PRUDEN: Smells from the shadows

ANALYSIS/OPINION:

Something odd is going on. The Obama campaign boasts of a landslide in the making even as his polling lead slips a point or two, and there's anger bordering on rage when John McCain and Sarah Palin raise questions about Barack Obama's judgment in his unexplored past in Chicago.

An investigation of ACORN, a cabal of "political activists" hired to register voters in the neighborhoods where few friends of John McCain abide has now spread to 10 states. Investigators discovered that the entire offensive line of the Dallas Cowboys had signed up to vote in Las Vegas, unless it turns out that someone forged their signatures to make a quota. The rules for this game were written in Chicago.

The senator's campaign only wants to talk about the economy, and who can blame him? Wall Street is tanking to uncharted depths, banking is at a standstill and fear stalks Main Street and all the avenues and boulevards running across it. But Sen. Obama wants certain questions about the economy, and how it got this way, declared off-limits. Harry Reid, the leader of the Democratic majority in the U.S. Senate, declares questions about Franklin Raines, his stewardship of Fannie Mae and his relationship with the senator to be racist because both men "are African-American."

Sen. Obama, who has tried to avoid questions about his associations with shady Chicago figures, was asked again Thursday, this time by a television talking head, about William Ayers, the '60s terrorist and bomb-thrower with whom Republicans say he "palled around."

"Why don't we just clear that up right now," he told ABC News, and then repeated the bloviating response he gave last summer when the Ayers connection was first raised in Internet buzz.

"This is a guy who engaged in some despicable acts 40 years ago when I was 8 years old. By the time I met him, 10 or 15 years ago, he was a college professor of education at the University of Illinois ... and the notion that somehow he has been involved in my campaign, that he is an adviser of mine, that ... I've 'palled around with a terrorist,' all these statements are made simply to try to score cheap political points."

This "explanation" hardly clears up anything, or addresses the questions raised first by Sarah Palin and now by John McCain.

Nobody has accused little 8-year-old Barack of anything, not even of tiny misdemeanors in the nursery, of wetting his bed or not eating all his carrots and broccoli. No one has accused the grown-up Barack of taking lessons in bomb-making or plotting with Mr. Ayers and his wife, Bernardine Dohrn, to make one more attempt to blow up the Capitol and the Pentagon and everybody in it.

The senator has never explained why, at the age of 33, or 38, or however old he was when he did, in fact, "pal around" with Bill Ayers, he inevitably preferred to walk in the shadows on the shady side of the street. He even served with Bill Ayers on the board of a charity that dispensed millions of dollars to left-wing Chicago enterprises.

Franklin Raines

The unanswered questions are not about crimes, but about his judgment. Just as Bill Ayers and Bernardine Dohrn have never repented for terrorism against their country, the senator has never expressed repentance for his association with them.

After all this time we still don't know a lot about Sen. Obama's murky Chicago past, and maybe we won't until he's in the White House for a while and the mainstream media looks to actual reporting for its orgasmic thrills.

But we do know that he has a history of choosing odd friends, such as Tony Rezko, whose sentencing for racketeering was postponed this week, suggesting that Tony the Squeezer is squealing to the feds in pursuit of a lighter sentence. Maybe the squealing will tell us something else about the Obama past. Or maybe not. The senator's reticence encourages speculation, some of it perhaps unfair.

But why did it take him 20 years to discover that the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, his beloved pastor in Chicago, is a racist bigot who doesn't like white folks very much and who prayed for God to "damn America."

We've all dozed off through a dull sermon, but Sen. Obama wants us to believe he either played Sunday morning hooky or slept through every offensive sermon for two decades, never once hearing what everybody else in the congregation heard.

If there really is an Obama landslide in the making, why the ferocious attempts to stifle these perfectly legitimate questions?

Wesley Pruden is editor emeritus of The Times.

http://washingtontimes.com/news/2008/oct/10/something-smelly-in-the-shadows/

Obama should be going to the jailhouse, not the whitehouse.

tit for tat, eh?

McCain linked to private group in Iran-Contra case

By PETE YOST - 3 days ago

WASHINGTON (AP) - GOP presidential nominee John McCain has past connections to a private group that supplied aid to guerrillas seeking to overthrow the leftist government of Nicaragua in the Iran-Contra affair.

McCain's ties are facing renewed scrutiny after his campaign criticized Barack Obama for his link to a former radical who engaged in violent acts 40 years ago.

The U.S. Council for World Freedom was part of an international organization linked to former Nazi collaborators and ultra-right-wing death squads in Central America. The group was dedicated to stamping out communism around the globe.

The council's founder, retired Army Maj. Gen. John Singlaub, said McCain became associated with the organization in the early 1980s as McCain was launching his political career in Arizona. Singlaub said McCain was a supporter but not an active member in the group.

"McCain was a new guy on the block learning the ropes," Singlaub told The Associated Press in an interview. "I think I met him in the Washington area when he was just a new congressman. We had McCain on the board to make him feel like he wasn't left out. It looks good to have names on a letterhead who are well-known and appreciated.

"I don't recall talking to McCain at all on the work of the group," Singlaub said.

The renewed attention over McCain's association with Singlaub's group comes as McCain's campaign steps up criticism of Obama's dealings with William Ayers, a college professor who co-founded the Weather Underground and years later worked on education reform in Chicago alongside Obama. Ayers held a meet-the-candidate event at his home when Obama first ran for public office in the mid-1990s.

Obama was roughly 8 years old when Ayers, now at the University of Illinois at Chicago, was working with the Weather Underground, which took responsibility for bombings that included nonfatal blasts at the Pentagon and U.S. Capitol. McCain's vice presidential nominee, Sarah Palin, has said that Obama "pals around with terrorists."

In McCain's case, Singlaub knew McCain's father, a Navy admiral who had sought Singlaub's counsel when McCain, a Navy pilot, became a prisoner of war and spent 5 1/2 years in North Vietnamese hands.

"John's father asked me for advice about what he ought to do now that his son had been shot down and captured," Singlaub recalled in one of two recent interviews. "I said, 'As long as you don't give any impression that you care more about him than you care about any of the other prisoners, he won't be treated any differently.'"

Covert arms shipments to the rebels called Contras, financed in part by secret arms sales to Iran, became known as the Iran-Contra affair. They proved to be the undoing of Singlaub's council.

In 1987, the Internal Revenue Service withdrew the tax-exempt status of Singlaub's group because of its activities on behalf of the Contras.

Elected to the House in 1982 and at a time when he was on the board of Singlaub's council, McCain was among Republicans on Capitol Hill expressing support for the Contras, a CIA-organized guerrilla force in Central America. In 1984, Congress cut off CIA funds for the Contras.

Months before the cutoff, top Reagan administration officials ramped up a secret White House-directed supply network and put National Security Council aide Oliver North in charge of running it. The goal was to keep the Contras operational until Congress could be persuaded to resume CIA funding.

Singlaub's private group became the public cover for the White House operation.

Secretly, Singlaub worked with North in an effort to raise millions of dollars from foreign governments.

McCain has said previously he resigned from the council in 1984 and asked in 1986 to have his name removed from the group's letterhead.

"I didn't know whether (the group's activity) was legal or illegal, but I didn't think I wanted to be associated with them," McCain said in a newspaper interview in 1986.

Singlaub does not recall any McCain resignation in 1984 or May 1986. Nor does Joyce Downey, who oversaw the group's day-to-day activities.

"That's a surprise to me," Singlaub said. "This is the first time I've ever heard that. There may have been someone in his office communicating with our office."

"I don't ever remember hearing about his resigning, but I really wasn't worried about that part of our activities, a housekeeping thing," said Singlaub. "If he didn't want to be on the board that's OK. It wasn't as if he had been active participant and we were going to miss his help. He had no active interest. He certainly supported us."

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Keating Five

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Alan Cranston (D-CA)	Dennis DeConcini (D-AZ)
John Glenn (D-OH)	John McCain (R-AZ)
Donald W. Riegle (D-MI)

The Keating Five were five United States Senators accused of corruption in 1989, igniting a major political scandal as part of the larger Savings and Loan crisis of the late 1980s and early 1990s. The five senators, Alan Cranston (D-CA), Dennis DeConcini (D-AZ), John Glenn (D-OH), John McCain (R-AZ), and Donald W. Riegle (D-MI), were accused of improperly intervening in 1987 on behalf of Charles H. Keating, Jr., chairman of the Lincoln Savings and Loan Association, which was the target of a regulatory investigation by the Federal Home Loan Bank Board (FHLBB). The FHLBB subsequently backed off taking action against Lincoln.

Lincoln Savings and Loan collapsed in 1989, at a cost of over $3 billion to the federal government. Some 23,000 Lincoln bondholders were defrauded and many elderly investors lost their life savings. The substantial political contributions that Keating had made to each of the senators, totalling $1.3 million, attracted considerable public and media attention. After a lengthy investigation, the Senate Ethics Committee determined in 1991 that Alan Cranston, Dennis DeConcini, and Donald Riegle had substantially and improperly interfered with the FHLBB in its investigation of Lincoln Savings, with Cranston receiving a formal reprimand. Senators John Glenn and John McCain were cleared of having acted improperly but were criticized for having exercised "poor judgment".

All five of the senators involved served out their terms. Only Glenn and McCain ran for re-election, and they both succeeded. McCain would go on to become the Republican nominee for president in 2008.

Hey there,

I have begun to falter slighty regarding this election. Like you, I wasn't keen on either candidate, though she isn't a republican. Certainly more qualified than Obama and slightly less repugnant than McCain. Can we dispense with the "conservative/liberal" monikers? Quite fashionable but totally irrelevant since niether side truly understand the meanings. But lets explore,  A.C.O.R.N. again like "Swift Boat" doesn't speak nor represent either candidate, as Ayers nor wright do. Lets also direct our sense of clarity to another point; McCain isn't represnted by nor claims to have anything any longer to do with Mr. Keating and will not discuss it. I for one do not hold his lack of terrible judgement from back then, against him there either. Voter fraud needs to be dealt with immediately and those involved, should these compulsions prove relevent, be prosecuted. The last thing we need is another election mirroring 1960 or 2000. Even 2004 had it's mistakes.

 I for one have yet to hear that anyone is expecting a landslide in either camp. I must admit that I have been out of touch with the current political air these past several days and find myself in a haze regarding some of the data you enlisted here aside of a few scant speculations above. I would certainly agree that Obama be scrutinzed futher should we actually suspect that he has been involved in wrong doing. But character bashing has begun to get old in both directions. I prefer to stick to issues that ARE issues. Not ducking potential illegalities, just trying to understand why after all this time, just 25 days away from the what many consider, the most important election of our time(thus far) that we seem to care that he knows a guy who hated what our government got us involved in over 30 years ago and did some hideous things therefore, all without Obama's premission no less. While Obama flatly and unoquivicably SHOUTS.... was deplorable and despicable. Or that he was pastored by a nut that he again admits is not what Obama represents, and that a racist per se' had only recently begun to go off the really deep end. One could argue just as readily that Pastor Haege who went kookoo also was ensconsed in McCain's fuzzy warm aproval. But more importantly still, is that no matter what of the association either of these men and woman had, it's not what the majority of this democracy gives a piddle about, and perhaps....... just perhaps they are right. I couldn't care less that Mrs. Palin MIGHT have used her authority as Governor to oust a "loser" under her particular jurisdiction. I only care that she isn't a criminal as a result, or that she is qualified to lead our nation.

I know those old phrases could apply to some or others, or even McCain and or Obama; Birds of a feather flock together......you lay with dogs you get up with fleas.......you can lead a horse to water but cannot make it drink or "vote for a bill" hehe.....but seriously, did either of these men neglect thier jobs or consort under crooked darkness(bribes/ scandal) Did anyone here, play a major role in our current depressive finacial condition? Can we depend on either to lead with integrity and a dignity that "We The People" must finally get from our elected leaders?   Not....will the septagenarian croak a week after the election? Will Obi, turn into some Jihadist? Or, will Palin be impeached for killing a moose on the East Lawn. That's how truly ridiculous most all of these non-issue issues have become.

I would like to know more about the assertions of some, that Obama might not be or isn't a US citzen? I have found that one to be above and beyond ridiculous. But where some looking for political fodder, I think it could be a comic's dream story. "I looked into his eyes and didn't see his green card" Oh holy cow what next. Do these "spurs" really think that McCain.... with ALL the Republican might in this country.... couldn't have gone over all this with the finest of combs. I know you didn't comment on that here now, but I'd be interested in your thoughts. 

They say Nixon hated America but loved China. And Jews used children's blood to make Matza. What a world huh.