Barack Obama is trying to sic the Justice Department on a group he doesn't like.
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.
Obama has also launched his own response ad, directly addressing Simmons' attempt to link him to domestic terror.
Of course, Obama doesn't address the groups running the ad; he attacks John McCain.
"With all our problems, why is John McCain talking about the '60s, trying to link Barack Obama to radical Bill Ayers?" says Obama’s ad. "McCain knows Obama denounced Ayers' crimes, committed when Obama was just 8 years old."
John McCain isn't the one who has raised this issue. But by responding to it, Obama has now made it fair game. Can this campaign get dumber?
The Obama camp has decided to bully stations that run the ads, sending in letters and targeting advertisers. As DRJ at Patterico's Pontifications notes, "they said there would be efforts to quash speech after George W. Bush was elected President. They were right."
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