The Times London is giving prominence today to a scoop about a bizarre attempt by Utah Republican congressman Chris Cannon and his brother-in-law Robert Fox to show that Obama's autobiography Dreams from my Father was in fact ghostwritten by William Ayers.
The full story is here.
According to the Times they last weekend contacted an Oxford Professor called Peter Millican, who has devised a program which can test whether works are by the same author, and asked him to compare Obama's autobiography with Ayers' Fugitive Days. They went as far as offering him $10,000 to run the tests, and sent him electronic copies of the two works.
Sadly for the two hopeful clients, things did not progress much further than that. When Millican took a preliminary look at the two works he found that the claims were - surprise, surprise - "very implausible".
Even though he reported this to them, they still wanted him to continue, until he made it clear that he would want the results to be made public whatever the outcome. As the Times delicately phrases it:
A deal was agreed for more detailed research but when Millican said the results had to be made public, even if no link to Ayers was proved, interest waned.
I know the guy's from Utah, but you'd think a Republican Congressman would be a little less delusional about this Ayers-Obama non-connection. But it seems they really believe their own propaganda: if they've spent millions of dollars telling people there's a serious connection between Obama and Ayers, then dammit it must be true! Last word should go to the prof:
Millican said: "I thought it was extremely unlikely that we would get a positive result. It is the sort of thing where people make claims after seeing a few crude similarities and go overboard on them."