OFF MESSAGE! OFF MESSAGE! OFF MESSAGE! :

Barack, Bill, and Me: The Bill Ayers that Barack Obama and I worked with was no "domestic terrorist." (David S. Tanenhaus, Oct. 10, 2008, Slate)

That Barack Obama and William Ayers knew each other during the 1990s may tell us something about the two men. But it says much more about a particular time and place: Hyde Park, Chicago, more than a decade ago.

Obama first moved to Chicago in 1985, when he worked as a community organizer. But his career got on its current course when he returned to Hyde Park in 1991 to practice law and teach constitutional law at the University of Chicago. Four years later, he met Ayers at a lunchtime meeting about school reform.

As it happens, I was on the scene, too. [...]

To meet Ayers and Dohrn, as I did in 1995, was to encounter a middle-aged couple in their early 50s who seemed at ease in the vibrant academic community of Hyde Park.

Doesn't he know that the official campaign talking point is that they only live in the same neighborhood and that those neighbors are just like yours?

Posted by Orrin Judd at October 10, 2008 8:14 AM