Free Republic

One of the funders behind an ad campaign promoting Chuck Hagel’s nomination to head the Pentagon is also a major donor to the liberal advocacy group Media Matters for America. Hagel, who President Barack Obama tapped Monday as his nominee to head the Defense Department, is already under fire from critics who say he “has sought to distance the United States from Israel” during his career. According to a Foreign Policy magazine report Monday night, a substantial ad campaign aimed at swatting such attacks on Hagel is already underway, and gambling magnate Bill Benter

Revelation about funding sources prompts distancing from J StreetThe White House appears to be distancing itself from the liberal advocacy group J Street that it once embraced as its envoy to the U.S. Jewish community after disclosures that nearly half the group's funding for 2008 came from a single Hong Kong donor. White House spokesman Thomas Vietor declined to comment when asked on Monday if the White House would continue its past practice of inviting J Street's leaders to take part in conference calls with senior White House officials and to other White House events, and whether senior Obama administration...

A year ago J Street — the putatively progressive fledgling counter to the Israel lobbying group AIPAC — was riding high. They had just received a write up in the New York Times Magazine that was somewhere between a press release and a love poem and, with a complaisant Obama in the White House, the tiny organization seemed poised to be a significant player in the Middle East discussion. My, as grandma said, have times changed. For starters, J Street’s director, Jeremy Ben-Ami, has shown himself to be a Junior Beltway Pinocchio, serially denying his organization had the financial backing...