•  "...so far as is known, their relationship was never very close. An Obama spokesman says they last saw each other in a chance encounter on the street more than a year ago."

According to The Nation: Bill Ayers' "The Woods Fund, in many ways, is responsible for helping start Obama as an organizer and shaping his political identity.  In 1985 the foundation gave a $25,000 grant to the Developing Communities Project (aka the "DCP"), which hired Obama, at 24, as an organizer on Chicago's economically depressed South Side."
   
The Woods Fund was founded by the Woods family which owned the Illinois-based Sahara Coal Company, a major supplier of coal from its mines to major Illinois power companies.

 Commonwealth Edison, the giant Chicago-based electric power company was headed by Thomas Ayers, father of Bill Ayers.

In 1989, Obama was a summer intern at Michelle Obama's law firm.  One of Michelle's co-workers was Bernadine Dohrn.

In 1995, Obama's political career was launched in Bill Ayers' living room -- some of the socialists and commies present were the socialist Dr. Quentin Young, Obama's political ribbi, Alice Palmer, a member of the CPUSA, and of course self-described communists Bill Ayers and bernadine Dohrn.

Barack also was essentially an employee of Bill Ayers for eight years, starting in  1995.

Ayers, co-creator of the Challenge, help select as the new director of the board for this program?  Why, Barack Obama, of course.  Obama was the first Chairman of the Board of the Chicago Annenberg Challenge.
  
Obama served on the board for eight years, from 1995 until the Challenge ended in 2003.  Bill Ayers was intimately involved in the Challenge over this same time period, raising and spending at least $110 million in an effort to bolster a "radical" (Ayers' word) reform program in the Chicago Public Schools from 1994 to 2001.

Ayers was the Board Chairman of the nonprofit Woods Fund of Chicago and Obama was also a Board member.  Obama was a director of the Woods Fund board from 1999 to Dec. 11, 2002, according to the Fund's website.

In November 1997, Ayers and Obama participated in a panel at the University of Chicago entitled "Should a child ever be called a 'super predator?'" to debate "the merits of the juvenile justice system."

In April 2002, Ayers, Dohrn, and Obama, then an Illinois State Senator, participated together at a conference entitled "Intellectuals: Who Needs Them?" sponsored by The Center for Public Intellectuals and the University of Illinois-Chicago.  Ayers and Obama were two of the six members of the "Intellectuals in Times of Crisis" panel.  Here is the agenda.

"I know they are friends," said Dr. Young of Obama and Ayers.

•  "The education project described in the Web ad, far from being 'radical'"

Here's a Wall Street Journal article, entitled "Obama and Ayers Pushed Radicalism On Schools," but who you gonna believe?

•  "Even the description of Ayers as a 'terrorist' is a matter of interpretation. Setting off bombs can fairly be described as terrorism even when they are intended to cause only property damage, which is what Ayers has admitted doing in his youth. But for nearly three decades since, Ayers has lived the relatively quiet life of an educator. It would be correct to call him a 'former terrorist,' and an 'unapologetic' one at that. But if McCain means the word 'terrorist' to invoke images of 9/11, he's being misleading; Ayers is no Osama bin Laden now, and never was."

I suppose it was a mis-booking that resulted in Bill Ayers and Bernadine Dohrn being two of the "peace activists" aboard the Gaza "Freedom Flotilla" -- just last week.

•  "Obama never said Ayers was 'just' a guy in the neighborhood"

Here is a transcript from ABC News, of an Obama/Clinton debate, where Barack Obama says, referring to Bill Ayers, "This is a guy who lives in my neighborhood."  I suppose putting the word "just" in quotes rationalize the lie.

•  "We (FactCheck.org) wrote back then that Clinton had gone too far by suggesting that 'people died' as a result of Ayers' actions."

A San Francisco police union has accused former domestic terrorist William Ayers, co-founder of the Weather Underground, and his wife, Bernadine Dohrn, in a 1970 bombing that killed one sergeant, the San Francisco Chronicle reports.

On Feb. 16, 1970, a bomb placed on a window ledge of Park Station killed Sgt. Brian McDonnell and injured eight other officers, the Chronicle reported.