In remarks at a Colorado airport hangar today, Gov. Sarah Palin tore into Senator Barack Obama with a twist that she ripped right from the headlines of this very newspaper.

Without apparently mentioning the name of William C. Ayers, a professor in Chicago who is a former member of the radical Weathermen, Ms. Palin said, according to a pool report from her appearance:

“There is a lot of interest, I guess, in what I read and what I’ve read lately. Well, I was reading my copy of today’s New York Times and I was interested to read about Barack’s friends from Chicago. “I get to bring this up not to pick a fight, but it was there in the New York Times, so we are gonna talk about it. Turns out one of Barack’s earliest supporters is a man who, according to the New York Times, and they are hardly ever wrong, was a domestic terrorist and part of a group that quote launched a campaign of bombings that would target the Pentagon and US Capitol. Wow. These are the same guys who think patriotism is paying higher taxes. “This is not a man who sees America as you see it and how I see America. We see America as the greatest force for good in this world. If we can be that beacon of light and hope for others who seek freedom and democracy and can live in a country that would allow intolerance in the equal rights that again our military men and women fight for and die for for all of us. Our opponent though, is someone who sees America it seems as being so imperfect that he’s palling around with terrorists who would target their own country?”

The aforementioned article, by Scott Shane, delved into the relationship between Mr. Ayers and Mr. Obama, who together served on education boards in Chicago years ago. Mr. Shane wrote:

A review of records of the schools project and interviews with a dozen people who know both men, suggest that Mr. Obama, 47, has played down his contacts with Mr. Ayers, 63. But the two men do not appear to have been close. Nor has Mr. Obama ever expressed sympathy for the radical views and actions of Mr. Ayers, whom he has called “somebody who engaged in detestable acts 40 years ago, when I was 8.”

The Republican efforts to remind the voting public of Mr. Obama’s old ties to Mr. Ayers and their mutual education projects in Chicago date back much farther than today, but they include a new McCain ad highlighting the relationship that is up on television. And both the McCain campaign and the Republican National Committee have pumped out releases today listing articles, including Mr. Shane’s, about Mr. Ayers.

Ms. Palin’s line of attack also comes on the heels (forgive us for that and we’ll get back to those spikes in a minute) of reports indicating that the McCain campaign may begin lobbing more negative critiques against the Democratic presidential nominee in the final month of this election cycle. Or as Ms. Palin put it today, a donor had suggested that she get tougher on her opponents: “And I turned to one of the staffers and said, ‘O.K. they’re serious!’ Jason the campaign staffer said, ‘O.K., let’s look at it this way, Sarah, the gloves are off, the heels are on, let’s get to work!’ ”

Would those be her blood-red heels? Just joking.

Hari Sevugan, a spokesman for the Obama campaign, fired back almost immediately in a statement: “Governor Palin’s comments, while offensive, are not surprising, given the McCain campaign’s statement this morning that they would be launching Swiftboat-like attacks in hopes of deflecting attention from the nation’s economic ills. In fact, the very newspaper story Governor Palin cited in hurling her shameless attack made clear that Senator Obama is not close to Bill Ayers, much less ‘pals,’ and that he has strongly condemned the despicable acts Ayers committed 40 years ago, when Obama was eight. What’s clear is that John McCain and Sarah Palin would rather spend their time tearing down Barack Obama than laying out a plan to build up our economy.”

So if Mr. Obama was 8 years old at the time, Ms. Palin was 5? Just wondering.

At that airport hangar rally in Englewood, Colo., Governor Palin was received enthusiastically in one of her rare appearances without her running mate, Senator John McCain. Frances Owens, the former Colorado first lady, lauded her: “Since joining the Republican ticket, she has energized millions of voters … I am very honored to introduce to you a card-carrying, lipstick-wearing professional Republican woman who totally knocked it out of the park last Thursday.”

She was referring to Ms. Palin’s debate performance, which had been watched closely — and some would say nervously — by many Republicans who had been fretting over the stumbles she made in limited TV interviews during the last month.

Again today, as she said on Fox News yesterday, Ms. Palin alluded to her problems during those sessions (with CBS’ Katie Couric in particular), but excused them away as frustration on her part for being asked questions she didn’t feel were pertinent.

“After that recent interview that wasn’t so successful because as I admitted on Fox TV the other day, I was annoyed and I was impatient with some of the questions, and I need to learn to I guess hide to some of that annoyance, some of the annoyance with some of the questions I received was because I am so apparently outside the Washington elite and the media elite, that sometimes I don’t understand why they are asking what they are asking when Americans want to talk about energy independence, they want to talk about how they are gonna be able to send their kids to college, to hear our solutions to challenges to health care, not necessarily, ‘What publication did you read this morning?’ OK, so I was annoyed and I have to apologize for that.”

(The hangar audience yelled “NO!” at that point.)

Funny, she didn’t express that frustration when the TV journalists were “playing stump the candidate,” a phrase she used on the campaign trail as a challenge for folks to get to know her and her level of experience. Nor did she change the subject in those television Q&A’s as deftly as she managed to do during Thursday night’s debate. Perhaps this is the result of what former Gov. Mitt Romney and others were saying last week: Let Palin Be Palin. Don’t bottle her up, as the McCain campaign had done before the debate, some argued; give her free rein to become accustomed to the give-and-take in the glare of a national spotlight.

Or as NBC’s Matt Lauer asked Mr. Romney: Will Practice Make Perfect?