Gee, Bill, maybe you should try explaining this to Rachel Maddow

“You shouldn’t believe everything you hear about me… You know nothing about me.”
-- Bill Ayers, white supremacist author of "Dreams From My Father"

Dear Associated Press: Let's talk about political celebrities and their ghost writers

Y'know, it was nice of you guys to assign Hilel Italie to write that story suggesting Sarah Palin doesn't have the brains to write her own book.

Shall we discuss the editorial process behind, say, Bill Clinton's My Life or Hillary Clinton's Living History? Between them, the Clintons employed enough ghosts to staff the day shift at Disney World's "Haunted Mansion" ride.

Having been a Washington, D.C., journalist since 1997, I can assure you that we "talk shop" often enough so that every writer inside the Beltway knows who's ghosting whom. No need to name names, but suffice it to say that once somebody has served in the Cabinet or been elected Senator, any book published under his name can be assumed to be, at best, a team effort in which the named author was the quarterback. (Or sometimes, as one hears in regard to the Clintons, the meddlesome team owner who insists on second-guessing the editorial quarterback.)

However, since the Associated Press has taken this sudden and keen interest in the subject of potential future presidents and their ghostwriters, perhaps you could be bothered to run down a disturbing theory that has troubled me for several months.

After I founded Authors Against Obama, a reader called to my attention Jack Cashill's theory that Dreams of My Father was ghost-written. Cashill offered abundant circumstantial evidence to support his theory, and perhaps the mighty AP could assign Hilel Italie to investigate this.

Or, as seems likely, perhaps not.

(Cross-posted at Hot Air Green Room.)

UPDATE: Allahpundit loves me! And Chris Matthews still hates Sarah Palin:

Bill Ayers: John McCain is a terrorist

As Kathy Shaidle said, I'm not making this up:

The question terrorism and the question right and wrong. After all, [John McCain] killed people actually from the air, innocent people. So would you be challenging him on that? Or is the fact that he did it under the rubric of legality, does that make it OK?

Guess who else is a terrorist?

Henry Kissinger is responsible for the death of millions. I’m responsible for the death of no one. Does that distinction not seem to matter? In other words, why am I held up as an example of something beyond the pale. Whereas Kissinger, hey it was normal. He was the secretary of state ... Yeah, he was the secretary of state overseeing an illegal, immoral, genocidal attack on civilians. That is terrorism, pure and simple.

Just so we're clear on the moral categories, right?

Also discussion at Hot Air Headlines.

Bill Ayers and 'tactical idiocy'

Having done my own thorough fisking of Bill Ayers' dishonest self-justification, I tip my hat to Hilzoy:

They say they did it to end the war in Vietnam. But how, exactly, that was supposed to happen is a total mystery. It's the Underpants Gnome theory of political activism:
Phase 1: Set a bunch of bombs.
Phase 2: ???
Phase 3: The war ends!
That level of tactical idiocy is one thing when you're collecting underpants. It's quite another when you're setting bombs.

I dare say that's one of the most eloquent and concise summaries of the '60s radical trip I've ever read. And it's worth noting that, while Ayers postures for history by framing his terrorism in terms of opposition to the war, (a) Nixon began withdrawing U.S. troops from Vietnam before Ayers and his comrades started setting off bombs, and (b) Ayers and his comrades weren't merely trying to end the war, they were self-styled communist revolutionaries whose aim was to bring about a Marxist-Leninist regime in America.

Bill Ayers, terrorist, still unrepentant

The New York Times grants Bill Ayers 845 words on its op-ed page to defend himself. In the 11th paragraph, he twice uses the word "regrets," but if you think he's going to apologize or repent, think again:

I have regrets, of course -- including mistakes of excess and failures of imagination, posturing and posing, inflated and heated rhetoric, blind sectarianism and a lot else. No one can reach my age with their eyes even partly open and not have hundreds of regrets. The responsibility for the risks we posed to others in some of our most extreme actions in those underground years never leaves my thoughts for long.
The antiwar movement in all its commitment, all its sacrifice and determination, could not stop the violence unleashed against Vietnam. And therein lies cause for real regret.

"Unleashed" by whom? Not the Marxist-Leninist regime in Hanoi, which Ayers actively supported. He never tried to stop that violence. The guys who tried to stop the Marxist-Leninist violence were the U.S. military -- the "pigs" Ayers tried to kill.

The Weather Underground's bombings were, according to Ayers, "symbolic acts of extreme vandalism directed at monuments to war and racism." An officer's dance at Fort Dix, N.J., was one of those "monuments," and when the bomb planned for that event accidentally detonated, it was powerful enough to kill three people and destroy the building in which it was being built. Ah, but here's the Big Lie by which Ayers attempts to evade responsibility for that:

In 1970, I co-founded the Weather Underground, an organization that was created after an accidental explosion that claimed the lives of three of our comrades in Greenwich Village.

A damned lie. The radical Weatherman faction of SDS emerged in the wake of protests at the 1968 Democratic convention, staged its first "extreme vandalism" during the October 1969 "Days of Rage" in Chicago, and declared its dedication to terrorist "revolutionary" action at a December 1969 "war council" in Flint, Michigan. Their express intent was to be an American version of the Viet Cong. To try to claim that the organization was not created until after the March 1970 Greenwich Village townhouse explosion is dishonest revisionism.

The New York Times has disgraced itself by publishing this Big Lie, which is as false as anything Jayson Blair ever wrote.

More comment at Newsbusters, Jammie Wearing Fool, Don Surber, Cold Fury and Nice Deb.

UPDATE: Eric Posner at the Volokh Conspiracy:

Under current law, Ayers was a terrorist. This definition is not idiosyncratic; similar definitions can be found in the laws of foreign countries and in international treaties. Ayers seems to think he ought to be excused for violence because his motives were good, but that is the excuse that terrorists always offer -- that their political goals justify their use of violence -- and naturally the legal definition could not permit such a defense without subverting itself, or turning every terrorism trial into a debate about whether the political ends of the defendants are "good" or "bad" from a moral or political perspective.

Terrorism is about means, not ends. There were many opponents of U.S. involvement in Vietnam who did not resort to bombings as a means to express their opposition.

UPDATE II: Jules Crittenden observes: "In running Ayers' lengthy self-absolution, the New York Times charitably overlooks its own reporting on the subject" -- a 1970 Weather Underground bombing in San Francisco killed one policeman and severely injured another.

UPDATE III: Allahpundit: "Terrorists, it seems, kill people indiscriminately whereas the Weathermen never tried to kill anyone. Except cops. And soldiers."

UPDATE IV: Ace is pretty cheesed, too.

UPDATE V: Speaking of Ace, a friend reminds me of an AOSHQ post by Dave in Texas, linking a 1977 New York Times article about Ayers' and his colleagues' ties to Cuban intelligence:

Cuban espionage agents operating in the United States and Canada supplied limited aid to the Weather Underground, a militant antiwar organization, in the late 1960's and 1970's, according to a top-secret report of the Federal Bureau of Investigation . . . .
After the Weathermen went "underground" in 1970 and many of them were being sought by the F.B.I. on criminal charges, Cuban intelligence officers were in touch with them from both the New York mission and the Cuban Embassy in Canada.
Cuban officials helped several Weather Underground adherents who feared arrest in the United States to travel to Prague, Czechoslovakia, and then to reenter the United Slates surreptitiously.

The Weathermen were willing agents of Marxist regimes hostile to the United States. Ayers is not only a terrorist, but a traitor. If it hadn't been for Jack Ruby, I suppose we'd now be reading New York Times op-eds by 69-year-old Lee Harvey Oswald: "I have regrets, of course . . ."

Bill Ayers, victim

The "neocon media machine" imposed its narrative on him! How dare they call the unrepentant terrorist bomber an unrepentant terrorist bomber! And how dare they accuse Barack Obama's friend and supoorter of being Barack Obama's friend and supporter!

Related thoughts from Jules Crittenden, who is (a) an employee of the Boston Herald, and (b) distantly related to David Frum, and therefore (c) a card-carrying member of the neocon media machine.

Undercover agent on Ayers

"Eliminating 25 million people . . . and they were dead serious":

People have forgotten the 1981 Nyack armored car robbery involving some of Ayers' proteges, including Kathy Boudin, whose son was raised by Ayers and Dorhn after she was convicted for her role in a crime that took the lives of two policemen. People have forgotten that the 1970 townhouse explosion that killed three of Ayers' followers was caused by a bomb that was planned for a dance at Fort Dix, N.J.

Ayers planned a bloody revolution. Real people were killed by his followers, and many others would have died had they succeeded in their plans for a Marxist revolution. But nobody knows, and nobody cares, and thousands of college professors take his side, and all the most powerful institutions of the media ignore the fact that Ayers has blood on his hands.

UPDATE: Oh, yeah, and did I mention that Bill Ayers is a communist? He has never repudiated his status as a revolutionary.

UPDATE II: Michelle Malkin has more.

Academics support Ayers

Three thousand commie professors:

More than 3,000 educators nationwide, including six Brown University professors, have signed a statement supporting William Ayers -- the man Republican presidential nominee Sen. John McCain called a "washed-up terrorist" at the third presidential debate. . . .
In response to the McCain campaign's focus on Ayers' radical acts of the 1960s and 1970s, "Friends and supporters of Bill Ayers" are circulating a statement online to vouch for the professor he has become.

Check and see if your kid's professor is on the list. Meanwhile, Comrade Ayers and Comrade Dohrn have a new book coming out:

Arguing that white supremacy has been the dominant political system in the United States since its earliest days -- and that it is still very much with us -- the discussion points to unexamined bigotry in the criminal justice system, election processes, war policy, and education. The book draws upon the authors' own confrontations with authorities during the Vietnam era, reasserts their belief that racism and war are interwoven issues, and offers personal stories about their lives today as parents, teachers, and reformers.

Shut up, you racist honkies -- but keep signing those tuition checks so they can teach your kids to hate you!

'Just a guy in my neighborhood'

Bill Ayers? Oh, you must mean the guy whose book Barack Obama favorably reviewed in 1997. The guy whom he joined in a University of Chicago panel discussion organized by Michelle Obama. The guy with whom he shared an office for three years.

Don't you dare imply that they actually knew each other, you racist.

UPDATE: See-Dubya actually shows us pages from Ayers' book, which is ostensibly about the juvenile justice system, but seems to contain a lot of self-absorbed writerly crap about Ayers' neighborhood:

Once a summer colony, Hyde Park today is dominated by the University of Chicago. . . .
To my right the lake, a shimmering sea of blues and greens . . . .

WTF? Is this a policy book about juvenile justice or a travel magazine feature? How do liberal writers get away with this kind of bait-and-switch? Do the publishers simply not care that the manuscript is padded out with personal stuff that has nothing to do with the subject of the book?

Stepping outside into the cool October night, I pondered these questions. There aren't any streetlights near my home on the heavily wooded western slope of South Mountain, so the stars stand out brightly in the midnight sky. The silver orb of a full moon hung low near the eastern horizon, half visible through the remaining leaves on the towering hickory and oak trees. Brilliant orange and yellow in the daylight, the leaves are just shadows in the moonlight now. I stepped up from the basement door into the backyard and lit a Marlboro -- and just then heard the crashing sound of a startled deer scampering into the surrounding woods.

See? Writing that kind of fancy descriptive stuff is the easiest thing in the world. Writing about one's own personal life requires no research, no footnotes, and it has no business in a book that's supposed to be about public policy. Ayers was defrauding his readers, and his publisher let him get away with it, just like Barack Obama's publisher, who paid him to write a policy-oriented book about race relations and instead got a memoir -- a freaking memoir!

UPDATE II: The Bill Ayers Method of padding out a public policy book with what amounts to personal journal entries is something I might have to adapt for my book on the 2008 election:

When I got up from the computer and went to the kitchen to refill my glass of iced tea, one of our cats was next to the door, waiting for me to let him out. I opened the door and the gray shadow slipped quickly out into the night. As I walked back toward my office, I passed the den where my sons Jefferson and Emerson were sleeping on the sofa, bathed in the blue glow of the TV. They'd fallen asleep watching a movie, and now were dozing together under the blanket, with our mutt Samson asleep on the floor close by.

Alas, I'm not a famous terrorist-turned-professor or a half-Kenyan Harvard Law student, so no one will pay me to write banal crap like that.

RNC Ayers video

¡La educación es revolución!

Andy McCarthy cites Bill Ayers' 2006 speech:

President Hugo Chavez, … invited guests, comrades. I’m honored and humbled to be here with you this morning. I bring greetings and support from your brothers and sisters throughout Northamerica [sic]! Welcome to the World Education Forum. Amamos la revolucion Bolivariana! ...
As students and teachers begin to see themselves as linked to one another, as tied to history and capable of collective action, the fundamental message of teaching shifts slightly, and becomes broader, more generous: we must change ourselves as we come together to change the world. Teaching invites transformations, it urges revolutions small and large. La educacion es revolucion!

Radical? How dare you say such a thing!

Team Maverick ad: 'Ayers'

Documentation from McCain campaign:

• Barack Obama's Relationship With Ayers "Went Much Deeper, Ran Much Longer And Was Much More Political Than Obama Said." CNN'S DREW GRIFFIN: "Barack Obama confirmed during a primary debate that he knew Ayers and when pressed, said they served on a charitable foundation board together. And Obama condemned Ayers support of violence. But the relationship between Obama and Ayers went much deeper, ran much longer, and was much more political than Obama said." (CNN's "Anderson Cooper 360," 10/6/08)
• Barack Obama First Met William Ayers In 1995 During His First State Senate Campaign, When Obama Held Event At Home Of Ayers And Wife Bernardine Dohrn, Which One Attendee Said Was Aimed At "Launching Him" In First Campaign For State Senate. "In 1995, State Senator Alice Palmer introduced her chosen successor, Barack Obama, to a few of the district's influential liberals at the home of two well known figures on the local left: William Ayers and Bernardine Dohrn. While Ayers and Dohrn may be thought of in Hyde Park as local activists, they're better known nationally as two of the most notorious -- and unrepentant -- figures from the violent fringe of the 1960s anti-war movement. ... 'I can remember being one of a small group of people who came to Bill Ayers' house to learn that Alice Palmer was stepping down from the senate and running for Congress,' said Dr. Quentin Young, a prominent Chicago physician and advocate for single-payer health care, of the informal gathering at the home of Ayers and his wife, Dohrn. '[Palmer] identified [Obama] as her successor.' ... Dr. Young and another guest, Maria Warren, described it similarly: as an introduction to Hyde Park liberals of the handpicked successor to Palmer, a well-regarded figure on the left. 'When I first met Barack Obama, he was giving a standard, innocuous little talk in the living room of those two legends-in-their-own-minds, Bill Ayers and Bernardine Dohrn,' Warren wrote on her blog in 2005. 'They were launching him -- introducing him to the Hyde Park community as the best thing since sliced bread.'" (Ben Smith, "Obama Once Visited '60s Radicals," The Politico, 1/22/08)
• CNN: The Meeting Was Widely Considered As "Barack Obama's Political Coming Out Party And It Was Hosted By Bill Ayers." CNN'S DREW GRIFFIN: "Anderson, this meeting at Bill Ayers home has been classified in many different ways. What I can tell you from the two people who were actually there, is number one, former Senator Alice Palmer says she, in no way organized this meeting and she was invited and attended it briefly. And Doctor Quentin Young, a retired doctor, told us this indeed was Barack Obama's political coming out party and it was hosted by Bill Ayers." (CNN's "Anderson Cooper 360," 10/6/08)
• Barack Obama Led Education Foundation That "Poured More Than $100 Million Into The Hands Of Community Organizers And Radical Education Activists" And "Translated Mr. Ayers's Radicalism Into Practice." "Despite having authored two autobiographies, Barack Obama has never written about his most important executive experience. From 1995 to 1999, he led an education foundation called the Chicago Annenberg Challenge (CAC), and remained on the board until 2001. The group poured more than $100 million into the hands of community organizers and radical education activists. ... The CAC's agenda flowed from Mr. Ayers's educational philosophy, which called for infusing students and their parents with a radical political commitment, and which downplayed achievement tests in favor of activism. In the mid-1960s, Mr. Ayers taught at a radical alternative school, and served as a community organizer in Cleveland's ghetto. ... CAC translated Mr . Ayers's radicalism into practice. Instead of funding schools directly, it required schools to affiliate with 'external partners,' which actually got the money. Proposals from groups focused on math/science achievement were turned down. Instead CAC disbursed money through various far-left community organizers, such as the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (or Acorn)." (Stanley Kurtz, Op-Ed, "Obama and Ayers Pushed Radicalism On Schools," The Wall Street Journal, 9/23/08)
• From March Of 1995 Until September Of 1997, Barack Obama And Ayers Attended At Least Seven Meetings Together Relating To The Chicago Annenberg Challenge. (Chicago Annenberg Challenge, Board Of Directors Meeting, Minutes Of The Board, 3/15/95, 3/31/95, 4/13/95, 6/5/95, 9/30/97; National Annenberg Challenge Evaluation Meeting, List Of Participants, 5/24/95; Chicago Annenberg Challenge, Chicago School Reform Collaborative Meeting, Minutes, 10/23/96)
• CNN: The Paths Of Barack Obama And Ayers "Repeatedly Crossed" At The Annenberg Challenge. CNN'S DREW GRIFFIN: "One place their paths repeatedly crossed, according to a CNN review of board minutes and other records, was Chicago's Annenberg Challenge project where a $50 million grant from the Annenberg Foundation matched locally raised funds to improve schools. According to participants and project records, Bill Ayers fought to bring the Annenberg grant to Chicago, Barack Obama was recruited as its chair. For seven years, Bill Ayers and Obama among many others, worked on funding for education projects, including some experiments supported by Ayers." (CNN's "Anderson Cooper 360," 10/6/08)
• Barack Obama "Served On The Board's Governance Committee With Mr. Obama, And Worked With Him To Craft CAC Bylaws." "The Daley documents show that Mr. Ayers sat as an ex-officio member of the board Mr. Obama chaired through CAC's first year. He also served on the board's governance committee with Mr. Obama, and worked with him to craft CAC bylaws. Mr. Ayers made presentations to board meetings chaired by Mr. Obama. Mr. Ayers spoke for the Collaborative before the board. Likewise, Mr. Obama periodically spoke for the board at meetings of the Collaborative." (Stanley Kurtz, Op-Ed, "Obama and Ayers Pushed Radicalism On Schools," The Wall Street Journal, 9/23/08)
• Bill Ayers Was Asked To Help Barack Obama Formulate The Chicago Annenberg Challenge By-Laws. (Chicago Annenberg Challenge Board Of Directors Minutes, 3/15/95)
  Barack Obama "Was The First Chairman Of The Chicago Annenberg Challenge." "In the 1990s, Ayers was instrumental in starting the Chicago Annenberg Challenge, which was awarded nearly $50 million by a foundation to help reform Chicago schools. Obama was the first chairman of the Chicago Annenberg Challenge and Republicans have been highlighting his ties to Ayers through the group." (Pete Yost, "University Won't Open Obama-Related Records Now," The Associated Press, 8/19/08)
• Chicago Annenberg Challenge: "Distributed More Than $100 Million To Ideological Allies With No Discernible Improvement In Public Education." "With Ayers directing the project's operational arm and Obama overseeing its financial affairs until 1999, the Chicago Annenberg Challenge distributed more than $100 million to ideological allies with no discernible improvement in public education." (Editorial, "Obama's Friend, America's Enemy," National Review, 8/27/08)
• Barack Obama On Ayers At Democratic Debate: "This Is A Guy Who Lives In My Neighborhood." "This is a guy who lives in my neighborhood, who's a professor of English in Chicago, who I know and who I have not received some official endorsement from. He's not somebody who I exchange ideas from on a regular basis." (Sen. Barack Obama, ABC Democratic Presidential Debate, Philadelphia, PA, 4/16/08)
• Bill Ayers Was A Leader Of "The Violent Left-Wing Activist Group The Weather Underground." "Senator Obama's ties to a former leader of the violent left-wing activist group the Weather Underground are drawing new scrutiny as he battles Senator Clinton for the Democratic presidential nomination." (Russell Berman, "Obama's Ties to Left Come Under Scrutiny," The New York Sun, 2/19/08)
• Bill Ayers' Wife, Weather Underground Leader Bernardine Dohrn, Appeared On FBI's "Most Wanted" List. "Bernardine Dohrn, the former leader of the militant Weather Underground who turned herself in after 11 years on the run, says she looks forward to spending time with family and friends and intends to continue a rebellion against 'the system.' ... 'I remain committed to the struggle ahead,' Ms. Dohrn told reporters Wednesday after a court appearance. 'Given the system which perpetuates ... harsh oppression and suffering, rebellion is inevitable and continuous.' Ms. Dohrn, 38, pleaded innocent to nine charges -- seven stemming from the 1969 'Days of Rage' anti-war demonstration in Chicago and two more for jumping bail. She was released on $25,000 bond and a hearing was set for Jan. 13. Ms. Dohrn, who once appeared on the FBI's most-wanted list, arrived in court with a lawyer and William Ayers, another ex-radical who said h e lived with Ms. Dohrn in New York and is the father of her two children." (James Litke, "Fugitive Leader Surrenders With No Regrets," The Associated Press, 12/4/80)
• In The 1970s, Weather Underground Bombed The Capitol And The Pentagon. "As an Illinois state senator in 2001, Mr. Obama accepted a $200 contribution from William Ayers, a founding member of the group that bombed the U.S. Capitol and the Pentagon during the 1970s." (Russell Berman, "Obama's Ties to Left Come Under Scrutiny," The New York Sun, 2/19/08)
• New York State Supreme Court Justice's House Was Bombed By Weather Underground. "In February 1970, my father, a New York State Supreme Court justice, was presiding over the trial of the so-called "Panther 21," members of the Black Panther Party indicted in a plot to bomb New York landmarks and department stores. Early on the morning of February 21, as my family slept, three gasoline-filled firebombs exploded at our home on the northern tip of Manhattan, two at the front door and the third tucked neatly under the gas tank of the family car. (Today, of course, we'd call that a car bomb.) A neighbor heard the first two blasts and, with the remains of a snowman I had built a few days earlier, managed to douse the flames beneath the car. That was an act whose courage I fully appreciated only as an adult, an act that doubtless saved multiple lives that night. ... Though no one was ever caught or tried for the attempt on my family's life , there was never any doubt who was behind it. Only a few weeks after the attack, the New York contingent of the Weathermen blew themselves up making more bombs in a Greenwich Village townhouse. The same cell had bombed my house, writes Ron Jacobs in The Way the Wind Blew: A History of the Weather Underground. And in late November that year, a letter to the Associated Press signed by Bernardine Dohrn, Ayers's wife, promised more bombings." (John M. Murtagh, "Fire In The Night," City Journal, 4/30/08)
• In His Book, Bill Ayers Writes About Participating In The Bombings Of The Capitol And Pentagon. "Now he has written a book, 'Fugitive Days' (Beacon Press, September). Mr. Ayers, who is 56, calls it a memoir, somewhat coyly perhaps, since he also says some of it is fiction. He writes that he participated in the bombings of New York City Police Headquarters in 1970, of the Capitol building in 1971, the Pentagon in 1972." (Dinitia Smith, "No Regrets For A Love Of Explosives," The New York Times, 9/11/01)
• In The September 11, 2001 New York Times, Ayers Was Quoted Saying "I Don't Regret Setting Bombs ... I Feel We Didn't Do Enough." "'I don't regret setting bombs,' Bill Ayers said. 'I feel we didn't do enough.' Mr. Ayers, who spent the 1970's as a fugitive in the Weather Underground, was sitting in the kitchen of his big turn-of-the-19th-century stone house in the Hyde Park district of Chicago." (Dinitia Smith, "No Regrets For A Love Of Explosives," The New York Times, 9/11/01)

Ayers: A Republican scandal?

Silly season is underway:

Barack Obama's campaign is citing the University of South Carolina's speaking invitations to William Ayers and Republican Gov. Mark Sanford's role as school trustee to counter GOP efforts to link the presidential candidate to the 1960s radical. . . .
In an e-mail to reporters, the Obama campaign said Ayers is a "distinguished scholar" at the University of South Carolina, where Sanford serves as the ex-officio trustee while governor.
"By Governor Palin's standards, that means Governor Sanford shares Ayers' views," the e-mail read.
Sanford rejected the argument.
"This is a totally bogus story. I've never even heard of the guy" until this weekend, Sanford said Tuesday. "This is a guy I don't know, I've never met."

Team Obama's insistence on responding quickly to every accusation, lest their guy be "swift-boated," is beginning to look like thin-skinned defensiveness. Which means the GOP should be making more accusations.

NYT on Ayers-Obama connection

UPDATED & BUMPED: Whitewash, says Stanley Kurtz:

The piece serves as a platform for the Obama campaign and Obama’s friends and allies. Obama’s spokesman and supporters’ names are named and their versions of events are presented in detail, with quotes. Yet the article makes no serious attempt to present the views of Obama critics who have worked to uncover the true nature of the relationship. That makes this piece irresponsible journalism, and an obvious effort by the former paper of record to protect Obama from the coming McCain onslaught.

Read the whole thing.

PREVIOUSLY: They dump it on a Saturday, and bury it under a lot of ultra-boring oatmeal, but at least it's there:

The Ayers-Obama connection first came to public attention last spring, when both Senator Hilary Rodham Clinton, Mr. Obama's Democratic primary rival, and Mr. McCain brought it up. It became the subject of a television advertisement in August by the anti-Obama American Issues Project and drew new attention recently on The Wall Street Journal's op-ed page and elsewhere as the archives of the Chicago Annenberg Challenge at the University of Illinois were opened to researchers.
That project was part of a national school reform effort financed with $500 million from Walter H. Annenberg, the billionaire publisher and philanthropist and President Richard M. Nixon's ambassador to the United Kingdom. Many cities applied for the Annenberg money, and Mr. Ayers joined two other local education activists to lead a broad, citywide effort that won nearly $50 million for Chicago.

The content of the story, and its purpose, can be summed up: "Nothing to see here. Move along."

UPDATE: VodkaPundit and Tom Maguire have more analysis. Based on my own newsroom experiences, I'd say this story got edited and rewritten several times on its way to publication. There is an editor or editors at the New York Times who made sure that anything in this story that might have reflected negatively on Obama was qualified or counterbalanced.

I'm betting that the reporter on the story spent a lot of time arguing with his bosses about this, and is unhappy with the way it was rewritten. Not only that, but I'll bet the story was "held" at least two days in the process. There is nothing time-sensitive in the story, and I'm guessing the reporter had it ready Monday or Tuesday, spent a day or two hassling with his editors over rewrites, and then the story was purposefully delayed so that it would publish on a Saturday -- historically, the lowest circulation day in the newspaper business.

But never mind -- the whole point of the story is to give the NY Times a fig leaf, so they can't be accused of ignoring the Obama-Ayers connection. It's a token gesture of "fairness."

Ads hits Obama-Ayers connection

Allah asks:

Was this one set to roll today all along or was it in the chamber and ready to fire in case Obama tried a guilt-by-association ploy of his own first? Either way, acidic stuff.

Devastating, because it's inarguably true. From page 2 of Donkey Cons:

The Weather Underground claimed credit for a dozen bombings from San Francisco to New York. In 1971, they bombed the U.S. Capitol. A year later, they bombed the Pentagon. In December 1980, after living for years as fugitives, [Bernardine] Dohrn and Ayers surrendered to the FBI. They were briefly jailed, but all charges against them were eventually dropped, prompting Ayers to brag later: "Guilty as hell. Free as a bird."

Former terrorists Dorhn and Ayers helped sponsor Obama's entry into politics, and he can't deny it.

UPDATE: Michelle Malkin:

No library gatekeepers can keep the lid on the truth forever. It’s out there

Ace of Spades:

Obama says the ad is "despicable."
You know what's despicable, Barack? Befriending an unrepentant terrorist who still supports violent terrorist bombing against your country, Barack.

You have to scroll down through a lot of mocking humor to get to the serious part, but both the humor and the serious stuff are good.

The Annenberg Challenge records

Dan Riehl examines the "curious, if not Clintoneseque" refusal of the University of Illinois library to allow access to archives of the Annenberg Challenge foundation, nexus of the connection between Barack Obama and Weather Underground terrorist Bill Ayers.

Dan's got screencaps of online records of the archives, and keeps digging, following up on Stanley Kurtz's original "access denied" report.

UPDATE: Associated Press notices.

Cover-up? In Chicago?

You don't say! One of the most corrupt cities on the planet, so crooked that even the public librarians are in cahoots with Daley's Democratic Party machine.

So Stanley Kurtz's effort to examine the records of the Annenberg Challenge Foundation -- chief nexus of the connection between Barack Obama and Weather Underground terrorists Bill Ayers and Bernardine Dohrn -- is currently blocked.

Future GOP campaign ad?

Attention, Indiana and North Carolina Democrats. This is Bill Ayers:



(Via Marathon Pundit and Michelle Malkin.) Ayers, a former Weather Underground terrorist, helped Barack Obama start his political career, including donating to Obama's Illinois State Senate campaign. Ayers continues to make excuses for the Weather Underground's murderous bombing spree.

You, the Democratic primary voters of Indiana and North Carolina, have to ask yourselves one question: "What will Karl Rove do with this kind of crap?"

Besides the radical ranting Rev. Wright, Obama is now clearly linked to this flag-stomping terrorist bomber. If you think Rove & Co. will just let that slide by between now and November -- if you can't picture in your mind the Republican TV commercials -- please feel free to vote for Hope and Change and other things that ain't gonna happen if the Republicans win.

Your call.