Kathy Shaidle suggests that the McCain campaign should make Bill Ayers "the hippie O.J.", adding:

It doesn't matter when Obama met up with Ayers, or how many meetings they ever had.

It's about the fact that Ayers went from domestic terrorist to "respected community leader", to the point where Ayers was throwing well attended fundraisers for Obama, and they sat on boards together.

Bill Ayers should never have achieved such respectable positions in the first place.

Bill Ayers should be sitting in jail, not on boards!

But that's how the 1960s Left's reputation-laundering works. Look at Angela Davis, and the convicted felon and torturer who invented (the Marxist inspired "holiday") Kwanzaa and, like Davis, is now a tenured prof.

On the morning of September 11, 2001, Ayers was quoted in the New York Times as saying he and his wife only regretted that they hadn't blown up more buildings. People were reminded that Ayers wife praised the Manson family murders.

That story was widely remarked upon for incredibly obvious reasons.

That story alone would make any decent, intelligent person say afterward: "Wow, I better not be seen anywhere near this guy, let alone sit on a board with him or go to his frickin' house. Boy, would THAT ever look bad."

So that means Obama isn't a decent, intelligent person. Period.

He's just another craven, arrogant, Chicago style politician.

The McCain campaign needs to spin this as an anti-hippie, anti-lefty, culture wars story:

Ayers and his wife are dangerous criminals and traitors who got away with it, and are now well off and respected. At least the Rosenbergs got the chair...

Look at how average Americans view O.J. -- make Ayers the hippie O.J.

Ask folks how they'd feel if Charles Mason was a professor now too?

Look:

a guy who has been photographed, as late as 2001, stomping on the American flag is one of Obama's supporters. [Obama served with Ayers on a board during this period, Charles Johnson notes--Ed.]

It doesn't matter if Obama denounces Ayers tomorrow.

It doesn't matter if their connection is/was "tenuous".

Here's what matters:

What does it tell you about Obama and his policies and his worldview that people like Ayers and his ilk are obviously going to vote for the guy?

Do you really want to vote for the same guy that unrepentant, unpunished domestic terrorists vote for?

Yes or no?

Pretty simple, but the McCain camp is blowing it.

Of course--but that doesn't prevent the AP from slagging anyone attacking their candidate and friends.

Meanwhile, Ed Morrissey notes another former associate of Obama who openly* called for the US invading Israel:

Power's ultimate aim is to send a massive American or Western force into Israel to stop what Power apparently sees as an Israeli genocide against the Palestinians. She specifically states that the force has to be "massive", not like a Srebrenica- or Bosnia-sized force. Why would it need to be so large? In order to neutralize the Israeli Defense Force, and protect the forces of Fatah and Hamas.

Had Barack Obama kicked her off of his advisory panel (rumored to number 300) after making remarks like this, it could have assuaged fears about his intentions towards Israel. Instead, he invited Power to advise him after making these remarks. She resigned only after calling Hillary a monster and after insinuating that Obama may not retreat from Iraq in 16 months if the ground situation changed -- which Obama later adopted as his own position after the primaries.

The interview ran in 2002, the period when the left essentially went to ground during the culture war in the immediate wake of 9/11, only to explode in often violent protests and bitter rhetoric in 2003 and 2004, which Charles Krauthammer memorably described as "the Pressure Cooker Theory of Hydraulic Release."

* Though the be fair, the interview apparently ran on some sort of Berkeley public TV channel, meaning only about 12 people watched it. Not sure if that constitutes "openly" or not.