Are Terrorists the New Communists?

By Prescott Carlson in News on Apr 19, 2008 2:05PM

Rick Ayers, brother of notorious former member of the Weather Underground and UIC professor Bill Ayers, is furious at Hillary Clinton and her campaign for repeatedly implying that Barack Obama's relationship with Bill Ayers has major negative connotations, and specifically her focus on Bill Ayer's quote in the New York Times on September 11, 2001: ''I don't regret setting bombs. I feel we didn't do enough.'' (Incidentally, it was just coincidence that the interview ran on that date, and his comment had nothing to do with the World Trade Center.) Rick Ayers compared Hillary's attack to the Communist witch hunt of the 50s:

"This is the most base version of McCarthyism," he wrote. "Obama should have taken a page from Joseph Welch when he confronted the red-baiting senator during the Army-McCarthy hearings. He should have said, 'Senator Clinton, are you really going to go there? Do you have no shame?'"

While their relationship just might be a tempest in a teapot -- or in Obamaspeak, a "distraction" -- is the fact that Obama is once again downplaying a friendship really the bigger deal? After all, this is the same guy that originally tried to claim he hardly knew Tony Rezko, and had only performed a few hours of legal work for him. Where's that famous Obama transparency? This is a "new kind of politics"? [S-T]

Photo of Bill Ayers via the UIC website