Weather Underground leader turned-academic William Ayers is now so docile that it never really "bothered anyone in Chicago," that Sen. Barack Obama had any connection to him, wrote Chicago Sun-Times reporter Lynn Sweet in the April 18 paper. Along those same lines the Washington Post's Peter Slevin argued that the '60s radical was now "considered so mainstream" in Chicago "that [Mayor Richard] Daley issued a statement on Thursday praising him as a 'distinguished professor of education' and a 'valued member of the Chicago community.'"

But while he may have forsaken violence long ago, as his blog attests, Ayers's politics are far from mainstream, and go far beyond the standard Democratic arguments to withdraw from Iraq. For example, Ayers wants to pay reparations in Iraq AND Afghanistan and practically withdraw the U.S. military from the entirety of the Middle East, even in countries that have longstanding security arrangements with the U.S.

Taken from an April 13 blog post titled originally enough, "End the War" (emphasis mine):