In the seventh year of Barack Obama’s presidency, many questions still remain unanswered about his life before he entered the White House. Mysteries surround his associations with a number of people, including Frank Marshall Davis, the Communist writer and activist who was a mentor to a young Obama when he lived in Hawaii. But never fear; The Washington Post is on the case.

Davis was one of many past Obama associates who was resolutely ignored by the Leftmedia in the run-up to the 2008 election – and since then, too. While other presidential candidates, particularly Republicans, can always count on the unwavering scrutiny of the press, Obama remained free of such probing questions. In fact, the media circled the wagons to protect him from any information that might damage the glowing narrative of Hope ‘n’ Change™. Consequently, Davis went largely unmentioned. And questions about Obama’s early dalliances with communism went unanswered.

This week, The Washington Post, one of the media gatekeepers of the Obama persona, gave the Davis story their fact-check “Pinocchio test.” After an article that documented barely half the story of Davis’s background and his associations with Obama, the Post decided any attempt to label Davis as Obama’s communist mentor was worth three Pinocchios out of four.

Nothing to see here; move along.

Who is the real Frank Marshall Davis? You won’t learn the answer from the Post or any other mainstream outlet that has been carrying Obama’s water for years. You have to turn to the likes of Paul Kengor, author of “The Communist: Frank Marshall Davis, the Untold Story of Barack Obama’s Mentor,” to get any serious information.

Davis was a card-carrying member (#47544) of the Communist Party USA (CPUSA) since the early 1940s. The media and leftist revisionist historians treat such Communist affiliations during the Cold War period as trivial, yet it’s worth remembering at the time that the CPUSA was not merely a club where disenchanted college students gathered to debate Karl Marx and do drugs. The stated purpose of the CPUSA was clear in the oath its members swore to “ensure the triumph of Soviet power in the United States.”

Davis was no armchair activist, either. He was the founding editor of a Communist paper in Chicago in 1946. He then moved to Hawaii in 1948 to write for the Honolulu Record, another Party journal. Throughout the 40s and 50s, Davis remained active. Obama apologists would have us believe Davis spent this time writing about the treatment of blacks, the cycle of poverty and ways to achieve social justice.

University of Kansas professor John Edgar Tidwell insists, “He was not out there on the front lines carrying pickets and signs. He wasn’t trying to overthrow the government at all.” Yet his writings were not those of an impassioned intellectual seeking a better America. Indeed, the FBI collected a 600-page file on Davis.

The Bureau kept Davis under constant surveillance and placed him on a watch list, meaning if war broke out with the Soviet Union, he would be arrested. At this point, Obama apologists will break out the Red Scare card, reminding us of the overzealous FBI tactics used during the 1950s. History has proven, though, that Alger Hiss was a Communist, the Rosenbergs were spies, and there were in fact Communists working in the State Department. These are not myths, and Frank Marshall Davis was not the victim of some rabid anti-Communist witch-hunt. He was the real thing.

Davis was introduced to Obama in 1970 by Obama’s grandfather for the express purpose of mentoring the boy. By many accounts Davis and Obama met some 10-15 times between then and when Obama went off to college nine years later. These extensive sessions had a profound impact on Obama’s life and certainly impacted his views on America, race and economics.

Obama was clever in hiding this relationship and the extent to which Davis influenced his thinking. “Frank” is mentioned 22 times by name in Obama’s “Dreams from My Father,” but only by his first name. And when the audio version of the book was released in 2005, all mentions of Frank were scrubbed from the edition. If Davis was such a wholesome influence on Obama, why did he get the redacted treatment in the future president’s autobiography?

Obama’s worldview and actions should be proof enough that the defining political and social influences in his life do not, to put it mildly, hold America in the highest regard. His first months in office were spent apologizing to other nations for America’s behavior. At every turn, Obama plays down and even insults America’s Christian heritage while repeatedly trying to remind us that Islam is the Religion of Peace™. He’s always on the lookout for ways to convert America into a government-run economy. His foreign policy agenda is driven by embracing America’s enemies and shunning our allies. And he has no respect for the Constitution or the office of the presidency.

Frank Marshall Davis belongs with Jeremiah Wright, Bill Ayers and an infamous list of anti-American activists and revolutionaries who can claim to be friends and mentors of the 44th president. With no help at all from the mainstream media, we have been able to piece together the nature of some of these associations. And we have Obama himself as proof of the life he led and the people with whom he chose to spend his time.

Still it would be nice if the media did its job once in a while. Then again, with Republicans running for president in 2016, they will surely pick up their muck rakes very soon.

> Update: Obama himself acknowledged “Frank” was indeed Frank Marshall Davis.