By Ross Balano, Kansas City Star Midwest Voices panelist

The Los Angeles Times has a video tape of a 2003 farewell party for Rashid Khalidi, a university professor who was a spokesman for the Palestine Liberation Organization and Yasser Arafat but they won’t let us see it. Why? What don’t they want us to see?

Attending the event was Barack Obama and that unrepentant terrorist, what’s his name…..you remember that guy Obama doesn’t pal around with? Oh yeah, William Ayers and Ayers' wife.

So what’s on that tape that The Times doesn’t want us to see? Maybe it’s Obama’s reaction when a young Palestinian read a poem accusing Israel of terrorism and remarks that were critical of the United States for supporting Israel. Maybe Obama applauded or was part of a standing ovation. We may never know.

Or maybe it shows Obama sitting next to Ayers, that guy he hardly even knows, at the dinner table. They wouldn’t want us to see that. Why someone might get the wrong idea and think there was more to that relationship than Obama would like to let on. Maybe they really were “pallin’ around.”

The Times should release the video. As John McCain put it, "I guarantee you, if there was a tape with me and Sarah Palin and some neo-Nazi or one of those, you think that that tape wouldn't be made public? Of course, Americans need to know, particularly about Ayers, and also about the PLO. So hopefully there will be enough pressure on the L.A. Times that it'll come out, but it’s really unfortunate that we have to go through this."

So let’s see: We cannot see any of Obama’s college work. We cannot see his birth records because they were sealed by the governor of Hawaii this week. Now we cannot see The Times’ video. What is Obama hiding?

We may never know thanks to a mainstream media trying desperately to protect Obama.