Source: http://www.ibdeditorials.com/IBDArticles.aspx?id=308530627185173
By INVESTOR'S BUSINESS DAILY | Posted Friday, October 10, 2008 4:20 PM PT
Campaign '08: Barack Obama now says he knew who Bill Ayers was but thought he was "rehabilitated." And they say McCain is erratic! Where are the fact-checkers when you need them?
Read More: Election 2008
In an interview with sympathetic Philadelphia radio talk show host Michael Smerconish, taped Thursday and broadcast Friday, Obama changed the story of his relationship with Weatherman terrorist William Ayers yet again. He even had the chutzpah to lay the matter at the feet of Ronald Reagan.
"Ultimately, I ended up learning about the fact that (Ayers) had engaged in this reprehensible act 40 years ago, but I was 8 years old at the time and I assumed that he had been rehabilitated," Obama said.
You'd think a graduate of Columbia University and Harvard Law School would have known that the actions of America's premier terrorist bomber did not, due to tainted evidence, result in a single day of prison time. So just when and where did he think Bill Ayers was rehabilitated?
And just when and where did Obama learn about "this reprehensible act"? He does not say. But when you meet someone for the first time and end up in his house as he hosts your first fundraiser, isn't it customary to inquire about his background?
Michelle Obama was asked about the relationship on "Larry King Live" on Thursday. "I don't know anyone in Chicago who is heavily involved in education policy who doesn't know Bill Ayers," she said. Or his background?
When Obama did find out, and learned Ayers did not regret his deeds, the savvy and politically ambitious Obama should have dropped him like the plague. Instead, he lied (and that's the only word for it) about their relationship.
"The gentleman in question, Bill Ayers, is a college professor, teaches education at the University of Illinois," Obama told Smerconish. "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." This is the mother of all stretches.
University of Illinois records show that in the 1990s, Ayers was instrumental in starting the Chicago Annenberg Challenge, securing a $50 million grant to reform the Chicago Public Schools, part of a national initiative funded by Walter Annenberg, the former ambassador who died in 2002.
Annenberg wanted to reform schools, but certainly not along the socialist lines intended by Bill Ayers, who sees Venezuela's system as a model and has a mutual admiration society going with Hugo Chavez. And to suggest Ronald Reagan had any connection is obscene.
In a Thursday column in the Philadelphia Daily News, Smerconish writes that "the facts suggest that Ayers is on the periphery of Obama's public life." This, we suppose, is Latin for "just a guy who lives in the neighborhood," as Obama claims. In fact, Obama and Ayers worked intimately on many projects and served on boards together, routinely exchanging ideas.
As reported on pajamasmedia.com, Obama's first known meeting with Ayers had to occur in Chicago in 1987. Ayers was an activist in the Alliance for Better Chicago Schools. Community organizer Obama's Developing Communities Project was a member of that alliance.
The canard that Ayers' crimes occurred when Obama was 8 is irrelevant. Obama was 24 at the time of the Weathermen's last attacks. He was 29 when the last remnants of the Weather Underground and the affiliated May 19th Communist Organization were sentenced to prison in 1990. Surely Ayers' background was in news accounts.
The claim that Barack Obama did not know who Ayers was when he launched his political career in Ayers' living room is bogus. Ayers was a player in Chicago's radical left politics. So was Obama, who has a problem with the truth.
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