check "excused", you may mean "accused"

Good point about Schwerner and Goodman. Doesn't one of their mothers still live in New Jersey somewhere. I seem to remember an interview on the anniversary of their murder, or during the trial of one of their murderers in the past few years. Might be nice to ask Mama what she thinks of the smears of Obama.

The personal attack on Richard Cohen doesn't change anything. Is Farrahkan a Holocaust deny and an anti-Semite? By any standard he is. Did the Church Barack Obama give an award to Farrahkan and gush over him? As is so often with you posts you often lots of smears but no facts.

Of course you stormed out of your synagogue he was the wrong like of hater for you. So did Obama storm out of his Church? Has he been back?

In your effort to change the subject and to shield Obama from the truth you despoil's Goodman and Schwerner's memory with racism combined with anti-semitism.

This post shames you, TPMCafe and those who edit it.

I believe Pat Buchanan is a well-known, well-established, bona fide anti-Semite. How often has Mr.Cohen asked the Republican Party, his own newspaper, the networks, cable to disown and denounce Buchanan's bigotry? I do not know for certain but I think the number of times is zero. Now why would that be?

Some gems from the always delightful Mr. Buchanan:

1). After Cardinal O'Connor criticized anti-Semitism during the
controversy over construction of a convent near Auschwitz, Buchanan wrote:
"If U.S. Jewry takes the clucking appeasement of the Catholic cardinalate
as indicative of our submission, it is mistaken. When Cardinal O'Connor of
New York seeks to soothe the always irate Elie Wiesel by reassuring him
'there are many Catholics who are anti-Semitic'...he speaks for himself. Be
not afraid, Your Eminence; just step aside, there are bishops and priests
ready to assume the role of defender of the faith." (New Republic,
10/22/90)

2)Buchanan told Elie Wiesel that President Reagan must not surrender to
"Jewish pressure" against visiting Bitburg, a German cemetery where SS men
were buried. In a White House meeting with Jewish leaders, Buchanan
reminded them that they were "Americans first," as fellow staffer Ed
Rollins later recounted to Reagan biographer Lou Cannon. Buchanan
repreatedly scrawled the phrase "Succumbing to the pressure of the Jews" on
his notepad during the meeting.

3) In 1990 William Buckley, Buchanan's former mentor, wrote a 20,000 word
essay on Buchanan that concluded: "I find it impossible to defend Pat
Buchanan against the charge" of anti-Semitism.

4) In Newsweek, December 23, 1991, Jonathan Alter writes that in 1983
Buchanan criticized the US government for expressing regret over its
postwar protection of Klaus Barbie.

5) In 1987 Buchanan lobbied to stop deportation of Karl Linnas, accused of
Nazi atrocities in Estonia.

6) In a March 17, 1990 column, Buchanan wrote that it was impossible for
850,000 Jews to be killed by diesel exhaust fed into the gas chamber at
Treblinka. "Diesel engines do not emit enough carbon monoxide to kill
anybody." According to Jacob Weisberg in his article "The Heresies of Pat
Buchanan," October 22, 1990, The New Republic, "Buchanan stands by his
bizarre claim about the diesel engines but refuses to discuss it on the
record. Suffice it to say that he embraces a bolder debunking claim than
he is yet willing to endorse in print...Where did he get the anecdote
("proving" his assertion about the diesel)? 'Somebody sent it to me.'
"Buchanan's source was almost certainly the July 1988 issue of a Newsletter
of the German American Information and Education Association--a known
Holocaust denial group which quotes extensively from a story of
schoolchildren who emerged unharmed after being exposed to diesel fumes
while trapped in a train tunnel.

7)On March 2, 1992, at a campaign rally in Marietta, Georgia, where Rabbi
Avi Weiss called out, "Your anti-Semitism makes America last," Buchanan
shot back, "This rally is of Americans, for Americans and for the good 'ole
USA, my friends."

8)Buchanan was a featured columnist for The Spotlight, a patently
anti-Semitic and anti-Black publication that championed David Duke.

9)Buchanan repeatedly referred to Capitol Hill as "Israeli occupied
territory." (McLaughlin Report, June 1990)

10)On February 4, 1987 in The Washington Post, Buchanan wrote: "Dr. Martin
Luther King is one of the most divisive men in contemporary history..."

11)In a January 16, 1986 column, Buchanan wrote:" But apartheid is not
the worst situation facing Africans today. Not remotely. If it were, they
wouldn't be pouring into South Africa from such "liberated" zones as
Mozambique."

12)In 1990, before the Gulf War, Buchanan wrote that if the US went to
war, "the fighting would be done by kids with names like McAllister,
Murphy, Gonzales and Leroy Brown." The National Review (December 30, 1991)
commented that "There is no way to read that sentence without concluding
that Pat Buchanan was suggesting that American Jews manage to avoid
personal military exposure even while advancing military policies they
(uniquely?) engender."

Point of personal privilege (since implicit in MJ's introduction is that I was accusing him of making things up in his prior post):

I never stated that MJ was making things up and neither did I call him a liar; I did challenge his journalistic standards because the allegations were incredibly nebulous at best and I thought his original title was unjustifiably provocative and I stand by that. I wish I had approached it in a different way but shit happens and I accept the consequences. This is MJ's gig, and the last thing I would ever want to do is stand in the way of good faith discourse.

For the record, I read Richard Cohen's column this morning after Josh Marshall flagged it and I was disgusted with the "guilt by association" essence of Cohen's thesis. I, too, have heard people in some of the synagogues I have attended and I have been ashamed at times of things I have heard.

Finally, for the record, the Goodman family and my wife's family are cousins. I know some of her family well and I had the privilege of meeting her once at my in-laws' home and I was in awe of her no less than I remain in awe of the legacy of her son. I have no doubt that Mrs. Goodman (may she rest in peace) would be disheartened by Cohen's column and by any organized effort in any segment of the Jewish community to associate Barack Obama with antisemitism.