That makes for an interesting web of connections between Obama and his campaign, Ayers, Ayers' father  and the two spouses and the Sidley Austin firm, which in turn has supplied a couple lower level Bush administration appointees, along with Exelon. Exelon, in turn, owns a dozen nuclear plants (including Three Mile Island) and a lot more coal-fired plants.

I don't think Obama did anything illegal or immoral, but once again we see he has unsavory friends.

When it was in his interest, he was an associate of Ayers.  How close we don't yet know, but it appears to be closer than he admitted.

But now that things have changed, he tries to disassociate himself from Ayers, and minimize his previous relationship.

Add to this lack of any paper trail of Obama's senate tenure and the fact that he preferred to be present rather than take a stand on any issue.

The day the building was blown up we were looked at differently and lumped into the terrorist mold along with the weathermen, who we did not support.

The non-violent protestors had to train ourselves on MACE etc. since the effort to squash our voices intensified and we were attacked by the mainstream press and the police became intolerant.

The Weathermen set back the peace process and gave us all a bad name.

You likely know all that, but for that reason alone - their extreme revolutionary destructive campaign to overthrow the system - they were shunned by the anti-war movement itself.

It became impossible to distance ourselves from them and we bore the anger towards their movement.

Just my 2 cents, I was there and remember.

They were not cool, not at all.  We knew it and nearly every organization stayed far from them.

The NYT quoted Bill Ayres as saying "I don't regret setting bombs. I feel we didn't do enough."  If this was what Bill Ayres believed then he wouldn't have written a letter to the editor to try to set the record straight.  

I find it strange that you base your opinion of Ayres on what someone else says he said instead of what he actually said as expressed in his letter to the editor.  

Jeralyn/All: what kind of politician do we respect more -- someone who sees a problem, has a vision of how to solve it, has the skill to articulate that vision that gets people to roll up their sleeves and  work on and implement that vision? Or politicians who are still casting about for a reason for their candidacy and existence, and hence listen to the multitudes of voices before they can formulate a plan and a vision that has a chance of success? I find Sen. Obama far more of the latter -- given his experience (or lack thereof) he has simply not thought through the problems with American education policy deeply enough, or engaged with the political forces long enough to have developed a sense of conviction behind his vision and policy proposals, and hence his changing stances on such matters -- which one could argue demonstrate intellectual flexibility. It leaves him lots of room to maneuver -- degrees of freedom as we say in design school.

Obama was on an education fund board.
This is his brush with Education in his resume.

So why has he been so quiet about running that Board?

Education is a big topic and Obama was involved in city wide school reforms.  What gives there?  Is it about Ayers running the fund or the rubbish impact of the reforms?

See a pattern?

he's either "the man who wasn't there", or "the invisible man", take your pick.

for the most part of his public life, he seems to garner a title, while doing nothing substantive, or, when he can't get away, votes "present". the same result ensues: he doesn't have a specific position identified that he then has to defend.

while this may be great for his political career, i'm not sure how good it for his constituents, who depend on him to stand up for them.

Once upon a time there was an unpopular war called the Vietnam war.  This war created a great deal of opposition and, in some cases, radicalization.  The most famous of the 60s college radical groups was a tiny splinter organization called the Weather Underground.  In their opposition to the war, they adopted the anarchist belief in the propaganda of the deed.  Bill Ayres was a member of this organization.

Bill Ayres is no longer a member of the Weather Underground and he no longer advocates or believes what he once did.  

In 2001 there was a NYT article which attibuted several inflammatory statements to Ayres including "I don't regret setting bombs. I feel we didn't do enough." and "I don't want to discount the possibility." when asked if he would "do it all again".   Ayres responded by immediately writing a Letter to the Editor in which he claimed that the NYT deliberately distorted what he actually believed.  

Here is what Ayres actually believes per wikipedia

In the ensuing years, he has repeatedly avowed that "no regrets" had been spoken in reference to his efforts to oppose the Vietnam War, and that "we didn't do enough" had been spoken in reference to his opinion that efforts to stop the United States from waging the Vietnam War were obviously inadequate as the war dragged on for a decade. Ayers has maintained that the two statements were not intended to elide into a wish they had set more bombs.

So lets get back to the question that Stephanopoulos asked Ayres:

And, in fact, on 9/11, he was quoted in the New York Times saying, "I don't regret setting bombs. I feel we didn't do enough."

So lets sum up.  Stephanoupolos premised his question to Obama on "the fact" that the NYT article accurately characterized the views of Bill Ayres (he did not apparently bother to find out Ayre's side of the story in his letter to the editor).  Ayres said that the NYT deliberately distorted what he said and believed.  

As far as I'm concerned, I think that Bill Ayres is probably the best authority regarding what Bill Ayres actually believes.  

Two guys that never met, over the course of a month, put together this cover of Hotel California.  The link goes to FARK's video player because the FARK comments are more interesting than the youtube comments.

During the video, little pop-ups describe how they put it together, those pop-ups are actually interesting in and of itself.

BTW, some of those people, who dedicated their efforts to those pieces of legislation and then see them placed in Obama's lap, were none to happy about it and still hold resentments toward Obama. Who wouldn't hold resentments?

I remember those times.  JFK was killed, MLK was killed, RFK was killed.  The Vietnam War had grown
from a small "police" action to a major war against a people who had done nothing to us. Friends, brothers, sons were being sent there to die.  Anti-war teach-ins and rallies dominated major college campuses.  My Lai. Kent State. The summers had turned into riot time in major cities.  The Chicago 8.

The Pentagon Papers told us just how much our government had lied to us about Vietnam (which is one reason I find it hard to forgive Congressional figures like Clinton and Feinstein for supporting the Iraq 'authorization": they are old enough to remember the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution but let themselves be fooled again.)  I actually lived a block away from where the SLA kidnapped Hearst.

In short, if you weren't there, if you can't remember, well, there was a certain amount of sympathy even for the most extreme acts such as those of the Weather Underground.

Many were horrified at the time.  Many understood the anger that drove the acts. Looking back over the decades, it is hard to understand why some of us lent at least tacit support to the most extreme actions - but I also feel uncomfortable taking the "they were simple terrorists" position now, so many decades later - when the pain and anguish of the times is so dim.