Ari Berman reports in The Nation:
John Batchelor, a right-wing talk-radio host for KFI-AM in Los Angeles … has written a series of outlandish columns about Obama for the conservative magazine Human Events and repeatedly pushed the Obama smears on his radio show. According to an e-mail of Batchelor’s obtained by The Nation, Batchelor says that information about Obama and Khalidi came via “oppo research.”
Even if the false claims about Obama originally emanated from the neoconservative right, the Clinton campaign has eagerly pushed them. Clinton operative Sidney Blumenthal has e-mailed damaging stories about Obama to reporters, including a recent article by Batchelor.
If I were a reporter, I would ask Blumenthal to confirm or deny this. And if I didn’t get an answer, I would start asking the Clinton campaign. False accusations of anti-Semitism should be about as far off limits as anything could be in Democratic politics, and I for one am curious about how low the Clinton machine is willing to go.