Looking at the facially preposterous claim by Obama's campaign that he did not know of Ayers' past, Jonah Goldberg reviews the papers in Chicago relevant to the issue and concludes either Obama never read the papers or he's forwarded a preposterous lie to cover the fact that he did know but it just didn't matter to him.

The Tribune is basically the paper of record in Chicago and also probably a good bellweather of other media coverage in the region (i.e. local TV news, the Sun-Times etc). And, yep, it turns out the Trib ran quite a few pieces on Ayers and his work as a founder of the Weather Underground, including a few before Obama's fundraiser at Ayers' home and a great many during Obama's tenure on the Woods Foundation board. Indeed, Ayers' memoir came out during that period and received national coverage, including a big story in the NYT. So presumably Obama heard something about that. If I wrote a memoir that received that kind of coverage, my guess is most of my professional friends and colleagues would have a pretty good idea of what it was about.