Cong. Jim Moran (D) won his primary race for the 8th Va. district, no thanks to The Washington Post. Despite its best efforts (which ironically included an editorial that endorsed neither Moran or his opponent), Moran received 59% of the vote.

The Post’s four-day series of stories about alleged but unstated and uncorroborated anti-Semitic remarks was shameful journalism. The articles are here, here, here, here, here and here. They report an unidentified remark characterized as anti-Semitic by a disgruntled vendor, pollster Alan Secrest. Yet, with no evidence (two others in attendance at the meeting where the remark was allegedly made did not hear it), The Post went with the story.

(The Post didn’t mention that Alan Secrest was part of another controversy last year when two of his candidates, both Democrats who lost races for the Virginia General Assembly, conducted a poll he developed. “Muslim-American advocates say [a] question [in the poll] portrays the entire community as sympathizing with terrorists.” )

I have no idea whether Moran is anti-Semitic. But I don’t think you can draw that conclusion from his past remarks that have drawn fire. Unlike Moran, most politicians will steer far away from the Israeli-Palestinian issue unless it’s to say they wholeheartedly support Israel’s right to exist. Add criticism of terrorism and you have as far as many politicians will go.

Even journalists must pause. Rory O’Connor writes a weekly column for AM New York, a free New York tabloid. But a recent column didn’t make it into AM New York. O’Connor had his AMNY column whacked by the publisher who didn’t like O’Connor’s take on recent events in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

The column explaining what happened asked people to comment, and comment they did. One recurring theme was an issue we must face if we’re to have an open and honest debate about how our world will be shaped. It’s the same discussion The Post’s coverage of Moran’s primary race demands.

Americans support Israeli’s right to exist, although they do so without knowing anything about the roots of the conflict. Those roots go way back, of course, a millennium before the existence of the modern Israeli state. And with any conflict that long, there is no right or wrong party here.

But most public officials are loathed to say that. As the comments on O’Connor’s piece point out, criticism of Israel – and by that I mean the policies of the current Israeli government –is soon translated as anti-Semitism.

As one anonymous commenter put it:

It’s crucial for the debate to focus on the difference between political criticism and anti-semitism. Until that debate begins, any effort to report on Israeli government actions gets conflated with the Jewish religion. The conflation has not occurred accidentally; it is done with a purpose to stop any criticism of Israeli government actions. But, it’s a terrible conflation because while it is used by pro-Israeli critics to deflect any criticism of the Israeli government, it in fact is contributing to increased anti-semitism around the world. Once you buy into the concept that Israel the government is the same thing as the Jewish religion, however, it cuts both ways. That is the dilemma of political zionism. Journalists and law-makers in Congress and the Senate have bought into, or have been forced to acquiese (sic) to, this false dichotomy.

There’s a lot for people to dislike about Jim Moran, chiefly perceived ethical lapses. And his temper gives one pause. But the charges of anti-Semitism are largely trumped up because of his balanced view of the Middle East conflict. That he has been sometimes inarticulate in espousing his views hasn’t helped.

The more important issue is that open and honest debate. We should abhor suicide bombings and the wanton killing of civilians, especially children who know not why they died. But that doesn’t mean we must support the occupation of the West Bank and Gaza, the wall that Balkanizes the Palestinians or “targeted killings.”

In a political world where the Democrats favored candidate is “Anybody but Bush” and the Republicans demonize anyone who disagrees with them, we tend to look at everything as either/or. It’s not either/or in the Middle East. It’s not terrorism or Israel’s existence. It’s finding a common ground between two entities that have terrorized each other, but where both have legitimate goals and grievances.

That won’t happen until we can get passed the knee-jerk charge of anti-Semitism. For that to happen, I suspect it will start, as most good movements do, with the grassroots. It will start when more American Jews press for a just peace and defend those non-Jews who also do.

And for all this to begin, the press, especially megaphones such as The Washington Post , must stop trading in the type of journalism we’ve seen in the past few days.

Del. Bob Marshall is unabashed in his quest to cut off debate on the question of same sex marriage. Courtesy of the SW Va. Law blog, we learn that Marshall had a bill in the last Assembly that would have called for the impeachment of any judge who ruled that the prohibition against same sex marriages was unconstitutional. Kind of makes the idea of checks and balances more like checkmate.

Eric Alterman’s post this morning counterbalances the effusive praise in the press of former President Regan. More important, it links to several stories on aspects of Reagan’s administrations and policies.

For me, though I don’t want to speak ill of the recently departed, two thoughts come to mind. One, I was utterly baffled when he was elected. I couldn’t believe that someone who I considered so intellectually ill-prepared stomped Carter. The presidents I was old enough to observe first hand – Eisenhower, Kennedy, Johnson, Nixon, Ford and Carter – seemed to have either the experience or general intellectual weight to be president. Maybe it’s a poor assumption that a president must have some gravitas, but I do and was therefore aghast that he won.

Two, while his legacy was more than economic, it is for that I remember him. I sum up his presidency thus: He made greed acceptable. He allowed us to lose our conscious about accumulating as much as we could without concern for the less fortunate. Whether he was a “good guy” or not (and evidence suggests he was), his economic policies were a disaster for this county.

Good column yesterday in the Los Angeles Times about which reporters got it wrong – and right — in predicting the Iraq fiasco.

The Washington Post has now clearly inserted itself in the political process with a weekend of more stories on the alleged anti-Semitic comment by Cong. Jim Moran (D-Va.). Still The Post says it doesn’t know what the comments were. But that doesn’t stop the paper from repeating the charge, originally reported Friday, today, in two stories Saturday (here and here) and one Sunday.

A letter to the editor from a Jewish reader expressed the same concerns I did Friday about the fairness of these stories.

And now, in a column published today, Paul Goldman, a former Virginia Democratic Party chairman and a Jew, criticizes The Post. Goldman makes a point I neglected to in my post Friday: The alleged remark was made in March, but the accuser, Alan Secrest, did not leak the comment (as we must assume he did) until the Friday before the primary election.

How can we have a fair political process if, in the last week of the campaign, someone can purposely leak a resignation letter to the virtual 800-pound media presence in order to get that media giant to print a damning charge (remember, Secrest knows Moran’s internal campaign polling data, so he knows what can hurt Moran the most) without even knowing what the alleged anti-Semitic words were exactly?

It is fundamentally unfair to ask someone to defend themselves against words the accuser refuses to reveal.

…I don’t believe a newspaper of such power as the Post should, in the final weekend of a campaign, make huge stories with such potentially damning content based on a claim of anti-Semitism unless the accuser at least will tell them precisely what was said so people can make up their own minds.

Stephen Farnsworth, a former journalist and now political science professor at Mary Washington University and author of the book The Nightly News Nightmare: Network Television’s Coverage of U.S. Presidential Elections, 1988-2000, wrote in an email to me this morning, “If this incident is supposed to be an important part of how voters assess Moran in the primary, both the consultant and the Post should be clearer about exactly what is being alleged. It also gives Moran a clearer opportunity to respond to a specific charge.”

The story was picked up by CNN and is bouncing around the blogosphere. Even Rosenberg supporters have trouble with The Post’s story.

Thanks to GOTV and Digby, we learn that Cong. Tom Davis (R-Va.) might want to re-write the Constitution. Maybe he wants us to go back to the 2/5’s rule that once was in place for counting African-Americans. But this time, he’ll short-change the Indians: “If you take out the Indian reservation, we would have won,” said Rep. Tom Davis (R-Va.), former chairman of the NRCC, of the recent special election for South Dakota’s House seat.

Here’s another example of Bush flip-flopping. The administration is now saying it is amenable to a tobacco buyout program that Bush opposed just a month ago.

The administration’s position marks a switch from just a month ago, when President Bush said on the campaign trail in Ohio that he didn’t think the system under which farmers grow and sell tobacco needed to be changed.

“He got a lot of heat,” Kentucky Farm Bureau President Sam Moore said of Bush. “We were very disappointed that he made that statement.”

Democratic presidential hopeful Sen. John Kerry, D-Mass., quickly reminded voters that he supported a tobacco farmer buyout when it was briefly considered in 1998.

Head of CIA cover operations to resign.

“Don’t do as I do; do as I say (but don’t say what I said).” (Second item)

The Washington Post published an article this morning in which Alan Secrest, a pollster, accuses Congressman Jim Moran (D-Va.) of making an anti-Semitic remark at a campaign strategy meeting .

What was the remark? We don’t know. Secrest won’t say or say why he won’t say. Both Mame Reiley, who heads Va. Gov. Mark Warner’s PAC, and Joe Trippi, former head of Howard Dean’s campaign, attended the meeting and said they heard no such remark.

Secrest and Moran both acknowledge the two had a heated argument over campaign strategy. According to the article, Secrest wanted Moran to spend money for a poll and advertising, whereas Moran wanted to focus on grassroots efforts in his primary campaign that will end Tuesday with voters choosing between Moran and a challenger who has never held elective office.

Moran has been dogged by some Jewish leaders for his remarks in response to a question regarding the Iraqi war posed by a woman who described herself as Jewish at a community group months ago. “If it were not for the strong support of the Jewish community for this war with Iraq, we would not be doing this,” Moran said. “The leaders of the Jewish community are influential enough that they could change the direction of where this is going and I think they should.”

There were reports that neither the woman nor most others at the meeting were offended by the comments. In context, the remarks didn’t strike the crowd as anti-Semitic, though one could argue they were politically naïve. Nonetheless, accusations of anti-Semitism were widely reported by The Post.

Moran’s sympathy with Palestinians in the Middle East conflict may be behind many of the charges. He is one of the few in Congress who has argued for a more balanced approach to the Middle East.

In recent years, Moran’s relations with pro-Israel organizations and U.S. Jewish leaders have deteriorated. The groups cite his 1991 vote against foreign aid to Israel, rhetorical support for the Palestinian cause, statements on Israeli history and leadership, and acceptance of campaign cash from individuals sympathetic to the terrorist organization Hamas or under investigation for possible links to terrorists. He later sent back those contributions.

…”the claim that this is anti-Semitic is just a canard that is designed to undermine the antiwar movement,” said [Phyllis Bennis, a fellow at the Institute for Policy Studies in Washington], who is Jewish. “Acknowledging that the Jewish community is one of several influential communities in the U.S. is not anti-Semitic.”

It was irresponsible of The Post to run this story, given that the reporters could find no one to corroborate even what the remark was so the reader could judge if it was offensive. In an email to the newspaper’s ombudsman (ombudsman@washpost.com or (202) 334-7582), I said the paper has participated in a modern form of McCarthyism, allowing vague, uncorroborated accusations to find a home on its pages.

The Post story notes that the Capitol Hill newspaper Roll Call published the story yesterday. But to hide behind that fact would also be irresponsible. Roll Call is not widely read by the 8th Congressional District’s voters, and they would have never heard of it at this point — a few days before the primary election.