Oh, Okay, Now It's An Issue

From FaultlineUSA:

Apparently Obama Does Believe in Guilt by Association

The office of President-elect Barack Obama has sent out a stiff seven-page questionnaire to those seeking high-ranking posts in his administration. The application delves deeply into the activities of family members and one’s associations.

According to the New York Times, Obama “has elevated the vetting even beyond what might have been expected.”

The application includes 63 requests for personal and professional records and all associations including those of spouses and grown children.

The application even requests information about all electronic communications the applicant has ever made. Any embarrassing e-mail ever sent, must be disclosed. All blog posts and links to Facebook pages must be disclosed. Any screen names used on the Internet and all aliases must be disclosed.

Gun ownership by anyone in the family must be disclosed.

Information in a personal diary must be disclosed if it contains anything embarrassing or would present a conflict of interest. The NY Times goes on to say:

Only the smallest details are excluded; traffic tickets carrying fines of less than $50 need not be reported, the application says.

The NYT interviewed Michael Berman, a lawyer and lobbyist who worked in the transitions of Bill Clinton and Jimmy Carter. Berman said after reviewing the Obama application:

“I am very happy I am not seeking a job in the federal government.”

An article in the American Sentinel points out that now that Obama has been elected, apparently one’s associations are really important.

The man whose campaign offered a constant stream of “that amounts to the charge of guilt by association” when reports of Jeremiah Wright, Tony Rezko, William Ayers, Rashid Khalidi, and others surfaced, is now more fixated on “associations” than any President in history. This from a man who would certainly fail to achieve a security clearance in any administration other than one in which he was President.

WTOP news summarized the most intrusive application ever devised by any incoming administration in an article entitled Plan to tell all to Obama administration. The article suggests that applicants must “be ready to dig through all your old documents to find all of your resumes and biographical statements for the last decade.”

WTOP news has also provided a pdf file of the 7-page application.

Sure, now it's an issue worth reporting on! But wait, there's more...

Apparently, it turns out that unrepentant terrorist Bill Ayers and Barack the Obamessiah are friends after all:

Via Ace. The bad news? Obama was lying to us when he dismissed Ayers at the debate as merely “a guy who lives in my neighborhood.” The good news? We already knew that, thanks to Axelrod and Mayor Daley.

Anyway, belated confirmation.

“We had served together on the board of a foundation, knew one another as neighbors and family friends, held an initial fund-raiser at my house, where I’d made a small donation to his earliest political campaign,” he writes.

But right-wing commentators tried to use those connections to smear Obama, he says.

“Obama’s political rivals and enemies apparently saw an opportunity to deepen a dishonest narrative about him, that he is somehow un-American, alien, linked to radical ideas, a closet terrorist, a sympathizer with extremism,” Ayers wrote.

This turd will be on Good Morning America tomorrow to hawk his book, if you can believe it. Will Diane Sawyer think to ask him how friendly the families were? Or, more importantly, what he learned from his epochal meeting of the minds recently with Reverend Wright? A rich trove of video treasure awaits us in the morning, my friends. Exit question: Has anyone queried The One on what sorts of crimes one would have to commit to lose their coveted “family friend” status? I realize questions of basic personal judgment are inappropriate on “dishonest narrative” grounds, but I’m curious nonetheless.

Is anyone else as infuriated by this as I am? This is one of the most blatant admissions of guilt that the media could possibly offer. All together now: TOLD YOU SO!!! Don't ever listen to them again.

There's my two cents.