Chris Matthews Pals Around With Unrepentant Domestic Terrorist

Via Newsbusters, Chris Matthews and Bill Ayers had an interesting exchange on Hardball last night:

MATTHEWS: Let me ask you about this quote. I read it in the New York Times, the other day. And honestly it, it bothered me, but you know, I certainly shared your anti-war views. I demonstrated and did all that stuff. But let me ask you this. "The Weather Underground went on to take responsibility for placing several small bombs in empty offices. The ones at the Pentagon and at the U.S. Capitol were the most notorious as an illegal and unpopular war consumed the nation." Do you stand by that decision by the Weather Underground to plant those bombs?

AYERS: No I never-

MATTHEWS: You think that was a good thing to do at the time?

AYERS: You know I don't defend those actions and I didn't, don't defend them in my book Fugitive Days. ... I think we made enormous mistakes and I think that there were terrible things done. I think we ought to have, in this country, a truth and reconciliation process where we really tell the truth about who did what, when-

Later Ayers said of his bombing spree: "I'm not so sure and I don't, again I don't want to defend what we did but nor do I think it was completely insane."

Huh? Is this the same Bill Ayers who told the New York Times in September 2001: "''I don't regret setting bombs ... I feel we didn't do enough''?

Allahpundit points out that Ayers expressed mild regret in his 2001 memoir, though I don't really plan on reading that scumbag's book just to find out when he became an unrepentant equivocating former domestic terrorist.

Matthews, for one, is happy to let bygones be bygones.

"I think you're a different man. I think you're a different man than the one that was in the Weather Underground and you've said so," Matthews said. "You agitate your way, I agitate my way."