Between Obama, Ayers, and Jeremiah Wright:

Given the precedent of his earlier responses on Ayers and Wright, Obama might be inclined to deny personal knowledge of the educational philosophy he was so generously funding. Such a denial would not be convincing. For one thing, we have evidence that in 1995, the same year Obama assumed control of the Chicago Annenberg Challenge, he publicly rejected “the unrealistic politics of integrationist assimilation,” a stance that clearly resonates with both Wright and Carruthers. (See “No Liberation.”)

And as noted, Wright had invited Carruthers, Hilliard, and like-minded thinkers to address his Trinity congregants. Wright likes to tick off his connections to these prominent Afrocentrists in sermons, and Obama would surely have heard of them. Reading over SSAVC’s Annenberg proposals, Obama could hardly be ignorant of what they were about. And if by some chance Obama overlooked Hilliard’s or Carruthers’s names, SSAVC’s proposals are filled with references to “rites of passage” and “Ptahhotep,” dead giveaways for the anti-American and separatist ideological concoction favored by SSAVC.

We know that Obama did read the proposals. Annenberg documents show him commenting on proposal quality. And especially after 1995, when concerns over self-dealing and conflicts of interest forced the Ayers-headed “Collaborative” to distance itself from monetary issues, all funding decisions fell to Obama and the board. Significantly, there was dissent within the board. One business leader and experienced grant-smith characterized the quality of most Annenberg proposals as “awful.” (See “The Chicago Annenberg Challenge: The First Three Years,” p. 19.) Yet Obama and his very small and divided board kept the money flowing to ideologically extremist groups like the South Shore African Village Collaborative, instead of organizations focused on traditional educational achievement.

If McCain won’t go after this, some 527s need to.

John McCain could win this election if he weren’t John McCain. By that, I mean that some candidate with John McCain’s history and record could win it if he were really willing to take the gloves off. But he’s constitutionally incapable of it. Too many years “reaching across the aisle.” Which is one of the reasons in general that Senators have a tough time being elected president. Unfortunately, we have no choice this year.

Scott Ott has a depressing satire.

We’re all fascists now.

It’s too bad that Senator Obama seems indifferent to actually creating wealth. This is the critical distinction between collectivists and classical liberals. The former think that it’s a fixed (or growing, but according to supernatural forces unaffectable by human intervention) pie to be justly distributed, whereas the latter think that it’s something to be created by maximizing freedom and minimizing how much of it is confiscated by those who want to “spread it around.”

And don’t expect many in the MSM to criticize him for it.

What we have to look forward to under an Obama/Pelosi/Reid administration:

A Democrat-controlled Washington will use sweeping new rules to shush conservative political speech. For starters, expect a real push to bring back the Fairness Doctrine.

True, Obama says he isn’t in favor of re-imposing this regulation, which, until Ronald Reagan’s FCC junked it in the ’80s, required broadcasters to give airtime to opposing viewpoints or face fines or even loss of license. But most top Democrats, including Nancy Pelosi, are revved up about the idea, and it’s hard to imagine Obama vetoing a new doctrine if Congress delivers him one.

Make no mistake: a new Fairness Doctrine would vaporize political talk radio, the one major medium dominated by the right. If a station ran a successful conservative program like, say, Mark Levin’s, it would also have to run a left-leaning alternative, even if — as with Air America and all other liberal efforts in the medium to date — it can’t find any listeners or sponsors.

There’s certainly nothing in Obama’s current behavior to indicate otherwise, as the editorial points out.

Even ignoring the First Amendment issues (which are sufficient reason in themselves to fight it), it would be a nightmare for broadcasters to enforce. What is “balance,” and who would decide? The model here is for the issue ad. If there’s a proposition on the ballot, and you run an editorial on it (say) in favor, then it’s fairly straightforward to say that it could be balanced by an editorial against it. But even there, who gets the opportunity? There might be multiple people or groups against it for different reasons, some more articulate than others. How would it be decided which of them got to “balance” it?

And once we get outside that narrow focus, into talk radio itself, it becomes a real nightmare, and a litigator’s delight. Consider Larry Elder, who is mostly a libertarian. Who “balances” him? A socialist who disagrees with his economics? A “conservative” who disagrees with his views on pornography and drugs?

What single blog is the antithesis of this one, or Instapundit? I sure as hell wouldn’t want to be the television or radio program director who had to decide. All of this, of course, is predicated on the simpleton’s assumption that political views and issues can be expressed on a unidimensional “left-right” scale. And even if that were the case, and political issues didn’t fall into a hypercube of multiple dimensions coming from all points on the hyperspherical compass, it wouldn’t be that simple, because the magnitude has to be calibrated as well. Is Rush Limbaugh as far “right” as Randi Rhodes is far “left”? Where is the pivot on the scale? Who determines what is “mainstream”? Ted Kennedy?

The First Amendment should have put a stake through the heart of this pernicious and anti-freedom nonsense years ago, but the fascist proponents of things like it have long abandoned principles like that.

[Afternoon update]

Treacher has some thoughts on the “Deathbed Media.”

Joe Biden stood next to Hillary Clinton in Scranton, PA today, and said with a perfectly straight face that she never abused her power.

Tell it to Billy Dale. And that was just the tip of the iceberg.