He told us the kids were terrific but that some of them were so paranoid about Israel that he thought they were "crazy." After all, these were all pretty well-off Jewish kids at a beautiful spot in Massachusetts and yet they acted like they were under assault by the world . Some of them were even Republicans (because of Israel).

"Dad, he wrote, there is nothing worse than fascist children."

Naturally, I saved that letter.

I was reminded of those kids when I watched the debate at Berkeley over the issue of divestment from two companies that supplied weapons to Israel.

AIPAC and Hillel, the Jewish student group allied with AIPAC, came up with the strategy of having Jewish students tell the university senate that seeing signs calling for divestment frightened them. Some broke down in tears when describing the pain of seeing pro-divestment placards in the student union.

It was hilarious because it was so utterly bogus. I know that I come from a different era. Back in the day when I was a pro-Israel activist on campus, we traded insults and threw chairs when confronted by our adversaries (some were scary Maoists!) but I don't recall weeping. We liked confrontation. We were college kids.

But this is the new style of pro-Israel advocacy built on victimhood. No wonder so few American kids buy into this. (As for Israeli kids, they would fall over laughing).

Not long ago, I talked to a boy from LA who had taken one of those propaganda trips from Auschwitz to Israel, designed to convey that the alternative to maintaining the occupation is death camps.

He said that it was awful. He was blown away by the horror of what he had seen. But on the bus leaving Auschwitz for Krakow or Warsaw, the adult escorts tried to work the kids up into a frenzy of weeping.

"They seemed to think that us seeing the ovens wasn't enough. They had to milk it and then turn it into a propaganda exercise. And I guess they thought that weeping hysterically was a good place to start. Even a couple of the boys cried," he said. "But I don't cry in public and my friends didn't either. I felt like thinking not crying. So they told me I didn't understand. But I understood. Me and my friends are just not big criers."

And now this Forward report about a 17-year old who, while taking the AP test in English Literature, freaked out when a test question referred to the late Palestinian professor and author, Edward Said. From the Forward:

The English Literature and Composition test, in which the question occurs, requires students to read excerpts of poetry and prose and compare them to other works they have studied in class. The passage from Said contains no reference to Palestine or Israel. But the test's description of the late Columbia University humanities professor as a "Palestinian American literary theorist and cultural critic" has led some pro-Israel students to object that the test has been politicized.

"I was really startled to see that quote because both of the practice questions didn't mention the writers' nationalities," said Ayelet Pearl, a senior at New York's Bronx High School of Science. "For me including this one clearly had political implications."

The Said quote on the AP test reads: "Exile is strangely compelling to think about but terrible to experience. It is the unhealable rift forced between a human being and its native place, between the self and its true home: its essential sadness can never be surmounted."

"I'm in a public school and most students here have the impression that Israel is the one attacking [the Palestinians]," the 17-year-old Pearl said. "To put a quote in like this subconsciously reinforces the idea that Israel's the antagonist, the aggressor, the one in the wrong."

The poor student lost it.

Though she had just 40 minutes to write the required essay, Pearl froze when she encountered the Said text. "I didn't know what to do because I wasn't comfortable answering it," she said. She decided to put a paragraph objecting to the quote's inclusion at the top of her essay. "I find it really inappropriate to put a political question like that on a test," she said she wrote.

Using this quote in the AP exam "is very reflective of the widespread use of education and testing as a platform for anti-Israel propaganda," she told the Forward.

The College Board, which develops and administers the Advanced Placement exams, requires test-takers to pledge not to discuss test questions for 48 hours after taking the assessment. Two nights later Pearl began an open Facebook protest group, called "Protest the 2010 AP English Literature and Composition Free Response Question."

As of press time the Facebook group had attracted 493 members, many of whom were engaged in lively discussion of the issue.

So this is what pro-Israel advocacy has come to: turning kids into scaredy-cats.

Lots of luck with that, AIPAC & Co. Israel is the 4th strongest military power in the world. It has 200 nuclear bombs. It has an army of cool, tough, non-weepy soldiers -- many of whom look like Olympic athletes or models. And you are teaching victimhood.

No wonder the only way you get Jewish kids to line up behind Israel's current policies is by giving them free trips. But even that won't work if crying on cue is demanded.

There are plenty of things to cry about in this world. And Israel's self-destructive policies (and its treatment of the Palestinians) are among them. But, that isn't what the lobby is aiming for. Like the fundraising letters from AIPAC and the American Jewish Committee that clutter my mailbox, their goal is to convince the most secure Jewish community in history that they should be afraid, very afraid.

Here's a response from one young Jewish kid, Jason Serota, that appeared in the New York Times yesterday.

As a young American Jew, I can sympathize with those who feel that we don't have the connection with Israel that previous generations had. For our parents and grandparents, who lived in the shadow of the Holocaust, Israel -- the place and the idea -- was more of a necessity. For my generation, especially in the Northeast, anti-Semitism is rare and the Holocaust a history lesson.

Israel will always be a special, important place for me (I was a bar mitzvah at Masada), and I believe its existence is vital. At the end of the day, however, I am an American and a Jew, and I find I don't have much in common with Israelis, other than as Jews. My home is here, in the diaspora.

Jason Serota
Philadelphia

He is not scared. And he is certainly not weeping.

They fired me after they heard the FBI threatening that their investigation could be broadened at AIPAC," Rosen maintained in a telephone interview.

I was sacrificed like Jonah to save the ship and they were going to make things right" later on, he said.

I thought they should settle with me," Rosen said of AIPAC. "I was abandoned after they sent me out to do something for them that was not illegal.

I worked at AIPAC during the time Rosen was there but I can't say that what he did was espionage. The government's case seemed weak (which it why it was dropped).

In general, I think Rosen -- not AIPAC -- has the better of the argument. During my time there, I witnessed Rosen rushing in on numerous occasions to share secrets (not classified, as far as I know) he had picked up from government sources. AIPAC's board loved Rosen precisely because he could dig up this stuff.

So Rosen's narrative -- that he was fired to save the organization, not because he did anything illegal or deviated from AIPAC practice -- makes sense to me.

In the end, AIPAC will settle. Or else, the real secrets will come out and that is the last thing the lobby wants.

***

I think Andrew Sullivan's defection from Planet Neocon is really getting to Jeffrey Goldberg.
He has become utterly obsessed with Arabs, Muslims, Palestinians and the Jews who don't fear them.

I don't have a problem with a single issue focus. The Middle East is my "beat." But even I write about 20% of my posts on domestic politics and other issues.

But Goldberg used to be a generalist of sorts. It's only since Sullivan abandoned him that he's gone all AIPAC, all the time.

I hope he doesn't blame Sullivan for defecting. It wasn't Sullivan. It wasn't the liberals and the Democrats (according to the latest polls) who up and decided to abandon giving Israel the benefit of the doubt.

It was Gaza. As the Israelis say, "Yesh Gvul" ("there are limits") and Gaza and the Goldstone report showed most of us what they are.

Everything has changed.

The obsession is personal because they have no way to knock down the facts about the Gaza war (1400 Palestinians killed, including 320 kids) while 13 Israelis were killed, four by friendly fire. Not only that, the Israelis leveled Gaza and have now kept it under blockade for a year and a half.

In other words, the Israeli government cannot win any argument about the Gaza war if they deal with the facts.

So they have decided to focus on Judge Goldstone's record as a South African judge during the apartheid regime. Here is the Israeli argument in a nutshell. It is from the Yedioth Achronoth "expose" on Goldstone that appeared on Thursday.

Here is the best part of the article.

Israeli politicians and the Foreign Ministry on Wednesday welcomed the Yedioth Ahronoth investigation, which revealed Goldstone's dark past as a cruel judge in South Africa under the Apartheid regime. A Foreign Ministry official referred to the investigation as "explosive PR material". Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman plans to instruct his office to send the information published in the newspaper to all of Israel's representatives in the world to be used in their PR activities.

That article appeared Thursday and on Friday Jeff Goldberg in the Atlantic, Jonathan Chait in the New Republic and Alan Dershowitz immediately wrote columns bashing the judge in just the terms specified. This is all in the first 24 hours after the the alleged directive to Israeli diplomats was mentioned.

By next week, there will be many more of these columns and blogposts, all parroting the line. Ed Koch is probably banging away on his ancient Remington typewriter as I write this. And we are bound to hear from Krauthammer, Peretz, Kristol, Jonah Goldberg and maybe Elliot Abram and John Bolton.

We'll see. And thanks to the wonders of the internets, I can keep updating this column to add new names and links.The March of the Penguins!

Note: none of the people who write with such fervor about long defunct South African apartheid ever write about the only apartheid they can do anything about: it's on the West Bank. Right now. And these guys tend to flip out if you even mention it.

PS Also, don't mention that Israel was apartheid South Africa's best friend, arms supplier and, best of all, conducted joint nuclear tests with the apartheid regime.

And I'll tell you why. It is also why the obsession with invalidating Obama's Presidency is very different from the equally intense lunacy during the Clinton years.

It is because the birthers want the first African-American's name erased from the list of Presidents. Even an impeached President or an assassinated President or a 30 day President remains on the books.

Harrison who served 30 days is #9. Garfield, shot after 120 days, is #20. The resigned Nixon is #37.

So the only way to make the fact that we elected a black President go away is to prove he was ineligible in the first place. In their fevered hopes, he is then removed from office, a white guy takes over, and Barack Obama is either not listed as President at all or is listed with an asterisk.

That is what the birther movement is all about. These people simply cannot live with the fact that America elected an African-American and they know that not even the very worst thing that could happen to him will not change that fact.

So...they come up with the one sure way to maintain their fantasy. They will never quit because if America actually elected a black President, God only knows what is next.

But America did elect Obama and, no matter what they do, he is up there with Washington, Lincoln, the Roosevelts, Reagan and the rest. And that has literally driven them crazy.

They are terrified by one man, the great human rights advocate, Justice Richard Goldstone, because he wrote a report revealing what everyone knew anyway -- that the Israelis committed war crimes in Gaza.

The report came out months ago and, to be honest, it did not change much of anything. The Israelis are still occupying the West Bank and still strangling Gaza.

And yet the right is obsessed with Goldstone. In his home country of South Africa the rabbis and the rightists even got together to try to ban Goldstone from his grandson's Bar Mitzvah.

Here is Israel's deputy foreign minister -- a leader of Avigdor Lieberman's transfer/apartheid party -- denouncing Goldstone for racism. (There is simply nothing these people won't say to make the world forget Gaza and that even includes denouncing racism -- whose perpetuation in the West Bank and Gaza is their life's work).

(See Akiva Eldar on this latest example of the Israeli right gone mad).

Of course, Israel was one of the apartheid regime's main arms suppliers and was such a staunch defender of the regime that AIPAC itself had to step in and tell the Israeli government that its arms dealing (nuclear too, it appears) was harming US-Israeli relations. In fact, Israel's friendship with South Africa was one of the main reasons that liberals in this country started losing their ardor for Israel.

One would think that Israel's rightwing defenders (who had no problems with South African apartheid or its current incarnation in the West Bank) would be the last people to make an issue of the fact that Judge Goldstone was a judge under the apartheid regime. I mean, who didn't know that? Judge Goldstone's first name is Judge and he served in his home country, which was Israel's dear departed ally, apartheid South Africa.

None of this is important.

What is important is to see just how badly Goldstone has shaken up the pro-occupation forces. Because they know that the Goldstone report is true and they intuitively understand that the occupation is evil, they have become obsessed with the judge.

If they thought his report was false, they would ignore him. But they know it isn't and that nothing they can do can make the report's findings go away (unless they can bring back to life the 1400 Palestinians killed in Gaza, including 320 kids).

All this is good news. If Israel was a nation without shame, I'd give up on it. But it isn't. It is a country made up of wonderful liberals (fighting liberals in many cases who confront the occupation with their bodies) and a right that, although racist and brutal, is capable of being shamed by one judge who wrote a report on crimes everyone knew about anyway.

This says something good about Israel. Even the rightwing defenders of the occupation are ashamed of it and know that, like apartheid, it will end. And soon. They are scared. They are afraid that very soon Israel will end the occupation and will become Israel again.

That will be a day all real friends of Israel will celebrate.

And American Jews, given the choice between the President they voted for 80-20% and a self-appointed Jewish "leadership" are backing their President. It doesn't hurt that younger Jews (like other young Americans) just don't buy into the ethnic solidarity line. They think for themselves and they see that the Jewish "leadership" is recommending policies that are harmful to America and to Israel.

It also doesn't hurt that J Street came along when it did. Who would have thought that Jeremy Ben Ami could take on AIPAC and win? But he has with Barack Obama leading the way. (Congress will lag behind until it grasps what has happened).

Of course, this wouldn't be happening but for the disastrous Gaza war, the endless occupation, and the takeover of Israel's government by the religious right.

The Jewish "leadership" also deserves blame, or credit, for this shift.

It is so defensive, so quick to label anyone it does not like an "anti-Semite," it is so ethnically chauvinist that it essentially no longer has a constituency.

And he has concluded that it is a joke.

Although he does not name his targets, it is clear that he is tallking about AIPAC, the American Jewish Committee and the Anti-Defamation League.

Also, read another fine Ha'aretz piece on how one rightwing Republican, Ron Lauder -- now leading anti-Obama efforts in the Jewish community -- became a Jewish "leader." He bought the position and he is using it to advance GOP interests.

Here's Goldberg on a Jewish organizational structure that "consists mostly of a handful of big-budget organizations and assorted tycoons and activists speaking in our names and defending what they think are our interests.

These are the two best pieces I've seen on the hoax called the "Jewish leadership." Read them and you'll see one third of the reasons American Jews are finally getting smart about the Middle East. The other two thirds are (1) Israeli policies and (2) President Obama.

Goldberg excerpt:

And while we may not pay them much attention, others do. They're recognized in Washington, Berlin, Cairo and beyond as the representative voice of America's Jews. Princes and prime ministers continually beat a path to their doors, seeking to trade favors. In the last month alone they have variously hosted America's secretary of state, national security adviser, White House chief of staff and chief of the Central Command, the celebrated General David Petraeus, all coming to pay court and seek their -- and presumably our -- good will. How do the leaders of this network decide what to say? It's a mixture of expressing their own beliefs, following Jerusalem's lead, consulting their boards and big donors, and -- here's the kicker -- listening to the Jews. That is, they read their mail, take phone calls and address gatherings.

The people they hear from, naturally, are the ones who show up. And since most of us don't bother, their public tends to be a self-selected group of the angriest, most frightened and most insistent among us. They hear from folks who are itching to warn them of the devious Arab mind, the evils of France, Europe and liberals and, lately, of Obama's Muslim roots and nefarious designs.

Check out the piece in Ha'aretz. It's damn smart. Maybe it will help the White House understand that there is no need to pay attention to those men behind the curtain because they represent precisely themselves.

I like Sullivan so I checked it out.

And, frankly, it's appalling. In the excerpt Maher says that all religions have their fanatics, but, when it comes to Muslims, they are all fanatics. ("But before I conclude, it should in fairness be noted that in speaking of Muslims, we realize that of course the vast majority are law-abiding, loving people, who just want to be left alone to subjugate their women in peace.")

This is nothing new for Maher, a guy who openly adores Binyamin Netanyahu and has featured Brigitte Gabriel.

In his film Religulous, Jews and Catholics (Maher is half and half) came out fine. Fundamentalist Protestants were made to look like morons and Muslims came off as crazy people.

I don't know how Maher gets away with this. My guess is that Muslims are the last group in America one is allowed to openly hate as a group now that bigotry against gays is unacceptable. It's ugly and it's dangerous. Imagine what it feels like for a Muslim teenager to watch HBO and see a supposedly enlightened entertainer mocking his faith and his family.

I doubt Maher will change. He likes who he likes. And he dislikes who he dislikes. Even entire ethnic and faith groups.

But I read Sullivan and I'm disappointed. Not only because Maher is bigoted against Muslims and Sullivan isn't but also because Maher ridicules all people of faith and Sullivan is a serious Roman Catholic. What gives?

**

Here's another hateful Maher moment.

Chuck Schumer, Anthony Weiner, and Jerry Nadler are old news. They wear their hypocrisy on human rights issues as badges of pride.

I haven't paid much attention to Brad Sherman because he is not especially prominent. But he is a Democrat and a self-styled populist. He's a quieter Alan Grayson. Populist, seemingly a liberal good guy but a down-the-line supporter of everything Israel does (like the Gaza invasion and blockade).

And he assumes (probably correctly) that his constituents won't find out that he believes that one must suspend progressive and human rights standards when it comes to Israel.

On May 6, in Room 2261 Rayburn House Office Building at 2 PM, Sherman will host a session on the subject: "If terrorists Are Glorified, How Can There Be Peace?"

See this PMW ad which excoriates the Fatah leadership for allowing streets in the West Bank to be named after terrorists. (Obviously, PMW would reject any suggestion that there are any streets or parks in Israel named after terrorists. But, of course, there are many).

But that's not the point. The point is that a United States Congressman is using his position to promote an organization whose sole purpose is smearing an American ally (the government of Mahmoud Abbas and Salam Fayyad) and subverting US policy in the Middle East (support for the two-state solution). What a disgrace.

Sherman should cancel his ""Hatefest On The Hill." But he won't because Sherman, like so many others in both houses, know no limits when it comes to defending the occupation. And, I'll give him this, unlike most of the other members of the Israel-is-always-right caucus, Sherman actually seems to believe this stuff.

Most of the others -- 90% of them -- are going through the motions. If we had public financing of campaigns, they would clam up. Not Sherman. Does that make him better or worse than Weiner, Schumer and Nadler?

The "dual loyalty card" is suddenly being played by neocons to argue that those who oppose the lobby are accusing Jews of dual loyalty. Lately they have seized on a remark by some anonymous White House aide who said that Obama aide, Dennis Ross, "seems to be far more sensitive to Netanyahu's coalition politics than to U.S. interests."

It was a dumb piece which led only to a flurry of stories revealing, for those who don't know, that the Washington Institute and Satloff are AIPAC cutouts. For the first time, I told the story about being in the room when the Washington Institute was created by AIPAC.

Anyway, here is Lee Smith of the Tablet, a new (very good) Jewish blog, playing the dual loyalty card for all its worth. And he names names, actually just one: Stephen Walt of Harvard.

According to Smith, Walt is leading the orchestra that is playing that tune. The neos are obsessed with Walt because (and John Mearsheimer) he wrote The Israel Lobby which argued that anyone who criticizes the lobby will be smeared as an anti-Semite and worse til the end of time. Smith, like all the other neos, proves the Walt-Mearsheimer thesis by arguing that, in criticizing the lobby, Walt is even worse than "the rejectionists of Hamas, for they at least have to live with the consequences of their choices." None of the things Smith says are is true but its standard stuff in the Standard.

But the beauty part is that the story about Profesor Walt is filed under the rubric "Agents Of Influence" which is a Washington term for those who quietly promote seamy interests under the guise of objectivity. They are often people you have never heard about who have a hidden agenda and promote it well.

And guess who Smith quotes to sum up his argument: Steve Rosen, that Steve Rosen.

To Stephen Walt, pro-Israel is a bad thing, but to the American people it is a good thing. If he thinks our national interests are not being followed, and that Dennis Ross and WINEP are instruments of a foreign power, then by that measure, the majority of the American people are instruments of a foreign power.

So true, the American people have often demonstrated their support for Dennis Ross and WINEP. Can't argue with that.

Of course the American people was not indicted under the Espionage Act for providing government secrets to Israel while Rosen was.

But the column isn't about Rosen who spent millions to prove that he was not something considerably worse than a mere Agent of Influence. Its about Walt.

And this contradiction doesn't even occur to Smith when he's wriitng his column. No, he is playing the the dual loyalty card and nothing will get in his way.

I guess the neos realize that calling their opponents "anti-semites" and "self-hating Jews" isn't working anymore. So they now accuse them of calling American Jews disloyal.

It won't work. The lobby is reeling, now that there is someone in the White House who thinks that he can deal with the sovereign State of Israel directly -- government to government -- without going through them. You know times are bad when the American Jewish Congress is merging with the American Jewish Committee, or vice versa.

No serious person is calling the lobby disloyal. But ever growing numbers are accusing it, quite rightly, of using thuggish tactics to silence its opponents.

American Jews, at home in America, aren't even paying attention. They are too busy going to work, figuring out how to pay for college, driving the kids to soccer, hanging out with their fellow Americans of all ethnicities (half are even marrying non-Jews) and doing what they can to advance the interests, not of Israel but of the United States and the Democratic party.

Meanwhile, here are Congressmen Anthony Weiner and Jerrold Nadler (big progressives) opposing the two-state solution. This follows Chuck Schumer's quote that God has chosen him to guard Israel's interests in the Senate.

Check this out.

The occupied areas of Israel (including Arab East Jerusalem) have a segregated road system.

Beautiful new roads to get Jewish settlers to work and back with ease.

And roads running just parallel to them for Arabs, to make getting to work and back (or to the doctor, school, or shopping) a miserable experience.

Even 1950's Alabama never had anything like this, not even close.

This is far from the worst aspect of the occupation. By Israeli-Palestinian standards, it's a minor inconvenience. But imagine having to live this way.

Here is why Congress does not protest this, or the infinitely more onerous aspects of the occupation.

After reading your post "Who closed the conservative mind?" I felt compelled to write. To introduce myself, I'm 24, Boston born and raised, a Kennedy/Obama Democrat, and Jewish to boot. I've probably read your writing in the past, but I'm not familiar with your work.

That post is the best distillation I've found of what led to the current state of the conservative movement. I think people like me who follow the movement from the left and know the history have our basic understanding of what happened, but the key insights about the movement come from people who identify with conservative philosophy as opposed to the conservative movement.

Clearly the separate explanations you posit (blame the south/money/frum memo/iraq war/times) are all part of a comprehensive explanation set out in the post, and you're right that the times are the key element. It's something I've thought about a lot.

I was a month away from my 16th birthday on 9/11, so my life as a political junkie basically began when I heard about Monica Lewinsky in middle school. Until 2006, I'd never cheered my party on as it won an election, and by then, it felt too late. Out of that experience, I came to understand that modern America is defined by the bitterly divided Baby Boomer generation, my parents' generation, and that division has cost America dearly since they were born.

Toughness is not the issue. It's easy to be tough if the selection of one's target is driven by politics. The real test is, do you take on the battles that have been unpopular and perhaps seem impossible to win but are important to take on?

Think of that when you praise your favorite liberal for being "great" on equal opportunity, climate change, choice, marriage equality, the banks, the economy or whatever. And then ask, "isn't that that an easy call for someone from the West Side of Manhattan, Cambridge, West LA, South Florida, etc?" I

And then check the names of those Representatives and Senators who yielded to AIPAC and signed their letter earlier this month designed to put them on record behind Netanyahu, not Obama and which states, flatout, that there must never be any "space" between Israel's positions and America's. Here is the AIPAC House text. Here is the AIPAC Senate text.

File the names of those NOT on these last in your "Profiles In Courage" folder. As for the ones on the list, some are pretty good but "tough," I don't think so.

A half a dozen of the progressives listed (maybe as many as 10) actually believe the balderdash in these letters (like Henry Waxman). The rest won't say no to AIPAC. As for the Republicans, they do believe this stuff. Like Schumer (see my post below this one), God tells them to sign these letters. What choice do they have?

Pretty ugly stuff and, happily, the White House slapped him down.

In fact, Schumer is no great Zionist. For him, it's just politics.

At least, I always thought so.

But now this from New York magazine. Here is Schumer explaining that he defends Israel because Hashem (Orthodox for God) tells him to.

You know, my name .... comes from the word shomer, guardian, watcher. My ancestors were guardians of the ghetto wall in Chortkov. And I believe Hashem actually gave me that name. One of my roles, very important in the United States senate, is to be a shomer -- to be a or the shomer Yisrael. And I will continue to be that with every bone in my body ...

Rick Santorum could not sound nuttier.

Schumer's screed gets to the edge of sounding as if he is more a Senator working in the Knesset than working in the United States Senate.

This is the 2nd time I know of that Schumer has publicly crossed the line when it came to zealously blaming his own government and colleagues in delicate matters of US-Israel-Palestine policy.

During the third of three major efforts of the George W. Bush administration to get the recess appointed US Ambassador to the United Nations John Bolton confirmed in the US Senate, Senator Schumer launched a passionate personal campaign to help Bolton succeed.

Schumer called many Democratic Senate colleagues and bluntly said, "A vote against John Bolton is a vote against Israel."

I'm going to ask a stupid question: are there no limits? Answer: there aren't. Not until Schumer (and Boxer and Grayson and about a hundred other liberals but not on Israel) hear from their constituents, and not only from J Street.

Liberals and progressives cannot give their representatives a pass on this issue. Enough is enough, even if God is giving these guys their marching orders.

My buddy, Clay Swisher, at Al Jazeera English, who was at the 2000 Camp David summit and wrote the best book about it, has his own take on Schumer. Clay includes some great links too. Is New York really the state that gave us Senators Wagner, Lehman, Javits and Bobby Kennedy?