Why would Obama accept support from and associate with someone like this?

From the NYTimes, 9/11/01:

No Regrets for a Love Of Explosives; In a Memoir of Sorts, a War Protester Talks of Life With the Weathermen

”I don’t regret setting bombs,” Bill Ayers said. ”I feel we didn’t do enough.” Mr. Ayers, who spent the 1970’s as a fugitive in the Weather Underground, was sitting in the kitchen of his big turn-of-the-19th-century stone house in the Hyde Park district of Chicago.

. . .

He writes that he participated in the bombings of New York City Police Headquarters in 1970, of the Capitol building in 1971, the Pentagon in 1972.

. . .

Mr. Ayers, who in 1970 was said to have 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,” is today distinguished professor of education at the University of Illinois at Chicago.

. . .

So, would Mr. Ayers do it all again, he is asked? ”I don’t want to discount the possibility,” he said.

So, what is the relationship between Ayers and Barack Obama? According to the Chicago Sun-Times:

In the mid-1990s, Ayers and Dohrn hosted a meet-and-greet at their house to introduce Obama to their neighbors during his first run for the Illinois Senate. In 2001, Ayers contributed $200 to Obama’s campaign. Ayers also served alongside Obama between December 1999 and December 2002 on the board of the not-for-profit Woods Fund of Chicago. That board met four times a year, and members would see each other at occasional dinners the group hosted.

Why would Obama go to the home of an unrepentent terrorist to launch his political career? Why would he accept money from such a person?

Contributed By	Amount	Received By	Description
Ayers, William 1329 E. 50th Street Chicago, IL 60615	$200.00 4/2/2001	Individual Contribution Friends of Barack Obama

Why would he associate with someone like this at all?

UPDATE:  It appears that Obama and his supporters are trying to suppress the release of records detailing the Chicago Annenberg Challenge that could shed additional light on the relationship between Obama and Ayers.

In 2001, the Chicago Annenberg Challenge (CAC) turned over its records to the University of Illinois Chicago’s (UIC) Richard J. Daley library. The records are of value because they document the close working relationship Obama had with domestic terrorist leader and “bomb designer” William Ayres. They demonstrate that Obama failed at the one executive position he ever held; Chairman of the Board of the CAC. And they reveal how the charitable funds donated to improve the public education of Chicago schoolchildren were used to fund extreme radicals like Ayers and Maoist Mike Klonsky.

These records need to be released NOW.