You know, a person doesn't have to be Maureen Dowd's age (and could, in fact, be only Sarah Palin's age) to be old enough to know that the last thing desired by most folks who protested the Viet Nam war was to see a U.S. soldier being hurt. Bill Ayers was a protester of a different persuasion. His lover at the time was one of three like-minded buddies of his who would die in the explosion of a bomb (nails and other small and meant-to-be-penetrating missiles) which they'd assembled and were planning to place at a site where soldiers outnumbered civilians. If Ayers turned himself in after some of his fellow members of the elite protesters' group, Weatherman, so brilliantly blew themselves up, it wasn't because he hadn't been in favor of building that bomb, and he'll never be able to say that if that bomb hadn't exploded when it did, he wouldn't have planted it.

Another war is taking the lives of another soon-to-be commander-in-chief's soldiers. It does matter who any of us pals around with. Barack Obama was always free to avoid Bill Ayers as a way of not disrespecting justice, which Ayers himself says was not, in his case, served. Understand: Ayers himself says that he shouldn't be where he is.

Barack Obama's embrace of the Iraq war as a means to an end establishes that the war is good for both candidates, both sides in the debate. --Remember: this is happening after the explosion. John McCain gives a reason for believing that the war is good. Barack Obama now needs to give a reason for the same belief, and it can't be one which is only as good as McCain's.

Bill Ayers claims of his history in power that the times were extreme, and that because of that quality in the times, he was forced to be extreme. It's out of line for anyone to attribute to all Viet Nam-era protesters whatever it was that Bill Ayers found to be meaningful and inspiring. Yet out of line is exactly where Obama's would-be supporters go when when they criticize Sarah Palin for using the term domestic terrorist--two words which, I believe, Obama himself would use, were he to be given, or were he to create for himself, the opportunity.

When I offer that Bill Ayers observes of himself that he shouldn't be where he is, I'm not complimenting Ayers on his honesty or attempting to help him resurrect what would be his good name. I'm simply saying, of one specific man who has become, among other things, a college professor and a community activist-organizer, that he is insane.