As Stanley Kurtz writes in “Radical-In-Chief: Barack Obama and the Untold Story of American Socialism” (2010) —

Barack Obama and Bill Ayers — that famously unrepentant revolutionary terrorist of the sixties — were longstanding political partners. For eight years, Ayers and Obama worked together at two leftist Chicago foundations. Obama praised Ayers’s writings and funneled major financial support to the projects of Ayers and his radical allies. Ayers helped launch Obama’s political career and joined with the future president in the battle over an Illinois juvenile crime bill. Ayers played an important role in elevating Obama to the position of board chairman of the Chicago Annenberg Challenge, an educational foundation Ayers himself helped create. Evidence suggests that Obama was responsible for bringing Ayers onto the board of the Woods Fund of Chicago, where the two worked together to increase funding for radical community organizations, including ACORN and the Midwest Academy. Evidence also suggests that despite official denials the Obama-Ayers connection long predates 1995, when the Obama camp claims it began.

The significance of 1995? That’s when Ayers co-founded the six-year, $160 million Chicago Annenberg Challenge — with Obama as its first board chairman — not that they had anything to do with one another. Later that year, Obama launched his campaign for Illinois state senate in the Hyde Park home of Ayers and his wife, fellow ex-Weather Underground terrorist Bernadine Dohrn. Which again should not be interpreted as evidence that Ayers had anything to do with Obama, who could have launched his political career in any number of Chicago living rooms.

Obama’s years of collaboration with Ayers, which mysteriously occurred without the two men ever conversing, became problematic for the ambitious Illinois pol due to a deeply unfortunate coincidence — a story about Ayers touting his new book, “Fugitive Days” and the glories of bomb-throwing in the New York Times … with the story running on the morning of Sept. 11, 2001.

The piece, under the headline “No Regrets for a Love of Explosives,” began with this memorable quote from Ayers: “I don’t regret setting bombs — I regret we didn’t do enough.” A sentiment surely shared by Osama bin Laden to his dying day.

“I can’t quite imagine putting a bomb in a building today — all of that seems so distinctly a part of then,” Ayers writes in “Fugitive Days” (page 295). “But I can’t imagine entirely dismissing the possibility, either.” The book was published in 2001, the same year Obama and Ayers served together on the Woods Fund Board while magically having nothing whatsoever to do with one another.