Why I probably ought never be in the same room with Barack Obama

I've never been arrested. The closest I've come as an adult to being in a fist-fight was more than 10 years ago, when a drunk sucker-punched me after I knocked on the door of his ski condo at 3:00 a.m. to ask him and his friends to turn down their music, and by the time I got off the floor the door was locked again. In fact, I try to stay out of situations in which I might lose my temper.

That's why if ever I found myself in a room with unrepentant former Weather Underground terrorist Bill Ayers, I'd immediately leave the room.

I know myself well enough to know that the odds would skyrocket that I'd get into a fist-fight, and even that I'd throw the first punch, were I to find myself face-to-face with a would-be cop killer whose motto is "Guilty as hell, free as a bird — America is a great country!" Even if he wasn't trampling on an American flag at that precise moment, I could no more break bread with such a man, or share a round of beers, or shake hands with him, than I could with Osama bin Ladin.

If Bill Ayers and his wife Bernadine Dorn are what pass for respectable members of liberal Chicago society now, that's among the most shameful indictments I've ever heard of the honesty and integrity of that city's citizens.

Barack Obama continues to profess that it's perfectly okay for him to be friends with this man, to have served on a corporate board with him, to have exchanged back-scratching and doled out millions of dollars in grant money to his pet radical education projects, and to have even used Ayers' home to beg him and his radical friends for political contributions. Obama says that the fact that Ayers' self-admitted terrorism occurred in the 1960s and 1970s — crimes for which Ayers is not still in prison now only because of law enforcement blunders — makes it perfectly okay for Obama to associate with Ayers in the 1990s and 2000s. The Obama campaign is even running a TV ad to make that argument.

To which my reaction is this: I probably should never be in the same room with Barack Obama either. We could probably have a civil conversation about most things. I could probably shake his hand, break bread with him, or share a beer with Barack Obama, no matter how much I disagree with his positions. But if, while I was face to face with him, he had the nerve to make the same argument to my face about Bill Ayers that he makes in this television commercial, I'd have to immediately leave the room. I know the limits of my temper, and that would put me too close to losing it.

I'm pretty sure that Secret Service agents hit much harder than that drunk did at the ski condos, and I know that people who try to punch a presidential candidate in the nose get prosecuted. And they should (get prosecuted, I mean).

The issue is not Obama's judgment when he was eight years old. The issue is Obama's judgment during the last ten years that he's been associated with Ayers — including his judgment now in refusing to renounce his friendship with Ayers.

If there's anyone who ought to have been (metaphorically) ground into paste already under the rear wheels of the Obama campaign bus (along with Tony Rezko and Rev. Wright) a long time ago, it's Bill Ayers. Obama's association with him, and his continued insistence in defending this terrorist who won't repent his own violence, is the single most contemptible thing I know about the Democratic nominee for POTUS.

Ayers was a twisted dollop of evil scum in the 1960s and 1970s, and he's still evil scum. It is absolutely inconceivable to me that someone who might become the president of the United States could call such a man "friend."

It is wholly insufficient — a pathetic joke of an excuse — for Obama to "denounce Ayers' crimes" when Ayers won't denounce those crimes himself. A four-year-old child can understand that. Why can't Barack Obama? Or rather, why does Obama pretend not to understand it?

Does Ayers have something he's holding over Obama's head that we still don't know about? Can you think of any other good reason why Obama would abandon Rev. Wright or Tony Rezko, while continuing to defend his relationship with the even more odious Bill Ayers?