BARACK AND the bomber.

If we’re judged by those with whom we associate, here’s a question:

Would you rather be associated with a ’60s radical who plotted to bomb the Pentagon and to this day believes, as he said a few years ago, “I don’t regret setting bombs; I feel we didn’t do enough,” or would you rather be associated with — slight pause, please — Sen. Tom Coburn (R-Okla.)?

That was the rather bizarre scenario raised by Sen. Barack Obama (Ill.) at Wednesday night’s Democratic presidential debate in Philadelphia. . . . But wouldn’t Coburn be more comparable to Ayers if he, Coburn, had bombed abortion clinics in the past — and then said that he not only did not regret bombing the clinics but wished that he had done more? And then, after bombing abortion clinics and refusing to express regret, he held a political event in his home for Barack Obama, which Obama attended?

And if all that had happened, would Obama say it wasn’t a problem because Coburn had bombed those clinics a long time ago, when Obama was just 8 years old?

Read the whole thing. Interestingly, I don’t think Coburn has weighed in. But Tom Maguire has!

UPDATE: Obama, Bill Ayers, and Bernadine Dohrn.

ANOTHER UPDATE: Meanwhile, some background on Bill Clinton’s Weather Underground pardons.