Obama warns stations not to air 'radical' ad

Posted: August 26, 2008
American Issues Project television ad

Sen. Barack Obama is warning TV stations and asking the Justice
Department to intervene in an attempt to block the airing of an ad by a
non-profit group that links him to an unrepentant domestic terrorist.

The spot by the American Issues Project questions Obama's ties to
William Ayers, a founder of the Weather Underground organization who
boasted of a series of bomb attacks at the Pentagon and U.S. Capitol
four decades ago.

Cut!

Obama spokesman Tommy Vietor, who called the ads false, despicable and
outrageous, said supporters of the presumptive Democratic presidential
candidate have inundated stations with 93,000 e-mails.

"Other stations that follow Sinclair's lead should expect a similar
response from people who don't want the political discourse cheapened
with these false, negative attacks," Vietor told the AP.

Obama campaign lawyer Robert Bauer wrote to station managers, the AP
said, warning: "Your station is committed to operating in the public
interest, an objective that cannot be satisfied by accepting for
compensation material of such malicious falsity."

Bauer also wrote to Deputy Assistant Attorney General John C. Keeney,
calling the ad a "knowing and willful attempt to evade the strictures of
federal election law."


American Issues Project counsel Cleta Mitchell responded today with the
group's own letter to Keeney

"Let me be very clear: AIP is not in violation of any federal statute,
regulation or other applicable law," Mitchell writes. "This
organization, its officers and directors and all those associated with
it have taken great pains to comply with all provisions of law
applicable to AIP’s activities and programs and will continue to do so
at all times in the future."

Fox News and CNN rejected the ads, but as of yesterday, it ran about 150
times in local markets in Pennsylvania, Ohio, Virginia and Michigan, the
AP said.

As WND reported yesterday, Obama has run his own ad in response to the
American Issues Project spot.

"With all our problems, why is John McCain talking about the '60s,
trying to link Barack Obama to radical Bill Ayers?" the announcer says
in Obama's ad. "McCain knows Obama denounced Ayers' crimes, committed
when Obama was just 8 years old."

The ad does not mention Obama's extensive ties to Ayers. Obama launched
his political career with an event in Ayers' home, and WND first
reported Obama served on the board of the Wood's Fund, a liberal Chicago
nonprofit, alongside Ayers from 1999 to 2002.

Obama also was chairman, under Ayers' leadership, of the Chicago
Annenberg Challenge, or CAC, a school reform organization. The
University of Illinois at Chicago, where Ayers is a professor, is
scheduled to make available today records of Obama's service on the CAC
board.

Responding to the Obama campaign's fierce reaction, American Issues
Project spokesman Christian Pinkston said, "It seems they protest a bit
too much."


"They're going all of these routes – threats, intimation – to thwart the
First Amendment here because they don't have an argument on merit."

The AP noted that while the McCain campaign cannot coordinate efforts
with outside groups, it took advantage of being the target of the
response ad.

"The fact that Barack Obama chose to launch his political career at the
home of an unrepentant terrorist raises more questions about Senator
Obama's judgment than any TV ad ever could," McCain spokesman Brian
Rogers said.

Ayers has admitted to involvement in the bombings of U.S. governmental
buildings in the 1970s.

"I don't regret setting bombs. I feel we didn't do enough," he told the
New York Times in an interview released Sept. 11, 2001

"Everything was absolutely ideal on the day I bombed the Pentagon,"
Ayers wrote in his memoirs, "Fugitive Days."

Ayers is married to another notorious Weathermen terrorist, Bernadine
Dohrn, who also has served on panels with Obama. Dohrn, once on the
FBI's Top 10 Most Wanted List, was described by J. Edgar Hoover as the
"most dangerous woman in America." Ayers and Dohrn raised the son of
Weathermen terrorist Kathy Boudin, who was serving a sentence for
participating in a 1981 murder and robbery that left four people dead.

The American Issues Project ad says, "Barack Obama is friends with
Ayers, defending him as, quote, 'Respectable' and 'Mainstream.' Obama's
political career was launched in Ayers' home. And the two served
together on a left-wing board. Why would Barack Obama be friends with
someone who bombed the Capitol and is proud of it?   Do you know enough
to elect Barack Obama?"

http://wnd.com/index.php?fa=PAGE.view&pageIds448

--
"Instead of worrying about whether immigrants can learn English, they'll
learn English; you need to make sure your child can speak Spanish."

Barack Hussein Obama
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