The conservative blog-world has been in the red zone over this story. Now John McCain’s campaign has kicked in. Seems as if the LA Times (hey there Brandon and Angel!) has a video-tape of Barack Obama attending a going away party for  Rashid Khalidi, a former University of Chicago professor who now teaches at Columbia University. Depending who is doing the talking, Khalidi is either an academic of Middle Eastern history or someone who wants Israel off the face of the map. His most recent work is The Iron Cage: The Story of the Palestinian Struggle for Statehood.  He has been called a former spokesman for the Palestine Liberation Organization, but he has repeatedly denied that charge.

According to a McCain spokesperson, someone on the tape read a poem that was notable not for its  synecdoche, but rather due to “hate speech” toward Isreal.