Indicted Chicago businessman Antoin "Tony" Rezko was a more significant fundraiser for presidential candidate Barack Obama's earlier political campaigns than previously known. Rezko raised as much as $250,000 for the first three offices Obama sought, the senator told the Tribune on Friday. Obama also said for the first time that his private real estate transactions with Rezko involved repeated lapses of judgment. The mistake, Obama said, was not simply that Rezko was under grand jury investigation at the time of their 2005 and 2006 dealings. "The mistake was he had been a contributor and somebody involved in politics," he said. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2008/03/14/tony-rezko-a-more-signifi_n_91652.html
Still, Obama said he did nothing unethical. "He never once asked me for any favors, or ever did any favors for me," the Illinois senator said in an interview with the Chicago Sun-Times. "He never gave me any gifts or gave me any indication he was setting me up to ask for any favors in the future." Obama met Friday with the editorial boards of the Chicago Tribune and Sun-Times in an effort to resolve nagging questions about his relationship with Rezko, a Chicago businessman and major fundraiser in Illinois politics. Obama is not accused of any wrongdoing. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2008/03/14/obama-admits-more-extensi_n_91652.html
Oh, he said he did nothing unethical. Okay, that makes it so... Obama also said for the first time that his private real estate transactions with Rezko involved repeated lapses of judgment. So only now does he admit it was a "lapse of judgment." Too funny... You voted for Bush in 2004, right? No surprise then that you back someone who had repeated lapses of judgment...
Unlike you, who in 5 years of Trolling these boards (banned 3 times for unacceptable behaviour) has never admitted one of your countless lapses in judgement, like the other day, when you suggested that if a man is attacked and hits back, he's not acting in self defence, he's acting out of 'vengeance', one of the most idiotic, knee-jerk liberal PC pieces of crap I have ever heard in my life That was an obvious lapse in judgement. Will you admit it? If not, keep your comments to yourself. Obama's admission that his transaction with this individual involved a lapse in judgement is itself a lapse in politically expedient judgement. Kind of refreshing, actually. Every politician who gets to his level has some insider deals in the past. Obama's lawyers obviously didn't tell him, in a timely manner, to never admit anything, ever, until they tell him to.
I think Obama's problems are partly the result of rocketing from being a small-time local pol, where at least in Chicago apparently, things like petty corruption and ties to black racists are acceptable, to being close to the presidency, where they are not. He didn't have 20 years in between to wash these stains from his record. His explanations and damage control have not exactly been up to Clinton standards either. Saying Rezko never asked for favors is a joke. Did Obama imagine that the guy gave him a quarter mill because he was interested in good government?