Thanks to ABC News' George Stephanopolous and his decision last night to ask a debate question pushed on him by Fox News' Sean Hannity, we're going to be hearing a lot of discussion in the next week or so about Barack Obama's relationship with former Weather Underground member Bill Ayers. As the noise machine focuses on his radical activism at a time when Obama was "eight years old," what will almost certainly be overlooked is Ayers' work in recent decades on education reform and juvenile justice.

On March 3, the Sun-Times published an editorial chalking up the Ayers connection as the "latest empty shot at Obama." In the piece, the Sun-Times briefly summarized Ayers' work:

But Ayers, it is also true to say, has since followed in the footsteps of the great Chicago social worker Jane Addams, crusading for education and juvenile justice reform. His 1997 book, A Kind and Just Parent: The Children of Juvenile Court, has been praised for exposing how Cook County's juvenile justice system all but eliminates a child's chance for redemption.

Is Barack Obama consorting with a radical? Hardly.

The editorial's conclusion also deserves highlighting:

Obama's middle name is Hussein. That doesn't make him an Islamic terrorist. He stopped wearing a flag pin. That doesn't make him unpatriotic. And he's friendly with UIC Professor William Ayers. That doesn't make him a bomb thrower.

Because it's no longer available on the Sun-Times website, I've reprinted the editorial in its entirety after the jump.

(Full disclosure: As a native of Chicago's Hyde Park neighborhood, I grew up with Bill Ayers and Bernadine Dohrn's children and know both parents quite well.)

Clearing up another empty shot at Obama

March 3, 2008

And now, by our count, we have Phony Flap Number 6,537,203: Barack Obama Consorts With Known American Terrorist!

Conservative talk radio hosts are in a dither over the non-news that Obama is "friendly" with a fellow named William Ayers, a professor of education at the University of Illinois at Chicago. Thirty-five years ago, it seems, Ayers ran with the Weather Underground, a guerrilla band of deluded "revolutionaries" who protested the Vietnam War, racial injustice and "The Man" by setting off bombs.

We know the nation's press can't be entirely familiar with Ayers, who is pretty much a Chicago boy, so allow us to fill you in.

Ayers was, indeed, a Weatherman. He bombed the U.S. Capitol, a bathroom in the Pentagon, and even cased out the White House.

He went on the lam in the 1970s, lived under an assumed name with his radical wife, Bernardine Dohrn, and gave himself up in 1980. Since then, he has built a respectable career as an academic and an advocate for troubled children.

Ayers, it is true to say, remains sadly unreflective about his Weatherman days, as revealed in his memoir Fugitive Days. "I can't quite imagine putting a bomb in a building today -- all of that seems so distinctly a part of then," he writes. "But I can't imagine entirely dismissing the possibility, either."

But Ayers, it is also true to say, has since followed in the footsteps of the great Chicago social worker Jane Addams, crusading for education and juvenile justice reform. His 1997 book, A Kind and Just Parent: The Children of Juvenile Court, has been praised for exposing how Cook County's juvenile justice system all but eliminates a child's chance for redemption.

Is Barack Obama consorting with a radical? Hardly.

Ayers is nothing more than an aging lefty with a foolish past who is doing good. And while, yes, Obama is friendly with Ayers, it appears to be only in the way of two community activists whose circles overlap.

Obama's middle name is Hussein. That doesn't make him an Islamic terrorist. He stopped wearing a flag pin. That doesn't make him unpatriotic. And he's friendly with UIC Professor William Ayers. That doesn't make him a bomb thrower.