Here's a NYT fact check on the Reagan comments that is pretty fair, even though Adam Nagourney wrote it. Here is the meat of it, but the link is great to refute the Terrulians of the board. (Obama's comment that HRC praised Reagan more in Brokaw's book is an understatement!)
"At issue were remarks Mr. Obama made last week to The Reno Gazette-Journal. While he spoke positively of Reagan and described the Republicans as “the party of ideas,” he did not say that he admired Reagan.
“Ronald Reagan changed the trajectory of America in a way that, you know, Richard Nixon did not, and in a way that Bill Clinton did not,” Mr. Obama told the newspaper. “He put us on a fundamentally different path because the country was ready for it. He tapped into what people were already feeling, which is, we want clarity, we want optimism, we want, you know, a return to that sense of dynamism and, you know, entrepreneurship that had been missing.”
At the debate, Mr. Obama said that Mrs. Clinton had “provided much more fulsome praise” of Reagan in Tom Brokaw’s new book, “Boom!,” in which she is quoted as saying: “When he had those big tax cuts and they went too far, he oversaw the largest tax increase. He could call the Soviet Union the Evil Empire and then negotiate arms-control agreements. He played the balance and the music beautifully.” http://www.nytimes.com/2008/01/22/us/politics/22truth.html?_r=1&oref=slogin