"Whitewatering Obama"

Tim Dickinson (Rolling Stone):

While it’s true that Hillary Clinton was a corporate lawyer on the Wal Mart board, there’s far less to Obama’s “slumlord” connection than Hillary suggested last night:

The Associated Press:

Fresh out of Harvard law school, Obama worked at the Chicago firm of Davis, Miner, Barnhill & Galland. Rezko was among clients of the firm, a fact Clinton noted during the debate.

Attorneys there say Obama never represented Rezko directly. The future senator did represent community organizations that were Rezko partners in rehabilitating buildings to provide apartments for the poor….

Judson Miner, a partner in the firm, said that Obama’s role was small. He said Obama did perhaps six or seven hours of work on such projects, mainly filing incorporation papers for the nonprofit groups….

As for the apartment buildings, as a first-year associate with the law firm, Obama would not have been doing much decision making. And he would have had no control over what happened to the apartments, some of which ended up in poor condition with numerous code violations.

Barack Obama