I am not convinced that Bill Ayers or Bernadine Dohrn accurately filled out 1040’s stating their employment as revolutionary terrorists, nor that they did their witholding accurately, or paid estimated taxes as independent contractors. But it would be enlightening to know when Ayers and Dohrn retired from being incompetent bombers to being incompetent educators, and if the two occupations overlapped.

Brian Fitzpatrick at Town Hall lists the miserable work done by the media in forming an Ayers timeline

A few examples:

• The Washington Post quotes campaign spokesman Bill Burton: “But he was an eight-year-old child when Ayers and the Weathermen were active…”
• The Washington Post “fact-checker” column quotes Obama: “…40 years ago when I was eight years old…”
• The New York Times quotes Obama: “…40 years ago, when I was eight.”
• A CNN “fact check” quotes Obama: …40 years ago, when I was eight years old…”
• Associated Press reporter Brendan Riley: “…carried out as Obama has said when he was 8.”
• CBS/AP quotes Obama communications director Robert Gibbs: “Barack Obama has condemned the attacks that happened when Barack Obama was 8 years old.”

Several reporters have gone even further, repeating the glib line as original reporting

• TIME magazine: “…in 1969, when Obama was eight years old.”
• New York Daily News: “…set off bombs when Obama was eight years old…”
• AP’s Steven R. Hurst: “He was eight years old when they occurred.”
• AP’s Jim Kuhnhenn: “Obama was eight years old at the time…”
• AP’s Liz Sidoti: “Obama was eight years old when the Weather Underground…”
• AP: “Weather Underground members were blamed for several bombings when Obama was a child.”
• Reuters’s Mark Egan: “…when it was involved in a series of bombings in the 1960s, when Obama was eight years old.”
• Reuters’s Jason Szep: “the group was involved in bombings in the 1960s, when Obama was 8 years old.”

I am about the same age as Sen. Obama and was well aware of the SDS and Weathermen (though more about the Fighting Illini), when I was in college. Barack Obama was 20 years old at the time of the Brinks Robbery that sent Bernadine Dohrn to Federal prison. Obama was theoretically a responsible adult when he worked with Bill Ayers on the Annenberg Challenge.

So how about it Big Media? When do you think Bill Ayers put away his ammonium nitrate and diesel cocktails and took up herbal tea to became just a guy in the neighborhood with a stack of bad ideas about education (one of many in that field, I may add) ? It sure wasn’t 1969. Was it 1991? 2001? Sometime during the primaries?

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John Powers is the President of the Chicago Daily Observer