CNN (of all places) essentially calls Barack Obama a liar:

Griffin also tells a somewhat nonplussed Cooper that Obama has lied about his “coming out party” at the home of William Ayers and Bernardine Dohrn in 1995. Obama has said that Alice Palmer arranged the fundraiser and the venue, but Griffin spoke to two people who attended the event, who claim Obama lied. Palmer had nothing to do with that event outside of being invited to it. Obama and Ayers planned the event themselves.

The story never made much sense. Why would Ayers and Dohrn allow their house to be used for an event in which they had no role? I wonder how long he’s been falsely fingering Palmer for it? I’m betting that he never told this fairy tale until recently, when it suddenly (and inexplicably, to him) became a potential campaign issue.

And of course, the next question is, if he’s lying about this, what else is he lying to us about? After all, as Senator McCain pointed out yesterday, for a guy who has written two books about himself, his life hasn’t been anything close to an open book.

From Mark Steyn:

The point is not that President-designate Obama is a “close friend” of the unrepentant Ayers, or that he was only eight when his patron was building bombs to kill the women of New Jersey. As Joe Biden would no doubt point out on his entertaining “This Day In History” segment, McCain was only six when Czogolsz killed President McKinley. But I doubt he’d let the guy host a fundraiser for him.

But, in the world in which Obama moves, it would seem absurd and provincial to object to partying with an “unrepentant terrorist.” The senator advanced and prospered in a milieu in which men like Ayers are not just accepted but admired for their “passionate participation”, and function as power-brokers and path-smoothers. This is a great country, and most of us (as Peter Kirsanow notes below) make it without having to kiss up to America-haters like Ayers and Wright. But not Obama.

Who is this man on course to be 44th president? Apparently, it’s not just impolite but racist to ask.

Speaking of which, Sarah Palin apparently handled the racism nonsense from CNN pretty well yesterday.

[Update a couple minutes later]

Jonah Goldberg has some more thoughts on the terrorists“passionate anti-war and civil rights movement” and the contradictions of the fascist left.

Mickey Kaus points out the foolishness of the press, in imagining that there was ever any possibliity that the media would be supporting McCain.

It’s one thing to have pro-Democratic, pro-Obama media favoritism: That’s just the way it is. Political reporters have opinions. Better blatant than latent.

It’s another to have that very favoritism used as evidence that McCain is blowing it, losing his reputation for “integrity” and his “gold plated brand.”

Yes, they only like McCain when he’s running against Republicans. The NYT endorsed him in the primary. Does anyone imagine they’ll endorse him in the general?

He also has a warning:

It might seem as if the MSM reaction against McCain’s shift to negativism has “driven the final nail into his coffin,” as Heilemann suggests. The Feiler Faster Thesis says no–given the speed with which the country now processes information, there’s plenty of time for several dramatic twists and turns, including lead changes. Obamaphiles (in the press and elsewhere) are deluding themselves, I think, if they think they can ride the economic crisis and the reaction against negativity to victory in a month. Plus Obama’s not that far ahead.

Nope.

I suspect that there are a lot more of these folks than there are Republicans against McCain. And they’ve connected the ACORN dots between Obama, the Dems in Congress and the housing meltdown.

Bob Owens notes that it’s not just Bill Ayers. And he also points out the absurdity of thinking that one could be a member of the Weatherman at all, let alone a founder, and not have murderous intent:

BarackObama.com, the campaign’s official website, offers up a “fact check” that Obama was just eight years old when the Weathermen were active in 1969. The Obama campaign has tried to use the founding date of the Weathermen as a touchstone, claiming that the acts of the group were something that happened “40 years ago” when Obama was a child. Far closer to the truth is the December 6, 1990, sentencing date of Weathermen Susan Rosenberg and Linda Sue Evans, when the last of the Weathermen were sentenced for their role in a string of bombings in the mid-1980s, including bombs that detonated at the National War College, the Washington Navy Yard Computing Center, the Washington Navy Yard Officers’ Club, New York City’s Patrolmen’s Benevolent Association, the Israeli Aircraft Industries Building, New York City’s South African Consulate, and the United States Capitol Building.

Barack Obama’s ties to the Weathermen aren’t ties that were 40 years removed from a child’s experiences, but the conscious decision of a young radical to establish a relationship to an infamous terrorist because of shared ideology and interests.

Barack Obama never set any bombs. But he’s never had problems with associating with those who did.

This talking point that Obama was “only eight years old” is stupid, as is anyone who buys it.

[Afternoon update]

Abe Greenwald has more:

Okay, let’s go with that judgment thing, shall we. Barack Obama served on the board of an educational organization headed by a terrorist bomber. He launched his political career in said bomber’s home. He then went on to serve two years alongside said bomber on the board of a “charitable” organization. Not quite done, Obama gave the bomber the gift of an enthusiastic blurb for the bomber’s book jacket. Even if Obama’s preposterous new claim about not knowing who Bill Ayers was was true in 1995, was it true in 1997 when Obama, then state senator, endorsed Ayers’s book? Had he not yet found out the identity of his buddy by 2000, when he took the position serving with Ayers on the board of the Woods Fund? Did no one slip him a note over the next two years reading, “Don’t indicate that you’re reading this note, but the guy next to you is a terrorist”? Frankly, if Obama didn’t find out that Bill Ayers is a terrorist until it came up during the primary, then there’s more to worry about than the candidate’s political leanings.

No kidding.

[Early evening update]

Here’s a flash from the past. A 2001 piece by David Horowitz about the terrorist couple:

This is the banal excuse of common criminals – the devil made me do it. “I don’t think you can understand a single thing we did,” explains the pampered Weatherman bomber Bill Ayers “without understanding the violence of the Vietnam War.”

I interviewed Ayers ten years ago, in a kindergarten classroom in uptown Manhattan where he was employed to shape the minds of inner city children. Dressed in bib overalls with golden curls rolling below his ears, Ayers reviewed his activities as a terrorist for my tape recorder. When he was done, he broke into a broad, Jack Horner grin and summed up his experience: “Guilty as hell. Free as a bird. America is a great country.”

That would have been 1991. This was a man who would later be put in charge of millions of dollars, with Barack Obama, to propagandize and radicalize Chicago schoolchildren. Either Obama had no problem with his past, or he was unaware of it. I don’t believe the latter. But either way, I don’t want him to be running the country. For all we know, he’ll appoint Ayers to be head of the Department of Education.

[Evening update]

“Bill Ayers has never hidden the fact that he was part of the Weather Underground, part of this radical group. In some ways it has made him somewhat famous in the South Side, Hyde Park, Chicago neighborhood where he lives.”

I guess we’re supposed to believe that he somehow only hid it from Barack Obama.

Steve Diamond (no Republican he, I’m guessing) has been doing an excellent job in pulling together the story of Barack Obama’s relationship with Bill Ayers and other sixties neo-Stalinist radicals, and the shared agendas, particularly in the area of education. Just keep reading and scrolling.

By Barack Obama. Unfortunately, the story doesn’t lend itself well to a thirty-second ad.

Illegal fundraising by the Obama campaign? Who would have thought?

I wonder how much of that foreign money comes from oil wealth.