Guilt by Association

I suppose it would be totally wonkish and elitist and I don't know what all to suggest that the current craze for guilt by association (William Ayers was a terrorist when Barack Obama was 8 years old! Obama met Ayers 30 years later! He's a terrorist!) is utterly, absolutely, totally contrary to the spirit of our Constitution. But it made me think of bills of attainder.
Now there's a phrase you don't hear much these days. You might hear a lot about the "wall of separation between church and state" (which isn't in there), but bills of attainder? A prize to whoever has even heard of one, much less knows what it is.
But the Founding Fathers (and, I daresay, mothers) were on the qui vive against bills of attainder, so much so that they prohibited them twice, in Articles 1 and 3 -- and that's even before the Bill of Rights was even thought of. A bill of attainder named some particular individual and branded him or her a criminal. It also laid the taint on the "offender"s children, children's children, etc. It was the ultimate in guilt by association.
In Article 3, the Founders even went to the length of spelling out what is and isn't treason, AND THEN they specified that no attainder of treason should attach to the family of someone convicted of that terrible crime, and no penalty beyond the lifetime of the guilty party.
So when I hear that person A is a "terrorist" -- even though person A has never been convicted of a crime -- and person B is likewise a "terrorist" because he knows person A, I get a creepy feeling. And I suspect there are a lot of Founders turning uneasily in their graves.