The National Review editors write an excellent article on Barack Obama’s association with Bill Ayers, an unrepentant member of a terrorist cell which bombed the Pentagon, the U.S. Capitol, various police headquarters, and other targets in the early 1970s. Obama has said Ayers was “just a guy in the neighborhood.” Reality:
1. In 1995, Bill Ayers and his wife Bernadine Dohrn hosted a fundraiser that helped launch Obama’s career in Chicago politics.
2. Writing in the Chicago Tribune in 1997, Obama called A Kind and Just Parent
3. They served together on the board of the Woods Fund.
Even more intriguing, in 1995 Ayers won a $49.2 million grant from the Annenberg Foundation — matched two-to-one by public and private contributions — to promote “reform” in the Chicago school system. He quickly brought in Obama, then all of 33 and bereft of any executive experience, to chair the board. With Ayers directing the project’s operational arm and Obama overseeing its financial affairs until 1999, the Chicago Annenberg Challenge distributed more than $100 million to ideological allies with no discernible improvement in public education.
Until this week, moreover, the University of Illinois at Chicago, where Ayers works, was blocking access to the project’s files (examination of which was being sought by frequent National Review contributor Stanley Kurtz), until finally relenting under public pressure.