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Fox just interviewed Stanley Kurtz. Kurtz claimed a documented, direct link between Obama's training ACORN criminals and the mortgage disaster as ACORN was the largest gang in forcing the banks to make the bad loans. Obama was ACORN's principal trainer in Illinois. My question: where is McCain? He could run ads proving this link and destroy Obama's candidacy. He isn't.

Just who is this Barack Obama, what experiences has he had, and what does he have in store for us – particularly if he gains the White House with large Democratic majorities in the House and the Senate ready to help him carry out his plans? You are known by the company you keep and by your past actions. Much of what you say during a political campaign must be discounted, but sometimes a little truth slips out. The picture was blurred, but has recently become much clearer. Obama is a long-time member of a black liberation theology church, a...

Stanley Kurtz's articles today on NRO and in the Wall Street Journal are must reads. Three takeaways: * Obama had a long-term working relationship with William Ayers. * The Chicago Annenberg Challenge ("CAC"), the only executive experience on Obama's resume, was an objective failure despite the expenditure of millions of dollars. * Through the CAC, Ayers and Obama financed radical organizations, including one with a history of engaging in voter fraud. Stanley's work is a challenge to mainstream journalists. A candidate for the presidency has a demonstrated working relationship with — indeed funded — an unrepentant terrorist, yet the media...

After hearing about Barack Obama's ties to the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, Bill Ayers, Bernardine Dohrn, Fr. Michael Pfleger, and the militant activists of ACORN (the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now), it should be clear to everyone that his extremist roots run deep. But the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee has yet another connection with the world of far-Left radicalism. Obama has long been linked -- through foundation grants, shared political activism, collaboration on legislation and tactics, and mutual praise and support -- with the Chicago-based Gamaliel Foundation, one of the least known yet most influential national umbrella groups for...

Chicago Talk Radio Host Milt Rosenberg had NRO's own David Freddoso, author of The Case Against Barack Obama, his show tonight. Rosenberg's producer emails to say that they're again trying to silence Freddoso, just like they did when Stanly Kurtz was on recently: Tonight, we have David Freddoso on our show discussing his new book.  As we speak, thousands of Obama supporters are flooding our phone lines and e-mail boxes, just as they did for our show with Stanley Kurtz.  An Obama Action Wire was sent out tonight to intimidate us into taking Freddoso off the air. The podcast of...

This is a story that just won't go away. As Senator Obama was rousing a huge crowd in Denver, a more important drama was playing out concerning Obama’s real relationship and motivations in allying himself with the terrorist, William Ayers, a drama that is deplorable in its implications. When Senator Obama was confronted about this strange and disturbing relationship, his response was that he (Obama) was only 8 years old when Ayers exploded and conspired to explode bombs trying to kill policemen, military officers and various other American officials on American soil. What a deceptive answer! What is at issue...

Stanley Kurtz's appearance on the Milt Rosenberg radio program in Chicago last night provided an unsettling look into the authoritarian tactics being employed by the Obama campaign to stifle and intimidate its critics. I happened to be in the WGN studios for the entire affair because my friend, Zack Christenson, produces the show in question. He was aware of my previous reporting on the Obama-Ayers connection and kindly invited me to sit in on the two-hour interview. (For full disclosure, I work for two other radio stations in Chicago, WIND, and WYLL). As I arrived at the downtown Chicago studios...

<p>"WGN radio is giving right-wing hatchet man Stanley Kurtz a forum to air his baseless, fear-mongering terrorist smears," Obama's campaign wrote in an e-mail to supporters. "He's currently scheduled to spend a solid two-hour block from 9:00 to 11:00 p.m. pushing lies, distortions, and manipulations about Barack and University of Illinois professor William Ayers."</p>

Some interesting happenings on the search for truth front. The indispensable National Review columnist Stanley Kurtz has been doing some much needed digging on the extent of the relationship between Barack Obama and Weather Underground terrorist William Ayers. Well yesterday, Kurtz went on WGN Radio in Chicago to discuss his findings and what sort of trouble he’s run in to, and the Obama campaign let out this incredibly dishonest email...

Stanley Kurtz's appearance on the Milt Rosenberg radio program in Chicago last night provided an unsettling look into the authoritarian tactics being employed by the Obama campaign to stifle and intimidate its critics. I happened to be in the WGN studios for the entire affair because my friend, Zack Christenson, produces the show in question. He was aware of my previous reporting on the Obama-Ayers connection and kindly invited me to sit in on the two-hour interview. (For full disclosure, I work for two other radio stations in Chicago, WIND, and WYLL). As I arrived at the downtown Chicago studios...

Has any material from the Chicago Annenberg Challenge records been redacted, removed, or destroyed since my dispute with the library began? The answer is: I do not know. I don’t know if UIC simply determined that it had legal authority to open the materials, without further agreement from the donor, or whether UIC is making this material available only after having restricted some material, at the donor’s request. Obviously, I will be on the lookout when I view the records for evidence of tampering, or of, say, names in critical places being blacked out. I will also be able to...

John Kass has an explanation for Stanley Kurtz for why he couldn’t access what should be public records at the University of Illinois at Chicago. Kurtz apparently didn’t read the name of the building in which the files from the Chicago Annenberg Challenge reside. It’s the Richard Daley Library, and when a Daley gets involved in a Chicago issue, openness flies right back out the door: The relationship between the ambitious Obama and the unrepentant Ayers is a subject that excites Republicans, who haven’t really thwacked that pinata as hard as they might. It really irritates Obama and his political...

The problem of Barack Obama’s relationship with Bill Ayers will not go away. Ayers and his wife, Bernardine Dohrn were terrorists for the notorious Weather Underground during the turbulent 1960s, turning fugitive when a bomb — designed to kill army officers in New Jersey — accidentally exploded in a New York townhouse. Prior to that, Ayers and his cohorts succeeded in bombing the Pentagon. Ayers and Dohrn remain unrepentant for their terrorist past. * * * This much we know from the public record, but a large cache of documents housed in the Richard J. Daley Library at the University...

This is getting curiouser and curiouser... Records detailing the workings of a 1990's charitable group working to better education in the city of Chicago that are housed at the University of Illinois Chicago (UIC) are being shielded from the prying eyes of reporters. The significance of these records is that the foundation in question was run by none other than Barack Obama. And the foundation was formed by none other than William Ayers, the radical Weather Underground terrorist who Obama has referred to as "just a neighbor." Stanley Kurtz of the National Review has tried to access records of The...

The National Review's Stanley Kurtz has been denied access to important documents relating to the Chicago Annenburg Challenge. Obama was Chair of this organization from 1995 to 1999 and received the appointment with Ayers' help. Ayers was the founder of this organization and played a substantial role in its operations. Kurtz was initially granted permission to view documents relating to the operations of the Annenberg Challenge, which are house that the library of the University of Illinois at Chicago. However, at the last moment library officials intervened to block access to the documents. The complete story is available at the...

With the important exception of Arizona, 2006 was an excellent election for those who believe that marriage is the union of a man and a woman. Amendments defining marriage as a man-woman union passed in seven out of eight states (Virginia, Tennessee, South Carolina, Wisconsin, Colorado, South Dakota, and Idaho) by an average vote of 61 percent. The narrow loss in Arizona was not because voters favored gay marriage, but because of a successful campaign against the measure’s ban on domestic partner benefits. The Arizona result might seem to indicate that voters favor domestic partner benefits, yet even here the...

Yesterday the New Jersey supreme court ruled in favor of same-sex marriage, or its equivalent, just without the name “marriage.” It is not entirely clear what will happen next, but here is a preliminary evaluation of the situation. There are three possible outcomes in New Jersey: 1) the legislature will legalize full-fledged gay marriage; 2) the legislature will authorize Vermont-style civil unions that are marriage in all but name; or 3) the legislature will reject the state supreme court’s decision entirely, either by directly defying it, or by authorizing a constitutional amendment defining marriage as the union of a man...

WASHINGTON, February 7, 2006 (LifeSiteNews.com) – Prominent American conservative commentator Stanley Kurtz has uncovered a chilling plot for Canada – the former Liberal government, in collusion with liberal courts, has been attempting to “abolish marriage” entirely.The first obvious reality is that the past Liberal governments, with the courts, have already caused critical damage to marriage – the advent of so-called same-sex marriage is a major step towards abolishing marriage. A next step will be legalization of polygamy, as the Liberals have already considered. (See http://www.lifesite.net/ldn/2006/jan/06011301.html for more on a Liberal government-sponsored study that promotes polygamy as a norm for Canada).As...

HOLLYWOOD FAMILY VALUES [Stanley Kurtz] Those of you who had better things to do this past weekend (i.e. everyone), may have missed my little dustup with The New Republic. It all happened on the eve of Christmas Eve, when TNR put out a piece by Rob Anderson attacking my “Here Come the Brides.” I answered Anderson with “Triple-Dutch Wrong.” Maggie Gallagher (at the always useful marriagedebate.com blog) then waded in with her own take on the debate. You can find more on all these issues at marriagedebate.com. There’s one late-breaking element of this debate that I think deserves more attention:...

This article “Miers espoused progressive views as elected official, record shows,” about Miers’ testimony in a 1990 voting rights lawsuit directly suggests that she would vote like O’Connor on affirmative action. Put that together with Miers’ reported advice on the Michigan Supreme Court case, and the feminist lecture series, and I think we begin to build up a substantive picture of her views. The most telling thing about this article may be Miers’ comment that she “wouldn’t belong to the Federalist Society” or other “politically charged” groups because they “seem to color your view one way or another.” From a...

May 02, 2005, 9:44 a.m. Dominionist Domination The Left runs with a wild theory. What is the real agenda of the religious far Right? I’ll tell you what it is. These nuts want to take over the federal government and suppress other religions through genocide and mass murder, rather than through proselytizing. They want to reestablish slavery. They want to reduce women to near-slavery by making them property, first of their fathers, and then of their husbands. They want to execute anyone found guilty of pre-martial, extramaritial, or homosexual sex. They want to bring back the death penalty for witchcraft....

Harper’s Magazine’s May cover stories about “The Christian Right’s War On America,” frightened me, although not the way Harper’s meant them to. I fear these stories could mark the beginning of a systematic campaign of hatred directed at traditional Christians. Whether this is what Harper’s intends, I cannot say. But regardless of the intention, the effect seems clear. The phrase “campaign of hatred” is a strong one, and I worry about amplifying an already dangerous dynamic of recrimination on both sides of the culture wars. I don’t doubt that conservatives, Christian and otherwise, are sometimes guilty of rhetorical excess. Yet...

In the ivory tower today, the idea that marriage is good is apparently considered an extremist notion. On the other hand, the idea that there are few real differences between normal men and convicted rapists is regarded as cutting-edge theory. That, at least, seems to be the conclusion of Harvard University Press, which recently, and under highly unusual circumstances, rejected an important new book on the benefits of marriage. The book — The Case for Marriage: Why Married People Are Happier, Healthier, and Better Off — is by Linda Waite and Maggie Gallagher, and has just been published, to considerable...

Mary Eberstadt’s Home Alone America: The Hidden Toll of Day Care, Behavioral Drugs. and Other Parent Substitutes is a culture-changing book. But don’t take my word for it. Listen to The Economist: “Eberstadt’s passionate attack on the damage caused by the absence of parents suggests that we may be approaching some sort of turning point in social attitudes, where assumptions about family life and maternal employment start to change. It has happened before — it could happen again.” Rich Lowry has already done a great job of recounting some of the core claims of Home Alone America. I want to...

With a real war going on right now in Iraq, why are we arguing about what happened 35 years ago in Vietnam? Here are two answers to that question: 1. Knowing President Bush has no positive achievements to run on, and desperate to prevent revelations under a Kerry presidency of the cooked intelligence and profiteering behind the disastrous Iraq war, the Republican attack machine has orchestrated a professional hit job on John Kerry's character and military record. The story of Kerry's wartime heroism puts the Vietnam-era cowardice of the president and vice president to shame. In doing so, the...

Power to the People The FMA vote is coming up soon — and you can bet your senators are listening. If you believe the core purpose of marriage is to bind children to their mothers and fathers, you might want to contact your senators. Sometime in the middle of July, the Senate will take its first vote on the Federal Marriage Amendment. Your help is needed. Marriage is not meant solely, or even mainly, for husbands and wives. Marriage exists as a public institution because children need mothers and fathers. Once marriage is treated as a mere celebration of the...

Lessons of the same-sex marriage debate in the Netherlands.   ONLY A FEW YEARS AGO, two prominent demographers hailed the Dutch family as a model for Europe. Somehow the Dutch had managed to combine liberal family law and a robust welfare state with a surprisingly traditional attitude toward marriage. Even as a new pattern of highly unstable parental cohabitation was sweeping out of Scandinavia and across northern Europe, the Dutch were unswayed. To be sure, premarital cohabitation was widespread, but when Dutch couples decided to have children, they got married. At least they used to. Today, marriage is in...

Now that I have had a chance to present my case that gay marriage is undermining marriage in Europe to the Constitution Subcommittee of the House Judiciary Committee, a chorus of critics has risen to challenge my argument. The hearing featured strenuous efforts by Jerrold Nadler (D., N.Y.) and other Democrats to discredit my claims. Congresswoman Tammy Baldwin (D., Wis.) staged a bit of an ambush — cross-examining me using an (at the time) unpublished article from The New Republic that attacks my work on Scandinavian marriage. As far as I'm concerned, the Democrats failed to shake or rebut my...

Has Andrew Sullivan abandoned his "conservative case" for gay marriage? Apparently so. I've already shown that the Scandinavian experience empirically refutes Sullivan's "conservative case." Yet now, instead of arguing that gay marriage will strengthen marriage itself, Sullivan claims that gay marriage cannot harm an institution that is already effectively dead. Sullivan seizes on a piece by "Christian traditionalist" Donald Sensing to make this point. Sensing argues that, by allowing sex without consequences, the birth-control pill has already killed marriage. Having severed the connection between marriage and childbearing, the pill, says Sensing, ushered in an era of cohabitation, thereby putting an...

<p>IN THE Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court's dueling opinions on same-sex marriage, each side places the burden of proof on the other. The majority in the Goodridge decision insists there is "no rational reason" for defining marriage as the union of a man and a woman. The minority chides the majority for its "blind faith" that there are no potential dangers to so radical a change. Both sides lack evidence on the real-world effects of same-sex marriage. Yet evidence is in. Marriage is dying in Scandinavia, which has had marriage-like same-sex registered partnerships for over a decade.</p>

Gay marriage may soon be recognized in two American states: Massachusetts and.... Can you guess? No, I'm not thinking of California, although mayor Gavin Newsom's defiance of the law could easily bring court imposed gay marriage there. Nor am I thinking of New Jersey, although a Goodridgecopycat case is working its way through the liberal New Jersey courts. Surprisingly, New Mexico could be the next state to recognize gay marriage. I'll explain why in a moment. First let's trace the big picture. THE ROAD TO NATIONALIZATION When gay marriage comes to Massachusetts in May, immense complications will follow. David Frum...

The Nordic track COVER STORY: State approval of homosexual marriage in Scandinavia contributed to the virtual disappearance of real marriage By Gene Edward Veith No matter what happens in the homosexual-marriage/civil-union controversies, marriage as an institution isn't going away, is it? Yes, it is. Marriage has already all but disappeared in Scandinavia. Other Europeans are heading down that Nordic track. And, if gay marriage is legalized, so will we. That is the conclusion of Stanley Kurtz, a research fellow at the Hoover Institution, whose article "The End of Marriage in Scandinavia" was published in The Weekly Standard. Sweden was the...

In 2000, the people of the state of California voted by a margin of 61 percent to 39 percent to pass Proposition 22, which defined marriage as the union of a man and a woman. Having openly defied the overwhelming opinion of the voters of California, the city of San Francisco will now sue to overturn Proposition 22 on the grounds of the equal-protection and due-process provisions of the California State constitution. Does anyone believe that the framers of California's constitution intended these provisions to have this effect? Could there possibly be a more blatant effort to override democratically expressed...

The issue of same-sex "marriage" and the Federal Marriage Amendment will come to the fore in American political debate this year -- and, I believe, soon. Congressional leaders are strategizing right now. But there's one objection to our position that many of us have had to face, and we don't often have a good answer. Our opponents say, "What's the big deal? So what if gays and lesbians want to marry? This doesn't do anything to your marriage." Well, our answer has always been that it would weaken marriage. Why? Because it would take away the unique status and benefits...

The "conservative case" for same-sex marriage collapses. MARRIAGE IS SLOWLY DYING IN SCANDINAVIA. A majority of children in Sweden and Norway are born out of wedlock. Sixty percent of first-born children in Denmark have unmarried parents. Not coincidentally, these countries have had something close to full gay marriage for a decade or more. Same-sex marriage has locked in and reinforced an existing Scandinavian trend toward the separation of marriage and parenthood. The Nordic family pattern--including gay marriage--is spreading across Europe. And by looking closely at it we can answer the key empirical question underlying the gay marriage debate. Will same-sex...

Want to get rid of affirmative action? There's a lot you can do to help. But didn't we lose that battle? Didn't the Supreme Court's decisions in the University of Michigan cases hand the universities victory? Not really. The Michigan decisions were a classic attempt by Justice Sandra Day O'Connor to drag a polarizing cultural issue onto muddy middle ground. They simply set the terms for our ongoing battle over preferences. We opponents of affirmative action have only lost that battle if we think we've lost. Look closely at the Michigan decisions and you'll see any number of ways in...

AFTER GAY MARRIAGE, what will become of marriage itself? Will same-sex matrimony extend marriage's stabilizing effects to homosexuals? Will gay marriage undermine family life? A lot is riding on the answers to these questions. But the media's reflexive labeling of doubts about gay marriage as homophobia has made it almost impossible to debate the social effects of this reform. Now with the Supreme Court's ringing affirmation of sexual liberty in Lawrence v. Texas, that debate is unavoidable. Among the likeliest effects of gay marriage is to take us down a slippery slope to legalized polygamy and "polyamory" (group marriage). Marriage...

If you've followed the war on terror with any degree of care, you know that Daniel Pipes has been a major player in our debates over what to do about militant Islam. To his great credit, Pipes was one of the very few scholars who warned the country, well before September 11, of the potential terrorist threat stemming from militant Islam. Pipes is both a serious scholar of contemporary Islam and a tireless advocate for a policy that takes the threat of militant Islam seriously — while still encouraging the forces of liberalism within Islam. I don't always agree with...

The U.S. Congress broke with a 45-year tradition last week: It permitted a dissident to critique the federal funding for the study of foreign language and cultures - to suggest that the program often serves the very opposite of academia's goals or the nation's interests. The topic impinges on core questions of how Americans see the outside world and themselves. It also has major implications for U.S. policy. Federal funding of international studies (known in govermentese as "Title VI fellowships") is relatively new, going back to 1959, when Cold War tensions prompted a sense of American vulnerability. The goal was...

Last Thursday, June 19, I testified at a contentious hearing of the House Subcommittee on Select Education. The hearing was convened to examine charges of bias leveled against programs of international education funded under Title VI of the Higher Education Act. Title VI-funded programs support the academic study of the Middle East, and other areas of the world. (You can read my testimony here and you can view the hearings on video by going here. Note that the first two of the five witnesses were not involved in the controversy. You can safely skip their testimony, if desired.) Having laid...

Now that the initial wave of reactions to the controversial government-funded day-care study has run its course, time to take a step back. Why is day care a problem in this country? Why has this study ruffled so many feathers? Is it possible to speak truthfully about what's at stake in the day-care dispute? And what are the prospects for a solution? To answer these questions, we need to recognize that the greatest threat to day care is love. I know that sounds like old news — and totally smarmy to boot. But the challenge posed to day care by...

Congress Weighs Anti-U.S. Biases At Key Colleges: Columbia, NYU Cited in Testimony New York Sun, June 20-22, 2003 (Front page) By Timothy Starks - Staff Reporter of the Sun WASHINGTON -A House subcommittee yesterday held a public hearing to investigate whether anti-American views pervade federally funded international-studies programs on college campuses -- including Columbia and New York University -- and to get ideas for what, if anything, should be done about it. . The hearing came as Congress moves to renew the Higher Education Act, and as a key group of Senate Republicans considers whether Congress should intervene in an...

For some time now, I have criticized scholars who study the Middle East (and other areas of the world) for abusing Title VI of the Higher Education Act. Title VI-funded programs in Middle Eastern studies (and other area studies) tend to purvey extreme and one-sided criticisms of American foreign policy. ANNOUNCING A HEARING It is my pleasure to announce that Congress has decided to investigate the charges of political bias that have been leveled against Title VI programs by critics like Martin Kramer, Daniel Pipes, and myself. This Thursday, June 19, at 1:00 P.M. in room 2175 of the Rayburn...

May 20, 2003, 9:00 a.m. All the News that's Fit to Print… …for the whole world to read. here is no doubt that the Jayson Blair outrage has created a crisis at the New York Times. And since the scandal caps a long series of complaints about the paper's leftward bias, the Blair affair's power to hurt the Times has become more than the sum of its parts. Yet those who believe that the New York Times is on the ropes are fooling themselves. Beneath the well-publicized controversies over the Times' ideological bias lie a couple of lesser known and...

There is no doubt that the Jayson Blair outrage has created a crisis at the New York Times. And since the scandal caps a long series of complaints about the paper's leftward bias, the Blair affair's power to hurt the Times has become more than the sum of its parts. Yet those who believe that the New York Times is on the ropes are fooling themselves. Beneath the well-publicized controversies over the Times' ideological bias lie a couple of lesser known and intertwined stories: the tale of Times owner, Arthur Sulzberger Jr., and of the business strategy that he and...

The Jayson Blair story points to a serious problem alright, but not to a solution. I think I have a solution. It's no secret that a great many of us no longer trust the New York Times. The paper has always had a liberal flavor, of course. Yet in the past, the Times's news coverage maintained sufficient balance and integrity that it could justly be deemed the "newspaper of record." That is no longer true. In many ways, the New York Times remains an excellent paper, yet I deeply mistrust what I read there. I know the paper has a...

There is a mystery at the heart of the gay-marriage debate. I call it the "libertarian question." The libertarian question (really a series of questions) goes like this: Why should any form of adult consensual sex be illegal? What rational or compelling interest does the state have in regulating consensual adult sex? More specifically, how does the marriage of two gay men undermine my marriage? Will the fact that two married gay men live next door make me leave my wife? Hardly. So how, then, does gay marriage undermine heterosexual marriage? Why not get the state out of such matters...

The Democrats think they understand the political implications of the Santorum flap. They do not. The conventional wisdom of the Democrats on the Santorum affair is set forth in places like The New Republic's &c. blog and in a recent column by Eleanor Clift.As the Democrat's see it, the Santorum affair will do substantial damage to the Republican party for some time. That's because, on social issues generally, and on homosexuality in particular, the public is divided into roughly three camps — social conservatives, social liberals, and social moderates. Social conservatives, who see homosexuality as immoral, form a large...

    April 24, 2003, 8:45 a.m. Defending Senator Santorum The Pennsylvania Republican has been subject to shameful treatment. come to the question of homosexuality and public policy from a different perspective than U.S. Senator Rick Santorum. I would like to see sodomy laws abolished, and have said so publicly. I should also note that I am not religious, and do not see homosexuality as sinful. Nonetheless, I am convinced that Sen. Santorum's recent remarks on homosexuality have been badly distorted by both the Democratic party and the mainstream press. The shameful public response to Sen. Santorum's statements is a...