On one hand, Team Obama rails against presumptive 2008 Republican presidential candidate Senator John Sidney McCain’s associations with lobbyists (even though McCain eschews earmarks and their candidate freely uses them) and solicitation of the political endorsement of Rev. John Hagee (as though that solicitation signified that McCain embraced all of Rev. Hagee’s political and religious views instead of McCain's hope that Rev. Hagee would conclude that McCain is the best viable candidate).

On the other hand, Team Obama whines that their man’s close associations with crazed “religious leaders” like Rev. Jeremiah A. “God damn America” Wright, Jr. and Father Michael Pflager, convicted criminals like Tony Rezko, radical terrorists like William Ayers, foreign extremists like Kenya’s Raila Odinga and communists like Frank Marshall Davis should be ignored by voters.

The truth is that Obama has a huge guilty association problem of his own making and voters would be both foolish and derelict in their duty as voters if they ignored it.

Wikipedia defines “guilt by association” as “[a]n association fallacy is an inductive formal fallacy of the type hasty generalization or red herring which asserts that qualities of one thing are inherently qualities of another, merely by an irrelevant association.”

A key word in that definition is “irrelevant.”

Relevant associations SHOULD be considered.

In the old “Batman” television series starring Adam West, there was an episode in which the villainous Penguin ran for Mayor of Gotham City against Batman and campaigned on the theme that he regularly associated with police while Batman was to be found with criminals.

Of course, the Penguin did NOT point out that the police with whom he was shown in his ad were arresting him for his distardly crimes while Batman was fighting the criminals with whom he was depicted in the ad.

Context matters.

My article on presumptive 2008 Democrat presidential candidate Barack Hussein Obama, Jr.’s most known (NOT so well known these days) North Carolina supporters: the political phony former Senator John Edwards, now admittedly an adulterer and a liar; his wife Elizabeth, who, while knowing the truth, nevertheless enthusiastically promoted him as a moral values presidential candidate even as he publicly lied about his relationship with his mistress; and the despicable political opportunist and race card player, former Durham County, North Carolina District Attorney Michael B. Nifong, who used former position of public trust for the vilest of political and personal purposes by pretending that the members of the 2005-2006 Duke University Men’s Lacrosse Team were either rapists/sexual assaulters/kidnappers or covering up for teammates whom they knew or had good reason to believe were rapists/sexual assaulters/kidnappers, because he desperately needed the black vote to win an election and keep his job, the ex-convict stropper who was claiming to be a victim happened to be black, all but one of the team members happened to be white and persecuting the innocent would provide him with (temporary) political salvation.

It’s certainly true that (1) candidates often are supported by persons whose support they would rather not have (at least publicly) and (2) the inferences to be drawn from political and personal associations should be carefully considered.

Thus, I don’t blame Obama because (as reported) white supremacists expect that if Obama is elected President, their number will increase. That surely is not Obama’s goal. We know that Obama is no white supremacist. If white supremacist ranks ever increase, it will not be because Obama wanted that result.

Likewise, if the number of black supremacists increases, it will not be because either Obama or McCain wanted that result.

But the saying that “a person is known by the company he (or she) keeps” is a sensible one.

It IS relevant that Obama (1) chose the black liberation theology church of Rev. Wright as his church when he flipped from atheist/agnostic to Christian and (2) quietly stayed a member for so many years, until Rev. Wright had become a political albatross who absolutely had to be abandoned.

It is also relevant that at the time he left that church, he nevertheless praised it and Rev. Wright’s chosen successor, Rev. Otis Moss, a defender, if not a disciple, of Rev. Wright.

It is especially relevant because Obama praised Rev. Wright so greatly in his biography, Dreams From My Father, and even took the title of his presidential campaign book, The Audacity of Hope, from the sermon by Rev. Wright that supposedly had moved him so powerfully.

It is especially relevant that Obama first invited and then dis-invited Rev. Wright to give the invocation when Obama announced his presidential campaign last year and prayer privately with Rev. Wright just before the announce after telling Rev. Wright not to appear in public with him because Rev. Wright’s sermons could be “rough.”

Just as the Edwards family was trying to fool the voters about John Edwards' character, the Obama campaign was trying to fool the voters into believing that Obama was a candidate who transcends race and not a faithful follower of a crazed anti-America black racist like Rev. Wright.

Likewise, Obama’s association with William Ayers, an unrepentant domestic terrorist from the Vietnam War era, is telling.

It is telling that Obama married the former Michelle LaVaughn Robinson, who wrote in her college senior thesis that she put the Black community “first and foremost.” (No wonder she stayed with Rev. Wright so long!)

It is telling that the persons who selected Obama to deliver the keynote address at the 2004 Democrat national convention were the 2004 Democrat presidential candidate, Senator John Kerry of Massachusetts, and his colleague, Senator Ted Kennedy.

It is telling that Obama was slow to support Georgia as a victim of Russian aggression, especially when his reaction is contrasted with his strong support of unsuccessful Kenyan presidential candidate and current Kenyan Prime Minister Raila Odinga, especially during the New Hampshire primary campaign. (Odinga was educated in then Communist East Germany, named his first child after Fidel Castro and contracted with Muslim extremists to impose Sharia law in Kenya in return for their political support. He claims to be Obama’s cousin. Obama campaigned for him the last time he visited Kenya and warned of the possibility of sending American troops to Kenya after Odinga complained that the Kenyan presidential campaign had been stolen from him.)

It is telling that Obama's childhood mentor, Frank Marshall Davis, was a communist.Cliff Kincaid, Accuracy in Media, “Obama’s Communist Mentor,” February 18, 2008:

”In his books, Obama admits attending ‘socialist conferences’ and coming into contact with Marxist literature. But he ridicules the charge of being a ‘hard-core academic Marxist,’ which was made by his colorful and outspoken 2004 U.S. Senate opponent, Republican Alan Keyes.

“However, through Frank Marshall Davis, Obama had an admitted relationship with someone who was publicly identified as a member of the Communist Party USA (CPUSA). The record shows that Obama was in Hawaii from 1971-1979, where, at some point in time, he developed a close relationship, almost like a son, with Davis, listening to his ‘poetry’ and getting advice on his career path. But Obama, in his book, Dreams From My Father, refers to him repeatedly as just ‘Frank.’

“The reason is apparent: Davis was a known communist who belonged to a party subservient to the Soviet Union. In fact, the 1951 report of the Commission on Subversive Activities to the Legislature of the Territory of Hawaii identified him as a CPUSA member. What's more, anti-communist congressional committees, including the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC), accused Davis of involvement in several communist-front organizations.

“Trevor Loudon, a New Zealand-based libertarian activist, researcher and blogger, noted evidence that ‘Frank’ was Frank Marshall Davis in a posting in March of 2007.

It is telling that at a private fund raiser in San Francisco earlier this year Obama was taped denigrated Americans for “clinging” to religion and guns and explaining this attitude toward religion in Marxist terms.

It is telling that Obama voted NOT to confirm either Chief Justice John Roberts or Associate Justice Samuel A. Alito, Jr. and was rated the most liberal United States Senator by non-partisan National Journal.

It is telling that Obama is an abortion absolutist who wanted to deny Fourteenth Amendment protection to babies born alive as a result of botched abortions.

It is telling that Father Pfleger was an official part of the Obama campaign until the nation learned what kind of person Father Pfleger when excerpts from Father Pflger’s outrageous sermon (by invitation of his friend Rev. Wright) at Rev. Wright’s church (Trinity United Church of Christ in Chicago, Illinois) was broadcast and repeatedly rebroadcast on national television.

It is telling that Obama was part of the Million Man March of Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan (a good friend of both Rev. Wright and Father Pfleger).

The key is whether an association is relevant.

Choices of mentors, spiritual and political, are relevant.

So are a person’s political alliances.