Say Anything Blog

A Texas billionaire is running an ad tying Obama to domestic terrorist William Ayers and Obama himself wants the Department of Justice to take the ad off the air.

Sen. Barack Obama has launched an all-out effort to block a Republican billionaire’s efforts to tie him to domestic and foreign terrorists in a wave of negative television ads.

Obama’s campaign has written the Department of Justice demanding a criminal investigation of the “American Issues Project,” the vehicle through which Dallas investor Harold Simmons is financing the advertisements. The Obama campaign — and tens of thousands of supporters — also is pressuring television networks and affiliates to reject the ads. The effort has met with some success: CNN and Fox News are not airing the attacks, and some local affiliates have refused as well.

Obama has also launched his own response ad, directly addressing Simmons’ attempt to link him to domestic terror.

The project is “a knowing and willful attempt to violate the strictures of federal election law,” Obama general counsel Bob Bauer wrote to Deputy Assistant Attorney General John Keeney last week in a letter provided to Politico. Bauer argued that by advocating Obama’s defeat, the ad should be subject to the contribution limits of federal campaign law, not the anything-goes regime of issue advocacy.

If a given campaign ad is libelous or slanderous then there are laws which allow for Obama to address that.  But to say that this ad is illegal under campaign law?  That sounds rather dangerously like a politician trying to silence the free speech of a group of citizens.

If this ad is indeed illegal under campaign laws then those laws (which, embarrassingly enough, McCain had a hand in writing) should be thrown off the books.

Here’s the ad:

Frankly, I don’t see a thing wrong with it other than the fact that it’s terribly inconvenient for Obama.  Meanwhile, the Obama campaign is responding with an ad of their own.

I think Obama is probably going to lose this fight.  By trying to silence the folks who are bringing up the facts about Obama’s relationship with Ayers he only looks as though he wants to hide something.  And with Obama’s history of associating himself closely with other radicals such as his pastor, Rev. Jeremiah “God Damn America” Wright, Obama’s close relationship with William Ayers is just too easy to believe.