Ayers to kids: "Kill your parents!" Ayers to courts:"Don't hold teen murderers responsible!"

Barack Obama chose to share a stage with Bill Ayers in 1997 in a juvenile justice-themed event promoted by Michelle Obama. The lovely Michelle was quoted in the press release as saying that the panelists were "experienced" with the criminal justice system, but it didn't mention that one of them was an unreformed, unrepentant would-be cop-killer and mass murderer, as I explained in another guest-post at HughHewitt.com yesterday.

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[Copied here for archival purposes on November 5, 2008, from the post linked above at HughHewitt.com.]

(Guest Post by Bill Dyer a/k/a Beldar)

I hadn't seen before today the press release from the University of Chicago Chronicle that Hugh linked. It describes a joint public appearance on November 20, 1997, featuring then Illinois state senator Barack Obama and unrepentant Weather Underground terrorist Bill Ayers.

Obama is described as a state senator and "Senior Lecturer in the Law School, who is working to combat legislation that would put more juvenile offenders into the adult system." Ayers is described merely as the "author of 'A Kind and Just Parent: The Children of Juvenile Court' (Beacon Press, 1997)" who "spent a year observing the Cook County Temporary Juvenile Detention Center in Chicago." (The press-release's subhead says, "Author, former offender among speakers," but it's referring there to two different people — Ayers as the "author," and Alex Correa as "a reformed juvenile offender who spent seven years in Cook County Temporary Detention Center." Given his lack of remorse, no one could plausibly describe Ayers as "reformed.")

The press release also quotes none other than Sen. Obama's lovely wife, Michelle:

Michelle Obama, Associate Dean of Student Services and Director of the University Community Service Center, hopes bringing issues like this to campus will open a dialogue between members of the University community and the broader community.

"Students and faculty explore these issues in the classroom, but it is an internal conversation," Obama said. "We know that issues like juvenile justice impact the city of Chicago, this nation and — directly or indirectly — this campus. This panel gives students a chance to hear about the juvenile justice system not only on a theoretical level, but from the people who have experienced it."

That last sentence either represents sly and noxious irony or monumental cluelessness on the part of Michelle Obama because, of course, Ayers' experience with the justice system is most spectacularly as a criminal. I'd put my money on sly and noxious irony.

Liberals and conservatives can agree that the problems of juvenile crime and the juvenile justice system are serious and perplexing. But who in his or her right mind could look for solutions to, or even meaningful observations about, those problems from the likes of Bill Ayers?

From the 2001 Chicago Magazine article about Ayers and his wife and fellow terrorist Bernadine Dohrn entitled No Regrets that featured the photo of Ayers trampling the American flag (emphasis mine):

In 1969, [Ayers and Dorn] decided to "bring the war home" by staging a protest in Chicago during the trial of the "Chicago Eight" radicals accused of conspiring to cross state lines to incite a riot during the 1968 Democratic National Convention here. (Their conviction was later overturned.) "The Days of Rage," as the 1969 protest was called, brought several hundred members of the Weatherman — many of them attired for battle with helmets and weapons — to Lincoln Park. The tear-gassed marches, window smashing, and clashes with police lasted four days, during which 290 militants were arrested and 63 people were injured. Damage to windows, cars, and other property soared to hundreds of thousands of dollars. Around this time, Ayers summed up the Weatherman philosophy as "Kill all the rich people. Break up their cars and apartments. Bring the revolution home, kill your parents — that's where it's really at."

"The rhetoric was excessive because the times were excessive," says Ayers. "The war had escalated, so naturally the language escalated. No one thought I meant that literally."

"No one"? Not even those who know of his plot to explode a deadly nail bomb at a crowded dance on a New Jersey military base? It wasn't just the war or the anti-war rhetoric that had escalated, but the deadly violence of the anti-war terrorists he led. Oh, no — the only people who could possibly doubt the literalness of this twisted dollop of evil scum's advice to "kill your parents" are those who know nothing about Bill Ayers or his history.

Of course, letting teenage murderers escape responsibility for their crimes is perfectly consistent with Ayers' own motto, in which he describes the result of the criminal prosecution against him that was thrown out due to government errors:

"Guilty as hell, free as a bird — America is a great country."

— Beldar