RKMBs Forums .::Important::. Politics and Current Events An Ayers Victim Speaks

Figures you watch that thug. Perchance do you stab your finger in the air to try to look all tough and belligerent as well?

Figures you watch that thug. Perchance do you stab your finger in the air to try to look all tough and belligerent as well?

Actually, this poll doesn't surprise me. It's not that different than the annual polls that say the public doesn't like any negative ads...even though candidates continue to use them because they are effective.

Actually, if you review my posting history you'll see that I've always cautioned people against overreliance on polling. I've also bemoaned the press's tendency to report polls as news in place of actual analysis of issues.

About the only time I post a poll is to tweak whomod and demonstrate that his overuse of polls is dangerous

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Obama Affinity to Marxists Dates Back to College Days: Barack Obama shrugs off charges of socialism, but noted in his own memoir that he carefully chose Marxist professors as friends in college.

Holy crap, FOX NEWS has something bad to say about Obama? Shock!

Holy crap, FOX NEWS has something bad to say about Obama? Shock!

"Let's remember that what you call a violent past that was at a time when thousands of people were being murdered by our government every month, and those of us who fought to end the war were actually on the right side,"

PARIS (Reuters) – Explosives were found in a central Paris store on Tuesday following a tip off from a group demanding the withdrawal of French troops from Afghanistan, a spokesman at the Paris prosecutors office said.

The group named itself the Afghan Revolutionary Front, which is not known to the police, the spokesman said.

The five sticks of explosives did not have detonators attached and the spokesman said French anti-terrorist police thought the devices had been placed as a warning.

Let's take a trip down the rabbit hole to 1969. As we look back from a safe distance of 40 years, America in the late '60s looks temporarily insane.

In those days, America's terrorism problem was a group of violent college kids called the Weathermen, named after a Bob Dylan song. But they were not Peter, Paul and Mary. Compared to the Weathermen, modern Iraq war protesters are a dime bag of oregano.

The Weathermen Underground bombed the U.S. Capitol and the Pentagon. They declared war on the United States and packed sticks of dynamite with roofing nails, fence staples and propane bottles to use on police stations and military recruiting offices.

And Larry Grathwohl of Cincinnati was there, living in a Weathermen "collective" in Cincinnati, sleeping on a mattress on the floor.

"I think it's important," he said of his story when we met for coffee at an IHOP. "They're going backward to rewrite history."

Grathwohl recalled the night he was singled out for an LSD-fueled all-nighter of "criticism." He ducked the drugs and kept his cover as they called him a "pig." But they were right. He was an informant for the cops.

Grathwohl, raised in Hyde Park and now of Amelia, was a student at the University of Cincinnati, just back from Vietnam when he joined the Weathermen. A Cincinnati cop he knew said it might be useful. Soon he was an FBI informant, close to Weatherman leaders Bill Ayers and Bernadine Dohrn.

Ayers and Dohrn, now married, made headlines this year for being linked to Barack Obama. Sarah Palin was mocked for saying Obama was "palling around" with Ayers. But after the election, Ayers admitted to being "family friends" with the Obamas.

Grathwohl says the press gave Obama a pass, and gave Ayers a Get out of Jail Free card.

"Bill insists he was only against the war. That's not true," he said. "They were communists, part of an international revolutionary movement of Cubans, Chinese and Vietnamese. We were going to attack the U.S. from within. The ultimate goal was to overthrow the government."

In an op-ed column after the election, Ayers admitted the group placed "several small bombs in empty offices." He said the "attacks on property, never on people, were meant to respect human life and convey outrage and determination to end the Vietnam War."

Grathwohl replied: "I sat in meetings where we were planning bombs. Bill gave instructions for the place and time so the greatest number of people would be killed or injured."

Grathwohl said he warned Ayers that "people will be killed." He says Ayers replied, "In a revolution, some people have to die."

In his New York Times op-ed, Ayers wrote, "The risks we posed to others in some of our most extreme actions never leaves my thoughts for long."

Grathwohl testified about the Weathermen to grand juries and Congress. His version is more pointed - like roofing nails. He describes Ayers as "a spoiled rich kid who had a silver spoon in his mouth his entire life. Most of them were like that."

He says he heard Ayers talk about putting 75 million Americans in re-education camps. "He said 25 million might have to be eliminated."

"The plans they were making were scary," he said. But when bombs started going off, "they were no longer just a bunch of spoiled kids talking."

In early 1970, a bomb intended for an officers' dance at Fort Dix, N.J., exploded and killed several Weathermen. At about the same time, a cop was killed in a San Francisco bombing. Dohrn was a suspect on the FBI's Ten Most Wanted.

Ayers and Dohrn went into hiding until 1980, when they surrendered. But charges were dropped because the FBI used illegal wiretaps.

Grathwohl says they never paid for their crimes or showed remorse.

"Even though it is decades later, it is important that we guard against efforts to turn people such as Billy and Bernadine into latter-day Robin Hoods, and that we remember them for what they were and still unabashedly represent today."

Ayers now pushes radical ideas as a professor of education at the University of Illinois at Chicago. Dohrn teaches law and is director of the Children and Family Justice Center at Northwestern University. They live in a wealthy neighborhood near the Chicago home of their family friend, the next president of the United States.

Looking out from the rabbit hole of 1969, maybe it's 2008 that looks insane.

WASHINGTON – New York police detective Anthony S. Senft's life changed forever when a bomb set by Puerto Rican separatists exploded, blowing him 15 feet in the air and blinding him in one eye. Now, he's angry that Eric Holder, who played a key role in awarding clemency to the bombers, is in line to be attorney general.

Holder, as President Bill Clinton's deputy attorney general, worked closely with the Justice Department's pardon attorney to raise the possibility of commuting the prison terms. Three years earlier, that pardon attorney's predecessor had recommended against clemency.

In newly disclosed documents, officials expressed concerns about a department report on possible clemency for the prisoners becoming known publicly.

Holder was expected to face aggressive questioning over the clemency and other issues Thursday from Republicans during a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing. GOP lawmakers have indicated they expect to approve Holder as Barack Obama's pick to run the job. But the hearing promised to be the most contentious so far among Obama's Cabinet choices.

"Everyone is asking why would a man who helped terrorists get out of jail be nominated for a Cabinet position, especially now that our whole world is infected by terrorism?" said Senft, who retired from the police department weeks ago.

Senft suffered hearing damage and other injuries, including a broken hip, when he hit the ground in the 1982 bombing at a federal building in Manhattan. Armed Forces of National Liberation, or FALN for its Spanish initials, claimed responsibility for that bombing and more than 100 others, which killed six people and injured dozens more.

Among the matters confronting Holder:

_Clinton's pardon, on his last day in office, of fugitive financier Marc Rich. Rich's wife was a major donor to the Democratic Party and to Clinton's library. Holder urged Rich's lawyer to solicit a pardon directly from the White House, bypassing a traditional, lengthier review at the Justice Department that would have included checking with prosecutors. Holder said he was "neutral, leaning toward favorable" on a pardon.

_His decision against recommending an independent investigation of fundraising by then-Vice President Al Gore. Gore's money-raising phone calls from the White House created a political uproar during the Clinton administration's second term.

_His efforts in 2004 to become a special investigator for the Illinois Gaming Board. The job, under Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich, would have paid Holder and his Washington law firm up to $300,000. The board did not hire Holder and the probe was scrapped.

_The government raid in April 2000 that led to the return of a Cuban boy, Elian Gonzales, to his homeland over the objection of many Cuban-Americans in Miami.

Democrats have asked President George Bush's former Homeland Security adviser, Frances Fragos Townsend, and a former FBI director, Louis Freeh, to testify on behalf of Holder.

Senft said he believes Clinton's decision on the commutations for 16 prisoners was intended to help Hillary Rodham Clinton's campaign for the Senate in New York, home to more than 1 million Puerto Ricans. At the time, she said she opposed her husband's decision, while adding she understood "the really strong feelings that my friends in the Puerto Rican community have on this issue."

"All the devastation, all the people killed and maimed," Senft said, "and our good president decides to grant them clemency because his wife is running for senator, and Holder helped him do it. It's a horrible travesty, an unjust thing."

Even Democrats criticized Clinton's clemency for the Puerto Ricans. The Senate and House each denounced the action.

Republicans are renewing their objections, anticipating the chance to ask Holder about the case under oath and with cameras running.

"I don't see any justifiable motivation" for the clemency, Sen. Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania, the senior Republican on the Judiciary Committee, said this week on MSNBC.

Among those scheduled to testify at Holder's hearing will be Richard Hahn, a retired FBI agent. He said several of the Puerto Ricans freed by Clinton were co-conspirators in planning FALN crimes, which including bombings, robberies and murders.

"These were not activists walking around with signs, these were violent terrorists," Hahn said in an interview with The Associated Press. "And anyone in our government that cared to learn that could have learned by simply contacting the FBI."

From 1975 to 1988, Hahn investigated FALN crimes. He objected to the clemency, he said, because a number of FALN-related crimes remain unsolved, fugitive co-conspirators never were arrested, prisoners showed no remorse and there was no agreement with the prisoners to cooperate with authorities.

Clinton said in 1999 his clemency decision was influenced by South African Archbishop Desmond Tutu and former President Jimmy Carter. At the time, the government said none of those whose sentences commuted was directly responsible for deaths or injuries. That was disputed by Sen. Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, who then led the Judiciary Committee. Republicans complained that under today's sentencing guidelines, the prisoners would have been sentenced to 30 years to life.

In newly disclosed documents, first reported by the Los Angeles Times last week, then-U.S. pardon attorney Roger Adams expressed concerns that the department's recommendation raising the possibility of clemency would become publicly known. "It is particularly important that the proposed report be kept on very close hold," Adams wrote in August 1998 to Kevin Ohlson, who was Holder's chief of staff. "A 'leak' of the proposed report would be disastrous."

Holder was asked by senators in October 1999 whether it was a mistake not to notify bombing victims and their families that President Clinton was considering clemency for the bombers.

"I think we could have done a better job," Holder said.