October 4, 2008, 7:44 P.M.

John,

I think Sarah Palin might have a point with this Bill Ayers business.

I’m not talking about her desperate attempt to frame Barack Obama as being “pals” with “terrorists who would target their own country.” Even McCain’s own advisors have confessed this is merely a ploy to distract voters from the economy, and the notion that Obama and former Weather Underground member Bill Ayers are in any way close is thoroughly debunked in today’s New York Times. CNN also points out that the rumor has been dismissed by The Washington Post, Time, The Chicago Sun-Times, The New Yorker, and even The National Review. Obama himself has condemned the man’s former actions, calling Ayers “somebody who engaged in detestable acts 40 years ago, when I was 8.”

But Palin’s comments hint at a conspiracy far more nefarious. Obama and Ayers first became associated when Ayers, who is now an education professor at the University of Illinois-Chicago, helped win a $50 million grant from philanthropist Walter H. Annenberg, and Obama was asked by a third party to help determine how the money should be distributed. If, as Sarah Palin says, Bill Ayers is still a terrorist bent on destroying America then the Annenberg Foundation is guilty of funneling tens of millions of dollars to known terrorists.

Now that Palin’s running mate is aware of these facts, John McCain cannot be satisfied with merely using them to attack Barack Obama’s character. As a United States senator, it is his duty to call for an immediate investigation of the Annenberg Foundation. Their assets should be frozen, their trustees tried for treason, and all other organizations funded with Annenberg money should be considered potential terrorist organizations. A partial list of these include:

• The Archdiocese of Philadelphia
• The University of Notre Dame
• The Betty Ford Center
• Big Brothers and Big Sisters of Los Angeles
• Boy Scouts of America
• The Boys and Girls Club
• Chess In the Schools, Inc.
• Gerald R. Ford School of Public Policy
• Home of the Merciful Savior for Crippled Children
• Jazz at Lincoln Center
• Little League Baseball
• Los Angeles Museum of the Holocaust
• Mr. Holland’s Opus Foundation
• Naval War College Foundation
• Oregon School for the Deaf
• Painted Turtle Gang Camp Foundation
• Reading Is Fundamental
• Sesame Workshop
• The Carter Center
• United Negro College Fund
• McSweeney’s

John McCain and Sarah Palin should demand federal raids on all of these groups before they can move their assets offshore and reorganize in Yemen. In a world as black and white as the one in which Sarah Palin lives, it would be unpatriotic to do anything less.

But as long as guilt by association is fair play, shouldn’t we look closely at Sarah Palin’s very intimate association with one of the key figures of the savings and loan scandal of the 1980s? As we confront perhaps the greatest financial crisis of our generation, can we really trust the judgment of someone who freely chooses to associate herself so closely with John McCain?

Maybe she needs to hold a press conference in which she distances herself by dismissing McCain as “somebody who engaged in detestable acts when I was 23.”

—Kevin

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