Free Republic

Abstract:      The Chicago Annenberg Challenge was a $160 million dollar reform effort in the Chicago public school system led by, among others, Barack Obama and Bill Ayers. An analysis of the Challenge suggests that an authoritarian form of politics shared by Ayers and Obama was a critical part of the reform effort. This form of authoritarian radicalism has its roots in the American New Left and Black Power movements. The paper contrasts the authoritarian and anti-union approach of the Challenge with a democratic alternative. Keywords: Law, poliitics, education, Obama, Ayers, Annenberg Challenge JEL Classifications: None Working Paper Series Date...

Hundreds of educators have endorsed a letter opposing the "demonization" of Williams Ayers – the domestic terrorist who helped launch Barack Obama's poliltical career, and whose relationship with the Democratic presidential candidate continues to be major controversy – arguing that frequent reports of his involvement in domestic bombings are "designed to intimidate free thinking and stifle critical dialogue." "We write to support our colleague Professor William Ayers, Distinguished Professor of Education and Senior University Scholar at the University of Illinois at Chicago, who is currently under determined and sustained political attack," reads the letter, available for endorsement at www.supportbillayers.org. "The...

There has been much talk, both pro and con, about whether Sen. Barack Obama’s “associations” matter with regard to his qualifications to hold the office of President of the United States. This argument, this avenue of political discourse, misses the point. Whether or not Sen. Obama has associations with criminals, terrorists and other nefarious and infamous individuals pales in comparison as to whether he has been influenced by them. We have heard the names of the people on the list of radicals and ne’er-do-wells that Barack Obama says he knows but doesn’t know; has worked with but hasn’t worked with;...

Election 2008 is nearly upon us. It’s been a unique election cycle in every sense of the word. First, the cataclysmic struggle between Hillary Rodham Clinton and Barack Hussein Obama was a real cliffhanger that caught nearly everyone’s attention until the time that Clinton suspended her campaign and claimed to throw in behind Obama. I seriously doubt that however, and fully believe that electing Obama is the last thing Hillary and Bill want. That Clinton won more votes than Obama was never thoroughly reported in the mainstream media, because early on, the msm was “in the tank” for Obama. Such...

“McCain would rather tear my campaign down than lift America up! That’s what you do when you are out of ideas, running behind and running out of time!” -- Barack Obama from the campaign trail Sunday. According to the Obama campaign, Sarah Palin’s first round jabs regarding Obama community organizing pal, political mentor and convicted terrorist William Ayers, are an “unfair attempt” at eleventh hour “character assassination” by a “desperate campaign” running behind late in the game. Clearly, Palin’s jab landed squarely on Obama’s nose and Obama is looking for a referee to stop the fight. However, the William Ayers...

THIRTY-FOUR YEARS AGO this fall, a small band of well-educated young Americans hell-bent on storming heaven steeled themselves to commit an act of spectacularly gratuitous violence. A militant breakaway faction of Students for a Democratic Society, they called themselves the Weathermen. http://www.boston.com/news/globe/ideas/articles/2003/10/19/return_of_the_weathermen/

Please copy, paste, and circulate this press release from the Governor of Missouri. Note the Web domain of the press release, governor.mo.gov. This is not "someone's blog," a "rumor," or a "smear." It is the official Web site of Missouri's state government. The Governor of Missouri says openly that Barack Obama conspired to misuse his state's law enforcement resources to "threaten and intimidate his critics."We cannot overemphasize the gravity of Governor Blunt's accusation. While we are not attorneys and cannot give legal advice, "Conspiracy against rights" is a felony under the U.S. Code, Title 18 (Crimes). At present, Governor Blunt's...

Former weatherman Mark Rudd, who worked closely with William Ayers is a signer with the group, ”Progressives for Obama“.

The Fox News Channel has refused a request by a group called America Issues Project to buy time on the network to run an ad criticizing presumptive Democratic party presidential nominee Sen. Barack Obama over his friendship with unrepentent Weathermen terrorist Bill Ayers.The Associated Press reports a spokesman for Fox News would not give an explanation as to why Fox refused the ad buy.Fox has had a rocky relationship with the Obama campaign. Obama refused to participate in any presidential debates on Fox and has singled out the network for criticism in speeches on the campaign trail.Bill O'Reilly, host of...

Pentagon Makes Fighting Extremism Top Priority Seven years after the Sept. 11 attacks, the Pentagon on Thursday officially named "the long war" against global extremism as its top priority and pledged to avert any conventional military threat from China or Russia through dialogue. The Defense Department, in a new national defense strategy, also emphasized the need to subordinate military operations to "soft power" initiatives to undermine Islamist militancy by promoting economic, political and social development in vulnerable corners of the world. Defense Secretary Robert Gates said he hoped the change would help establish permanent institutional support for counterinsurgency skills...

Sen. John McCain's campaign is finishing a hard-hitting television ad highlighting Barack Obama 's ties to shady Chicago land dealer Tony Rezko, the one-time Obama patron who was convicted earlier this summer of fraud. A campaign official said that the decision to Go Rezko was Obama's. "He's opened the door to this," the official said. The ad will be released to network news divisions in time for their broadcasts tonight. Though McCain is widely perceived to to drawn first blood by attacking Obama's character, the official said that the difference between Obama's mocking McCain for his wealth and his shaky...

Here is a new ad put out by the American Issues Project about Barack Obama's association with unrepentant terrorist William Ayers. Obama began his political career in Chicago in the home of Ayers, who held a fundraiser for him. . . (see video)

The main obstacle standing between Barack Obama and the White House was distilled into five words by a local television correspondent in South Charleston, W.Va., earlier this month. Prefacing a question about the challenges of winning over white, blue-collar voters, the reporter offered this observation: “They think you are un-American,” he said. Such questions, asked by reporters and plainly on the minds of voters in Appalachia and elsewhere, are the fruits of an unprecedented, subterranean e-mail campaign. What began as a demonstrably false attempt to cast Obama as a Muslim has now metastasized into something far more threatening to the...

WARNING: Some Graphic Language I read occasionally of former Weatherman Bill Ayers and his wife Bernardine Dohrn, both now not only accepted, despite their bombing campaign against America in the 1960s and 70s, but successful , establishment educators whose opinions on social issues are taken seriously. Every time I see Ayers’ name I shudder with fear and rage and realize that I will never be able to erase the mark he left on my life one evening 40 years ago. It was at the Undergraduate Library at the University of Michigan on a Friday night in November 1965. I was...

SPRINGFIELD, Ill. - Sen. Barack Obama is defending his relationship with a former radical whose provocative words were wrongly linked by Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton to the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. Facts were loose in both Democratic presidential campaigns Thursday as Clinton sought advantage from her rival's association with William Ayers, a college professor who was once part of the violent Weather Underground group. The dustup arose in their debate the night before when Obama was asked whether his connection to Ayers raised politically damaging questions about his patriotism. Obama struck back by calling attention to Bill Clinton's decision...

On a brisk November morning, Cathy Wilkerson strides down one of the city’s finest streets, 11th between Fifth and Sixth Avenues, her glance sweeping across the row of handsome town houses, alighting nowhere in particular. “The street I remember,” Ms. Wilkerson says, “was a lot less polished.” If streets had memories, this one would recall a far less polished incarnation of her. On the morning of March 6, 1970, Cathy Wilkerson stumbled onto 11th Street in tatters, bleeding and her clothes all but ripped off her body. Her father’s town house, 18 West 11th Street, which she had borrowed on...

SALEM, N.H. - Presidential hopeful Mitt Romney in an interview Monday dismissed concerns he's too nice to be a viable candidate in a vicious race, proving it by taking a swipe at yet-to-announced GOP rival Fred Thompson. "We all get the chance to go on the talk shows. But it's not the sort of questions you get in the debates or the town meetings that I've had," Romney said in an Associated Press interview, alluding to plans by Thompson to formally announced his candidacy during a planned Wednesday night appearance on the "Tonight Show with Jay Leno." "The talk show...

Word buzzing about NBC10 is that chief meteorologist Glenn "Hurricane" Schwartz will not mention Christmas themes on the air. He reportedly refused to read a scripted voice-over about Santa and holiday lights that led into his forecast. When the producer called him on it later, he said he would not inject Christianity into his weathercast because he is Jewish. It's not known if this is a new policy. Schwartz has been on staff for 11 years. Schwartz would not confirm a controversy yesterday. He called the matter "internal" and said it did not "belong outside the station." NBC10 news director...

NEW YORK — Columbia University is coming under increasing criticism over revelations that it built friendly relations with Nazi Germany in the 1930's. Now Columbia's provost is firing back – but he may have shot himself in the foot. The controversy began last month when the David S. Wyman Institute for Holocaust Studies publicized research by one of its scholars, Professor Stephen Norwood of the University of Oklahoma, revealing a series of steps taken by Columbia president Nicholas Murray Butler during 1933-1937 to forge ties with the Hitler regime. After first trying to avoid the issue, Columbia officials are now...

There are two misconceptions held by many Americans. The first is that communism ceased to be a threat when the Soviet Union imploded. The second is that the New Left of the Sixties collapsed and disappeared as well. “The Sixties are dead,” wrote columnist George Will (Slamming the Doors, Newsweek, Mar. 25, 1991) Because the New Left lacked cohesion it fell apart as a political movement. However, its revolutionaries reorganized themselves into a multitude of single issue groups. Thus we now have for example, radical feminists, black extremists, anti-war ‘peace’ activists, animal rights groups, radical environmentalists, and ‘gay’ rights groups....