What’s Obama’s problem with free speech?

What’s Obama’s problem with free speech?
This story appeared in the Antelope Valley Press
Sunday, September 21, 2008
We’re newspaper people, so you won’t be surprised to learn that we hold the First Amendment dear. We value the freedom of expression.
So when word exploded on the national scene that Gov. Sarah Palin was a “book banner,” well, by golly, we paid attention. Can’t have smalltown mayors or anyone else going around banning Harry Potter.
Turns out Palin never banned any books. It was all Internet nonsense from people suffering from PDS – Palin Derangement Syndrome. The Harry Potter books Palin was supposed to have banned hadn’t even been published yet when she was mayor of Wasilla, Alaska.
But it turns out there is a candidate in the presidential field who actually has tried to stifle free speech. His name is Barack Obama.
Right about the same time those false and defamatory Palin messages were filling e-mail boxes around the nation, Obama was trying to silence a conservative writer named Stanley Kurtz, who was investigating the Democratic senator’s ties to William Ayers.
Ayers is a former member of the domestic terrorist group, the Weathermen. He spent several years on the FBI’s Most Wanted list. Obama often points out that Ayers’ radical activities – the group bombed the Pentagon and the Capitol, you know, little things like that – took place when he, Obama, was just 8 years old.
That is true, but Ayers has never repented and, in fact, in 2001 said that he regretted not having done more.
All of that aside, how many of you make friends with people who’ve been on the FBI’s Most Wanted list?
In the 1980s, Ayers and Obama were colleagues in something called the Chicago Annenberg Challenge, which was supposed to improve Chicago’s education system but can offer no evidence of having done so, $100 million later.
Writer Stanley Kurtz – unlike, it seems, anyone else in the national press – was curious about exactly what this group did, how it spent its money and just how close Obama was to the terrorist Ayers.
Legitimate questions, we’d say. To whom did they give grants? What grant applications were rejected? What, if anything, did the group accomplish?
Obama was the director of this project, his sole executive experience. Don’t voters have a right to know how he did?
The Chicago Annenberg Project’s papers were on file at the University of Illinois Library. Stanley Kurtz made an appointment to see the papers, but mysteriously, that appointment was suddenly canceled. Permanently.
Through Freedom of Information requests, the papers were finally released, and Kurtz and others are culling them.
We have no idea whether Obama or his campaign had anything to do with the sudden revocation of Kurtz’s permission to see the files. But we do know what happened when Kurtz was scheduled to go on WGN radio in Chicago to talk about it.
When the station sought an Obama campaign spokesperson to give the other side, the Obama campaign declined.
The Obama campaign then put out an “action alert” to all the supporters on its e-mail list. They called on supporters to flood the station with phone calls. “Tell WGN that by providing Kurtz with air time, they are legitimizing baseless attacks from a smear-merchant and lowering the standards of political discourse.”
The Obama campaign lied to its supporters, as well, claiming they had no chance to rebut the claims when, in fact, they’d been invited on.
The dutiful Obama supporters did as asked. The radio host, Alan Rosenberg, asked one caller, a young woman, to refute what Kurtz was saying rather than just toss insults and say that Kurtz should not even be on.
The young woman admitted that she didn’t know anything about the affair and was just calling in because Obama told her to.
Failing to keep Kurtz off the air, the Obama people sought to turn the show into a circus by encouraging callers to, rather than ask questions and engage the guest, simply say that he shouldn’t be on and that the interview should be stopped.
Ironically, WGN is, according to Chicago insiders, largely a liberal station, with most of its hosts openly supporting Obama.
Even the liberal Los Angeles Times called the Obama campaign’s move “a surprising attempt to stifle broadcast criticism of its candidate.”
Well, it’s only surprising if you don’t see through Barack Obama as a candidate who says one thing and does another. If this attempt at suppressing free speech is what Obama does as a candidate, just think what he might do as president.

Wild Thing’s comment………….
Obama’s a commie rat. Commie rats don’t like free speech.
What’s Obama’s problem with free speech?
Answer: With free speech people are allowed to ask questions.
Obama supports HIS free speech. The proletariat is to be silent and listen to his wisdom!! ( YUK! )