you seem to miss a fairly obvious key point. The last line of Rutenberg's piece reads "He (Martin)also denied harboring anti-Semitic sentiment, saying “it’s peripheral, it draws you away from the issue.”" I think this comment speaks for itself.

Here's my letter of today to The New York Times. I believe that events have taken a turn that could lead to real physical violence.

"TWIMC:

As the political campaign begins to totter on edge of disaster, media organizations such as yours, a newspaper that I have read since I was a H.S. student in The City back in the 1970's, need to intervene forcefully to unmask the corrosive influence of an outlet such as Fox News.

Sean Hannity's recent program on Barack Obama along with the constant innuendo, exaggerations and lies propagated by the many talking heads and banners of that channel are beginning to bear fruit. That effort and the unbelievable turn in Senator McCain's campaign (at least for 2008) have begun to bear a fruit that could turn truly dark as evidenced by yesterday's shouts of "kill him" (!!!) and "terrorist".

The time to call their actions by the proper name has arrived, and you bear some responsibility for that."

I urge you to do similarly with your local papers and even the national press. Senator McCain and his backers (Where is the brave Colin Powell when his country needs him?) have thrown all caution to the wind, all. They may or may not understand what they're doing, but I wonder. (Palin doesn't count, by the way; she's merely a pawn, ambitious though she may be.)

The Times's reluctance to come to grips with the allegations of anti-Semitism on the part of "Andy Martin" (aka Anthony R. Martin-Trigona) represents a failure of nerve, of research, or both, and should be addressed by the newspaper's Public Editor. On this question, the January 20, 2000, decision of the Florida Supreme Court in Anthony R. Martin v. State of Florida is informative.

The particular case before the court involved an appeal from the refusal of a judge to grant him bail. (Why he needed bail is not stated in the opinion.) The Florida Supreme Court wrote:

He also continued to personally attack the judge who denied him bail, accusing the judge of
"kidnaping" him. In addition, scattered throughout these petitions were even more
atrocious insults. He made anti-Semitic remarks against the Jewish community as a whole and against justices of this Court.

The court wrote:

Nearly everything Martin files is malicious. It appears that Martin's inability to refrain from the "tactic of injecting personal insults into proceedings" was the main reason why the Illinois Supreme Court refused to allow his admission to that state's bar. See Martin v. Marko, 651 So. 2d 819 (Fla. 4th DCA 1995)(quoting In re Martin-
Trigona, 302 N.E.2d 68 (Ill. 1973), cert. denied, 417 U.S. 909 (1974)). In both of the instant petitions, Martin repeatedly demeaned a number of circuit and district court judges, accusing one judge, for example, of "trumping up yet another crackpot contempt proceeding." In addition to insulting circuit and district court judges, he
asserts that his most recent cases in this Court were denied because there is a new Jewish justice on the Court. He asserts that this justice is "apparently Jewish, thereby validating the public perception that Jewish judges are using their official positions to pervert the law against petitioner. . . . Since there is nothing else in petitioner's life which would suggest the extraordinary treatment and monolithic harassment which is being directed at petitioner by judges, the only excuse which does appear, retaliation
by Jewish judges."

The Florida court also quoted from a 1984 case in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit:

In Martin-Trigona, the Second Circuit Court of Appeals court noted that:
[T]he appellant needs no introduction. He is the source of literally hundreds of lawsuits, motions and miscellaneous pleadings, all but a small
fraction of which lack any merit whatsoever. Viewing Martin-Trigona's litigious conduct in its entirety yields the inescapable conclusion that he
persistently resorts to legal processes without regard to the merits of the claims asserted and that he invokes those processes largely to harass
persons who have unluckily crossed his path. His abuse of legal processes is exemplified not only by the number and variety of meritless actions but also by his recent use of pleadings and other legal papers, the contents of which are set out in their appalling detail in the district court's
opinion, as a vehicle to launch vicious attacks upon persons of Jewish heritage.