It is a major story in the New York Times, Politico, the New York Post, and the left wing Guardian in Great Britain. It is the most curious of all Barack Obama’s problematic relationships and calls into question not only his judgement but the core of his political beliefs.
How radical are the politics of Barack Obama?
The story is about William Ayers and Bernadine Dohrn – two members of the radical 1960’s terrorist group the Weather Underground and the fact that the possible next president of the United States is on a first name basis with a self-confessed bomber of the Pentagon who not only has no regrets for his terrorist action but wishes he could do it all over again.
Larry Rohter and Michael Luo of the New York Times:
On March 6, 1970, a bomb explosion destroyed a Greenwich Village town house, killing three members of the radical Weather Underground and driving other members of the group even deeper into hiding.On Wednesday night, those events emerged as the focus of a sharp exchange between Senators Hillary Rodham Clinton and Barack Obama at their debate in Philadelphia. Mr. Obama was asked by a moderator, George Stephanopoulos of ABC News, about his relationship with Bill Ayers, a former Weather Underground leader who is now a professor at the University of Illinois at Chicago.
In the early 1970s, the Weathermen, who took their name from a line in a Bob Dylan song, claimed responsibility for bombing the Capitol, the Pentagon, the State Department Building and banks, courthouses and police stations.
Charges against Ayers and Dohrn were dropped because the Feds spied on the duo illegally. But the question absolutely must be asked just what was Obama thinking having anything at all to do with this man:
Mr. Ayers is listed as a member of the nine-member board of the Woods Fund of Chicago, an offshoot of the Woods Charitable Fund, founded in 1941 by a prominent lawyer and telephone company executive. According to the fund’s Web site, it has focused in recent years on “issues that affected the area’s least advantaged, including welfare reform, affordable housing” and “tax policy as a tool in reducing poverty.”For a time, Mr. Obama was on the board with Mr. Ayers, though he no longer has a formal association with the group. At the debate, he described Mr. Ayers as “a guy who lives in my neighborhood,” but “not somebody who I exchange ideas from on a regular basis.” Mr. Obama said he was being unjustly linked to “somebody who engaged in detestable acts 40 years ago, when I was 8 years old.”
What would any other politician have done when he or she discovered that a terrorist was sitting on the same board as they? Wouldn’t just about anyone else have said “no thank you” to such an invitation?
There’s more to this relationship than Ayers simply being a “guy who lives in my neighborhood.” The two were introduced back in 1995 when Obama was presented by outgoing state senator Alice Palmer to Ayers and other far left activists in the University Chicago neighborhood of Hyde Park at Ayers house according to this story by Ben Smith in Politico. And RezkoWatch reports on 2 other forums where we know Obama and Ayers participated:
Wondering whether the three may have crossed paths is not speculation. It is a fact that they have. Ayers, Dohrn, and Obama have appeared together at a number of gatherings and academic events. In November 1997, Ayers and Obama participated in a panel at the University of Chicago entitled Should a child ever be called a “super predator?” to debate “the merits of the juvenile justice system”.In April 2002, Ayers, Dohrn, and Obama, then an Illinois State Senator, participated together at a conference entitled “Intellectuals: Who Needs Them?” sponsored by The Center for Public Intellectuals and the University of Illinois-Chicago. Ayers and Obama were two of the six members of the “Intellectuals in Times of Crisis” panel.
And Campus Watch reports on a farewell dinner for the radical Palestinian activist Rashid Khalidi, who was leaving the Arab American Action Network to take the Edward Said endowed chair at Colombia University, where Obama, Ayers, and Dohrn all gave glowing testimonials to Khalidi – whose group received $75,000 from the Woods Foundation
In bringing professor Khalidi to Morningside Heights from the University of Chicago, Columbia also got itself a twofer of Palestinian activism and advocacy. Mr. Khalidi’s wife, Mona, who also served in Beirut as chief editor of the English section of the WAFA press agency, was hired as dean of foreign students at Columbia’s SIPA, working under Dean Anderson. In Chicago, the Khalidis founded the Arab American Action Network, and Mona Khalidi served as its president. A big farewell dinner was held in their honor by AAAN with a commemorative book filled with testimonials from their friends and political allies. These included the left wing anti-war group Not In My Name, the Electronic Intifada, and the ex-Weatherman domestic terrorists Bernadine Dohrn and Bill Ayers. (There were also testimonials from then-state Senator Barack Obama and the mayor of Chicago.)
This information along with the fact that Obama served with Ayers on the Board of the Woods Foundation, gives the lie to Obama’s claim that he doesn’t know Ayers very well. And both of those forums at U of C were set up by none other than Michelle Obama in her capacity as University of Chcago PR executive; evidently she too saw nothing wrong in glad handing with terrorists.
It is beyond belief that the press is just now getting around to this, the most incredible of all Obama radical associations. And the scary thought is that it will change few minds about Obama and his hypocritical brand of “new politics.”
Much of this blog post originally appears at The American Thinker
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