LGF has this link to Stanley Kurtz's reporting on B.Obama between '96 and '04. For sources he reached beyond the Sun-Times and Tribune to the black newspaper The Chicago Defender and to The Hyde Park Herald.

From Kurtz:

What they portray is a Barack Obama sharply at variance with the image of the post-racial, post-ideological, bipartisan, culture-war-shunning politician familiar from current media coverage and purveyed by the Obama campaign. As details of Obama’s early political career emerge into the light, his associations with such radical figures as Reverend Jeremiah Wright, Father Michael Pfleger, Reverend James Meeks, Bill Ayers, and Bernardine Dohrn look less like peculiar instances of personal misjudgment and more like intentional political partnerships. At his core, in other words, the politician chronicled here is profoundly race-conscious, exceedingly liberal, free-spending even in the face of looming state budget deficits, and partisan.

It seems to me that we still can see that same politician if we look carefully. Witness Obama's continued references to racism as he tries to disarm his critics, his trillion-dollar spending proposals, and his money and support ties to the gay and lesbian activists.