Free Republic

Barack Obama's critics appropriately have spotlighted his ties to William Ayers and Bernardine Dohrn, the remorseless co-founders and leaders of the terrorist Weather Underground. However, Obama's detractors largely overlook Ayers' campaign contribution to Obama.On April 2, 2001, Ayers donated $200 to Obama's Illinois State Senate re-election campaign. Though not a jackpot, this represents Ayers' only recorded political contribution.The Illinois State Board of Elections' online database shows that Ayers donated to no other candidate. The websites of the Federal Elections Commission, The Center for Responsive Politics (opensecrets.org), and NewsMeat.com indicate that Ayers has made no disclosed federal campaign contributions.Why is...

The mainstream press steadfastly refuses to delve into Barack Obama’s radicalism, his Leftist revolutionary collaboration with self-identified communists from Frank Marshall Davis to Bill Ayers. The McCain campaign, moreover, has contributed mightily to the whitewash by ineptly seizing on the issue’s least important aspect: Obama’s abject dishonesty about the depth of his relationships with committed Leftists — e.g., the portrayal of Ayers as just “a guy who lives in my neighborhood.” (Petrified of being smeared as a racist, McCain has never mentioned Davis, whom Obama identifies only as “Frank” in his memoir. And, of course, utterance of Jeremiah Wright’s name...

It’s nice to be the guy getting tips for once instead of the guy sending them. Yesterday I got two great tips from Morgen, a reader who had found my earlier posts digging into the Obama Ayers connection. Both tips appear to check out and the second one is, I think, big news.First, the smaller one…This Chicago Annenberg Challenge website from 2002 shows the total amount of funds given to Bill Ayers’ Small Schools Workshop from 1995 to 2001. The amount is not the $175K I had reported earlier. According to this page, the total given under Barack Obama’s direct...

Bill Ayers and Barack Obama shared an office. Ayers’ Small Schools Workshop, the one Obama directed all that money too is located at 115 S. Sangamon Street, Chicago, Illinois 60607 [Note the link is to a year 2000 version of their website]. Here’s a screen grab from the website’s footer: In 1998, the address for the Chicago Annenberg Challenge, where Obama presumably worked, was 115 S. Sangamon Street, Chicago, Illinois 60607. Here’s a copy of their 1998 tax return with that address: The CAC moved to a new address sometime in 1999 or 2000, but the shared office probably persisted...

Barack Obama started serving as chairman of the Chicago Annenberg Challenge, an education grant program, in 1995, the same year he was elected to the Illinois state Senate. As chairman, Obama oversaw the disbursement of $49.2 million in Annenberg grants, most of which went to non-profit groups with the stated intent of improving Chicago’s public schools. Since the start of his political career, Obama has received a total of $331,528 in campaign contributions from people who served as staff and board members of non-profit groups that received grants from the Chicago Annenberg Challenge (CAC). In 2005 and 2006, board members...

Stanley Kurtz, who has been dumpster-diving in the Chicago Annenberg Challenge file boxes for a few weeks now, writes today at NRO: It took me a while to put the pieces together, but I think I’ve figured out what’s had the Obama camp so worried about the Chicago Annenberg Challenge records. It goes way beyond Bill Ayers. In fact, it connects the dots between Ayers, Jeremiah Wright, and Obama’s own early radicalism. I lay out the details today in my new piece, “Wright 101.” The gist of what I found is that, from his position as board chair at the...

Education: The joint effort between Barack Obama and terrorist William Ayers to "reform" Chicago schools was a flop. After spending $160 million, Chicago's children were still being left behind.It was, and some say still is, his only claim to have executive experience qualifying him for high government office. "My experience previous to elected office equips me for the job," Obama said in a 2000 televised debate during a failed campaign to unseat incumbent Democratic Congressman Bobby Rush. Of that experience, Obama said: "I have chaired major philanthropic efforts on the city, like the Chicago Annenberg Challenge (CAC) that gave $50...

Stanley Kurtz's examination of the archives of the Chicago Annenberg Challenge provides us evidence of the sort of educational policies Barack Obama funded when handing out scores of millions of dollars he was entrusted with. In a must-read article at National Review Online, Kurtz provides the detailed history of the movement Obama backed with tax-free charitable funds. It is absolutely fair to quiz Obama on his views toward education today based on his track record. A few brief samples: Obama gave legitimacy - and a whole lot of money - to education programs built around the same extremist anti-American ideology...

Obama-Run Foundation Gave Millions to Liberal Groups, Including One Run by Bill Ayers Monday, October 13, 2008 By Fred Lucas, Staff Writer (CNSNews.com) – William Ayers, a one-time leader of the Weather Underground domestic terrorist group that in the 1970s took credit for bombing the Pentagon and the U.S. Capitol, became the founder of the Small Schools Workshop at the University of Illinois-Chicago in 1992 and was the group’s co-director through 2002. During those years, the Smalls Schools Workshop received at least $800,000 from the Chicago Annenberg Challenge--an organization that Ayers also helped found and that Barack Obama chaired starting...

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...

Urgent request to all Freepers to help Stanley Kurtz gain access to embargoed Chicago Annenberg Challenge documents. Documents pertaining to Barack Obama's unknown relationship with William Ayers, unrepentant terrorist.

In the best tradition of Bill Clinton’s famous declaration that the answer to the question of whether or not he was having an affair with Monica depended on “what the definition of ‘is’ is,” Barack Obama was clearly splitting hairs and concealing the truth when he said that William Ayers was “just a guy who lives in my neighborhood.” The records of the administration of the Chicago Annenberg Challenge (CAC), released last week by the University of Illinois, show that the Ayers-Obama connection was, in fact, an intimate collaboration and that it led to the only executive or administrative experience...

Video of Obama in his own words from various interviews regarding Chicago Annenburg Challenge and who hired him. Bill Ayers, infact, Ayers built the foundation with a 50 Mill grant then hired Obama, the ACORN community Organization attorney (Obama) to run it. It was one of his only job resume points he pointed to while running for US Senate.

It appears that Barack Obama has trained his minions well—very very well, in fact. Obama’s group ACORN is under scrutiny or indictment in at least 14 states for voter fraud, embezzlement and misuses of taxpayer funds. One of the states—Missouri—is the state in which the Obama campaign now has Missouri police, St. Louis Prosecuting Attorney Bob McCulloch and St. Louis City Circuit Attorney Jennifer Joyce using their offices to intimidate and threaten those who speak ill about Kandidate Obama. Note: There are also rumblings that Missouri police may use their color of authority to intimidate all non-Obama voters. The chance...

Subversives for Obama Friday, 26th September 2008 There are two American election campaigns currently running. The first, in the mainstream media, accepts Barack Obama at face value, no questions asked, while it viciously turns over Sarah Palin and her family whom it subjects to lies, smears and character assassination. The second, being conducted in the blogosphere and (with one or two notable exceptions such as the Wall Street Journal) not alluded to at all by the mainstream media, is the site of verbal warfare between Camp Obama and bloggers who are practising journalism as it used to be practised –...

t is incomprehensible that anyone would entrust the education of children to an admitted -- and unapologetic -- domestic terrorist. Yet Sen. Barack Obama has done just that. From 1995 to 2001, the Democrats' presidential nominee was an integral part of the radical leftist Chicago Annenberg Challenge (CAC) education foundation, formed by William Ayers, a founder of the violent Weather Underground gang. It's the same Mr. Ayers who (along with his followers) bombed the Pentagon and never expressed remorse about his wickedness. And it's the same Ayers in whose home Barack Obama launched his political career in 1995. Hand in...

New evidence strongly suggests that Barack Obama has been less than forthcoming about the role that unrepentant Weather Underground terrorist Bill Ayers may have played in choosing him to lead the Chicago Annenberg Challenge (CAC). Through a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request, I have obtained an e-mail message from former CAC executive director, Ken Rolling, to Warren Chapman and Anne Hallett, two of CAC’s three co-founders. Bill Ayers was the third founder. In Rolling’s message, sent the morning after I first requested access to CAC records housed at the University of Illinois at Chicago (UIC), he admits to avoiding...

Stanley Kurtz's articles today on NRO and in the Wall Street Journal are must reads. Three takeaways: * Obama had a long-term working relationship with William Ayers. * The Chicago Annenberg Challenge ("CAC"), the only executive experience on Obama's resume, was an objective failure despite the expenditure of millions of dollars. * Through the CAC, Ayers and Obama financed radical organizations, including one with a history of engaging in voter fraud. Stanley's work is a challenge to mainstream journalists. A candidate for the presidency has a demonstrated working relationship with — indeed funded — an unrepentant terrorist, yet the media...

Records show collaboration on funding leftists despite claim he's just 'a guy' in neighborhood JERUSALEM – In spite of Sen. Barack Obama's claims to the contrary, the Democratic presidential nominee had a close working relationship with former Weathermen terrorist leader William Ayers when the two served alongside each other on a hundred-million-dollar education foundation, according to the group's own archived records. The records also show Obama's and Ayers' foundation granted money to radical leftist activist causes. News reports, archived records, interviews and Ayers' own curriculum vitae document that Ayers was the founder of the Chicago Annenberg Challenge, or CAC, which...

Today, in a piece in the Wall Street Journal entitled, “Obama and Ayers Pushed Radicalism On Schools,” I offer a report on my research into the archives of the Chicago Annenberg Challenge (CAC), an education foundation once headed by Barack Obama. As I explained in “Chicago Annenberg Challenge Shutdown?” the Richard J. Daley Library of the University of Illinois at Chicago first agreed to grant, then abruptly denied me, access to the files of this foundation. Subsequently, the Daley Library again reversed their decision and made the CAC files available. As I note in today’s Journal piece, I’ve conveyed the...

Today, in a piece in the Wall Street Journal entitled, “Obama and Ayers Pushed Radicalism On Schools,” I offer a report on my research into the archives of the Chicago Annenberg Challenge (CAC), an education foundation once headed by Barack Obama. As I explained in “Chicago Annenberg Challenge Shutdown?” the Richard J. Daley Library of the University of Illinois at Chicago first agreed to grant, then abruptly denied me, access to the files of this foundation. Subsequently, the Daley Library again reversed their decision and made the CAC files available. As I note in today’s Journal piece, I’ve conveyed the...

Despite having authored two autobiographies, Barack Obama has never written about his most important executive experience. From 1995 to 1999, he led an education foundation called the Chicago Annenberg Challenge (CAC), and remained on the board until 2001. The group poured more than $100 million into the hands of community organizers and radical education activists. ... In works like "City Kids, City Teachers" and "Teaching the Personal and the Political," Mr. Ayers wrote that teachers should be community organizers dedicated to provoking resistance to American racism and oppression. His preferred alternative? "I'm a radical, Leftist, small 'c' communist," Mr. Ayers...

Why would someone involved in keeping nonprofits ethical give the appearance of being involved in political partisanship? When Ricky Ricardo caught Lucy in some very compromising position he said she had some "‘splaining to do."That's how I feel about Diana Aviv, head of Independent Sector, an organization which assists almost 600 nonprofit organizations around the country and the world to establish and maintain appropriate ethical standards and practices of transparency.

Washington, DC (LifeNews.com) -- A writer for a libertarian group has written perhaps the most scathing attack on pro-life vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin since the Alaska governor was announced weeks ago as John McCain's running mate. Nicholas Provenzo condemns Palin for the birth of her baby Trig, who has Down syndrome.Provenzo, who writes for the Center for the Advancement of Capitalism, not only bashes her for allowing Trig to be born, but says she should have made the so-called morally justifiable decision to kill him in an abortion.The Center for the Advancement of Capitalism bills itself as a...

While running in the Democratic primaries Obama pointed to one of his very, very few legislative endeavors and — in his post partisan, post-racial mode — posed as someone who championed it: “It’s no secret that most Americans think the country is on the wrong track,” Obama told the group. “But the reason isn’t just failed policies. It’s a system in Washington that has failed the American people. A system that has not kept the most fundamental trust of American democracy: that our government is of the people, and that it must govern for all the people - not just...

As most observers predicted at the time, records from the Chicago Annenberg Challenge where Barack Obama served as President of the Board and terrorist William Ayers as head of the action arm of the organization were almost certainly scrubbed; the result of a tip from the University of Illinois to the Obama campaign: The President of the University of Illinois, B. Joseph White, and the University Counsel of the University of Illinois, Thomas Bearrows, contacted Kenneth C. Rolling, the former Executive Director of the Chicago Annenberg Challenge (CAC) and a professional colleague of Barack Obama for many years, prior to...

Given that I thought the Hollywood soundstage, with its faux columns, would make Barack Obama's nomination speech seem strange and offbeat, my prognostication skills aren't much. The speech was superb -- not as good as his race speech, or his 2004 convention speech, but very good nonetheless. But I see trouble on the horizon for him. This attack ad now being aired by 527 independent groups is going to shake up a lot of people who didn't know about Obama's friendship with former Weatherman Bill Ayers. I think it's far more damaging to Obama than Rev. Wright. Whenever I wirte...

Several weeks ago a gentleman called the Art Lewis Show and said he is voting for Obama because he will make Wal-Mart unionize and force them back to the South. He must really hate Wal-Mart. Some people will vote for Obama because they hate President Bush, even though Bush is not running in 2008. The liberal media wants you to vote Obama so they can be part of a history-making event. It always has been my consensus that every eligible citizen should vote. I want to take that back. There are some people who just should not vote. I don't...

I am honored to be here tonight. A proud mother. A proud Democrat. A proud American. And a proud supporter of Barack Obama." So went Hillary Clinton's opening line Tuesday night to the faithful gathered in Denver to make Barack Obama's nomination as the Democrats' presidential candidate official. What's missing in that line? Bill Clinton. The only time she mentioned the man responsible for her being the former first lady, for her being the current junior senator from New York, and for coming oh-so-close to the Democrat nomination for president, was when she said, "And when Barack Obama is in...

While the Obama coronation proceeds apace in Denver, it is in Chicago that Americans are getting a disturbing demonstration of his thuggish methods of stifling criticism. Stanley Kurtz, a senior fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center, is a Harvard-educated social anthropologist and frequent contributor to National Review, among other publications. He is widely respected for his meticulous research and measured commentary. For months, he has been doing the job the mainstream media refuses to do: examining the background and public record of Barack Obama, the first-term senator Democrats are about to make their nominee for president despite the...

Continuing to follow up on what can be learned of Barack Obama's tenure as the Chairman of the Board of the Chicago Annenberg Challenge (CAC), evaluations of the program during his tenure available on line demonstrate that in his only real executive test, Barack Obama was a dismal failure squandering millions of dollars on education programs which had basically no real effect. They also strongly suggest Obama's claim that un-repentant terrorist Bill Ayers is just a teacher who lived down the block is an outright lie. The structure and tone of the CAC, addressed in the documents, leave a strong...

Throughout the summer months, many voters supporting John McCain have been frustrated by his failure to respond forcefully to Obama’s charges against him. I felt his failure to swat about at each charge was because he was an old fighter pilot, taught to hold his fire and stay concealed as long as possible. If circumstances permitted, he would not budge until his opponent had made a potentially fatal move from which it was going to be exceedingly hard to extricate himself. Whether my assessment was right or not, it appears that the moment to strike has arrived, and like the...

Once upon a time, the two parties' national conventions chose presidential nominees. Now, they are television shows that try to establish a narrative, one that links the long-since-determined nominee's life story with the ongoing history of the nation, one that shows how this one man is perfectly positioned to lead America to a better future. The hope is that the nominees will get a bounce in the polls. And they usually do. Gallup Poll data show that nominees got a 5 percent or better bounce from 14 of the 16 national conventions between 1976 and 2004. And that's even for...

William Ayers, unrepentant terrorist and education professor, is once again being tied to Barack Obama in the public mind. Controversy builds over the withholding of the archives of the Chicago Annenberg Challenge, an expensive failed school reform effort headed by Obama and effectively run by Ayers, held by the library of the University of Illinois Chicago. Researchers who have gained access to a few documents recording the history of the project have found strong evidence of a very important working relationship between the two men on the project, Obama's sole claim to executive experience. Oddly enough, even though the project...

The problem of Barack Obama’s relationship with Bill Ayers will not go away. Ayers and his wife, Bernardine Dohrn were terrorists for the notorious Weather Underground during the turbulent 1960s, turning fugitive when a bomb — designed to kill army officers in New Jersey — accidentally exploded in a New York townhouse. Prior to that, Ayers and his cohorts succeeded in bombing the Pentagon. Ayers and Dohrn remain unrepentant for their terrorist past. * * * This much we know from the public record, but a large cache of documents housed in the Richard J. Daley Library at the University...

The cloak of media invisibility is slowly beginning to lift from Barack Obama's most important administrative leadership experience, helming an expensive educational reform effort in Chicago that failed to produce any measurable academic gains, according to the project's own final report. Add in the fact that former Weatherman and admitted terrorist William Ayers (whom Obama described in the Philadelphia debate as merely a "neighbor") was head of the operating arm of the CAC, working with Obama on distributing scores of millions of dollars to grantees in the wards of the city, and you have a topic that the Obama campaign...

Five federal agencies have agreed to pool their smart card needs into a large contract buy of up to 40 million cards during the next three years. The agencies — the Defense Department, Homeland Security Department, Interior Department, NASA, and Department of Veterans Affairs — will initiate the procurement, but other federal agencies could buy cards under the contract, said Bob Donelson, a senior property management specialist in Interior's Bureau of Land Management. He spoke today in Washington, D.C., at a Federal Public Key Infrastructure Deployment Workshop. By combining their requirements, the five agencies will reduce their card costs, which...