Asking such a question can apparently lead to legal trouble.

Amazingly (and stupidly, IMO), Barack Obama's campaign is taking legal action against a group which produced a video asking that question. The video (claims the campaign) is malicious and false.

"Barack Obama is friends with Ayers, defending him as, quote, 'Respectable' and 'Mainstream,'" the group's ad states. "Obama's political career was launched in Ayers' home. And the two served together on a left-wing board. Why would Barack Obama be friends with someone who bombed the Capitol and is proud of it? Do you know enough to elect Barack Obama?"

In a letter to station managers, Obama campaign lawyer Robert Bauer wrote: "Your station is committed to operating in the public interest, an objective that cannot be satisfied by accepting for compensation material of such malicious falsity."

Bauer also wrote to Deputy Assistant Attorney General John C. Keeney, noting that the ad is a "knowing and willful attempt to evade the strictures of federal election law."

The campaign's aggressive tactics could draw more attention to a subject the campaign wants to go away. On Tuesday, the University of Illinois at Chicago will make available records of Obama's service on the board of the Chicago Annenberg Challenge. The group was set up to improve the city's schools. The documents could shed further light on whether Obama and Ayers had a relationship.

Perhaps someone can enlighten me.

At Obama's "Factcheck" website, this claim is made (all in caps):

AYERS IS A TENURED PROFESSOR AT THE UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS AT CHICAGO AND WAS A "RESPECTED ADVISOR" TO MAYOR DALEY ON SCHOOL REFORM

"Ayers is now mainstream..."

His campaign issued a 1,300-word "fact check" pooh-poohing his connection to Ayers and his wife, Bernardine Dohrn (another former Weathermen terrorist), as "phony," "tenuous," "a stretch" - but simultaneously defending them as "respectable fixtures of the mainstream in Chicago."

NOTE: That last quote (which has been cited by others) appears to have disappeared entirely from the Factcheck site. At least I can't find it there.

No, it is not there. A little "housecleaning" went on, says Hot Air.

Well then, are we allowed to ask why?

Who will check Obama's Factcheck?

Jacoby, of course, questions just how "mainstream" and "respectable" Ayers or his views are -- and he notes (as have others) that Obama's career was launched in the Ayers and Dohrn's home:

The key facts, reported by Ben Smith in Politico.com, are these: Barack Obama's political career was launched in Ayers's and Dohrn's home, when a group of "influential liberals" gathered in 1995 to meet the young organizer who was Illinois lawmaker Alice Palmer's chosen successor. In the years that followed, Obama and Ayers would serve together as (paid) board members of the Woods Fund, a leftist Chicago foundation, and appear jointly on academic panels, at least one of which was organized by Michelle Obama. Ayers would even donate money to one of Obama's political campaigns.

Arguably, none of this would matter if Ayers and Dohrn had long ago repudiated their violent extremism. But they have always refused to apologize for their monstrous behavior. "We weren't extreme enough in fighting against the war," Ayers told the Chicago Tribune in 2001. In a memoir published that year, he exulted: "Everything was absolutely ideal on the day I bombed the Pentagon." America, he said after Sept. 11, "is not a just and fair and decent place. . . . It makes me want to puke."

Is this Obama's idea of "respectable" and "mainstream" political thinking? If so, doesn't that tell us something about his judgment and standards?

Maybe the objection is to this question:

Why would Barack Obama be friends with someone who bombed the Capitol and is proud of it?

I think it's a good question, and one which will continue to be on a lot of voters' minds.

And it has never been answered. Instead, Obama has tried like hell to imply that he hardly knew Ayers, and the evidence is growing that he knew him well for many years, and worked with him closely:

...the so-called "Fact Check" at the Obama website does not disclose that Obama and Ayers worked together on a failed education reform project from 1995 to 2001, and had probably first teamed up on education reform in 1987.

2. Set aside the fact that Obama was a mere lad when Ayers was setting bombs; today Ayers is an unreconstructed hard-left radical with dramatic views on education and society - as he explained to Hugo Chavez during a speech in Venezuela in 2006, "La educacion es revolucion!"

Obama worked for five years with Bill Ayers on education reform while they were both with the Chicago Annenberg Challenge. Are we being asked to believe that, just as Obama initially claimed to have been unaware of Jeremiah Wright's views, he was also unaware of Ayers current radicalism?

Or else.

Those who ask questions may face a Justice Department investigation.

MORE: Some good advice from Michelle Malkin on the above video:

Spread the ad far and wide. Will they come after bloggers next?

Shut us up?

No, they can't.

MORE: And here's Ace on Obama's claim that the ad is "despicable":

Obama says the ad is "despicable."

You know what's despicable, Barack? Befriending an unrepentant terrorist who still supports violent terrorist bombing against your country, Barack.