In light of the mounting common-sense evidence of the total implausibility of Barack Obama's claim to have not known that Bill Ayers and Bernadine Dohrn were not just terrorists but nationally famous terrorists when he worked with Ayers in the mid-1990s (including funnelling millions of dollars to left-wing "education" projects under Ayers' control, giving a favorable blurb to Ayers' book, and holding a crucial reception to launch Obama's political career at Ayers' home), Obama campaign manager David Axelrod is now partially backing down on what Obama knew but continuing to deny when he knew it:

So when did Obama learn that Ayers, now an education professor at the University of Illinois at Chicago, was a founding member of the militant Weather Underground in the 1960s?

"It was sometime after their first meetings, you know, he became aware of that,'' David Axelrod, Obama's chief campaign strategist, said on board the Obama campaign plane on a flight from Asheville, N.C., to here for tonight's debate. "I don't know the exact moment."

Obama just was not familiar with the name when he first met him?

"Yeah,'' Axelrod said. "I mean the fact is, like a lot of people who, you know, didn't live through that era, particularly who didn't live through that era in Chicago, it just wasn't, I mean, when he came to Chicago, Ayers was advising Mayor Daley on school reform issues and that was his profile was that he was an expert on education issues."

Did Obama know of Ayers' history before or after the event, a small reception for Obama's state Senate campaign in 1995 at Ayers' home?

"My understanding was that he, when he went there, he did not know, so I would say after,'' Axelrod said -- confirming that he has asked Obama about this. "Yes, yeah."

"No one is suggesting that he never knew,'' Axelrod notes of Obama, who has since repudiated Ayers' protest tactics. "I mean that's not, we weren't offering that."

Of course, it was always laughable for Obama to claim that he, a guy who went to a Stokely Carmicheal lecture in college, was represented in Congress by a former Black Panther, and immersed himself in college in "neocolonialism, Franz Fanon, Eurocentrism, and patriarchy" and wrote in 1995 of wanting an edgier brand of friends than "so-called campus radicals, most of them white and tenured and happily tolerated," would have no idea who Bill Ayers and Bernadine Dohrn really were.

As always with these guys, Obama supporters like Paul Begala are pushing McCain's ties to a guy they claim is the equivalent of Ayers, John Singlaub, who is...wait for it......"a decorated retired Army major general with a background in special operations and intelligence." Well, that does, in fact, tell us just as much about who McCain hangs with as Ayers does for Obama, doesn't it? Could you pick a more perfect example, short of when they were blasting McCain for associating with Bud Day, America's most highly decorated living veteran?

The gist of the charge against Singlaub seems to be that his organization was criticized for becoming a gathering place for anti-Semitic cranks and the like, but even the Politico piece admits that "Singlaub eventually won some praise from the anti-defamation group for working to purge those elements from the league." Other than that it's an attempt to refight the Iran-Contra brouhaha. Nice try.