Palin Says Obama Hangs Out with Terrorists

Well, now she is truly getting desperate. Sarah Palin has inferred that Obama's character is deeply flawed because he apparently hangs out with people like William Ayers, who allegedly had terroristic tendencies. Truth is that Ayers was just on the same board of directors as Obama and the two rarely speak. The smear tactic is used by Palin and McCain as a desparate attempt to smear his reputation however they can. I hope the American people see through this stuff.

Campaiging for America's Presidential election continues with Republican vice presidential candidate, Sarah Palin, making a claim that Democrat Barack Obama is friendly with a terrorist. The comment referred to William Ayers, a founding member of the radical 1960s group, the Weathermen, that committed bombings on the Pentagon and the Capitol, and who supported Obama's first run for public office in 1995.Washington correspondent Kim Landers reports with a month until election day, Governor Palin has accused Senator Obama of "palling around with terrorists". It is in a reference to Vietnam era radical, William Ayers, who has since served on a community board with Barack Obama in Chicago. Barack Obama calls the Republican attack a "smear" and he's urging voters not to be distracted. "His campaign has announced that they plan to and I quote turn the page, on the discussion about our economy and spend the final weeks of this campaign launching swift boat style attacks on me," he said. Barack Obama has denounced Mr Ayers' radical views.

Sarah Palin do all you want, it's just more terrific material for Tina Fay on Saturday night live.

The following is from Washington Post fact checker site. Some good reasoning here I think!

There has been a sudden spate of blog items and newspaper articles, mainly in the British press, linking Barack Obama to a former member of the radical Weather Underground Organization that claimed responsibility for a dozen bombings between 1970 and 1974. The former Weatherman, William Ayers, now holds the position of distinguished professor of education at the University of Illinois-Chicago. Although never convicted of any crime, he told the New York Times in September 2001, "I don't regret setting bombs...I feel we didn't do enough."
Both Obama and Ayers were members of the board of an anti-poverty group, the Woods Fund of Chicago, between 1999 and 2002. In addition, Ayers contributed $200 to Obama's re-election fund to the Illinois State Senate in April 2001, as reported here. They lived within a few blocks of each other in the trendy Hyde Park section of Chicago, and moved in the same liberal-progressive circles.
Is there anything here that raises questions about Obama's judgment or is this just another example of guilt by association?

The Facts
The first article in the mainstream press linking Obama to Ayers appeared in the London Daily Mail on February 2. It was written by Peter Hitchens, the right-wing brother of the left-wing firebrand turned Iraq war supporter, Christopher Hitchens. Hitchens cited the Ayers connection to bolster his argument that Obama is "far more radical than he would like us to know."
The Hitchens piece was followed by a Bloomberg article last week pointing to the Ayers connection as support for Hillary Clinton's contention that Obama might not be able to withstand the "Republican attack machine." Larry Johnson, a former counterterrorism official at the CIA and the State Department, predicted that the Republicans would seize on the Ayers case, and other Chicago relationships, to "bludgeon Obama's presidential aspirations into the dust."
The London Sunday Times joined the chorus this weekend by reporting that Republicans were "out to crush Barack by painting him as a leftwinger with dubious support".
The only hard facts that have come out so far are the $200 contribution by Ayers to the Obama re-election fund, and their joint membership of the eight-person Woods Fund Board. Ayers did not respond to e-mails and telephone calls requesting clarification of the relationship. Obama spokesman Bill Burton noted in a statement that Ayers was a professor of education at the University of Illinois and a former aide to Mayor Richard M. Daley, and continued:
Senator Obama strongly condemns the violent actions of the Weathermen group, as he does all acts of violence. But he was an eight-year-old child when Ayers and the Weathermen were active, and any attempt to connect Obama with events of almost forty years ago is ridiculous.
In the short term, the person who has most to gain by speculation about Obama's acquaintance with a former terrorist is Hillary Clinton. The former First Lady likes to present herself as "tested and vetted" after years of exposure to Republican attacks, in contrast to Obama, a relative newcomer to hardscrabble presidential politics. Such arguments resonate with Johnson, the counterterrorism expert, who told me that he is a Clinton supporter, although not involved with the campaign.
But the Obama-Ayers link is a tenuous one. As Newsday pointed out, Clinton has her own, also tenuous, Weatherman connection. Her husband commuted the sentences of a couple of convicted Weather Underground members, Susan Rosenberg and Linda Sue Evans, shortly before leaving office in January 2001. Which is worse: pardoning a convicted terrorist or accepting a campaign contribution from a former Weatherman who was never convicted?
Whatever his past, Ayers is now a respected member of the Chicago intelligentsia, and still a member of the Woods Fund Board. The president of the Woods Fund, Deborah Harrington, said he had been selected for the board because of his solid academic credentials and "passion for social justice."
"This whole connection is a stretch," Harrington told me. "Barack was very well known in Chicago, and a highly respected legislator. It would be difficult to find people round here who never volunteered or contributed money to one of his campaigns."

The Pinocchio Test
The question is not whether a connection can be established between Barack Obama and a former member of the Weathermen, but whether it has any significance for the 2008 presidential campaign. Could Bill Ayers become a political embarrassment for Obama? Let me know what you think.

Very objective assessment I would say, thanks to the people at the Washington Post.