* Why is Sen. Joe Lieberman campaigning for John McCain at a Holocaust museum near Detroit? Because the McCain campaign rented the room. Holocaust Memorial Center founder and CEO Rabbi Charles Rosenzveig emphasized that the Wednesday night event was not sponsored by the museum. The GOP campaign paid the $700 fee like everyone else who uses the facility does. (The money pays for the room, security and the coffee, he quipped.) Rosenzveig said the Obama campaign had also inquired about using the center a few months back for an event, but later decided to use another site. He speculated that the facility is popular because “we are located in the busiest section of town.”
As for the appropriateness of politicking at a site honoring the Holocaust, Lieberman’s office referred us to the McCain campaign, which has thus far not returned our calls. But a campaign spokesperson did tell Politico last week that “this location has been the site of political gatherings before, and the campaign felt that it would be a unique and educational setting for our supporters to meet with Senator Lieberman.”
Meanwhile, the Council on American-Islamic Relations is taking exception to Lieberman’s comment during the speech that McCain would govern according to “Judeo-Christian values”–saying the Connecticut senator came very close to “applying a religious litmus test for public office.”
* A top Hillary Clinton supporter is ripping those in the Jewish community who have obsessed over Barack Obama’s religious background. In an interview with Shalom TV, Jill Iscol, a vice president of Clinton’s campaign finance committee, said that Jews are “hysterical that Barack Obama may be a Muslim, may not be a Muslim, is a Christian, whatever. It is absolutely anathema that people are not standing up and saying ‘So what.’ If this was about somebody being any other religion, we would be very upset – particularly if it was somebody who was a Jew.”
Apparently, Iscol forgot that the Clinton’s campaign’s hands aren’t entirely clean on this issue. Just to name a couple, there were the two Clinton volunteers in Iowa who were asked to resign after passing along those false e-mails about Obama and that time Clinton told 60 Minutes Obama wasn’t a Muslim “as far as I know”…..
* George Clooney says he’d never be “dumb enough” to offer advice to either presidential candidate, in denying that thinly-sourced story alleging that he was giving tips on Middle East policy to Barack Obama. He also offers a million dollars to anyone who can prove that he has ever e-mailed or texted the presumptive Democratic nominee.
