NEW YORK TIMES: A new e-mail making the rounds among Jewish voters in Pennsylvania this week falsely 
alleged that Mr. Obama “taught members of Acorn to commit voter registration fraud,’’ and equated a vote for Senator Barack Obama with the “tragic mistake” of their Jewish ancestors, who “ignored the warning signs in the 1930’s and 1940’s.”
At first blush, it was typical of the sorts of e-mails floating around with false, unsubstantiated and incendiary claims this year. But where most of the attack e-mails against Mr. Obama have been mostly either anonymous or from people outside of mainstream politics, this one had an unusually official provenance: It was sponsored by the Pennsylvania Republican Party’s “Victory 2008” committee.
And it was signed by several prominent McCain supporters in the state: Mitchell L. Morgan, a top fund-raiser; Hon. Sandra Schwartz Newman, a member of Mr. McCain’s national task-force monitoring Election Day voting, and I. Michael Coslov, a steel industry executive. After several calls for comment about the e-mail, leaders of the state party repudiated it on Friday. They said it had been released without their authorization and that they had fired the strategist who helped draft it, Bryan Rudnick. […]
In a brief interview earlier Friday, Judge Newman — a former state supreme court justice now in private practice –- said she had helped write the letter. Then she quickly passed the phone to Mr. Rudnick. He said the e-mail was sent to 75,000 voters in Pennsylvania and asked that other questions be e-mailed to him. Mr. Rudnick did not respond to that e-mail. But, contacted again on Friday night, Mr. Rudnick disputed the party’s version of events and said he had approval for the letter from officials at several levels. MORE
NATIONAL JEWISH DEMOCRATIC COUNCIL: Today, the monthly averages of Gallup Poll Daily shows that Jewish voters “now favor Obama over John McCain by more than 3 to 1, 74% to 22%.” “Though we will only know the final numbers on election night, the trend is clearly in Senator Barack Obama’s direction,” stated Ira N. Forman, Executive Director of the National Jewish Democratic Council (NJDC). MORE
COZEN O’CONNOR: The Honorable Sandra Schultz Newman joined the firm in January 2007 as Chair of the National Appellate Practice. In 1995, she was elected to the Pennsylvania Supreme Court, the oldest court in the country and 67 years older than the U.S. Supreme Court. The first woman ever elected to this state’s high court, she served until her retirement in 2006. Prior to her term, Justice Newman was a judge for the Commonwealth Court of Pennsylvania and a practicing attorney in private practice, and also served as an Assistant District Attorney in the Montgomery County District Attorney’s office. MORE
*Shpilkes – upset stomach, or simply nervous energy; to be feeling “antsy,” to be “sitting on pins and needles.”