Way back in January, Insight magazine, a project of Sun Myung Moon’s far-right Washington Times, published an item asking, “Are the American people ready for an elected president who was educated in a Madrassa as a young boy and has not been forthcoming about his Muslim heritage?” Even by conservative standards, it was a ridiculous attack with no foundation in reality.

Fox News and several conservative blogs pounced on the story, but even they eventually backpedaled. The story was debunked, repeatedly, by news outlets large and small, and the baseless smear quickly faded away.

Ben Smith and Jonathan Martin report that the story didn’t disappear altogether.

[R]ather than vanish, the whispered smear campaign appears to have gone underground, and in its purest form: Obama himself, according to a pair of widely circulated anonymous e-mails, is a Muslim.

“Barack Hussein Obama has joined the United Church of Christ in an attempt to downplay his Muslim background,” warns an e-mail titled “Who Is Barack Obama,” that was circulating in South Carolina political circles this summer and sent to Politico by a South Carolina Democrat.

“The Muslims have said they plan on destroying the U.S. from the inside out; what better way to start than at the highest level?”

“Please forward to everyone you know,” it ended.

The other widely forwarded e-mail is titled “Can a good Muslim become a good American” and answers that question in the negative, before concluding: “And Barack Hussein Obama, a Muslim, wants to be our president!!!”

What is it about South Carolina and ugly whisper campaigns?

The mystery surrounding the events in Syria on Sept. 6 is slowly becoming less mysterious.

Israel’s air attack on Syria last month was directed against a site that Israeli and American intelligence analysts judged was a partly constructed nuclear reactor, apparently modeled on one North Korea has used to create its stockpile of nuclear weapons fuel, according to American and foreign officials with access to the intelligence reports.

The description of the target addresses one of the central mysteries surrounding the Sept. 6 attack, and suggests that Israel carried out the raid to demonstrate its determination to snuff out even a nascent nuclear project in a neighboring state.

Hmm, “neighboring state.” How subtle.

The NYT piece fills in a few gaps, including the fact that U.S. was definitely divided on the merit of the airstrikes, and that the Syrian reactor was far from completion.

But here’s the nut graf:

A senior Israeli official, while declining to speak about the specific nature of the target, said the strike was intended to “re-establish the credibility of our deterrent power,” signaling that Israel meant to send a message to the Syrians that even the potential for a nuclear weapons program would not be permitted. But several American officials said the strike may also have been intended by Israel as a signal to Iran and its nuclear aspirations. Neither Iran nor any Arab government except for Syria has criticized the Israeli raid, suggesting that Israel is not the only country that would be disturbed by a nuclear Syria. North Korea did issue a protest.

Interestingly enough, Syria was outraged two months ago, and looked for some regional allies to share their indignation. They came up empty.

Conservative critics of Al Gore winning the Nobel Peace Prize have had no shortage of criticisms, accusing the Nobel committee of everything from cheapening the honor to politicizing it.

James Fallows remembers hearing similar reactions in 1964, when the Nobel Peace Prize went to Martin Luther King.

The reaction was, of course, racial at its root. This was a majority-white, minority-Hispanic small town with very few black residents, which went for Barry Goldwater over Lyndon Johnson in the presidential election that same fall.

But the stated form of the objection concerned not King’s race but his obnoxiousness as a man. He was a windbag. He was pompous and self-dramatizing, He was holier than thou. Plus, he had started getting involved where he didn’t belong, in raising questions about the Vietnam War.

Those criticisms, of course, sound rather familiar; similar assessments are made of Gore quite frequently.

Time will tell if historical scrutiny will make Gore’s critics look like King’s — which is to say, petty and short-sighted — but given what we know, it seems like a safe bet.

On Friday, in an otherwise unremarkable speech, Mitt Romney said he is the candidate who best represents the “Republican wing of the Republican Party.” This prompted John McCain, who apparently considers Romney something of a fraud, to launch quite a tirade yesterday in New Hampshire.

“When he ran against Ted Kennedy,” Mr. McCain said as dozens of people wearing Romney buttons looked on angrily, “he said he didn’t want to return to the days of Reagan-Bush. I always thought Ronald Reagan was a real Republican.”

He continued: “When he voted for a Democratic candidate for president, Paul Tsongas, I don’t think he was speaking for Republicans. When he refused to endorse the Contract with America, I don’t think he was speaking for Republicans. And when he was embracing the Democratic position on many issues of the day, I don’t think he was speaking for Republicans.”

As Mr. McCain spoke, his voice became pitched with indignation.

“So you’ll understand why I’m a little perplexed when Mitt Romney now suggests that he’s a better Republican than me, or that he speaks for the Republican wing of the Republican Party,” he said.

I guess the gloves are off?

In terms of motivations, it’s not hard to guess why McCain is unloading on the former Massachusetts governor — McCain has a lot of ground to make up, and Romney’s record makes him vulnerable. Indeed, everything the Arizona senator said about Romney yesterday was true.

But I wonder if McCain underestimates his own vulnerabilities on this. If the race for the GOP nomination comes down to who is the most loyal partisan and fiercest advocate of the Republican agenda, McCain’s going to lose.

I started thinking about the past few years, and McCain’s record is ripe for the picking. He’s worked with Sen. Russ Feingold (D-Wis.) on sweeping campaign-finance reform, former Sen. John Edwards (D-N.C.) on a Patients’ Bill of Rights, and Sen. Ted Kennedy (D-Mass.) on immigration reform — all bills the GOP opposed in large numbers. McCain voted against Bush’s tax cuts in 2001 and 2003, and the anti-gay constitutional amendment last year. In March 2004, asked on national television whether he would consider joining the Democratic presidential ticket as John Kerry’s running mate, McCain said, “John Kerry is a close friend of mine. We have been friends for years. Obviously I would entertain it.”

A month later, in April 2004, just as the national Republican campaign was beginning in earnest, McCain said, “I believe my party has gone astray…. I think the Democratic Party is a fine party, and I have no problems with it, in their views and their philosophy.”

And now McCain has decided his path to the nomination will be decided by a fight over who is the “real” Republican in the race? Is this really a wise strategy?

Nearly two weeks ago, the NYT had a front-page blockbuster, highlighting secret legal opinions from the Bush administration, which endorsed “the harshest interrogation techniques ever used by the Central Intelligence Agency.” After insisting publicly that “torture is abhorrent,” administration officials “provided explicit authorization to barrage terror suspects with a combination of painful physical and psychological tactics,” including simulated drownings and freezing temperatures.

The revelations sparked renewed discussion about U.S. policy on torture, but Frank Rich argues today that the response wasn’t nearly enough: “The administration gives its alibi (Abu Ghraib was just a few bad apples). A few members of Congress squawk. The debate is labeled ‘politics.’ We turn the page.”

Our moral trajectory over the Bush years could not be better dramatized than it was by a reunion of an elite group of two dozen World War II veterans in Washington this month. They were participants in a top-secret operation to interrogate some 4,000 Nazi prisoners of war. Until now, they have kept silent, but America’s recent record prompted them to talk to The Washington Post.

“We got more information out of a German general with a game of chess or Ping-Pong than they do today, with their torture,” said Henry Kolm, 90, an M.I.T. physicist whose interrogation of Rudolf Hess, Hitler’s deputy, took place over a chessboard. George Frenkel, 87, recalled that he “never laid hands on anyone” in his many interrogations, adding, “I’m proud to say I never compromised my humanity.”

Our humanity has been compromised by those who use Gestapo tactics in our war. The longer we stand idly by while they do so, the more we resemble those “good Germans” who professed ignorance of their own Gestapo. It’s up to us to wake up our somnambulant Congress to challenge administration policy every day. Let the war’s last supporters filibuster all night if they want to. There is nothing left to lose except whatever remains of our country’s good name.

Complacency, under the circumstances, is untenable.

The WaPo’s editorial board seems to believe congressional Dems on the right track with their “RESTORE Act,” unveiled this week, but sides with the Bush administration on a key sticking point.

There is one major area of disagreement between the administration and House Democrats where we think the administration has the better of the argument: the question of whether telecommunications companies that provided information to the government without court orders should be given retroactive immunity from being sued. House Democrats are understandably reluctant to grant that wholesale protection without understanding exactly what conduct they are shielding, and the administration has balked at providing such information. But the telecommunications providers seem to us to have been acting as patriotic corporate citizens in a difficult and uncharted environment.

It’s a confusing argument. We know that the telecoms weren’t just motivated by “patriotism” during a “difficult” post-9/11 period, but were in fact cooperating with the NSA long before the 2001 terrorist attacks. We know this, of course, because the WaPo ran a front-page story on this just yesterday.

Indeed, this same front-page article suggests the telecoms that were playing ball with the NSA weren’t necessarily driven by national service, but rather the corporate desire to secure lucrative contracts that were in jeopardy unless the companies obliged administration requests.

So, what’s the argument here? That Congress should provide retroactive immunity to companies that cooperated in secret with the NSA to violate customers’ privacy rights, apparently in violation of the law, before a national emergency? That these companies should be entirely shielded from responsibility, before lawmakers even understand what exactly transpired?

This is what the WaPo finds persuasive?

Update: Glenn Greenwald has more, including a solid analysis of how seriously (or, in this case, not) the DC establishment takes the rule of law.

Didn’t happen in a bathroom, but it seems we’ve got another terrible misunderstanding …

A Vatican official suspended after being caught on hidden camera making advances to a young man said in an interview published Sunday that he is not gay and was only pretending to be gay as part of his work.

In an interview with La Repubblica newspaper, Monsignor Tommaso Stenico said he frequented online gay chat rooms and met with gay men as part of his work as a psychoanalyst. He said that he pretended to be gay in order to gather information about “those who damage the image of the Church with homosexual activity.”

…

“It’s all false; it was a trap. I was a victim of my own attempts to contribute to cleaning up the Church with my psychoanalyst work,” La Repubblica quoted Stenico as saying.

…

In the Repubblica interview, Stenico said he had met with the young man and pretended to talk about homosexuality “to better understand this mysterious and faraway world which, by the fault of a few people — among them some priests — is doing so much harm to the Church.”

National Journal conducts a weekly “Insider’s Poll,” which, as the name implies, questions DC players about political stories of the day. As the WSJ noted, the poll is “generally a good reflection of conventional wisdom among strategists, lobbyists, consultants, pollsters and party operatives inside the Beltway.”

This week’s survey asked insiders: “Does Mitt Romney need to address the issue of his religious faith the way that John F. Kennedy did in 1960?” The results showed that 59% of Republicans, and 44% of Democrats said, “Yes, and soon.”

Robert Novak recently noted the same trend. “Although disagreement remains within the Romney camp, the consensus is that he must address the Mormon question with a speech deploring bias,” Novak wrote a couple of weeks ago. “According to campaign sources, a speech has been written, though much of it could still be changed.”

I don’t doubt that Romney’s faith tradition is controversial in some conservative circles, but I haven’t the foggiest idea what he could say about it to overcome some voters’ prejudice. Answering the “Mormon question” isn’t nearly as easy as it sounds.

The notion that Romney could deliver a JFK-like speech is rather silly, for reasons that have nothing to do with Romney’s skills. Kennedy spoke to the Greater Houston Ministerial Association on Sept. 12, 1960, and made a powerful case that his administration would be neutral on matters of faith. (It seems ridiculous in hindsight, but there was a common fear that Kennedy, as a Roman Catholic, would let the Vatican dictate U.S. policy.)

“I believe in an America where the separation of church and state is absolute — where no Catholic prelate would tell the President (should he be Catholic) how to act, and no Protestant minister would tell his parishioners for whom to vote, where no church or church school is granted any public funds or political preference and where no man is denied public office merely because his religion differs from the president who might appoint him or the people who might elect him.

“I believe in an America that is officially neither Catholic, Protestant nor Jewish — where no public official either requests or accepts instructions on public policy from the Pope, the National Council of Churches or any other ecclesiastical source, where no religious body seeks to impose its will directly or indirectly upon the general populace or the public acts of its officials and where religious liberty is so indivisible that an act against one church is treated as an act against all.”

Romney’s challenge is entirely different. He can’t deliver a similar speech because Republicans don’t want to hear it.

Nearly a half-century after JFK’s speech in Houston, many of today’s conservatives, particularly those in the GOP’s religious right base, abhor the very idea of church-state separation. It’s not unusual to hear figures like James Dobson and Pat Robertson reject the constitutional principle’s very existence.

If Romney were to publicly argue that “the separation of church and state is absolute,” he would be thumbing his nose at some of the very people he hopes to impress. Conservative activists — indeed, the very people who worry about the “Momon question” — want more intermingling between religion and government, not less.

For that matter, the nature of the controversy is very different now than in 1960. Conservative Republicans uneasy about Romney’s faith aren’t worried that Salt Lake City will dictate policy through the White House; they’re just not comfortable with a faith tradition with which they’re unfamiliar (and in some cases, find heretical). In this sense, as a friend of mine recently argued, Romney is “boxed in” on the issue.

The “Insider’s Poll” suggests the DC establishment is waiting for a grand pronouncement. Unfortunately for the campaign, there’s a disconnect between what the insiders expect and what Romney can say.

The NYT’s Carl Hulse reports today that Republicans on the Hill have a serious morale problem. The White House communications team invited some congressional counterparts to the other end of Pennsylvania Avenue the other day, and was apparently disappointed to see their widespread depression. Said one of the senior Republican congressional aides who attended the White House gathering, “We are not happy, no doubt about it.”

The leading cause of the discontent, at least right now, is the Republican sense that they’re loosing the S-CHIP battle in a big way. Hulse noted that Ed Gillespie and others at the White House are encouraging congressional Republicans to just wait for the storm to blow over, while GOP lawmakers believe the president’s aides “[do] not fully appreciate their political difficulties.”

Stuart Rothenberg had a similar report in Roll Call the other day.

“It’s just stunning to me,” one veteran Republican strategist told me this week, “that after seven years of Republicans complaining that the president won’t use his veto, [the White House and Republican Congressional leaders] choose their big showdown to be over children’s health care. Good Lord, it probably polls at 80 percent!”

Added the GOP insider: “If we had been talking about cutting spending and waste in government for years, we could oppose SCHIP. But now we are finally going to get religion on spending?”

So what advice would this Republican give his party’s Members of Congress? “If I were in a swing district, I’d vote to override. There’s no way I’d take a bullet on this.”

One GOP lawmaker added, “It’s stupid politics. The leadership is putting pressure on Members [to sustain the veto], promising to rebuild the brand. I don’t know why our guys are following [Bush] into the sea like lemmings.”

Maybe out of habit?

The S-CHIP override vote is slated for Thursday. Stay tuned.

We learned on Friday that Army officials in Baghdad believe Blackwater guards at Nisoor Square not only weren’t under attack when they opened fire, the private security force actually opened fire on Iraqi civilians while the Iraqis were fleeing in the other direction. Said Lt. Col. Mike Tarsa, whose soldiers reached Nisoor Square 20 to 25 minutes after the gunfire subsided, “It appeared to me they were fleeing the scene when they were engaged. It had every indication of an excessive shooting.”

To date, there have been exactly zero independent reports and/or evidence bolstering Blackwater’s version of events on Sept. 16. It is against this backdrop that Iraqi officials have renewed discussions with the Bush administration about kicking the private army out of the country.

U.S. and Iraqi officials are negotiating Baghdad’s demand that security company Blackwater USA be expelled from the country within six months, and American diplomats appear to be working on how to fill the security gap if the company is phased out. […]

The Iraqi investigators issued five recommendations to the government of Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, which has since sent them to the U.S. Embassy as demands for action. Point No. 2 in the report says: “The Iraqi government should demand that the United States stops using the services of Blackwater in Iraq within six months and replace it with a new, more disciplined organization that would be answerable to Iraqi laws.”

Sami al-Askari, a top aide to al-Maliki, said that point in the Iraqi list of demands was nonnegotiable.

“I believe the government has been clear. There have been attacks on the lives of Iraqi citizens on the part of that company (Blackwater). It must be expelled. The government has given six months for its expulsion and it’s left to the U.S. Embassy to determine with Blackwater when to terminate the contract. The American administration must find another company,” he told AP.

In a bit of a shift, al-Askari, according to the AP report, said Bush administration officials are no longer “insisting on Blackwater staying.”

If Blackwater is expelled, as now appears increasingly likely, who’d replace their teams? Apparently, DynCorp, which already has a significant presence in Iraq, is poised to replace the controversial North Carolina company, though the AP noted that DynCorp probably doesn’t have the infrastructure in place to take over Blackwater’s responsibilities within six months, as the Maliki government demands.