Almost as soon as Orly Taitz answered her cellphone, before I could even ask a single question, the leader of the movement determined to disprove President Obama’s American citizenship breathlessly told me the president was “connected” to 39 bogus Social Security numbers, including one for a deceased person born in 1890. “If Obama is not stopped, we will be in Nazi Germany!” Taitz, who has a thick Russian accent, shrieked. “Forgery is a criminal matter and he committed it. Obama should be in the Big House, not the White House!”

Since Taitz’s “birther” campaign began, in the summer of 2008, during the late stages of the Democratic primaries, the dentist, lawyer, and mother of three has begun winning friends in high places. Taitz told me excitedly that since she opened her Facebook account, she has had to hire a staff of five to process the thousands of friend requests she receives each week.

Among those requesting her online friendship, Taitz said, are House Minority Whip Eric Cantor (R-VA), Rep. Mary Bono (R-CA), and Republican National Committee Chairman Michael Steele. She has even received a request, she said, from someone saying they are Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. “I personally checked [the request] and determined that it came from his office,” Taitz said.

Among Taitz’s “biggest supporters,” she said, is CNN anchor Lou Dobbs. “I did Lou’s radio show for half an hour and he was very understanding,” she told me. “He became a supporter and since then he became a supporter of the whole [Obama eligibility] issue.” Indeed, during the July 15 broadcast of Dobbs’ radio show, he praised Taitz’s work, suggested Obama might be “undocumented,” and demanded the president “show the documents” to prove he was born in the United States.

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Jamie Kirchick, a little guy I’ve never met who seems to really hate me, wrote a post calling me a self-hating Jew. The post was indistinguishable from any of the indignant emails I’ve been receiving from Israeli settlers and Kahanist nutcases. The editors of Commentary promptly removed the post from their website? Why? And what does Marty Peretz have to say about the suppression of his lil’ darling?

Here’s Andrew Sullivan on Marty’s boy (Kirchik, incidentally, is a former guest writer on Sullivan’s blog) and Matt Yglesias responds to being called self-hating. The Economist’s Democracy in Action mustered the most substantial response to Kirchik. Excerpt below the fold:

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In October 1995, Likud Party leader Benjamin Netanyahu appeared before thousands of right-wing demonstrators in Jerusalem’s Zion Square to deliver a stinging denunciation of Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin and the Oslo Accords he had signed two years earlier. “Death to Rabin! Nazis! Judenrat!” the demonstrators chanted. Many waved signs depicting Rabin dressed in Nazi regalia.

Concerned that Netanyahu would inflame an already dangerous climate, Israeli Housing Minister Benjamin Ben-Eliezer warned the hyper-ambitious politician, “You’d better restrain your people. Otherwise it will end in murder. They tried to kill me just now… Your people are mad. If someone is murdered, the blood will be on your hands… The settlers have gone crazy, and someone will be murdered here, if not today, then in another week or another month!”

Netanyahu ignored Ben-Eliezer, striding to the podium to chants of “Bibi! Bibi! Bibi!” and an eerily prescient introduction as Israel’s “next prime minister.”

One month later, Rabin was assassinated by Yigal Amir, a right-wing radical and student at Bar-Ilan University, the ideological training ground of Israel’s religious-nationalist front. Rabin’s wife, Leah, refused to forgive Netanyahu, insisting he was at least as responsible for her husband’s murder as the extremist who pulled the trigger.

With Netanyahu back in the prime minister’s office, Avigdor Lieberman’s proto-fascist party in control of several top government posts, and the Israeli peace camp Rabin once inspired in a state of near-permanent marginalization, an emboldened settler movement has turned its wrath on Barack Obama. Obama has aroused the setters’ ire by calling for a construction freeze in the West Bank and a halt to Israeli housing projects intended to Judaize Palestinian neighborhoods in East Jerusalem.

7-23, an anti-US hatefest erupts in front of the American consulate in Jerusalem

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While former Rep. Chip Pickering of Mississippi allegedly carried on an extramarital affair with Elizabeth Creekmore Byrd, he recorded details of his exploits in a secret diary, including the dates and locations of his adulterous encounters.

Pickering, a Republican, described several assignations he had with Creekmore Byrd inside the C Street House, a Capitol Hill townhouse inhabited by an all-male group of right-wing Republican congressmen belonging to The Fellowship, an evangelical group.

And according to a divorce filing by Pickering’s estranged wife, Leisha, the former congressman’s diary reveals the identities of several men who enabled his adulterous trysts and helped him cover his tracks.

So who were Pickering’s enablers? Are they or were they ever C Street House residents? And what role did they play, if any, in helping Pickering transform a house that hosted a “Christian men’s accountability group” into his love nest?

Thanks to heavily politicized local courts and an aggressive damage-control campaign waged by Pickering and his powerful Republican allies, the diary, which contains the answers to these questions, is locked away in a courtroom in Mississippi. And if Pickering has his way, it will stay there indefinitely.

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According to Tablet, I am "the YouTube Michael Moore." Never heard that one before.

Allison Hoffman, writer for the new Jewish magazine, Tablet (the Jewish Slate, which is slightly redundant), has just published a profile of me and my video work. Allison leads by claiming I am a liability to my father and may be the real reason why the Obama White House scuttled his State Department appointment. She does not back this claim up with any evidence, probably because there is none to support it. This says as much about her editors as it does about her journalistic acumen. Why didn’t her editors demand that she at least supply one piece of evidence before going to press?

I also am curious about how a new online magazine could run a story focusing on viral videos without even linking to those videos. Indeed, the story contains not one single link. There is no point in publishing an online magazine if it operates on a traditional model. Tablet, are you listening?

Beyond that, the piece is riddled with minor factual errors that I won’t bother to dispute, though anyone who follows baseball knows it was impossible for me to “grow up” rooting for Kevin Youkilis — he was called up in 2004. I actually told Allison my family is the kind of Jewish family that gets excited when a Jewish player makes it in professional sports or in popular culture. I pointed to Youkilis as an example of the kind of player we cheered for. She made a very minor mistake but one that shows why reporters should use voice recorders (or video cameras!) instead of notepads and their memories.

Phil Weiss has more here. The Tablet profile is below the fold:

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One of dozens of similarly high-minded responses to my Feeling The Hate series, with an apparent allusion to “The Shining:”

Update: The Huffington Post has just removed “Feeling the Hate in Tel Aviv” without explanation.

On May 27, journalist Jesse Rosenfeld and I set out on the streets of Tel Aviv to probe the political opinions of young local residents. We started the day filming at Tel Aviv University, where a group of Jewish and Palestinian Israeli students gathered to protest a proposed law that would criminalize public observance of the Nakba, or the mass expulsion and killing of Palestinians by Zionist militias in 1948. There, we interviewed Palestinian Israeli students about the rising climate of repression, then spoke to another group of students who gathered nearby to heckle their Arab classmates and demand their deportation. A few hundred meters away, two genial business students expressed support for the so-called Nakba law, remarking to us, “If you want to keep democracy, you can’t let people protest against the independence of the country.”

That evening, Jesse and I took our camera to central Tel Aviv, where thousands were taking part in the annual all-night festival known as White Night. Some revelers took an intermission from the partying to express to us their hatred for the Iranian people. And a group of teenagers launched into a virtually unprompted diatribe against Barack Obama, referring to him as a Nazi, a Muslim, and a “Cushi,” which is Hebrew slang for “nigger.” When questioned about the source of his opinions, one teenager proudly declared himself a “gezan,” or a racist.

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Since her sudden resignation from the Alaskan governor’s office on July 3, Sarah Palin has created a constitutional crisis that could cost state legislators hundreds of thousands of dollars in taxpayers’ money to resolve. Palin appointed Lt. Governor Sean Parnell to succeed her, and tapped Lt. Gen. Craig Campbell, the commissioner of the Alaskan Department of Military and Veterans Affairs, to fill Parnell’s post. However, the state legislature had already chosen someone to succeed Parnell in case of an emergency: State Corrections Commissioner Joe Schmidt. To resolve the conflict Palin created, the legislature will almost certainly have to call a special session, an event that could require at least $200,000 to administer.

The legislative sources heaped scorn on Palin for saddling them with a new and potentially expensive crisis while she made plans to pursue lucre and celebrity in the lower 48.

“Honestly, Sarah’s resignation was complete bullshit and I’m saying that as a Republican,” a Republican political veteran working in the legislature told me. “In all my years in politics, nobody has left Alaska in such a mess. Everyone here is just shocked.” The Republican added, “There’s no choice but to hold a special session. The conflict has to be handled in an orderly way.”

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Sarah Palin has threatened to sue my friend Shannyn Moore and any mainstream media outlets that discuss this story; more is on the way.

The suddenness of Sarah Palin’s resignation Friday raises the question about whether Palin is leaving to avert a major scandal. One logical place to start looking is the affair that has Alaska political circles buzzing: an alleged scandal centered around a building contractor, Spenard Building Supplies, with close ties to Palin and her husband, Todd.

Many political observers in Alaska are fixated on rumors that federal investigators have been seizing paperwork from SBS in recent months, searching for evidence that Palin and her husband Todd steered lucrative contracts to the well-connected company in exchange for gifts like the construction of their home on pristine Lake Lucille in 2002. The home was built just two months before Palin began campaigning for governor, a job which would have provided her enhanced power to grant building contracts in the wide-open state.

Liz Trotta cites the work of my favorite journalist at around 1:30

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Joan Walsh at Salon writes:

As CBS News reported Wednesday, Salon’s coverage of Sarah and Todd Palin’s ties to the secessionist Alaska Independence Party sparked a lively e-mail spat between Palin and McCain campaign manager Steve Schmidt. The climax is a withering note from Schmidt to the vice-presidential nominee — AKA “rogue diva” — rejecting her request that the campaign essentially lie about Todd Palin’s seven-year membership in the secessionist group.

I wanted to clear up one question the CBS News story raised for me: whether Palin or her staff had gotten media inquiries about the Alaska first couple’s involvement with the fringe party. Certainly Salon asked about it multiple times, and got no reply from either Palin’s staff or McCain’s, but I can’t speak to whether other outlets also asked about the story. All I know is, they should have.

Todd Purdum’s Vanity Fair story opened the door on this new round of reporting on the Palin-McCain feud. But where Purdum’s piece was long on juicy gossip from anonymous sources, the CBS News story delivers names, dates and clear details on exactly what Palin and Schmidt were fighting about: in this case, Palin’s effort to whitewash her husband’s long association with the fringe group.

Salon took the lead in reporting on the Palins’ ties to AIP, from David Talbot’s interview with Palin-admiring party leader Lynette Clark to the Oct. 10 investigative piece that set Palin off: Max Blumenthal and David Neiwert’s deep exploration of how AIP members aided Palin’s rise to power, and how she paid them back, from firing Wasilla city employees they opposed, to trying (unsuccessfully) to appoint one party leader to the Wasilla City Council.

When CNN covered Blumenthal and Neiwert’s scoop, Palin demanded that the McCain campaign respond. “Pls get in front of that ridiculous issue that’s cropped up all day today — two reporters, a protestor’s sign, and many shout-outs all claiming Todd’s involvement in an anti-American political party,” Palin wrote to Schmidt, Nicolle Wallace and Rick Davis. “It’s bull, and I don’t want to have to keep reacting to it … Pls have statement given on this so it’s put to bed.” Schmidt fired back: “Ignore it. He was a member of the aip? My understanding is yes. That is part of their platform. Do not engage the protestors. If a reporter asks say it is ridiculous. Todd loves america.”

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