This entire issue is based on the claim that Ayers is not contrite about his past activities rather than based on his current activities involving education. Ayers has said himself that he does not regret opposing the Vietnam War, but he further clarified that that statement should not be construed as meaning he thinks the SDS should have set off more bombs, and he has expressed regret for past violence. This has been resolutely ignored by people who want desperately to say that Obama is connected with an unrepentant terrorist.

Ayers is still as radical as hell, and his "education projects" reek of it. Nobody's saying Obama supports terrorism, but the Ayers connection and the Wright connection, among others, at least show his radical views, or if he was just going along with the flow to get elected in that district, it shows something else.

This is about Obama's background, but a big take-away point is that the media is not doing a tenth as much research into this as they are doing on Republicans. Nothing at all would have been heard about this subject if it had been solely up to the New York Times.

And amid the flood of "let bygones be bygones," the New York Times article at least has the guts to write this:

...Steve Chapman, a columnist for The Chicago Tribune, defended Mr. Obama's relationship with the Rev. Jeremiah A. Wright Jr., his longtime pastor, whose black liberation theology and "God damn America" sermon became notorious last spring. But he denounced Mr. Obama for associating with Mr. Ayers, whom he said the University of Illinois should never have hired.

"I don't think there's a statute of limitations on terrorist bombings," Mr. Chapman said in an interview, speaking not of the law but of political and moral implications.

"If you're in public life, you ought to say, 'I don't want to be associated with this guy,' " Mr. Chapman said. "If John McCain had a long association with a guy who'd bombed abortion clinics, I don't think people would say, 'That’s ancient history.' "

I suspect it wouldn't have to be a "long association" either.