Bill Ayers, admitted terrorist and the man who launched Barack Obama's political career with a fundraiser in his house, is peddling a book, and speaking in public, sometimes accompanied by his wife, fellow Weatherman terrorist Bernardine Dohrn.

Speaking last week at Northwestern University, Dohrn made an astonishing claim in the course of justifying her own position as a law professor at Northwestern. Charles Rollet, a senior at that prestigious university attended and offers this account:

Speaking next to her husband, Dohrn addressed the paradox of having once been on the run from the law and her current position as a law professor by saying that "the academy is filled with people who've committed violence." As examples, she cited Ann Coulter and generals who "tortured at Abu Ghraib" getting invited to speak at colleges across the country.

"The academy does not have clean hands, let's just agree," said Dohrn.

I am not aware of Ann Coulter ever committing violence, and certainly she never manufactured and planted bombs, as the Weathermen unquestionably did. Because she is a public figure, Coulter has little chance of winning a slander lawsuit against Dohrn for this outrageous claim.

Dohrn's slander exhibits a characteristic of the left, equating the holding of conservative views to violence. Make no mistake, this is a conscious effort aimed at justifying repression of dissent against their own orthodoxy. Just yesterday, Senator Barbara Boxer, for instance, uttered this outrage:

"When you start acting like you're committing domestic abuse, you've got a problem," Boxer said, as first reported by The Hill. " 'I love you dear, but I'm shutting down your entire government. I love you dear, but I'm going to default.'"

Boxer should be publicly shamed for such slander, though she is protected from legal action by uttering her calumny on the Senate floor. She has trivialized domestic violence with her rhetoric, but remains serene in the knowledge that the feminist movement, normally protective of the domestic violence victims she insults, wilol remain silent, because she shares their leftist ideology.