Posted: 4:02 am
September 15, 2008
What is there to conclude about Barack Obama and his longtime buddy Wil liam Ayers?
The Obama campaign has been playing full-court defense over the candidate's ties to one of America's most unrepentant domestic terrorists.
For sure, the campaign has reason to worry: Ayers was the early '70s leader of a radical terrorist outfit called the Weather Underground - which bombed the Pentagon, the US Capitol and NYPD Headquarters as part of a violent "revolution" against the US government.
He surfaced in 1980, along with his wife and fellow terrorist, Bernardine Dohrn; a technicality then erased the federal charges against them.
And he seems proud of his actions.
"I don't regret setting bombs . . . I feel we didn't do enough," he told The New York Times in 2001.
Quite frankly, why such a despicable character shouldn't be persona non grata to anyone aspiring for responsible political office is beyond us.
But Ayers - who Obama meekly dismisses as "a guy in my neighborhood" - played a key role in the senator's rise.
In 1995, for example, Obama was named chairman of the Chicago Annenberg Challenge - Ayers' "school reform" outfit. Later that year, Ayers and Dohrn personally hosted an organizing meeting for Obama's first state Senate campaign.
True, Ayers had long been part of Chicago's political culture. But that says more about Chicago than about Ayers.
Obama has some explaining to do.
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