Sorry terrorist who are not sorry

Jonah Goldberg:

'EVERYTHING was absolutely ideal on the day I bombed the Pentagon."

That excerpt from William Ayers' memoir appeared in The New York Times on 9/11 - the day al Qaeda terrorists crashed hijacked planes into the World Trade Center and the Pentagon.

Ayers, once a leader in the Weather Underground - the group that declared "war" on the US government in 1970 - told the Times, "I don't regret setting bombs," and, "I feel we didn't do enough." He recently reappeared in the news because Politico.com reported Friday that Barack Obama has loose ties to him.

Now a professor of education at the University of Illinois at Chicago, Ayers is apparently a left-wing institution in Chicago's Hyde Park neighborhood. Obama visited his home as a rite of passage when launching his political career in the mid-'90s.

The two also served on the board of the charitable Woods Fund of Chicago, which gave money to Northwestern University Law School's Children and Family Justice Center, where Ayers' wife (and ex-Weather Underground compatriot who glorified violence) Bernardine Dohrn is the director.

I don't think Obama supports domestic terrorism, and I'm sure he can offer eloquent explanations for why he shouldn't suffer any guilt by association. But Hillary Clinton's campaign did try to score a few political points, meekly linking to the Politico story on the campaign Web site's blog.

The Clintonites probably couldn't be more aggressive without calling attention to how Bill Clinton pardoned Puerto Rican separatist terrorists - seen as a bid to gain support for Hillary's Senate bid from left-wing Puerto Ricans in New York.

What fascinates me is how light the baggage is when one travels from violent radicalism to liberalism. Chicago activist Sam Ackerman told Politico's reporter that Ayers "is one of my heroes in life." Cass Sunstein, a first-rank liberal intellectual, said of Ayers and Dohrn, "I feel very uncomfortable with their past, but neither of them is thought of as horrible types now - so far as most of us know, they are legitimate members of the community."

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Indeed, why is love of Che still radically chic at all? A murderer who believed that "the US is the great enemy of mankind" shouldn't be anyone's hero, never mind a logo for a line of baby clothes. Why are Fidel Castro's apologists progressive and enlightened, but apologists for Augusto Pinochet frightening and authoritarian? Why was Sen. Trent Lott's kindness to former segregationist Sen. Strom Thurmond a scandal but Obama's acquaintance with an unrepentant terrorist a triviality?

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It is wrong that colleges and universities would hire people like this and refuse to hire people like the brilliant historian Mark Moyar author of Triumph Forsaken, which challenges the liberal assumptions about the Vietnam war. People guilty of felonies against the US have no business being the go to guy for political office in this country. That they are, tells you something about the corrupt soul of the Democrat party in Illinois. It is time the media starts asking questions about this association instead of more questions about health care and other liberal issues.

The Belmont Club comments on the article and says it is a matter of solidarity among liberals in academia.