grathwohl interview

GRATHWOHL: I brought up the subject of what's going to happen after we take over the government. You know, we become responsible for administrating, you know, 250 million people. And there was no answers. No one had given any thought to economics. How are you going to clothe and feed these people?

The only thing that I could get was that they expected that the Cubans, the North Vietnamese, the Chinese and the Russians would all want to occupy different portions of the United States.

They also believed that their immediate responsibility would be to protect against what they called the counter-revolution. And they felt that this counter-revolution could best be guarded against by creating and establishing re-education centers in the Southwest where we would take all of the people who needed to be re‑educated into the new way of thinking and teach them how things were going to be.

I asked, "Well, what is going to happen to those people that we can't re‑educate, that are die-hard capitalists?"

And the reply was that they'd have to be eliminated and when I pursued this further, they estimated that they'd have to eliminate 25 million people in these re‑education centers.

And when I say eliminate, I mean kill 25 million people.

I want you to imagine sitting in a room with 25 people, most of whom have graduate degrees from Columbia and other well-known educational centers and hear them figuring out the logistics for the elimination of 25 million people and they were dead serious.

It's shocking.

What's also shocking is that thousands have signed their names to a statement in support of Bill Ayers.

In their appeal for signatures, "friends and supporters of Bill Ayers" write:

It seems that the character assassination and slander of Bill Ayers and other people who have known Obama is not about to let up. While an important concern is the dishonesty of this campaign and the slanderous McCarthyism they are using to attack Obama, we also feel an obligation to support our friend and colleague Bill Ayers. Many, many educators have reached out, asking what they could do, seeking a way to weigh in against fear and intimidation. Many of us have been talking and we agree that this one gesture, a joint statement signed by hundreds of hard-working educators, would be a great first step. Such a statement may be distributed through press releases or ads in the future.

"Character assassination and slander"?

Ayers damns himself with his own words.

Ayers declared war on our country, on his country.

If people fear him because of what he did in the past and the sort of beliefs he still holds, they have that right.

Who is intimidating Bill Ayers?

Americans are being educated on the activities of Ayers and the Weather Underground. Their eyes are being opened to the Leftist radicalism of some educators in our universities.

How is it intimidating to tell the truth about him?

Ayers has to live with the consequences of his actions. We all do.

He declared war on the United States. After his group took over the U.S. government, they planned to have re-education centers, to get the masses to abandon capitalism. Ayers' organization estimated that 25 million Americans would resist this re-education and they'd have to be eliminated.

They discussed KILLING 25 million Americans.

That's genocide.

Are we really supposed to hear this sort of stuff and just dismiss it?

It's amazing that educators are choosing to support Ayers.

"Character assassination"?

The Weather Underground considered slaughtering 25 million Americans.

Barack Obama talks tough when it comes to Osama bin Laden and fighting Islamic extremism.

"We cannot tolerate a terrorist sanctuary, and as president, I will not," Sen. Barack Obama said in May. "We must make it clear that if Pakistan cannot or will not act, we will take out high-level terrorist targets like bin Laden if we have them in our sights."

Obama makes no bones about it - if he gets a shot at bin Laden, he will take it - with or without Pakistani permission.

..."As Commander in Chief, I will have no greater priority than taking out these terrorists that threaten America, and finishing the job against the Taliban. That's why I've called for at least two additional U.S. combat brigades," Obama said.

I have trouble believing him. Why should I believe that Obama would take out bin Laden when he won't stand up to Bill Ayers?

To Bill Ayers, America is the enemy, yet Obama makes up excuses for Ayers and himself.

Obama thinks Ayers has "rehabilitated," and anyway, Obama was a just kid when Ayers was bombing the Pentagon.

Those explanations don't fly.

(h/t Little Green Footballs)

Support 4 Bill Ayers: Endorsements

Bill Ayers, self-proclaimed anarchist, Marxist, and unrepentant terrorist, has supporters.

Dear friends and colleagues in the field of education,

It seems that the character assassination and slander of Bill Ayers and other people who have known Obama is not about to let up. While an important concern is the dishonesty of this campaign and the slanderous McCarthyism they are using to attack Obama, we also feel an obligation to support our friend and colleague Bill Ayers. Many, many educators have reached out, asking what they could do, seeking a way to weigh in against fear and intimidation. Many of us have been talking and we agree that this one gesture, a joint statement signed by hundreds of hard-working educators, would be a great first step. Such a statement may be distributed through press releases or ads in the future.

Please click on ENDORSE THIS STATEMENT in order to sign the following statement in support of Bill Ayers and, just as importantly, FORWARD it to other friends and colleagues who would like to stand up against these attacks. (*Title/Affiliation will be listed for identification purposes only. Please be assured that we have no intention of using your name for any other purpose than beneath the words on this page.)

Thank you!

Friends and supporters of Bill Ayers
________________

EDUCATOR STATEMENT - 3247 Current Endorsements -

We write to support our colleague Professor William Ayers, Distinguished Professor of Education and Senior University Scholar at the University of Illinois at Chicago, who is currently under determined and sustained political attack. Ayers is a nationally known scholar, member of the Faculty Senate at UIC, Vice President-elect of the American Educational Research Association, and sought after as a speaker and visiting scholar by other universities because of his exemplary scholarship, teaching, and service. Throughout the 20 years that he has been a valued faculty member at UIC, he has taught, advised, mentored, and supported hundreds of undergraduate, Masters and Ph.D. students. He has pushed them to take seriously their responsibilities as educators in a democracy – to promote critical inquiry, dialogue, and debate; to encourage questioning and independent thinking; to value the full humanity of every person and to work for access and equity. Helping educators develop the capacity and ethical commitment to these responsibilities is at the core of what we do, and as a teacher he has always embraced debate and multiple perspectives.

All citizens, but particularly teachers and scholars, are called upon to challenge orthodoxy, dogma, and mindless complacency, to be skeptical of authoritative claims, to interrogate and trouble the given and the taken-for-granted. Without critical dialogue and dissent we would likely be burning witches and enslaving our fellow human beings to this day. The growth of knowledge, insight, and understanding--- the possibility of change--- depends on that kind of effort, and the inevitable clash of ideas that follows should be celebrated and nourished rather than crushed. Teachers have a heavy responsibility, a moral obligation, to organize classrooms as sites of open discussion, free of coercion or intimidation. By all accounts Professor Ayers meets this standard. His classes are fully enrolled, and students welcome the exchange of views that he encourages.

The current characterizations of Professor Ayers---“unrepentant terrorist,” “lunatic leftist”---are unrecognizable to those who know or work with him. It’s true that Professor Ayers participated passionately in the civil rights and antiwar movements of the 1960s, as did hundreds of thousands of Americans. His participation in political activity 40 years ago is history; what is most relevant now is his continued engagement in progressive causes, and his exemplary contribution---including publishing 16 books--- to the field of education. The current attacks appear as part of a pattern of “exposés” and assaults designed to intimidate free thinking and stifle critical dialogue. Like crusades against high school and elementary teachers, and faculty at UCLA, Columbia, DePaul, and the University of Colorado, the attacks on and the character assassination of Ayers threaten the university as a space of open inquiry and debate, and threaten schools as places of compassion, imagination, curiosity, and free thought. They serve as warnings that anyone who voices perspectives and advances questions that challenge orthodoxy and political power may become a target, and this, then, casts a chill over free speech and inquiry and the spirit of democracy.

We, the undersigned, stand on the side of education as an enterprise devoted to human inquiry, enlightenment, and liberation. We oppose the demonization of Professor William Ayers.

Read the list of Ayers supporters.

Wisconsin is represented, including:

Gloria Ladson-Billings - University of Wisconsin

Rene Antrop-Gonzalez, Ph.D. - University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee

Ken Zeichner - University of Wisconsin-Madison

Taina R. Collazo-Quiles - University of Wisconsin-Madison

Brian W. Lagotte - University of Wisconsin-Madison

Katy Swalwell - MEPD Graduate Faculty, University of Wisconsin-LaCrosse

Jen Scott Curwood - University of Wisconsin

Mary Thompson-Shriver - University of Wisconsin

Katherina A. Payne - University of Wisconsin

Ross Colin - The University of Wisconsin-Madison

Andrew Clement - University of Wisconsin-Madison

Vonzell Agosto - University of Wisconsin-Madison

University of Wisconsin-Madison

Matthew Knoester - University of Wisconsin-Madison

Donna L. Vukelich - University of Wisconsin-Madison

Kerry Kretchmar - University of Wisconsin-Madison

Dale Weiss - First grade teacher, La Escuela Fratney (Milwaukee, WI)

Madeline Hafner - University of Wisconsin-Madison

Thandeka K. Chapman - UW Milwaukee

Jenny Peshut - University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee

Margaret Phinney - University of Wisconsin-River Falls

Jack Winters - Marquette University

Daniel Ginsberg-Jaeckle - SDS-Milwaukee

Evelin Rodriguez - University of Wisconsin-Madison

Rhea Vedro - University of WI - Madison

Gary Greif - University of Wisconsin--Green Bay

Patricia S. Merrill - Milwaukee Area Technical College

Beth Handler - University of Wisconsin-Madison

Margaret Finders - University of Wisconsin La Crosse

Mary Louise Gomez - University of Wisconsin-Madison

Diana Hess - University of WI-Madison

Simone Schweber - University of Wisconsin-Madison

Beth Graue - University of Wisconsin Madison

Dawnene D. Hassett, Ph.D. - University of Wisconsin-Madison

Beth Robinson - Univeristy of Wisconsin-Milwaukee

Julie Mead - University of Wisconsin-Madison

Julio Guerrero - University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee

Constance Steinkuehler - University of Wisconsin-Madison

Nancy Ruggeri - University of Wisconsin-Madison

Douglas B. Larkin - University of Wisconsin-Madison

Sharon L. Morrow - University of Wisconsin - Madison

Sarah McKinney - University of Wisconsin-Madison, doctoral student

Doreen Adamany - University of Wisconsin

Selena Kohel - University of Wisconsin-Madison

Ricardo D. Rosa - University of Wisconsin

Manali Sheth - UW Madison, former teacher

Elizabeth A. Hutchinson - University of Wisconsin-Madison

Bethany Brent - University of Wisconsin-Madison

Julie Minikel-Lacocque - UW-Madison

Sarah Adumat - UW Madison

Bruce E. Gladstone - University of Wisconsin

Joyce Shanks - University of Wisconsin-La Crosse

Finn Ryan - University of Wisconsin, Madison

Wangari Gichiru - University of Wisconsin-Madison

Laurel Blomquist - Madison Area Technical College

Laura Faith Hetland - UW-Milwaukee, SDS, mNSC

Jacob Flom - University of Wisconsin Milwaukee - Progressive Students

Bonnie Paris - University of Wisconsin - Madison

Kurt D. Squire - University of Wisconsin-Madison

Julie Tenpas - UW-Milwaukee

April Goodwin - University of Wisconsin

Thomas Jasen Gardner - University of Wisconsin-Madison

Courtney Koestler - University of Wisconsin- Madison

Kyung Eun Jahng - University of Wisconsin-Madison

Sharon Chubbuck - Marquette University

Margot Kennard - University of Wisconsin-Madison

It's interesting that these thousands are troubled by the "determined and sustained political attack" of Bill Ayers.

They believe:

The current attacks appear as part of a pattern of “exposés” and assaults designed to intimidate free thinking and stifle critical dialogue. Like crusades against high school and elementary teachers, and faculty at UCLA, Columbia, DePaul, and the University of Colorado, the attacks on and the character assassination of Ayers threaten the university as a space of open inquiry and debate, and threaten schools as places of compassion, imagination, curiosity, and free thought. They serve as warnings that anyone who voices perspectives and advances questions that challenge orthodoxy and political power may become a target, and this, then, casts a chill over free speech and inquiry and the spirit of democracy.

If they're consistent, I assume they're horrified at the heavy-handed tactics employed by Barack Obama and his campaign to silence the critics of Obama.

Of course, they aren't consistent. They're hypocrites.
_______________

Marquette Warrior has more on Ayers supporter Jack Winters, Marquette University Professor of Biomedical Engineering.

John McAdams writes:

But why does Ayers need support? Apparently because people are saying bad things about him. He is in no danger of being fired from his tenured position. He is in no danger of being locked up (although he should have been locked up years ago for his terrorist activities).

Rather, people are criticizing him.

That, some leftist professors think, is an attack on academic freedom.

This from a class of people who feel free to launch any attack they want on anybody and everybody they dislike.

McAdams links to Winters' personal web page and notes the Left-leaning organizations that Winters supports.

Winters lists MoveOn and People for the American Way as "good groups."

I'm going to go out on a limb here and predict that Winters will not be voting for John McCain.

Wright 101: Obama's Funding of Anti-American Extremists

Barack Obama's mentor and pastor of 20 years, Jeremiah Wright, isn't getting much attention these days.

I think Obama's relationship with Wright deserves some scrutiny.

Stanley Kurtz offers some new and interesting information that goes well beyond the racist, anti-Semitic, anti-American sermons from Wright that were brought to the attention of the American people.

Kurtz writes:

It looks like Jeremiah Wright was just the tip of the iceberg. Not only did Barack Obama savor Wright’s sermons, Obama gave legitimacy — and a whole lot of money — to education programs built around the same extremist anti-American ideology preached by Reverend Wright. And guess what? Bill Ayers is still palling around with the same bitterly anti-American Afrocentric ideologues that he and Obama were promoting a decade ago. All this is revealed by a bit of digging, combined with a careful study of documents from the Chicago Annenberg Challenge, the education foundation Obama and Ayers jointly led in the late 1990s.

John McCain, take note. Obama’s tie to Wright is no longer a purely personal question (if it ever was one) about one man’s choice of his pastor. The fact that Obama funded extremist Afrocentrists who shared Wright’s anti-Americanism means that this is now a matter of public policy, and therefore an entirely legitimate issue in this campaign.

African Village
In the winter of 1996, the Coalition for Improved Education in [Chicago’s] South Shore (CIESS) announced that it had received a $200,000 grant from the Chicago Annenberg Challenge. That made CIESS an “external partner,” i.e. a community organization linked to a network of schools within the Chicago public system. This network, named the “South Shore African Village Collaborative” was thoroughly “Afrocentric” in orientation. CIESS’s job was to use a combination of teacher-training, curriculum advice, and community involvement to improve academic performance in the schools it worked with. CIESS would continue to receive large Annenberg grants throughout the 1990s.

The South Shore African Village Collaborative (SSAVC) was very much a part of the Afrocentric “rites of passage movement,” a fringe education crusade of the 1990s. SSAVC schools featured “African-Centered” curricula built around “rites of passage” ceremonies inspired by the puberty rites found in many African societies. In and of themselves, these ceremonies were harmless. Yet the philosophy that accompanied them was not. On the contrary, it was a carbon-copy of Jeremiah Wright’s worldview.

Rites of Passage
To learn what the rites of passage movement was all about, we can turn to a sympathetic 1992 study published in the Journal of Negro Education by Nsenga Warfield-Coppock. In that article, Warfield-Coppock bemoans the fact that public education in the United States is shaped by “capitalism, competitiveness, racism, sexism and oppression.” According to Warfield-Coppock, these American values “have confused African American people and oriented them toward American definitions of achievement and success and away from traditional African values.” American socialization has “proven to be dysfuntional and genocidal to the African American community,” Warfield-Coppock tells us. The answer is the adolescent rites of passage movement, designed “to provide African American youth with the cultural information and values they would need to counter the potentially detrimental effects of a Eurocentrically oriented society.”

The adolescent rites of passage movement that flowered in the 1990s grew out of the “cultural nationalist” or “Pan-African” thinking popular in radical black circles of the 1960s and 1970s. The attempt to create a virtually separate and intensely anti-American black social world began to take hold in the mid-1980s in small private schools, which carefully guarded the contents of their controversial curricula. Gradually, through external partners like CIESS, the movement spread to a few public schools. Supporters view these programs as “a social and cultural ‘inoculation’ process that facilitates healthy, African-centered development among African American youth and protects them against the ravages of a racist, sexist, capitalist, and oppressive society.”

We know that SSAVC was part of this movement, not only because their Annenberg proposals were filled with Afrocentric themes and references to “rites of passage,” but also because SSAVC’s faculty set up its African-centered curriculum in consultation with some of the most prominent leaders of the “rites of passage movement.” For example, a CIESS teacher conference sponsored a presentation on African-centered curricula by Jacob Carruthers, a particularly controversial Afrocentrist.

Jacob Carruthers
Like other leaders of the rites of passage movement, Carruthers teaches that the true birthplace of world civilization was ancient “Kemet” (Egypt), from which Kemetic philosophy supposedly spread to Africa as a whole. Carruthers and his colleagues believe that the values of Kemetic civilization are far superior to the isolating and oppressive, ancient Greek-based values of European and American civilization. Although academic Egyptologists and anthropologists strongly reject these historical claims, Carruthers dismisses critics as part of a white supremacist conspiracy to hide the truth of African superiority.

Carruthers’s key writings are collected in his book, Intellectual Warfare. Reading it is a wild, anti-American ride. In his book, we learn that Carruthers and his like-minded colleagues have formed an organization called the Association for the Study of Classical African Civilizations (ASCAC), which takes as its mission the need to “dismantle the European intellectual campaign to commit historicide against African peoples.” Carruthers includes “African-Americans” within a group he would define as simply “African.” When forced to describe a black person as “American,” Carruthers uses quotation marks, thus indicating that no black person can be American in any authentic sense. According to Carruthers, “The submission to Western civilization and its most outstanding offspring, American civilization, is, in reality, surrender to white supremacy.”

Carruthers’s goal is to use African-centered education to recreate a separatist universe within America, a kind of state-within-a-state. The rites of passage movement is central to the plan. Carruthers sees enemies on every part of the political spectrum, from conservatives, to liberals, to academic leftists, all of whom reject advocates of Kemetic civilization, like himself, as dangerous and academically irresponsible extremists. Carruthers sees all these groups as deluded captives of white supremacist Eurocentric culture. Therefore the only safe place for Africans living in the United States (i.e. American blacks) is outside the mental boundaries of our ineradicably racist Eurocentric civilization. As Carruthers puts it: “...some of us have chosen to reject the culture of our oppressors and recover our disrupted ancestral culture.” The rites of passage movement is a way to teach young Africans in the United States how to reject America and recover their authentic African heritage.

America as Rape
Carruthers admits that Africans living in America have already been shaped by Western culture, yet compares this Americanization process to rape: “We may not be able to get our virginity back after the rape, but we do not have to marry the rapist....” In other words, American blacks (i.e. Africans) may have been forcibly exposed to American culture, but that doesn’t mean they need to accept it. The better option, says Carruthers, is to separate out and relearn the wisdom of Africa’s original Kemetic culture, embodied in the teachings of the ancient wise man, Ptahhotep (an historical figure traditionally identified as the author of a Fifth Dynasty wisdom book). Anything less than re-Africanization threatens the mental, and even physical, genocide of Africans living in an ineradicably white supremacist United States.

Carruthers is a defender of Leonard Jeffries, professor in the department of black studies at City College in Harlem, infamous for his black supremacist and anti-Semitic views. Jeffries sees whites as oppressive and violent “ice people,” in contrast to peaceful and mutually supportive black “sun people.” The divergence says Jeffries, is attributable to differing levels of melanin in the skin. Jeffries also blames Jews for financing the slave trade. Carruthers defends Jeffries and excoriates the prestigious black academics Carruthers views as traitorous for denouncing their African brother, Jeffries. Carruthers’s vision of the superior and peaceful Kemetic philosophy of Ptahhotep triumphing over Greco-Euro-American-white culture obviously parallels Jeffries’ opposition between ice people and sun people.

More of Carruthers’s education philosophy can be found in his newsletter, The Kemetic Voice. In 1997, for example, at the same time Carruthers was advising SSAVC on how to set up an African-centered curriculum, he praised the decision of New Orleans’ School Board to remove the name of George Washington from an elementary school. Apparently, some officials in New Orleans had decided that nobody who held slaves should have a school named after him. Carruthers touted the name-change as proof that his African-centered perspective was finally having an effect on public policy. At the demise of George Washington School, Carruthers crowed: “These events remind us of how vast the gulf is that separates the Defenders of Western Civilization from the Champions of African Civilization.”

According to Chicago Annenberg Challenge records, Carruthers’s training session on African-centered curricula for SSAVC teachers was a huge hit: “As a consciousness raising session, it received rave reviews, and has prepared the way for the curriculum readiness survey....” These teacher-training workshops were directly funded by the Chicago Annenberg Challenge. Another sure sign of the ideological cast of SSAVC’s curriculum can be found in Annenberg documents noting that SSAVC students are taught the wisdom of Ptahhotep. Carruthers’s concerns about “menticide” and “genocide” at the hand of America’s white supremacist system seem to be echoed in an SSAVC document that says: “Our children need to understand the historical context of our struggles for liberation from those forces that seek to destroy us.”

When Jeremiah Wright turned toward African-centered thinking in the late 1980s and early 1990s (the period when, attracted by Wright’s African themes, Barack Obama first became a church member), many prominent thinkers from Carruthers’s Association for the Study of Classical African Civilizations were invited to speak at Trinity United Church of Christ, Carruthers himself included. We hear echoes of Carruthers’s work in Wright’s distinction between “right brained” Africans and “left brained” Europeans, in Wright’s fears of U.S. government-sponsored genocide against American blacks, and in Wright’s embittered attacks on America’s indelibly white-supremacist history. In Wright’s Trumpet Newsmagazine, as in Carruthers’s own writings, blacks are often referred to as “Africans living in the diaspora” rather than as Americans.

Asa Hilliard
Chicago Annenberg Challenge records also indicate that SSAVC educators invited Asa Hilliard, a pioneer of African-centered curricula and a close colleague of Carruthers, to offer a keynote address at yet another Annenberg-funded teacher training session. Hilliard’s ties to Wright run still deeper than Carruthers’s. A close Wright mentor and friend, Hilliard died in 2007 while on a trip to Kemet (Egypt) with Wright and members of Wright’s congregation. Hillard was scheduled to deliver several lectures to the congregants, and to speak at a meeting of the Association for the Study of Classical African Civilization, which he co-founded with Carruthers and other “African-centered” scholars. On that last trip, Hilliard accepted an appointment to the board of Wright’s new elementary school, Kwame Nkrumah Academy. Speaking of the need for such a school, Wright had earlier said, “We need to educate our children to the reality of white supremacy.” (For more on Wright’s Afrocentric school, see “Jeremiah Wright’s ‘Trumpet.’”)

Wright delivered the eulogy at Hilliard’s memorial service, with prominent members of ASCAC in the audience. To commemorate Hilliard, a special, two-cover double issue of Wright’s Trumpet Newsmagazine was published, with a picture of Hilliard on one side, and a picture of Louis Farrakhan on the other (in celebration of a 2007 award Farrakhan received from Wright). In short, the ties between Wright and Hilliard could hardly have been closer. Clearly, then, Wright’s own educational philosophy was mirrored at the Annenberg-funded SSAVC, which sought out Hilliard’s and Carruthers’s counsel to construct its curriculum.

Perhaps inadvertently, Wright’s eulogy for Hilliard actually established the fringe nature of his favorite African-centered scholars. In his tribute, Wright stressed how intensely “white Egyptologists recoiled at the very notion of everything Asa taught.” As Wright himself made plain, it seems virtually impossible to find respectable scholars of any political stripe who approve of the extremist anti-American version of Afrocentrism promoted by Hilliard and Carruthers.

Ayers’s Pals
An important exception to the rule is Bill Ayers himself, who not only worked with Obama to fund groups like this at the Chicago Annenberg Challenge, but who is still “palling around” with the same folks. Discretely waiting until after the election, Bill Ayers and his wife, and fellow former terrorist, Bernardine Dohrn plan to release a book in 2009 entitled Race Course Against White Supremacy. The book will be published by Third World Press, a press set up by Carruthers and other members of the ASCAC. Representatives of that press were prominently present for Wright’s eulogy at Asa Hilliard’s memorial service. Less than a decade ago, therefore, when it came to education issues, Barack Obama, Bill Ayers, and Jeremiah Wright were pretty much on the same page.

Obama’s Knowledge
Given the precedent of his earlier responses on Ayers and Wright, Obama might be inclined to deny personal knowledge of the educational philosophy he was so generously funding. Such a denial would not be convincing. For one thing, we have evidence that in 1995, the same year Obama assumed control of the Chicago Annenberg Challenge, he publicly rejected “the unrealistic politics of integrationist assimilation,” a stance that clearly resonates with both Wright and Carruthers. (See “No Liberation.”)

And as noted, Wright had invited Carruthers, Hilliard, and like-minded thinkers to address his Trinity congregants. Wright likes to tick off his connections to these prominent Afrocentrists in sermons, and Obama would surely have heard of them. Reading over SSAVC’s Annenberg proposals, Obama could hardly be ignorant of what they were about. And if by some chance Obama overlooked Hilliard’s or Carruthers’s names, SSAVC’s proposals are filled with references to “rites of passage” and “Ptahhotep,” dead giveaways for the anti-American and separatist ideological concoction favored by SSAVC.

We know that Obama did read the proposals. Annenberg documents show him commenting on proposal quality. And especially after 1995, when concerns over self-dealing and conflicts of interest forced the Ayers-headed “Collaborative” to distance itself from monetary issues, all funding decisions fell to Obama and the board. Significantly, there was dissent within the board. One business leader and experienced grant-smith characterized the quality of most Annenberg proposals as “awful.” (See “The Chicago Annenberg Challenge: The First Three Years,” p. 19.) Yet Obama and his very small and divided board kept the money flowing to ideologically extremist groups like the South Shore African Village Collaborative, instead of organizations focused on traditional educational achievement.

As if the content of SSAVC documents wasn’t warning enough, their proposals consistently misspelled “rites of passage” as “rights of passage,” hardly an encouraging sign from a group meant to improve children’s reading skills. The Chicago Annenberg Challenge’s own evaluators acknowledged that Annenberg-aided schools showed no improvement in achievement scores. Evaluators attributed that failure, in part, to the fact that many of Annenberg’s “external partners” had little educational expertise. A group that puts its efforts into Kwanzaa celebrations and half-baked history certainly fits that bill, and goes a long way toward explaining how Ayers and Obama managed to waste upwards of $150 million without improving student achievement.

However he may seek to deny it, all evidence points to the fact that, from his position as board chair of the Chicago Annenberg Challenge, Barack Obama knowingly and persistently funded an educational project that shared the extremist and anti-American philosophy of Jeremiah Wright. The Wright affair was no fluke. It’s time for McCain to say so.

I agree with Kurtz.

"Obama’s tie to Wright is no longer a purely personal question (if it ever was one) about one man’s choice of his pastor. The fact that Obama funded extremist Afrocentrists who shared Wright’s anti-Americanism means that this is now a matter of public policy, and therefore an entirely legitimate issue in this campaign."

Thank you, Stanley Kurtz, for your reporting.

Bill Ayers and Barack Obama: In Their Own Words

April 12, 2002

BILL AYERS: I'm very open about what I think and nobody here is surprised about what I think.

Bill Ayers, Barack Obama, and 'Dreams from My Father'

Was Barack Obama the author of his book, Dreams from My Father?

Did he write it or did someone else?

Could that someone else have been Obama's friend and colleague Bill Ayers?

That's what Jack Cashill claims, writing on WorldNetDaily.

Cashill lays out his case.

Are his accusations valid? Is there something to what he's saying?

That's debatable.

In a response to Jonathan Adler, Andy McCarthy considers the possibility that Cashill is on to something.

McCarthy writes:

Cashill has written a very thorough analysis... As I said, I resisted reading Cashill's analysis for a long time — and he's not the first to advance the idea that Obama did not write his book — because I didn't want to be accused of wading into what could be taken as nutter stuff. I was then persuaded that I should at least look at it with an open mind. I'm convinced it raises major questions. I tried to treat them in a serious way.

...The next time someone complains that we really don't know enough about Obama — that he won't talk about Columbia, release his records or anything he wrote there; that he won't produce anything from his Harvard days; that there seems to have been a concerted effort to purge documentation of his connections to socialist associations; that he has misrepresented the fact and depth of his relationships with some troublesome people — do make sure to repeat your thoughtful response that you've seen no evidence that evidence is relevant. We're about to elect to the presidency a blank slate of the Left who comes to us with a neon sign that says "SLATE NOT ACTUALLY BLANK IF YOU LOOK HARD ENOUGH."

I think there's a great deal of validity to McCarthy's assertion, "SLATE NOT ACTUALLY BLANK IF YOU LOOK HARD ENOUGH," when it comes to Barack Obama.

The media have failed the American public. In addition to not looking hard enough at Obama's not actually blank slate; what they have seen, they've tried to erase.

Instead of fulfilling their role as watchdogs, they've been trying to bury the bones found in Obama's closet.

Barack Obama and 'Rehabilitated' Bill Ayers

From Ben Smith, Politico, October 9, 2008:

In an interview with the sympathetic conservative talk radio host this afternoon, Obama offered the clearest explanation yet of how an extremely careful politician allowed himself anywhere near a former '60s radical who would become a Republican target in this year's presidential campaign.

Obama "had assumed" from Bill Ayers' stature in Chicago, he told the Philadelphia-based Michael Smerconish, that Ayers had been "rehabilitated" since his 1960s crimes.

In the interview, which was taped this afternoon and will air tomorrow, and which you can listen to above, Obama recalled moving back to Chicago after law school, and becoming involved in civic life there.

"The gentleman in question, Bill Ayers, is a college professor, teaches education at the University of Illinois," he said. "That's how i met him -- working on a school reform project that was funded by an ambassador and very close friend of Ronald Reagan's" along with "a bunch of conservative businessmen and civic leaders."

"Ultimately, I ended up learning about the fact that he had engaged in this reprehensible act 40 years ago, but I was eight years old at the time and I assumed that he had been rehabilitated," Obama said.

That may not have been an unreasonable assumption for Obama in the 1990s. Though Ayers never repented his part in the Weather Underground bombings, he had not yet become notorious for advertising them. That notoriety returned in 2001, when he published his memoir, "Fugitive Days," and reminisced about the bombings in a New York Times interview that happened to appear September 11 of that year.

So now we have yet another version of Obama's relationship with Ayers. It keeps morphing.

Smith writes that Obama's assumption that Ayers "had been rehabilitated" was reasonable in the 1990s.

No it wasn't. It's a completely unreasonable assumption that during the 1990s Obama believed Ayers had been "rehabilitated." What is Smith talking about?

In 1998, Bill Ayers and Bernadine Dorhn, Ayers' wife and partner in terror, were interviewed by Connie Chung for ABC News.

Watch a portion of that interview, 7:30 into this video.

Transcript

BILL O'REILLY, HOST: In the "Factor Follow-up" segment tonight: We've been looking into the political situation in Chicago where Barack Obama rose to prominence. Obviously, his association with Reverend Wright has hurt him. And there's also been bad publicity about William Ayers and Bernadine Dohrn, two radicals associated with the violent Weather Underground back in the '60s. In 1998 Connie Chung spoke with Ayers and Dohrn on ABC News.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

CONNIE CHUNG, ABC NEWS: A lot of people out there are probably saying: "I would love to hear them say, 'We were young. We were idealistic. We were foolish, and we were probably stupid. We made mistakes, and we're sorry about it. We're grown up now.'"

WILLIAM AYERS, FORMER WEATHER UNDERGROUND MEMBER: Well, I would say we were young, we were idealistic, we were foolish and we made mistakes.

BERNADINE DOHRN, FORMER WEATHER UNDERGROUND MEMBER: We made mistakes, and we'd do it again. I wish that we'd done more. I wish we'd been more militant. I wish a lot of things. But taken as a whole, we were so lucky to be born into that moment in history.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

This interview took place in 1998.

How is it reasonable that Obama believed Ayers was "rehabilitated" in the 1990s?

It's not, not even remotely.

Ayers and Dohrn do a high profile interview with Connie Chung on ABC News in 1998, expressing no remorse for their militancy and waging war on the country. And we are to believe that Obama was clueless, that he assumed Ayers was "rehabilitated"?

Really?

Apparently, Obama has a different definition of "rehabilitation" than I do.

The timeline doesn't fit Obama's current explanation of his relationship with Ayers, what he knew and when he knew it.

It doesn't fit.

Ben Smith does a poor job of looking into the facts.

Smith buys Obama's story of not knowing that Ayers was unrepentant, that Ayers still was clinging to his radical anti-American beliefs and violent methods to subvert the U.S. government as surely as Obama's believes that people in small towns in Pennsylvania are bitter and "cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren't like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations."

Obama is not being truthful with the American people. He's not being forthcoming about what he knew and when he knew it.

Furthermore, Smith talks about Ayers' notorious interview published in the New York Times on 9/11, citing that as possible evidence that Obama had no knowledge that Ayers had not been "rehabilitated" prior to its publication. That interview was a revelation for him.

There are problems with that, too. Obama and Ayers worked together after that article was published.

Obama knew that Ayers was not "rehabilitated" and he continued their relationship, their "friendly" relationship.

Put aside Obama's lack of truthfulness with the American people for a moment.

Look at his own assertion that he "assumed that [Ayers] had been rehabilitated."

As president, what sort of things would Obama wrongly just assume?

What other terrorists or thugs would he assume were rehabilitated?

As president, would Obama fall back on the claim that he shouldn't be held responsible for knowing things that happened when he was eight years old or at other points in his childhood?

What depth of understanding could he possibly have about past events that have shaped our present if he takes that stance?

For example, in the case of Israel, would knowledge of the Six-Day War be above his pay grade?

Obama can't be trusted.