A state-funded university in Illinois is withholding crucial documents that could shed more light on Barack Obama’s close ties to a domestic terrorist who planted bombs in the Capitol, Pentagon and other government buildings to protest U.S. policy.

In an apparent cover up, the University of Illinois at Chicago (UIC) refuses to make public hundreds of files that document the Democratic presidential candidate’s decades-long relationship with William Ayers, a Vietnam-era radical and former fugitive from U.S. justice who has proudly admitted setting the bombs in the 1970s.

Ayers, a member of the domestic terrorist group Weather Underground, is currently a professor at UIC and the school’s library—named after Chicago’s former longtime corrupt Democrat Mayor Richard J. Daley—houses 132 boxes containing nearly 1,000 folders of records relating to Obama’s ties to Ayers, various radical organizations and other questionable political allies.

Ayers and his wife, a fellow Weather Underground terrorist, have long supported and collaborated with Obama, donating money to his campaign and hosting fundraising events at their home. The Illinois senator and aging radical hang out in the same political and social circles, live in the same Chicago neighborhood and for years served on the board of a renowned Chicago nonprofit.

The mainstream media has largely ignored this quite relevant relationship, but one journalist has tried (unsuccessfully) to access the crucial files because they will reveal Obama’s personal, financial and ideological ties with Ayers as well as other radical groups. After all, Obama could be the next commander-in-chief and Americans have the right to know.

After initially agreeing to make the files public, the school reneged claiming that the mystery donor—believed to be Ayers—who provided the collection refuses to make the information public. The UIC professor in charge of the library’s special collections department later provided a rather bizarre explanation for the sudden change of heart by saying that it has come to the school’s attention that there is “restricted” material in the collection.

Americans learned of Obama’s scary relationship with Ayers just a few months ago despite his campaign’s efforts to distance him from the renowned terrorist. After planting the bombs, Ayers was a fugitive from U.S. justice for a decade and his group was officially labeled a terrorist group by the FBI.

None of this stopped Obama from joining forces with the Chicago radical who launched a successful grass roots effort to spearhead the senator’s thriving political career. Now the details of this alarming relationship, kept at a taxpayer-financed university, are being withheld from Americans.

As the mainstream media ignores rising national security threats by portraying illegal immigrants as harmless, poverty-stricken folks in search of a better life, violence on the southern border escalates and Mexico’s own Department of Justice has released alarming figures illustrating the crisis.

Desperate poor people in search of the American dream are hardly the only ones transiting the dangerously porous southern border. Heavily armed human and drug smugglers have practically taken over the U.S. southern border and the violence has for years been reported by groups on the northern side. This week, after years of denial, Mexico has finally admitted there is a problem.

The Mexican Department of Justice released an alarming report this week listing items seized from organized crime rings in 2008 alone. It includes 226 aircraft, nearly $277 million dollars, 61 tons of cocaine, close to 3,000 tons of marihuana, 8,923 firearms—5,178 of them long barrel—611 grenades and a million rounds of ammunition.

U.S. authorities have long revealed the dangers along the 2,000-mile U.S.-Mexico border while Mexican officials, either disputed the statistics or refused to respond. In late 2006 an investigative committee of the Department of Homeland Security released a report detailing how Middle Eastern terrorists, violent Mexican drug cartels and sophisticated human smugglers regularly use the Southwest border to illegally enter the United States.

It included findings from a crucial U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement investigation that documents how members of Hezbollah and other deadly Middle Eastern terrorist groups have entered the U.S. through the Mexican border.

Subsequent reports have illustrated how heavily armed Mexican human and drug smugglers have transformed large portions of the U.S. border into crime-infested corridors where gunfire and murder are commonplace. Others have revealed that violent assaults on U.S. Border Patrol agents are on the rise by illegal immigrants armed with weapons, big rocks and even Molotov cocktails—makeshift bombs made of a breakable container filled with flammable liquid.

Mexican officials and ambassadors working in the U.S. have vehemently denied that their citizens are violent, but rather peaceful people seeking a better life. This new admission from the country’s justice department is certainly a vindication that proves illegal alien advocates wrong.

The deadbeat California congresswoman, who abused her political power to get back one of the properties she let foreclose, is in trouble again for allowing a house in an upper middle-class neighborhood to become a rat-infested public nuisance.

The Sacramento Code Enforcement Department has declared the home of Democrat Laura Richardson, who represents parts of Los Angeles County’s poorest black neighborhoods in the state House, an official public nuisance and threatened to fine her as much as $5,000 a month if she doesn’t fix it.

Neighbors actually called police to complain about the abandoned house with a broken gate, dead grass and plants, boarded up doors and windows covered with brown paper. The city’s code enforcement inspectors visited the property last month and found “junk and debris” in the driveway and “rotting fruit on the ground in the rear yard which creates rodent harborage.”

The home is one of three that Richardson let foreclose after using it to get cash to finance her political career. The two other houses are located in the southern California cities of San Pedro and Long Beach. In all, Richardson borrowed about $200,000 from the properties before defaulting on the loans. She also owes thousands more in property taxes.

In May, the three-bedroom, one and a half-bath Sacramento home now known as an eye sore was sold to a contractor at a foreclosure auction for $388,000. Richardson also owed Sacramento County nearly $10,000 in property taxes. The contractor recorded the home’s deed on May 19 and he painted it, laid tile and redid the landscaping.

But Richardson wanted the house back and utilized her political clout with the lender, Washington Mutual. In what experts unrelated to this case call an unheard of action, the bank filed a letter of rescission of the foreclosure sale and demanded the new buyer return the keys. Richardson soon got the house back.

With an annual legislative salary of $169,300 you would think Richardson could afford to fix the house she bullied the bank to regain. The former Long Beach city councilwoman is up for reelection in November but has no viable opponent and is expected to cruise to a victory.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has warned a four-term Connecticut senator that he could lose a powerful committee chairmanship for criticizing Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama, whom she calls a great leader for the future.

Upset that Joe Lieberman, the longtime Democrat turned independent, is campaigning for Republican John McCain rather than her beloved Obama, Madam Speaker has publicly blasted the traitor for, among other things, making “totally irresponsible” remarks about the Illinois senator.

The veteran San Francisco congresswoman also threatened that Lieberman’s remarks may cost him his position as chairman of the Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee. Incidentally, Pelosi is also very angry at some of Hillary Clinton’s supporters for being “less than gracious” toward Obama. No word yet on what their punishment will be.

So what was it that Lieberman said that was so offensive to Pelosi? While campaigning for McCain in Pennsylvania, he questioned Obama’s patriotism when he called the upcoming presidential election a choice between one candidate (McCain) who has always put his country first and worked across party lines to get things done and one candidate that has not.

The House Speaker probably got really, really angry when Lieberman slammed Obama the next day for exhibiting “inexperience” when it comes to the escalating conflict between Russia and Georgia. Maybe Pelosi will threaten to strip Lieberman of his office over that one.

Pelosi explained on a local radio show why she’s so protective of Obama. It’s because he’s a really great leader for the future and those only come along every now and then. Republicans know this, according to the Speaker, so they have to undermine him. Their best weapon, she says, is to use someone who is considered by some to be a Democrat.

It’s official. The nation’s second-largest city, led by a self-proclaimed Chicano mayor, has passed legislation requiring retailers to accommodate illegal immigrant day laborers who create a nuisance when they hang out in parking lots and surrounding neighborhoods looking for work.

Under the new measure, approved unanimously by the Los Angeles City Council this week, home improvement stores that are 100,000 square feet or larger must provide shelters that are easily accessible and equipped with drinking water, bathrooms, tables with seating and trash facilities.

Initially approved by the city’s Planning and Land Use Management Committee, the new "Day Laborer Operating Standards" also require the home-improvement stores to develop a security plan in consultation with local police. That’s because the illegal immigrants who typically loiter in parking lots and surrounding neighborhoods often harass residents, block traffic, urinate in public and litter.

The councilman who spearheaded this rather outrageous law, former Los Angeles Police Chief Bernard Parks, assures that the city is not using it to protect illegal immigrants but rather to provide “dignity” for workers (who are in the country illegally) and control problems where there are no day laborer shelters.

Parks disclosed that the city currently spends about $2 million a year for day labor centers and those taxpayer dollars could be better spent on police, streets or parks within the sprawling municipality of about 4 million residents. A fellow councilman blamed the day laborer crisis on a popular home improvement store, saying that it has not managed the phenomena created by its marketing and targeting of customers that need the temporary workers.

The reality is that the City of Angels is a notorious illegal immigrant sanctuary that even forbids its police department from inquiring about suspects’ immigration status (Special Order 40), a policy legally challenged by Judicial Watch. To blame the crisis on a retail outlet is absurd and unfair when city officials and law enforcement agencies also play a huge role in it.

The North Carolina senator who cheated on his ailing, cancer-stricken wife while she worked on his failed presidential campaign, used political funds to pay the mistress, purchase a multi million-dollar home for her and transport her on private jets.

The bombshell story that the mainstream media refused to cover gets juicier by the day as the tabloid that broke it digs up more incriminating details about John Edwards’ secret affair with a younger woman that he met at a bar and kept close with a bogus campaign job. A child was conceived and, although Edwards denies it’s his, the facts contradict his story.

While the infidelity paints the portrait of an unethical and sleazy politician who used his sick wife to further his career, it is not necessarily illegal. But using campaign money to pay off the mistress and buy her lavish gifts could be. Edwards began the extramarital affair long before he hired his mistress (Rielle Hunter) to produce campaign videos, according to a news report.

With no previous filmmaking experience, Hunter was paid $114,000 by the senator’s political action committee to produce a series of internet videos that incidentally included shots of the two flirting. There has also been quite a bit of hush money and a $3 million home in an exclusive Santa Barbara California community.

Angry Edwards donors are demanding a refund. One pointed out on an internet web site that the disgraced senator should return contributions because they went to his girlfriend. Another says that those who donated money to Edwards helped pay for the $114,000 his mistress got to make three YouTube videos and accompany him around the world on a private jet.

A major U.S. city is on the verge of approving an ordinance requiring home-improvement stores to set aside space for day laborers—mostly illegal immigrants—seeking employment from customers to congregate.

Under the plan stores that are 100,000 square feet or larger must provide shelters that are easily accessible and equipped with drinking water, bathrooms, tables with seating and trash facilities. A crucial Los Angeles City Council Committee (Planning and Land Use Management) recently approved the measure unanimously and the actual council is set to vote on it this week.

The City of Angels’ new "Day Laborer Operating Standards" would also require the home-improvement stores to develop a security plan in consultation with local police. That’s because the illegal immigrants who typically loiter in parking lots and surrounding neighborhoods are a public nuisance, often harassing residents, blocking traffic, urinating in public and littering.

Los Angeles already operates eight day laborer sites throughout the city at annual cost of nearly $200,000, supposedly with “grant” dollars. Now the city’s government is demanding amenities that will improve and facilitate the lives of illegal immigrants who have broken the law.

One editorial—titled “Lounges for Laborers?”—opposing the measure because it will burden retailers points out that it’s not fundamentally fair for a municipal government to force businesses to bear the costs associated with day laborers. It should also be illegal.

A top aide to an indicted Pennsylvania state senator has admitted that he followed his powerful boss’s orders to destroy incriminating electronic mail sought by federal agents investigating the lawmaker for corruption.

The aide was the manager of computer services for Philadelphia Democrat Vincent Fumo, who was charged last year with 139 counts of conspiracy, fraud, obstruction of justice and filing false tax returns for stealing more than $2 million from the state Senate, a nonprofit and a museum. His federal trial is scheduled for next month.

When federal authorities began investigating Fumo, the veteran politician ordered the aide (Leonard Luchko) to erase electronic mail being sought by agents investigating his corruption case. Luchko also managed the computers of senate staff members as well as scores of contractors that did business with the office.

While pleading guilty to 28 counts of obstruction of justice this week, Luchko told a federal judge that he followed Fumo’s orders when he cleansed computer files at the senator’s office and home as well as his Black Berry of potentially damaging data from 2003 to 2005.

A 267-page federal indictment accuses Fumo of defrauding the Senate of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania by repeatedly using Senate employees and contractors to serve his personal and political needs. It also charges the senator of defrauding a nonprofit organization that he established to improve neighborhoods in Philadelphia County by using its funds and employees for personal and political benefit.

Prosecutors say the veteran legislator also defrauded a museum whose board he sat on of more than $100,000. The indictment, which was filed in February 2007, also names several of Fumo’s aides, including Luchko, for extensive obstruction of justice.