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Smear Watch

Man, you could start an entire blog devoted to this stuff. Here's one from Pennsylvania:

[A]n e-mail sent out a few days ago to Jewish voters from the state Republican Party -- and signed by former State Supreme Court Justice Sandra Newman, among others -- has stirred the wrath of Pennsylvania Democrats.

In a conference call with reporters Saturday, U.S. Sen. Bob Casey Jr. said the e-mail was part of a Republican campaign of "fear and smear and slash and trash." State Rep. Josh Shapiro of Montgomery County called it "scurrilous." 

The e-mail listed a number of reasons why Jews should worry about a Barack Obama presidency. The language was heated. And the text included at least two misstatements of fact.

One was that Obama "taught members of ACORN to commit vote fraud." In fact, Obama did instruct ACORN members in the 1990s on some aspects of community organizing. There is no evidence that he taught them anything having to do with voter registration, let alone vote fraud.

The other untruth was that William Ayers, the 1960s radical with whom Obama served on an educational reform board and who hosted a political fundraiser for Obama in 1995, "thought the terrorists didn’t do enough on 9/11.”

--Michael Crowley