So Called "Smears" About Obama Largely True

At least journalism still has some life in it over at Newsmax:
The Obama campaign says its candidate is a victim of “smears” — and has even created a Web site to fight such attacks.
But a Newsmax investigation finds many of the so-called smears are largely based in truth — and the Obama campaign uses half-truths, clever language, and ad hominem attacks to spin the facts.
Obama’s www.FightTheSmears.com focuses mainly on anti-Obama messages being repeated on the Internet and talk radio, the only media where Obama's ideological allies are not dominant.
These "smears" and the Obama rebuttals are often framed in lawyerly language that leaves much wiggle room in the candidate’s answers.
FightTheSmears.com also makes no attempt at objectivity, describing Obama’s critics as “pushing misleading research and distorted claims” because they are “ideologues” busy “spreading a ‘pack of lies’ about Barack.” ...

Here is an example:

...Claim No. 4: Obama has close ties with the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (ACORN), a group suspected of massive voter registration fraud.
Obama’s site says the candidate was never an ACORN employee and that ACORN “was not part of Project Vote, the successful voter registration drive [Obama] ran in 1992.”
As Newsmax has documented in ["Clever Obama Tries To Bury ACORN Past,"]

Obama’s Web site is attempting to deceive when it says Obama was never “hired” to work as a trainer for ACORN’s leaders. In fact, he did the work for free from at least 1993 until 2003.

ACORN spokesman Lewis Goldberg acknowledges in the Oct. 11, 2008, New York Times that Obama trained ACORN leaders. And Obama worked as a lawyer for ACORN.

As to heading up Project Vote in Illinois, Obama said during a speech to ACORN leaders last November, "[When] I ran the Project Vote voter registration drive in Illinois, ACORN was smack-dab in the middle of it.”

Veteran journalist Karen Tumulty described Project Vote in the Oct. 18, 2004, issue of Time magazine as “a nonpartisan arm of the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now” after interviewing its national director.

The co-founder of ACORN, former Students for a Democratic Society official Wade Rathke, described Project Vote as one of ACORN’s “family of organizations.”

Over the years, ACORN and its front groups, like the one Obama ran in Illinois, have registered more than 4 million voters. When authorities in Virginia checked ACORN registrations, it found that 83 percent were fraudulent or had problems. This, in theory, could mean ACORN may have created the opportunity for stealing more than 3.3 million votes in this November’s election, a margin far wider than that by which Obama is likely to win. (more here)