Swiftboating Obama: A Look Inside Bogus Right Wing Claims He Has Terror Ties

In early January, when Barack Obama was just one among many Democratic candidates, we published Swiftboating Obama's Religion: He Is Not a Muslim. Now that he is the putative Democratic nominee, here is a look at another potentially Swiftboat-able part of his record — his tenuous connections to Michael Ayers and Bernadine Dorhn, who were members of the Weather Underground in the Vietnam War era — and his one-time professional relationship with Dr. Rashid Khalidi, a one-time PLO media director.

Ayers was a prominent constituent in Obama’s state senate district.

Ayers and Dorhn were involved in the planning and execution of violent protests 40 years ago:

They disappeared in 1970, after a bomb -- designed to kill army officers in New Jersey -- accidentally destroyed a Greenwich Village townhouse, and turned themselves into authorities in 1980. They were never prosecuted for their involvement with the 25 bombings the Weather Underground claimed; charges were dropped because of improper FBI surveillance.

Both have written and spoken at length about their pasts, and today he is an advocate for progressive education and a professor at the University of Illinois at Chicago; she's an associate professor of law at Northwestern University.

This never-heard-of-him rightwinger offers a taste of the spin to come from his fellow Noise Machiners:

Ayers, along with his fellow former Weather Underground terrorist wife, Bernardine Dohrn, are among the two most despicable people in living in America. And Obama served on a board with him. That will play well in rural Ohio — for John McCain.

While the Arizona senator was being tortured by his North Vietnamese captors, Ayers was openly cheering for a Communist victory over our troops.

Obama biographer, John K. Wilson, author of “Barack Obama: This Improbable Quest,” and who says he is not affiliated with the Obama campaign, describes Obama’s relationship with with Ayers this way:

In 1995, State Sen. Alice Palmer held an event for supporters at the home of Ayers, where she announced her plans to run for Congress and introduced Obama as her chosen successor. Obama also served on the board of directors for a progressive foundation, the Woods Fund, from 1999-2001, when Ayers was also on the board. In 2001, Ayers gave $200 to Obama's state senate campaign fund. And Obama and Ayers appeared together on a 1997 panel at the University of Chicago dealing with juvenile justice (Obama also praised Ayers' approach on the subject in an op-ed he wrote that year), and on a 2002 panel on public intellectuals at the University of Illinois at Chicago.

That's it.