I've spent a fair amount of time reading up on the Ayers/Obama "connections". To spare y'all the need to do so, but to arm you with the truth, let me lay out the story, at least with respect to their connection to the Chicago Annenberg Challenge:

First, Ayers (who was from a prominent Chicago family) is a professor of education at the University of Illinois who has been active in public education issues. Ayers' father was CEO of Commonwealth Edison and a friend of the original Mayor Daley, and the current Mayor Daley knows him. Whether we like this fact or not, Ayers is part of the mainstream Chicago community leadership.

When the Annenberg Foundation announced that it was doing the Challenge grant program, Ayers got together with a couple of other education activist types (both of whom were already serving as advisors to the national Annenberg Challenge) and initiated the application for the Annenberg grant. Ayers was one of three authors of the initial application, but there was a 73-member Working Group of local activists and representatives of national school reform organizations involved in the effort. Chicago was one of five programs funded by Annenberg. The project started in 1995. It was a public-private partneship. Each funded project had to get additional 2:1 matching funding or in-kind donations. Although the project was overwhelmingly funded by Annenberg, other contributors included the Bank America Foundation, Chicago Tribune Charities, the Pritzker Family Foundation and the MacArthur Foundation.

The organization of the CAC had two parts. "A Board of Directors, composed of foundation and business executives, was responsible for fiscal operations, developing a procedure for securing matching funds and making grants, and hiring an executive director....More unusual was the body that came to be known as the Chicago Reform Collaborative, made up of the members of the original Working Group and others....The Collaborative had an important, if ambiguous role in the Chicago Challenge" which mostly ended up being "continuing the conversation among the advocates."

Ayers was the chair of the Collaborative, the touchy-feely idea side of the effort. Obama became the initial Chairman of the Board of Directors, providing oversight of the business side of looking after millions of Annenberg money. Other Board Members included the publisher of the Chicago Tribune, the President of the Field Museum and the President of the University of Illinois. As for whether Ayers recruited Obama:

"In fact, according to several people involved, Mr. Ayers played no role in Mr. Obama’s appointment. Instead, it was suggested by Deborah Leff, then president of the Joyce Foundation, a Chicago-based group whose board Mr. Obama, a young lawyer, had joined the previous year. At a lunch with two other foundation heads, Patricia A. Graham of the Spencer Foundation and Adele Simmons of the MacArthur Foundation, Ms. Leff suggested that Mr. Obama would make a good board chairman, she said in an interview. Mr. Ayers was not present and had not suggested Mr. Obama, she said.

Ms. Graham said she invited Mr. Obama to dinner at an Italian restaurant in Chicago and was impressed.

“At the end of the dinner I said, ‘I really want you to be chairman.’ He said, ‘I’ll do it if you’ll be vice chairman,’ ” Ms. Graham recalled, and she agreed."

Despite the attempts of certain wingers to make something out of nothing, there's nothing big revealed in the more recently released papers of the CAC that wasn't public before, or that contradicts the above story about how Obama was brought onto the Board. And BTW that Board included

I don't have time right now to deal in depth with their service together on the Woods Fund (but it's a similar story of two Chicago guys active in the community serving on the board of a legitimate mainstream non-profit foundation), or the coffee which was held at the Ayers' house for Alice Palmer to introduce Obama when he first ran for state senate (one of several such small community gatherings held for Obama. But the bottom line to me is that Obama's path crossed with Ayers because they were both active in the community. And that's it. There is simply no evidence that Bill Ayers is a confidant, advisor or close friend of Obama. There is no record of Obama having ever said anything indicating that he shares Bill Ayers' opinions regarding his Vietnam-era activities or his extreme radical views.

I've served on boards and been involved in community volunteer groups, and I certainly don't expect to be held accountable for the viewpoints of everyone else in the organization.

And, the thing is, it's a GOOD thing, for BOTH Obama and Ayers, that they are involved in their communities and served on these boards. Whatever other stupid things Ayers has said or done, I don't fault his being active in his community. And on Obama's side, do we really want to get to a situation where only those whose records are devoid of community involvement can be elected, because they might have a minor tie with some idiot?

BTW, Jean Rudd, Executive Director of the Wood Foundation, said of Obama way back in 1995: "He is among the most hard-nosed board members in wanting to see results. He wants to see our grants make change happen--not just pay salaries." That's a good thing.

Some of my sources:

Chicago Annenberg Challenge:

http://ccsr.uchicago.edu/publications/p0b06.pdf
http://ccsr.uchicago.edu/downloads/p62.pdf
http://ccsr.uchicago.edu/downloads/p62II.pdf
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/09/10/us...pagewanted=all
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/10/04/us...rssnyt&emc=rss
http://sonatabio.com/CAC/1998.pdf
http://sonatabio.com/CAC/1999.pdf

Reception with Alice Palmer:

http://dyn.politico.com/printstory.c...9AD5180C22FF0B

Woods Fund:

http://www.woodsfund.org/about/history