Keith Olbermann on MSNBCs Countdown last night:
OLBERMANN: Why do William Ayers and the Reverend Jeremiah Wright matter? The answer, we are told, has to do with Barack Obama's judgment and character, judgment in choosing to associate with them, judgment in choosing to serve on a board with Ayers, character in choosing not to walk out on Wright's rhetoric.
Marilyn Shannon, who defended the woman who shot the doctor, and whom the sentencing judge described as a terrorist, was a McCain delegate at the GOP convention last month
In our fourth story: What we learn applying this litmus test to John McCain.We told you last night about the U.S. Council for World Freedom on whose board John McCain sat for years. But while Ayers was a rehabilitated terrorist when Obama served on a board with him, what about McCain's fellow board members in the '80s?
What about fellow board member, Anthony Bouscaren-a veteran of the Pioneer Fund, a eugenics group researching white superiority? Or fellow board member, Jay Parker, a registered foreign agent for the apartheid government of South Africa in the late '70s?
And if board co-membership is so toxic, what about McCain's list of endorsements today, including Leonore Annenberg, widow of philanthropist Walter Annenberg, who created the project on which both Ayers and Obama served?
And what of Obama attending sermons by the Reverend Jeremiah Wright, never mind the fact that the teams of opposition researchers have yet to produce any evidence that Obama witnessed any of Wright's critics of America? If that tells us anything, what does August 30th, 1993 tell us? On that day, McCain attended a fund-raiser for the Oregon Citizens' Alliance. He can't claim he wasn't warned going in 30 protestors picketed him for endorsing the anti-gay group.
Prior to McCain's appearance there, a Republican senator, a colleague of his, Mark Hatfield, warned Senator McCain not to do it. McCain's own staffers called it "The invitation from hell," the Oregonian newspaper reported. An Arizona newspaper column previewed the speech with this headline, quote, "Hate Group Finds Friend in McCain."
And yet, McCain went, sat silently, offered no rebuke during or after the remarks of this woman, Marilyn Shannon, who praised a local woman who had just shot a doctor less than two weeks earlier. A doctor who was a former Navy flight surgeon, a sonogram pioneer, was shot in both arms because he performed legal abortions.
Unlike Ayers, who did not endorse terrorist activities during his meetings with Obama, this woman, Shannon, said of the shooter, as McCain sat there, quote, "Shes a fine lady." A judge later sentenced this "fine lady" for a campaign of, yes, bombing womens clinics said, quote, "Though, I am loathed to call anyone a terrorist, you are a terrorist."
And Marilyn Shannon, who defended that terrorist, who later said her praise did not mean she approves of others doing what that terrorist did, as McCain renounced her even, she was a Bush delegate in 2004, seen here with a purple heart bandage, mocking the American combat veteran, John Kerry. This year, last month, she was a delegate for John McCain.
Judgment and character.