Apparently, Rep. Michele Bachman is being furiously “fact-checked” for having claimed that Barack Obama had a close connection with unrepentant terrorist, Bill Ayers. According to Fact.Check.org, a supposedly non-partisan organization, “There’s…no evidence of a deep or strong friendship with Ayers.” In fact, Obama and Ayers had a significant political partnership. We saw it at the Chicago Annenberg Challenge, where Obama ran a board that was responsible for channeling hundreds of thousands of dollars to Bill Ayers’ education projects. We saw it during the fight over the juvenile justice bill in Illinois in 1997-98, when Obama and Ayers appeared on a panel designed to undermine a very reasonable juvenile crime bill, and when Obama plugged Ayers’ book on juvenile justice in the Chicago Tribune. We also have considerable evidence that the Obama camp has not been fully forthcoming about possible additional connections between Ayers and Obama. Instead of doing unconvincing, and unsupported “fact-checks” on the Obama-Ayers connection why isn’t the media pressing Obama associate Ken Rolling on his exceedingly un-credible claims about his role in blocking my access to documents about Obama’s past, or on his apparent determination not to tell the full story of Ayers’ role in Obama’s elevation to board chair of the Chicago Annenberg Challenge?
For articles the Minnesota press can refer to if it wants to develop a more genuine “fact-check” on the Obama-Ayers relationship, see here, here, here, here, and here. I’d say Rep. Bachman has some very significant reasons to be concerned about Obama’s past. The press seems more interested in attacking Rep. Bachman than in doing its job by asking Obama the many legitimate questions that flow out of his past dealings with Bill Ayers.