BIAS? Obama Attended VP Debate Moderator's Wedding

The appearance of bias is as bad as actual bias. If you were on trial before a judge and found out that the Judge had attended the wedding of the prosecutor twenty years ago, even if the judge were the fairest and most honest judge in the world you would ask for a different jurist.  Actually allow me to restate that. If it were the fairest and most honest judge in the world, he would recuse himself from the that trial.

The moderator of the Vice Presidential debate, Martha Raddatz gives the appearance of bias, and as an attorney should recuse herself from moderating the debate.  An attendee of Harvard Law and member of the Law Review with the future president, they were friendly enough for her to invite and he to attend her first wedding. That marriage was to Julius Genachowski, whom Obama would later tap to head the Federal Communications Commission

After TheDailyCaller made preliminary inquiries Monday to confirm Obama’s attendance at the wedding, ABC leaked a pre-emptive statement to liberal-leaning news outlets including Politico and The Daily Beast Tuesday, revealing what may have been internal network pressure felt just days before Raddatz was scheduled to moderate the one and only vice-presidential debate Thursday night.

Both Politico and The Daily Beast jumped to ABC and Raddatz’s defense. The Huffington Post, another liberal news outlet, joined them shortly thereafter, while calling “unusual” ABC’s attempt to kill the story before it gained wide circulation.

A source who attended the 1991 wedding told TheDC that Obama was also a guest there, and remembered that a man by the name of “Barry Obama” was among the guests dancing at the reception.

In august The Daily Caller first connected Genachowski, an Obama appointee, to Raddatz following her selection as the vice presidential debate moderator by the left-leaning Commission on Presidential Debates. That debate, between Congressman Paul Ryan and Vice President Joe Biden, will take place Thursday night at Centre College in Danville, Kentucky.

Carol Platt Liebau, a political commentator who was a Harvard Law Review colleague of Genachowski and Obama, wrote that “despite being a year below both men on the Review and not close personal friends with either of them,” she remembered Genachowski and Raddatz’s relationship as “quite public” during those days, and that “Raddatz visited Boston frequently.”

Genachowski’s friendship with Obama would continue through the campaign trail in 2008 and into the White House: He aggressively fundraised for Obama in 2008 as a campaign bundler, and served on the presidential transition team before winning his appointment to chair the FCC.

On Monday evening ABC spokesman David Ford grudgingly confirmed Obama’s attendance at the wedding, after shielding Raddatz in August by declining to comment when The Daily Caller first reported the story.

“This is absurd,” Ford said, in the same statement now circulated by ABC’s media allies on the left.

Obama, Ford wrote, “attended their wedding over two decades ago along with nearly the entire Law Review, many of whom went onto successful careers, including some in the Bush administration,” he said without providing a specific number of Harvard Law Review employees to verify the statement.

I wonder how many members of the Bush administration are moderating debates?

When pressed further on Tuesday for a specific number of Harvard Law Review employees in attendance at the wedding, Ford could offer none, despite circulating the same unverified approximation through sympathetic media outlets earlier that day in order to discredit The Daily Caller’s reporting.

Ford also could not provide The Daily Caller with a specific number of Harvard Law Review employees who worked with Obama and Genachowski during that year. A photo taken of the Harvard Law Review during Obama and Genachowski’s final year of law school contains 70 people.

Time will tell if Martha Raddatz will be a fair moderator or not. However as anyone with a law school background would know her appearance of bias means she should recuse herself from moderating the debate. Sadly that is not in the cards. Now the pressure is on her, she will be watched for bias with extra care because of her background.