From the debate transcript:
Quote:
OBAMA: Bob, I think it’s going to be important to just — I’ll respond to these two particular allegations that Senator McCain has made and that have gotten a lot of attention.
In fact, Mr. Ayers has become the centerpiece of Senator McCain’s campaign over the last two or three weeks. This has been their primary focus. So let’s get the record straight. Bill Ayers is a professor of education in Chicago.
Forty years ago, when I was 8 years old, he engaged in despicable acts with a radical domestic group. I have roundly condemned those acts. Ten years ago he served and I served on a school reform board that was funded by one of Ronald Reagan’s former ambassadors and close friends, Mr. Annenberg…
Mr. Ayers is not involved in my campaign. He has never been involved in this campaign. And he will not advise me in the White House. So that’s Mr. Ayers…
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Mr. Ayers and Mr. Obama have severed on other panels besides the Annenberg one. (Such as the Woods Fund.)
And, of course, Mr. Obama had his political career kicked off by the then out-going State Senator Ms. Alice Palmer in Mr. Ayers’ living room.
(Later, when Ms. Palmer decided she wanted to hold on to her Senate seat, Mr. Obama had her thrown off the ballot by finding fraudulent names on her petition.)
Moreover, Mr. Ayers was invited by Michelle Obama to speak at a forum on education that she sponsored in 1997:
Quote:
Close-up on juvenile justice
Nov. 6, 1997
Author, former offender among speakers
By Jennifer Vanasco
News Office
Children who kill are called “super predators,” “people with no conscience,” “feral pre-social beings” — and “adults.”
William Ayers, author of A Kind and Just Parent: The Children of Juvenile Court (Beacon Press, 1997), says “We should call a child a child. A 13-year-old who picks up a gun isn’t suddenly an adult. We have to ask other questions: How did he get the gun? Where did it come from?”
Ayers, who spent a year observing the Cook County Temporary Juvenile Detention Center in Chicago, is one of four panelists who will speak on juvenile justice at 6 p.m. Thursday, Nov. 20, in the C-Shop. The panel, which marks the 100th anniversary of the juvenile justice system in the United States, is part of the Community Service Center’s monthly discussion series on issues affecting the city of Chicago. The event is free and open to the public.
Ayers will be joined by Sen. Barack Obama, Senior Lecturer in the Law School, who is working to combat legislation that would put more juvenile offenders into the adult system…
Michelle Obama, Associate Dean of Student Services and Director of the University Community Service Center, hopes bringing issues like this to campus will open a dialogue between members of the University community and the broader community.
“Students and faculty explore these issues in the classroom, but it is an internal conversation,” Obama said. “We know that issues like juvenile justice impact the city of Chicago, this nation and — directly or indirectly — this campus. This panel gives students a chance to hear about the juvenile justice system not only on a theoretical level, but from the people who have experienced it.”
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By the way, note that Mr. Ayers is not listed as a “former offender.”
Mr. Obama continued in last night’s debate:
[quote]OBAMA: Now, with respect to ACORN, ACORN is a community organization. Apparently what they’ve done is they were paying people to go out and register folks, and apparently some of the people who were out there didn’t really register people, they just filled out a bunch of names.
It had nothing to do with us. We were not involved.
The only involvement I’ve had with ACORN was I represented them alongside the U.S. Justice Department in making Illinois implement a motor voter law that helped people get registered at DMVs.
Again, this is a blatant lie.
Mr. Obama worked for Project Vote in 1992, as was chronicled in a 13 year old article from the Chicago Reader:
Quote:
What Makes Obama Run?
By Hank De Zutter
December 8, 1995
In 1992 Obama took time off to direct Project Vote, the most successful grass-roots voter-registration campaign in recent city history. Credited with helping elect Carol Moseley-Braun to the U.S. Senate, the registration drive, aimed primarily at African-Americans, added an estimated 125,000 voters to the voter rolls–even more than were registered during Harold Washington’s mayoral campaigns. “It’s a power thing,” said the brochures and radio commercials…
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Mr. Obama even bragged about working for Project Vote as the highlight of his life as an organizer:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Px1Ut433xPU