Press searching for scandals - going after Edwards and Obama. Seems pathetic.

Identity of Edwards Home's Buyers Veiled
Assisted-Living Magnates in SEC Probe Paid Candidate $5.2 Million

By John Solomon and Lois Romano
Washington Post Staff Writers
Friday, January 19, 2007; Page A01

When former North Carolina senator and Democratic presidential candidate John Edwards finally succeeded last month in selling his imposing Georgetown mansion for $5.2 million after it had languished on the market, the names of the buyers were not publicly disclosed.

At the time, Edwards's spokeswoman told reporters that the house had been sold to an unidentified corporation. In reality, the buyers were Paul and Terry Klaassen, according to several sources and confirmed by Edwards's spokeswoman yesterday.

The wealthy founders of the nation's largest assisted-living housing chain for seniors, the Klaassens are currently cooperating with a government inquiry in connection with accounting practices and stock options exercised by them and other company insiders. They are also the focus of legal complaints by some of the same labor unions whose support Edwards has been assiduously courting for his presidential bid.

The grand 18th-century house had lingered on Washington's slowing real estate market for more than 18 months. The Edwardses paid $3.8 million in 2002 for the six-bedroom Federal-style house once owned by socialite Polly Fritchey, and they did substantial renovations. The final sale price was half a million dollars below the asking price but still $1.4 million more than the Edwardses paid four years earlier.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/01/18/AR2007011802077.html

Obama's Autobiography
18 Jan 2007 11:09 am

Does he have a James Frey problem? I like Obama, but you've got to worry when a campaign dismisses something as a "non-story." That almost always means it's a real one.

Chicago Sun-Times on Obama's Book: 'What's Real, What's Not'
January 16, 2007 3:09 PM

Rhonda Schwartz Reports:

The Chicago Sun-Times columnist who got the scoop on Barack Obama's presidential announcement today is the same reporter who earlier raised serious questions about the facts in Obama's much-praised autobiography that was the No. 1 bestseller in the country.
Lynn Sweet, the savvy Chicago political columnist who's been tracking Obama's rise, called into question Obama's use of composite characters and made-up names in his highly praised autobiography.

-snip-
As Sweet noted in her article, in the introduction of the book, Obama does disclose to his readers the use of composite characters "for the sake of compression" and also says that other than his family and public figures, other characters' "names have been changed to protect their privacy."

-snip-
Sweet questioned Obama about Kaufman's true identity and the other composites in the book in an interview just prior to the 2004 Chicago Democratic Convention. Obama said that while he couldn't remember all the real names, he said "Marty Kaufman" was really "Gerald Kellman," his first boss at the Calumet Community Religious Conference in Chicago.
Sweet tracked down Kellman who had no complaints about his portrayal in the book. "I think Barack was very accurate not only about myself but other people that I knew," Kellman told the reporter.

-snip-
Obama's response? "'I say in the book it is my remembrances of what happened,' Obama told me . I don't set it out as reportage...read the book for what it is worth.
'You reconstruct your memory for what happened. It is not reportage. It is not appearing in the New York Times or the Sun-Times. I say that explicitly in the book.'"

http://blogs.abcnews.com/theblotter/2007/01/chicago_suntime.html

THE RICOCHET SMEAR:
A while back I predicted that conservatives would shamelessly smear Barack Obama and then blame the smearing on Hillary Clinton. Today I saw this article (via the Corner) about Obama from the conservative magazine Insight, which breathlessly asks:




Of course, it's not Insight asking this question, the article goes on to explain, it's Hillary. The article continues:


The attribution on all this is broad enough ("political opponents within the Democratic Party"; "researchers connected to Senator Clinton") that I suppose this information about Obama could have originated with people in Clinton's orbit. But let's not forget where this information appeared. And let's be on the lookout for who goes on the cable shows and wonders whether "Barrack Hussein Obama" is "The Manchurian Madrassa Candidate." Something tells me it isn't going to be Hillary, or any liberal for that matter.

--Jason Zengerle

http://www.tnr.com/blog/theplank?pid=72792