Ex-Pa. judge: Sorry for email linking Obama to threat of new Holocaust

Former Pennsylvania Supreme Court Justice Sandra Schultz Newman has apologized for signing an offensive email which evoked the threat of another Holocaust if Barack Obama is elected president. Newman claims that she did had not read the email closely before it was sent and had been unaware of its offensive contents. The email was also signed by Mitchell L. Morgan, a major Republican fund-raiser, and I. Michael Coslov, CEO of a steel company. (Read here, here and here.)

The email, which was mass-mailed to approximately 75,000 Jews in Pennsylvania, was co-written by Bryan Rudnick, a Republican Party consultant working on outreach to Pennsylvania's Jewish community. According to reports, Rudnick says that he was authorized by the Pennsylvania Republican Party to send the offensive spam email. Pennsylvania GOP spokesman Michael Barley has issued an apology for the email, but claims that they did not authorize it. In addition to the offensive reference to the Holocaust, the GOP also disavowed an allegation in the email that Barack Obama “taught members of Acorn to commit voter registration fraud,” which Barley acknowledged was baseless. The Republicans have not revealed who co-authored the email with Rudnick.

Judge Newman is a member of the Republican Party's national task-force monitoring Election Day voting. She has been involved in a law suit against ACORN and the Pennsylvania Secretary of State alleging that submissions of false voter registrations will taint the upcoming election. The State of Pennsylvania say that there are safeguards in place to prevent voter fraud and that Newman's allegations are false. Democrats have alleged that Newman's task-force is part of a Republican effort to suppress the vote.

Read more at Philly.com: Ex-Pa. judge: Sorry for anti-Obama Jewish e-mail