Commentary’s Abe Greenwald has thought up a cunning defense of the $448,000 that McCain-chaired International Republican Institute gave to Rashid Khalidi’s Center for Palestine Research and Studies:

McCain’s token gesture was a political quickie aimed at pacifying a noisy party that you’d never really want to get personally involved with… Groups like the CPRS are specifically designed to cloak radical players in the robes of academic respectability.

$440k is a token gesture? I don’t know what kind of sums Greenwald is used to playing around with, but where I come from, half a million dollars is a pretty fair indication of support. Greenwald refers to CPRS as “Khalidi’s front organization,” which implies that CPRS had some other nefarious purpose. What that was, I’m sure Greenwald will tell us very soon. Very, very soon.

If Greenwald’s right, though, about McCain thoughtlessly throwing money around, doesn’t this mean that there could have been all kinds of other dangerous “front organizations” receiving money from IRI when McCain was too busy to do background checks? Shouldn’t someone be looking into this? Because this raises serious questions.

Meanwhile, back in the sane world, this Washington Post editorial, in which they asked Khalidi “whether he wanted to respond to the [McCain] campaign charges against him.”

He answered, via e-mail, that “I will stick to my policy of letting this idiot wind blow over.” That’s good advice for anyone still listening to the McCain campaign’s increasingly reckless ad hominem attacks. Sadly, that wind is likely to keep blowing for four more days.

Indeed, in some quarters it never stops. I believe Ezra Klein has hit upon an appropriate response: Buy Khalidi’s excellent book The Iron Cage.

Yesterday, Jeff Gillan of NewsONE in Nevada asked Sen. John Ensign (R-NV), the chairman of the National Republican Senatorial Committee, if Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin was “qualified to be President.” Ensign responded by saying that he didn’t think Palin was “experienced enough to be president“:

GILLAN: do you think she’s qualified to be President?

ENSIGN: well, I do not think that Barack Obama or her are experienced enough to be President of the United States – neither one of them, and Hillary Clinton was much more qualified to be President than Barack Obama was, but that who the nominee is. John McCain is much more qualified than Barack Obama and certainly Joe Biden is much more qualified than Sarah Palin is. I’d rather have the most qualified person at the top of the ticket, not number two.

Watch it:

Ensign is only the most recent conservative to challenge Palin’s qualifications for office. Just yesterday, former Secretary of State Lawrence Eagleburger, who is a top McCain supporter, said that Palin was not “prepared to take over the reins of the presidency.” Here are some conservatives who doubt Palin:

– In a recent New Yorker interview, Sen. Chuck Hagel (R-NE) said, “I don’t believe she’s qualified to be President of the United States.” Palin “is arguably the thinnest-résumé candidate for Vice-President in the history of America,” added Hagel.

– On Meet the Press two weeks ago, former Secretary of State Colin Powell, said, “I don’t believe she’s ready to be president of the United States.”

– In an interview with CNN earlier this month, former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney stuttered and hesitated when asked if Palin is “ready to be President.” “That’s something which I — I believe the American people will, uh, assess individually,” said Romney.

– Last week, Sen. Joe Lieberman (I-CT), who is one of McCain’s most ardent supporters, declared, “Thank God, she’s not gonna have to be president from day one.”

McCain, however, disagrees. He told Don Imus recently that Palin is “the most qualified of anyone recently who has run for vice president to tell you the truth.”

UPDATE: Secretary Eagleburger appeared on Fox News today to recant his statements from yesterday when he said “of course” Palin’s not ready to be Vice President. “I made a serious mistake yesterday,” he said. “I wasn’t thinking when I said it. … I was just plain stupid, and if I have given the flim flam artist Barack Obama some success with this, I am deeply apologetic. I did not intend it.” Watch it:

Last night, convicted felon Sen. Ted Stevens (R-AK) faced Anchorage mayor and Senate candidate Mark Begich in their last debate before Tuesday’s election. During the debate, Stevens twice insisted that he had “not been convicted of anything” — though, of course, he was found guilty of all seven counts of making false statements on his Senate disclosure forms.

Waving away his conviction wasn’t Stevens’ only bizarre moment in the debate. Discussing Iraq, Stevens insisted that Saddam Hussein had played a role in the 9/11 attacks:

MODERATOR: Knowing what you know now, do you think that the country of Iraq and Saddam Hussein played a role in the 9/11 attack on the United States?

STEVENS: I know more than you think I know, and I believe they did.

BEGICH: I don’t believe they did.

Perhaps Stevens is taking a cue from Cheney in doubling down on insisting a link existed between Iraq and 9/11. He wants Alaskans to believe he knows something they don’t, but it’s Stevens whose facts are wrong:

– The Sept. 11 commission found no “collaborative relationship” between Iraq and al Qaeda and said there was “no cooperation” between the two. [6/17/04]

– A Senate Intelligence Committee report found that Saddam Hussein issued a general order that Iraq should not deal with al Qaeda, and found that the Iraqi regime never attempted to facilitate a relationship with bin Ladin. [9/10/06]

– A Pentagon report looking into ties between Saddam Hussein’s Iraq and al Qaeda showed no connection between the two, after reviewing 600,000 Iraqi documents. [3/13/08]

What’s more, the White House knew that its repeated claims of collaboration between Iraq and al Qaeda were unfounded. A recent book by Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Ron Suskind claimed that, after the Iraq war began, the White House ordered the CIA to forge a “backdated, handwritten letter” from the head of Iraqi intelligence to Saddam Hussein, in an attempt to tie Hussein to the 9/11 attacks.

UPDATE: Watch video of Stevens’ comments here: