ABC News is reporting that a spokesman for the Clinton campaign has e-mailed reporters a copy of a dispatch of The New York Sun last week reporting that a founder of the Weather Underground, William Ayers, had given a campaign contribution to Barack Obama and served with Mr. Obama for three years on the nine-member board of Woods Fund.

The issue of the tie between Ayers and Mr. Obama has gotten some traction, with bloggers at Politico, the New York Times, the New Republic, and Commentary all weighing in after Mr. Berman’s report last week. Our report noted that in an interview published in the Times on September 11, 2001, Mr. Ayers, whose “underground” bombed the Pentagon, the Capitol, and New York Police headquarters, said, “I don’t regret setting bombs. I feel we didn’t do enough.”

For all the attention regarding Mr. Obama and Ayers, however, the politician who is on the spot in regard to Ayers is, in our view, Governor Spitzer. For it is at the State University of New York, New Paltz, that Ayers, who has become a professor in Illinois, was introduced warmly by a SUNY dean for a campus speech on education policy.

Mr. Obama’s association with Ayers, such as it was, was seven or eight years ago. SUNY’s was last week. An SUNY trustee during the Pataki era who was not reappointed by Mr. Spitzer, Candace de Russy, had it right when she said, “That campuses continue to affiliate themselves so uncritically with such persons is beyond perverse.” If even the Clinton campaign is reportedly raising eyebrows about Ayers, what’s the point of bringing him to talk to SUNY students? And where is the Candace de Russy of the Spitzer administration?