Free Republic

I wonder if we're not all looking at the Annenberg trees (Ayers) and missing the forest. Obama controls a huge amount of grant cash in corrupt Chicago. Subsequently strange things happen to his opponents, starting with the incumbent state Senator in his district, ending with Jack Ryan. This would be the Chicago Way.

Election '08: The Obama camp tries to suppress a campaign ad and university archives linking the candidate to a '60s terrorist who hosted his first campaign fundraiser. Is he being "swiftboated," or is this a cover-up? When Obama's association with William Ayers was raised at a Democratic debate this year, Obama replied: "This is a guy who lives in my neighborhood. . . . He's not somebody who I exchange ideas from on a regular basis."

Accusations of a connection between Barack Obama and ex-Weatherman Bill Ayers have recently been gathering steam in conservative journals thanks to Weekly Standard and National Review contributor Stanley Kurtz. For the uninitiated, the Weather Underground was a domestic terrorist group that grew out of the New Left in the '60s and '70s. The group sought to transform America into a communist nation. Obviously, Obama does not seek such a transformation, but relationships with people like Ayers do raise other questions. More to the point is that Mr. Kurtz, along with many other journalists and lawyers, is investigating files that were...

Even as Barack Obama gave his soaring speech Thursday night, his campaign was playing hardball with its critics. Team Obama has launched an offensive against WGN, the Chicago Tribune's radio station, for interviewing Stanley Kurtz. Mr. Kurtz is a conservative writer who this week forced the University of Illinois to finally open its records on Sen. Obama's association with William Ayers, the unrepentant 1970s Weather Underground terrorist.

Election '08: The Obama camp tries to suppress a campaign ad and university archives linking the candidate to a '60s terrorist who hosted his first campaign fundraiser. Is he being "swiftboated," or is this a cover-up?When Obama's association with William Ayers was raised at a Democratic debate this year, Obama replied: "This is a guy who lives in my neighborhood. . . . He's not somebody who I exchange ideas from on a regular basis." Tuesday's release of papers from a Chicago school reform project known as the Annenberg Challenge shows once again Barack Obama has a problem with the...

Election '08: The Obama camp tries to suppress a campaign ad and university archives linking the candidate to a '60s terrorist who hosted his first campaign fundraiser. Is he being "swiftboated," or is this a cover-up? When Obama's association with William Ayers was raised at a Democratic debate this year, Obama replied: "This is a guy who lives in my neighborhood. . . . He's not somebody who I exchange ideas from on a regular basis."

While Barack Obma's wife supposedly moved the masses with an "emotionally powerful" speech, the presidential candidate worked behind the scenes to kill a television ad that highlights his decades-long relationship to a renowned terrorist. Obama has warned television stations across the nation not to continue airing the incriminating commercial linking him to William Ayers, a Vietnam-era radical and fugitive from justice who has proudly admitted planting bombs on the Capitol, Pentagon and other government buildings to protest U.S. policy. Ayers, a member of the terrorist group Weather Underground, has long supported Obama's political career by donating money to his campaigns...

As we wait for the press and others to go through the thousands of documents related to the Chicago Annenberg Challenge where Barack Obama served as President of the Board and terrorist William Ayers headed up the operations arm, we can say for certain that Obama is a liar of the first magnitude. Barack Obama made it appear in public statements that he barely knew Ayers. Here is what he said at the Philadelphia debate in April about his relationship with the terrorist: This is a guy who lives in my neighborhood, who's a professor of English in Chicago who...

Documents released Tuesday by the University of Illinois at Chicago shed some light on Barack Obama’s relationship with William Ayers, a founding member of the 1960s and 1970s radical group the Weather Underground. Obama’s association with Ayers, who now teaches at the university, has become an issue in the Illinois senator’s presidential campaign. The Weather Underground took credit for several nonfatal bombings on targets that included the Pentagon and the U.S. Capitol, and critics accuse Obama of rubbing elbows with an unabashed 1960s radical. Obama has said that, although he knew Ayers as a professor involved in community outreach efforts...

CHICAGO (WLS) -- The University of Illinois at Chicago has opened records from a nonprofit organization Barack Obama served on that's linked to former '60s radical William Ayers. Journalists and political operatives from both parties are busy poring over a massive number of files released Tuesday morning at UIC's library. Republicans have already been airing TV ads questioning Barack Obama's ties to Ayers, a former 1960's radical. They're going over the files to see if there is any connection between Barack Obama and William Ayers as they worked together on a Chicago charity. Journalists, as well as political operatives from...

CHICAGO -- The University of Illinois at Chicago has opened records from a nonprofit organization Barack Obama served on that's linked to former '60s radical William Ayers. Those records include 140 boxes of documents from a school reform group called the Chicago Annenberg Challenge.....

Clarice Feldman lays out the reasons why the William Ayers/Annenberg Challenge story will seriously damage the candidacy of The One. A sample: ...the story was that Ayers was an old professor in Mr. Obama’s neighborhood who just happened to host a fundraiser for him in 1995 which launched his political career. Some mush was thrown in along the way about having served with him on a charity board, but Obama did not correctly describe the charity or the dates or the extent of their association on it. The truth is that the two men worked closely together for years, beginning...

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...

CHICAGO -- Saying its earlier decision to not release papers relating to a school reform foundation that Barack Obama had worked with and which was linked to 1960s radical activist Bill Ayers, "had been called into question," the University of Illinois at Chicago announced it will release records documents from the Chicago Annenberg Challenge.

The University of Illinois said Friday it is releasing records of Barack Obama's service to a nonprofit organization linked to former 1960s radical William Ayers.

Annenberg Challenge information will be released Tuesday Tribune staff report 9:17 PM CDT, August 22, 2008 Documents related to U.S. Sen. Barack Obama's service for a nonprofit education project started by former 1960s radical William Ayers will be released Tuesday from an archive at the University of Illinois at Chicago library, the university announced. UIC said Friday it will make public its archive of documents from the Chicago Annenberg Challenge in the library's Special Collections Department. The Chicago Annenberg Challenge was formed in 1995 to fund education reform initiatives in the city. The university's Richard J. Daley Library had refused...

Barack Obama's record as leader of the Chicago Annenberg Challenge (CAC) has come under scrutiny by, among others Steve Diamond, Tom Maguire, Stanley Kurtz and our own Tom Lifson . The CAC was a group formed in 1995 by former Weather Underground terrorist and current educational radical theorist Bill Ayers and Barack Obama, then an attorney at a politically connected law firm-Davis, Miner, Barnhill & Galland. Barack Obama was the founding chairman of the board and led the organization for 4 years. During his tenure, the CAC received $50 million dollars from the Annenberg Foundation and tens of millions of...

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...

John Kass has an explanation for Stanley Kurtz for why he couldn’t access what should be public records at the University of Illinois at Chicago. Kurtz apparently didn’t read the name of the building in which the files from the Chicago Annenberg Challenge reside. It’s the Richard Daley Library, and when a Daley gets involved in a Chicago issue, openness flies right back out the door: The relationship between the ambitious Obama and the unrepentant Ayers is a subject that excites Republicans, who haven’t really thwacked that pinata as hard as they might. It really irritates Obama and his political...

The Chicago Annenberg Challenge, Barack Obama's only claim to administrative leadership (as covered today by Thomas Lifson), was evaluated by the esteemed Thomas B. Fordham Institute, an independent outside body with expertise on educational reform. A larger study has a section focused on the Chicago Annenberg Challenge, Obama's project. It does not take much for grantees who receive funds from the Obama-Ayers led Anneberg Chicago effort to sign its praises. When an outside group audits the performance and reveals scores of millions of dollars were all but wasted, I think that should have some bearing on our evaluation of Obama...

Conservative writer Stanley Kurtz—researching an article for the National Review about connections between Barack Obama and former Weather Underground terrorist William Ayers—made a big mistake. The poor man took a wrong turn on the Chicago Way. Now he's lost. Kurtz's research was to be done in a special library run by the University of Illinois at Chicago. The library has 132 boxes full of documents pertaining to the Chicago Annenberg Challenge, a foundation vested heavily in school reform. Kurtz believes the documents may show Obama and Ayers were close—far closer than Obama has acknowledged—over oodles of foundation gifts on education...

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...

Conservative writer Stanley Kurtz—researching an article for the National Review about connections between Barack Obama and former Weather Underground terrorist William Ayers—made a big mistake. The poor man took a wrong turn on the Chicago Way. Now he's lost. Kurtz's research was to be done in a special library run by the University of Illinois at Chicago. The library has 132 boxes full of documents pertaining to the Chicago Annenberg Challenge, a foundation vested heavily in school reform. Kurtz believes the documents may show Obama and Ayers were close—far closer than Obama has acknowledged—over oodles of foundation gifts on education...

These annoying journalists are at it again, trying to poke around into papers in the background of candidates' lives. This time it involves freshman Illinois Sen. Barack Obama, his friend and former radical activist William Ayers and the University of Illinois. The university has refused to release records related to the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee's past service for a nonprofit educational project that put him in contact with activist Ayers, a 1960s-era radical who helped found an organization advWilliam Ayers former 60s radical activist and friend of Senator Barack Obama posed for this photo for Chicago Magazine in 2001 to...

The University of Illinois has refused to release records related to Sen. Barack Obama's service for a nonprofit educational project that put him in contact with activist William Ayers, a 1960s-era radical and now education professor. The university's Chicago campus maintains that the donor of the records that document the work of the Chicago Annenberg Challenge has not handed over ownership rights. The university says it is "aggressively pursuing" an agreement with the donor, and as soon as an agreement is reached, the collection will be made accessible to the public. The university has not identified the donor.

The University of Chicago's Anneberg Challenge program is sitting on records that would prove the strong connection between the anti American William Ayers and Democratic candidate Barack Obama. Please respectfully contact them and demand these papers be made public.

University Won’t Now Open Records Relating to Obama's Work with Nonprofit Linked to Ayers University Won't Open Obama-related Records Now Tuesday, August 19, 2008 By Pete Yost, Associated Press The University of Illinois on Tuesday refused to release records relating to Barack Obama's service to a nonprofit group linked to former 1960s radical activist William Ayers. The university's Chicago campus said the donor of the records that document the work of the Chicago Annenberg Challenge has not yet turned over ownership rights to the material.

The University of Illinois on Tuesday refused to release records relating to Barack Obama's service to a nonprofit group linked to former 1960s radical activist William Ayers. The university's Chicago campus said the donor of the records that document the work of the Chicago Annenberg Challenge has not yet turned over ownership rights to the material. The university is "aggressively pursuing" an agreement with the donor, and as soon as an agreement is finalized, the collection will be made accessible to the public, the university said in a one-paragraph statement.

This is getting curiouser and curiouser... Records detailing the workings of a 1990's charitable group working to better education in the city of Chicago that are housed at the University of Illinois Chicago (UIC) are being shielded from the prying eyes of reporters. The significance of these records is that the foundation in question was run by none other than Barack Obama. And the foundation was formed by none other than William Ayers, the radical Weather Underground terrorist who Obama has referred to as "just a neighbor." Stanley Kurtz of the National Review has tried to access records of The...

The Center for Public Intellectuals & The University of Illinois-Chicago (UIC) April 19th-20th, 2002, Conference Participants include: William (Bill) Ayers, Bernardine Dohrn, Sen Barack Obama For a brief history lesson as to who these other two scum are, pls refer to my comment below...(beneath the 2002 UIC event announcement)

US navy patrols Somalia's coast Somali soldiers may struggle to maintain order in Mogadishu US naval forces have deployed off the Somali coast to prevent leaders of defeated Islamist militias escaping. Kenya has also significantly tightened border security to stop an influx of fleeing fighters, as aid agencies called for help for genuine refugees. Uganda's president is travelling to Ethiopia to discuss forming an African force to stabilise the country. A two-week advance by Ethiopian troops swept the Islamist militias from areas they had controlled for six months. Location of militias and US Navy patrols The militias - known...

While reading the BBC's coverage of the Union of Islamic Courts' (UIC) takeover of Somalia -- what I see as the beginning of Taliban II -- I was struck with the carefully constructed wording of the British news organization's language. Their writers tiptoe around Islamist expansionism, yet are critical of dhimmi fears of Muslim radicalism -- e.g., from the West and Ethiopia. First, I stumbled upon a BBC report on refugees fleeing the UIC's advances into villages near the Kenyan border: UN officials report a big rise in the number of Somali refugees crossing into Kenya to escape instability at...

This is a follow-up post to The Weather Underground and Ward Churchill Bill Ayers: Pictured then and now. On September 11, 2001, a valentine to Bill Ayers and his wife Bernardine Dohrn was written by the New York Times. From The Weekly Standard in October of that year. POOR BILL AYERS. His timing could not have been worse. Just when his widely publicized memoir of his days as a terrorist was coming out, our nation suffered its worst terrorist assault ever. Indeed, the very morning of the attack, the New York Times printed a fawning profile of Ayers and...

See that picture? That's Richard J. Elrod. He's been partially paralyzed since 1969 after suffering a broken neck. More on him later. Yesterday I had a couple of posts on the husband-and-wife professors who were formerly members of the 1960s domestic terror organization, the Weather Underground. The professors are Bernardine Dohrn of Northwestern University and Bill Ayers of the University of Illinois-Chicago. Feel to drop by Marathon Pundit for more on information on them. On October 8, 1969, The Weather Underground decided to jumpstart the "People's Revolution," in Chicago. They blew up a statue of a policeman (that statue...