Posted on 02/19/2008 9:33:47 AM PST by Tailgunner Joe
Senator Obama's ties to a former leader of the violent left-wing activist group the Weather Underground are drawing new scrutiny as he battles Senator Clinton for the Democratic presidential nomination.
As an Illinois state senator in 2001, Mr. Obama accepted a $200 contribution from William Ayers, a founding member of the group that bombed the U.S. Capitol and the Pentagon during the 1970s.
Mr. Ayers wrote a memoir, "Fugitive Days," published in 2001, and on the day of the September 11 terrorist attacks, he was quoted by the New York Times as saying: "I don't regret setting bombs. I feel we didn't do enough."
He and Mr. Obama served together on the nine-member board of the Woods Fund, a Chicago nonprofit, for three years beginning in 1999, and they have also appeared jointly on two academic panels, one in 1997 and another in 2001. Mr. Ayers, who was never convicted in the Weather Underground bombings, is now a professor of education at the University of Illinois at Chicago.
The Ayers link, reported on Friday by Bloomberg News, has surfaced in recent days as Mr. Obama tries to add to his lead in the Democratic primary fight. He faces Mrs. Clinton today in a primary in Wisconsin and caucuses in Hawaii, after which they will prepare for critical elections in delegate-rich Ohio and Texas on March 4.
Reached at his office in Chicago yesterday, Mr. Ayers declined to comment on his relationship with Mr. Obama.
(Excerpt) Read more at nysun.com ...
Cannibals
Well knock me over with a feather! Next thing you know, someone will say that Hillary Clinton had ties to the Black Panthers.
aah! the '60's. so glad i missed that period.
Ayers was, and is, a scak of steaming excrement. The Weather Underground was nothing but a band of commie thugs and murderers.
scak = sack
Call me naive, but I just simply do not get this hysteria over Obama. He is so out of touch with America with NOTHING on a resume to lead the most powerful country in America. Educated people I would assume could see through the veneer but apparently not. I am in fear for this country.
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Dear Merciful Ghod...
Never thought of that.
or we'll find out the White supremacists send Ron Paul money...
That’s the whole problem- the “educated people” to whom you refer have not been educated- they’ve been brainwashed.
The founders warned us over and over again that liberty depended on a sound education, grounded in civics and the reasons for the Declaration and Constitution.
You’re right to be fearful- and you’re not alone.
Sarah Jane Olson AKA Kathy Soliah was the darling of the political left in MN during her arrest and trial.Some local dimocrap pols here were even selling her cookbooks to raise funds for ‘our little terrorist’.
They fell off the radar really fast when it was realized she was going to prison.
I think his wife, another major figure in the Weather Underground, is a professor at Northwestern University...a more prestigious university than UIC.
:) You beat me to it.
Ayres defends Ward Churchill:
"....Ward Churchill is under a sustained, orchestrated, and determined attack because of his political beliefs and statements and activities, and nothing more. No one doubts his productivity or his accomplishments. But the attack on Churchill is neither isolated nor innocent the high school history teacher on the west side of Chicago gets the message, and so does the English literature teacher in Detroit and the math teacher in an Oakland middle school: be careful what you say; stay close to the official story; stick to the authorized text.
If someone of Ward Churchills stature and standing for so many years at the University of Colorado can suffer this kind of campaign, what chance do I have?
Every committee, every investigation, every report plays out under a shadow of the star chamber; everyone must choose who to be and how to act in response. For this reason I support Ward Churchill unequivocally, unapologetically, whole-heartedly. I urge my colleagues and my students and everyone who values education as a grand enterprise geared toward enlightenment and liberation to speak out forcefully and fearlessly now on behalf of the liberty of teaching and learning, on behalf of the right to think at all.
Sincerely, William Ayers
Distinguished Professor of Education and Senior University Scholar
University of Illinois at Chicago billayers.org
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