Rush's Ghost-Writing Charge
Rush Limbaugh charged in a Fox TV interview that Barack Obama's law review articles were ghost-written for him.
Former White House associate counsel Brad Berenson, who served on the Harvard Law Review with Obama, disputes this allegation.
These charges are not accurate. As a 2L [second year law] student, Barack wrote the same amount as all of his 2L peers, although by policy of the Harvard Law Review, no student writing is signed or attributed to individual authors. As a 3L, it is true that he did not write, but that is because he was the President of the Review. Because the President does so much editing, including of all the major faculty articles, he is not expected to author original pieces himself and almost never does so. I saw Barack hunched over manuscripts editing articles on many a late night at Gannett House. He simply could not have been elected President if he was not regarded by his fellow editors as being among the best legal writers and legal minds in his class.
I should add here that I know Brad well. If he says something is so, it is so. It's also worth mentioning in this context that Brad is not only one of the most eminent criminal defense lawyers in Washington (Sidley & Austin by the way if you are a client seeking representation), but also a very strong conservative with very little time for the Obama administration's policies.
One more thing worth adding in this context. As the acknowledgments to the volumes make clear, both of Rush Limbaugh's own books were ghosted for him, 1992's The Way Things Ought To Be by John Fund of the Wall Street Journal, and 1993's See I Told You So by Joseph Farrah, now of World Net Daily.