Considering the number of posts I have written about Barack Obama's friendship and collaboration with unrepentant former Weather Underground leader Bill Ayers, I guess I should acknowledge -- however grudgingly -- that the New York Times has (on a Saturday, as Glenn noted) finally reported that the connections between these men are deeper than previously acknowledged.

In a piece titled "Nothing to see here. Move along.," Ed Morrissey does a great job of showing what a piss-poor job the Times did. His conclusion?

If John McCain had spent ten years on charitable boards with someone less egregious than abortion bombers -- say, with Randall Terry of Operation Rescue -- the New York Times would have Page One, in-depth reporting, complete with teams of reporters combing through the minutes of the board meetings. Hell, the New York Times infamously smeared McCain with allegations of a sexual affair based on nothing but gossip from two disgruntled ex-staffers last February, and spent days rolling that out, using four reporters on the story. For the Obama/Ayers connection, they have Scott Shane telling us that there's nothing to see here.
Great reporting. Thanks for nothing.

What the presence of this story in the Times means, I'm not sure. It could be that the story has gotten too big to ignore. Then again, it could be a sort of CYA, as if the Times doesn't want it said that they failed to report the story at all.

I think it's quite obvious that Obama and Ayers had to have known each other before 1995, as the Times asserts. But as Tom Maguire points out, they're resolutely holding the line at 1995.

Fausta has more, and concludes that the Times article is a joke.

Stephen Green notes that the the countless meetings in one year alone contradict the "crossed paths" meme, and sees through the Times' attempt to spin this as a bunch of right wingers claiming Obama is a far-left terrorist wannabe:

The only problem is, I don't know of anyone with a substantive worry that deep in his heart, Obama wants to blow up the Pentagon or even just stick it to the man, baby. Instead, the worry is that Obama has had some kind of relationship with an unrepentant domestic terrorist, which even Shane must admit Obama has downplayed. And that Obama has promised, and continues to promise, to meet with would-be genocidal killers like Mahmoud Ahmadinejad "without preconditions." And that Obama has the most liberal voting record in the Senate.

In short, we question his values and his honesty and his judgement -- especially his judgement.

And pieces like today's New York Times whitewash do nothing to help put those questions aside.

Fascinatingly, Stanley Kurtz (whose investigation into the CAC led to the story breaking) even sees a coverup at work inside the Times story itself:

How could a responsible article on the topic of Obama, Ayers, and the Chicago Annenberg Challenge ignore the story of the blocked library access and the results of the two FOIA requests? How could a responsible paper fail to aggressively follow up on the questions raised by those requests, and by the documents and analysis presented by Steve Diamond?

Most remarkably of all, Shane seems to paper over the results of his own questioning. On the one hand, toward the end of the piece we read: "Since 2002, there is little public evidence of their relationship." And it's no wonder, says Shane, since Ayers was caught expressing no regret for his own past terrorism in an article published on September 11, 2001. Yet earlier in Shane's article we learn that, according to Obama spokesman Ben LaBolt, Obama and Ayers "have not spoken by phone or exchanged e-mail messages since Mr. Obama began serving in the United States Senate in January 2005." Very interesting. Obama's own spokesman has just left open the possibility that there has indeed been phone and e-mail contact between the two men between 2002 and 2004, well after Ayers' infamous conduct on 9/11. Yet instead of pursuing this opening, Shane ignores the findings of his own investigation and covers for Obama.

Those guys at the Times take being above and beyond the call of duty quite literally.