By now you've probably seen at least some of these e-mails and articles about Barack Obama bouncing around the Internet. They distort Obama's religious faith, question his support for Israel, warp the identity and positions of his campaign advisers and defame his friends and allies from Chicago. The purpose of the smear is to paint him as an Arab-loving, Israel-hating, terrorist-coddling, radical black nationalist.

Berman's Nation story sheds light on the role of the Internet publication The American Thinker in propelling smears against the Obama Campaign and reveals the interesting fact that "blogger" Ed Lasky (who also seems to be a Chicago stock trader), whose writing at the American Thinker has played a significant role in inciting anti-Obama rumors according to Berman, has made financial donations to the Swift Boat Veterans For Truth.

Lasky, as Berman notes, also sits on the board of the International Fellowship of Christians and Jews and as noted in a Media Transparency story by Bill Berkowitz, the IFCJ has  paid $800,000 to Ralph Reed's lobbying firm and millions of dollars to a Texas based direct mail company supposedly headed by a member of the Council For National Policy.

And, there's more...

Another significant American Thinker contributor, described as a co-founder of the site and who has collaborated with Ed Lasky in writing two anti-Obama smear pieces, is Richard Baehr - a health care consultant who has served in the past as the Illinois AIPAC Education Director but, far more significantly, is a very active member of the Chicago chapter of the Republican Jewish Coalition, a group spearheading the GOP strategy of trying to peel American Jews away from their traditional affiliation with the Democratic Party.

The anti-Obama smear effort, writes Berman, targets the American-Jewish community and that point has been explored also by Eric Alterman in a recent Nation piece, Some Jews Against Obama:

During the past few months a small group of neoconservative Jews, many of whom hold key positions in the world of official Jewish institutions, have been working to undermine the presidential candidacy of Barack Obama with a series of carefully planted character assassinations and deliberately misleading innuendo.

The attempt is absurd given that, as Ari Berman describes, Obama's stance is "well within the Democratic Party mainstream" :

Obama's foreign policy record is well within the Democratic Party mainstream. He's committed to a two-state solution between Israel and the Palestinians, supported Israel's incursion into Lebanon in 2006 and has criticized Hamas. During his campaign for the presidency, Obama has been defended by AIPAC, the neoconservative New York Sun and The New Republic's Marty Peretz, a noted Israel hawk.

Considering Barack Obama's stated positions on Israel, the attack is ludicrous:

As Alterman describes it, some earlier attacks came from NeoCon associated American Jewish leaders such as Morton Klein and Malcolm Hoenlein, but Obama's pro-Israel credentials are solidly mainstream and well guarded by endorsements such as Peretz's, so the attack has shifted from a frontal assault, to a smear campaign questioning Obama's associations.

At the "fulcrum" of this Internet and email driven smear effort, according to Berman, is a blogger named Ed Lasky:

At the fulcrum of this effort is a little-known blogger from Northbrook, Illinois, named Ed Lasky, whose articles on AmericanThinker.com have done more than anything to give the smear campaign an air of respectability. Lasky co-founded AmericanThinker.com in 2003, modeling it after Powerline... He wrote a blog post in 2004 titled "Why American Jews Must Vote for Bush," made three separate donations to the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth, contributed $1,000 to Tom DeLay and has given more than $50,000 to GOP candidates and causes since 2000. Lasky sits on the board of the International Fellowship of Christians and Jews, headed by Rabbi Yechiel Eckstein, whose close affiliations with Christian-right operatives like Ralph Reed has made Eckstein a controversial figure in the Jewish community.

Beyond close affiliations with Ralph Reed, Eckstein's International Fellowship of Christians and Jews shoveled out a small fortune of the money it raises for Israel to American PR firms including $800,000 to Ralph Reed's Century Strategies PR firm and a Texas direct mail firm supposedly owned by a member of the Christian right group The Council For National Policy. In a May 22, 2007 Media Transparency story Bill Berkowitz writes:

on the road to raising tens of millions of dollars, it appears that he [Eckstein] has diverted a fair portion of the money to a half dozen media relations, direct mail and telemarketing companies, including Century Strategies, run by Ralph Reed, the Bigham Agency and Krieger Associates.

Founded in 1997, the Atlanta, Georgia-based Century Strategies LLC (website) is Ralph Reed's post-Christian Coalition high-powered GOP-oriented political consulting firm. According to a July 2004 profile in the National Journal, Century Strategies, which also has offices in Washington, D.C., "has raked in millions of dollars by mounting grassroots lobbying drives and other campaigns -- as well as doing some inside-the-Beltway advocacy -- for two dozen or so Fortune 100 companies and lesser-known enterprises."

The Carrollton, Texas-based Bigham Agency received more than $8 million from Eckstein-run enterprises between 2002 and 2004, according to an entry posted at the TPMCafe. Bigham is run by E. Paul Bigham, who is described as a "major right winger and member of the Council for National Policy," a highly secretive group of right wing deciders.

While the anti-Obama writings of Ed Lasky, who has been identified as a Chicago stock trader, is the centerpiece of Berman's story there are some interesting aspects of The American Thinker not explored in Berman's story:

First of all, it's notable that The American Thinker is a hotbed of Global Warming denalism, which seems to be a pet issue of the publication's Editor and Publisher Thomas Lifson.

More directly relevant to the anti-Obama smear campaign being waged by the American Thinker is the role of Richard Baehr, described as the co-founder of The American Thinker.

Ed Lasky has publicly described Baehr as a good friend, and that would  not be surprising given that Baehr and Lasky have collaborated in their writing for The American Thinker including a  a January 29, 2008 story entitled The Audacity of Questioning Obama's Commitment to Israel and a February 19, 2008 piece attacking Barack Obama's foreign policy team, especially for the presence, on the team, of Samantha Power - who Baehr and Lasky try to tar, citing Commentary Magazine, as "an advocate of the Walt-Mearsheimer view of the American relationship with Israel". Central to Mearsheimer's and Walt's critique has been the influence of AIPAC on US foreign policy towards Israel and the Mideast, and so Baehr's and Lasky's attack carries an underlying irony, because Richard Baehr has in the past worked as AIPAC's Illinois Education Director and reportedly served on the AIPAC national Committee though Lasky and Baehr did not opt to disclose Baehr's relationship to AIPAC in their piece "Samantha Power and Obama's Foreign Policy Team".  

Richard Baehr, who serves as the Chief Political Correspondent for The American Thinker where Lasky posts most of his writing, also turns out to be in the Republican Jewish Coalition. Baehr is described as 'active" member of the Chicago RJC chapter and that description appears accurate - he chairs meetings and has flown to the West Coast to address a California RJC chapter and Baehr could be found, early this March, 2008, at the Las Vegas annual meeting of the RJC.