Saturday, April 19, 2008

The Ayers Connection

Nearly two months ago I reported right here about Barack Obama's connection with the unrepentant terrorist William Ayers.
Now the connection has surfaced in the most recent televised debate and is attracting the glare of the national media.
To hear Obama tell it, Ayers is just a guy "who lives in my neighborhood." But as Ben Smith at Politico has reported Ayers and Obama "have crossed paths repeatedly in the last decade. In 1997, Obama cited Ayers’ critique of the juvenile justice system in a Chicago Tribune article on what prominent Chicagoans were reading. He and Ayers served together on the board of the Woods Fund of Chicago for three years starting in 1999. In 2001, Ayers also gave $200 to Obama’s state Senate reelection campaign." And Obama has also been linked to 60s radical Bernardine Dohrn.
When it comes to people like Rev. Wright, Dohrn, Ayers and others, what's at question is Obama's judgment - his judgment in continuing to associate with people such as this; his judgment is refusing to walk away from them; his judgment in not seeing the dangers in the views espoused by these individuals. Now, Obama's unwillingness to face up to the situation suggests a level of arrogance and immaturity that we'd do well to reject.

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