The Gist

Obama Joins Internet Flame War

The Obama campaign is fighting back against all the web-driven smears with the creation of an "internet war room" to formulate rapid responses to attacks on his patriotism and claims about his religion on the web.

It's something we've talked about quite a bit on the show. How do you dispel these crazy emails? Just yesterday, my brother called me to ask me to give him, once and for all, the "facts" about Obama and whether or not he took his oath of office on a Koran (it was actually Rep. Keith Ellison of Minnesota, who is a Muslim, who did that in his ceremonial swearing in), so he could rebut people who bring it up.

And now, there are more and more emails, and now videos on the web -- including one we're going to talk about on the show today -- that continue to push these lies, some of them slickly produced. Some have dismissed these smears as only affecting a small minority of people. But I'm not so sure. It's a challenge, and I think an "Internet war room" is a start.