John Kass tries to explain how unrepentant domestic terrorists like William Ayers and Bernardine Dohrn could be considered “mainstream”.  It takes a healthy dose of The Chicago Way, but also a healthy dose of infiltration by some of Ayers’ old radical compatriots into the Daley Machine.  One of Ayers’ staunch defenders in Chicago, Marilyn Katz, was part of the same SDS that launched the Weather Underground — and who now works on Team Obama:

One friend of Obama and Ayers is former ’60s radical Marilyn Katz, now an Obama fundraiser, strategist and public relations maven. She’s often a go-to quote for reporters to knock down the Ayers-Obama story.

“What Bill Ayers and [former Black Panther, now U.S. Rep.] Bobby Rush . . . did 40 years ago has nothing to do with [the presidential campaign],” Katz was quoted as saying in the Chicago Sun-Times in April. “[Ayers] has a national reputation. He lectures at Harvard [University] and Vassar [College].”

What that story and many other pro-Obama articles gloss over is that during the violent protests of the 1968 Democratic National Convention here, Katz was the security chief for the radical Students for a Democratic Society. She once advocated throwing studded nails in front of police cars, back in the SDS days when the group was alleged to have thrown cellophane bags full of human excrement at cops and cans of urine and golf balls impaled with nails.

How things change.

Under this Daley, her firm, MK Communications, has many city deals, and one involves public relations for the Chicago Police Department’s community policing program. From nails to contracts, the Chicago Way. Apparently, irony was not a ’60s thing.

When you hear that Ayers is mainstream, consider the source.  And while we’re at it, how many more SDS radicals now work for Barack Obama?