The Simon Wiesenthal Center has issued a brutal condemnation of the Center for American Progress and Media Matters for America, blasting the organizations for supporting bloggers who promote “dangerous political libels” and “toxic anti-Jewish prejudices.”

Click over to read the full statement the Wiesenthal Center gave to WaPo’s Jennifer Rubin, if you have a minute. But here’s the key section:

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The most recent Gallup Poll is an encouraging one for conservatives. When asked which of the following will be the biggest threat to the country in the future – big business, big labor, or big government – those surveyed responded this way: 64 percent of said big government, 26 percent said big business, and eight percent said big labor.

Gallup’s analysis points out that the portion of Americans who say big government will be the biggest threat to the country is just one percentage point shy of the record high — while the 26 percent who say big business is down from the 32 percent recorded during the recession. Moreover, Democrats – by a 48 percent v. 44 percent margin – say big government is more of a threat than big business. Sixty-four percent of independents, and 82 percent of Republicans, worry more about big government.

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While working on my story for the December issue of COMMENTARY about the twentieth anniversary of the dissolution of the Soviet Union, I spoke with Pavel Palazchenko, who was Mikhail Gorbachev’s translator and advisor during Gorbachev’s term in office, and with Robert Amsterdam, who until two years ago represented the jailed “oligarch” Mikhail Khodorkovsky. Both men had something to say about the future of Russian democracy.

Given the steady protest movement and pro-democracy momentum we’re seeing in Russia I think they are worth sharing. Here is what Palazchenko told me about the current Russian “stability” versus the drive for change:

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At Politico, Ben Smith and Maggie Haberman make the case that Mitt Romney is following the same path as Hillary Clinton’s doomed campaign four years ago.

Like the great, fallen front-runner of 2008, here is another well-funded, establishment-blessed, presumptive nominee whose supposedly firm hold on his party’s greatest prize seems to be slip-sliding away.

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The extraordinary focus of the West in particular and the world in general on the Jews and the Jewish state is a shocking thing that, through a century (at least) of repetition, no longer shocks. With the ability to dominate the headlines of an American presidential campaign and to give nine deaths the gravity to capture the attention of a world that blithely ignores the deaths of millions, the “Jewish question” should perpetually astound in its power.

As David Mamet writes today in the Wall Street Journal, that all says much more about the world than it does about the Jews.

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Yesterday, Mitt Romney was asked if he thought Newt Gingrich should return the $1.6 million he earned for advising Freddie Mac. “Boy, I sure do,” Romney said. “He [Gingrich] was on a debate saying politicians who took money from Freddie and Fannie should go to jail, which is outrageous in itself.” To which Gingrich shot back, “I would say if Governor Romney would like to give back all the money he’s earned from bankrupting companies and laying off employees over the years at Bain, I would be glad to listen to him — and I bet you $10, not $10,000, he won’t take the offer.”

This is a ludicrous caricature of Romney’s work at Bain Capital, where he earned a reputation for excellence, investing in startups (like Staples), turning companies around in some cases and cutting payrolls and shutting down companies that couldn’t be revived in other cases.

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Even before Mitt Romney’s subpar debate performance Saturday night, more and more commentators had been wondering aloud if he is really as electable as conventional wisdom suggests. Romney’s defenders point to polls consistently showing him garnering more votes in a theoretical general election matchup with President Obama.

But Gingrich is making gains there as well, as a new USA Today/Gallup poll shows. The accompanying article also explains the improvements in Gingrich’s numbers:

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As Jonathan correctly noted yesterday, it’s ridiculous to assert that Israeli-Palestinian peace is threatened by plans to build 40 new homes inside a settlement that everyone knows will remain Israeli under any agreement. But if UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon would like to see a genuine obstacle to peace, I suggest he study what happened at a conference of Mediterranean writers in Marseille last week: An Israeli author was kicked off a panel discussion because a Palestinian writer refused to sit at the same table with him.

Organizer Pierre Assouline told Haaretz that in the previous two years, Palestinian writers refused to attend the conference at all because Israelis were present. This year, poet Najwan Darwish agreed to show up, but only if he didn’t have to participate on the same panels as any Israeli authors. When he discovered that he was in fact listed as speaking on one panel together with Israeli Moshe Sakal, he told Assouline he would boycott the discussion unless Sakal was ousted. And Assouline, deciding that Sakal in any case wasn’t important to the issue at hand (the Arab Spring), acquiesced.

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Think it’s only those squishy, Chardonnay-swigging, elitist Republicans who are opposed to a Gingrich nomination? Not necessarily. Yesterday two prominent, right-wing talk show hosts launched into controversial anti-Newt diatribes, and both for very different reasons.

First, here’s Glenn Beck, who caught a lot of heat for the following comments, made on Fox Business:

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Max notes that the identities of various nations have been “invented” relatively recently, including those of Americans, Italians, and others, and argues there is little point at this stage in disputing whether the Palestinians have forged a national identity, or whether they should have a state. But identities have consequences, and the Palestinian one bears on their claim to statehood, since identity and statehood are not synonymous (as the Kurds and Tibetans know).

The “Palestinians” have not been invented so much as renamed; not so much renamed as repurposed; not so much repurposed as redefined as “refugees” — under a definition that applies to no other people in the world. The number of all other refugees decreases each year, as they are resettled; the number of Palestinian “refugees” increases each year, as they are born, since they are the only people in the world entitled to inherit refugee status. Their refugee status is fundamental to their identity; it is the reason they reject offers of a state again and again and again: a two-state solution would require their acceptance of a Jewish state, but acceptance of such a state would require them to give up their identity.

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