GOP presidential candidate Mitt Romney’s foreign policy team claimed last month that they’ve been working hard at brining the former Massachusetts governor up to speed on global affairs. But his ignorance about what has become a lightening rod issue among the foreign policy community raises questions about their work.

As of December, as shown in a YouTube video that has eluded widespread attention, Mitt Romney claimed to not know anything about the Mojahedeen-e Khalq (MEK), a controversial, exiled Iranian group listed by the State Department as a “foreign terrorist organization.” Asked during a campaign appearance about the group, Romney said he’d never heard of the group and asked what they were. Told of the MEK’s status, Romney asked indignantly, “Why would you think that I support a — you said it’s a terrorist group?”

As the questioner informed Romney, one of Romney’s foreign policy advisers — former Ambassador Mitchell Reiss — has been active in the very public, well-financed campaign to get the MEK off the terror list. Romney then replied:

I’ll take a look at the issue. I’m not familiar with that particular group, or that effort on the part of any of my team.

Watch the video of the exchange from December:

It might seem like a small and obscure issue, but the MEK has attracted much attention, including paid speeches by top American politicians and former officials here and in Europe, and multiple full-page newspaper adverts. Another Romney backer, former U.N. Ambassador John Bolton, has advocated forcefully on behalf of the MEK. More recently, NBC News did a long report on the group’s ties to terror activity in Iran. And the Treasury Department recently announced that it is investigating payments to prominent former American government officials to speak in support of the MEK.

Beyond the public attention, the Romney campaign has been engaged in the MEK issue well before his professed ignorance in December. Romney may not have been aware of it, but Reiss’s advocacy for the MEK was used by neoconservatives in the Romney camp to marginalize Reiss.

In a November GOP debate, Romney spoke of using Iranian “insurgent” groups. (The MEK is by far the best organized militant group opposed to the Islamic Republic.) The remark prompted the conservative Daily Caller website to make a number of inquiries to the campaign that went unanswered, and wrote that the campaign wouldn’t “clarify whether he was referring to the MEK, and what his position is on the organization.”

Now that three months have passed, Romney should make clear his grasp of MEK issues — which involve not only matters of Iran and Iraq policy, but also issues of terrorism — and stake out a position on the group. (HT: Matt Duss)

GOP presidential candidate Newt Gingrich has promised that if he wins the White House gasoline price will drop to $2.50 or even $2 per gallon. The former House Speaker also said that as president, he’d support (and join) an Israeli military attack on Iran’s nuclear facilities. Indeed, Gingrich said recently that “the red line is now,” referring to the point at which Iran’s nuclear program has progressed far enough to warrant military strikes.

Price economists have said that a promise to bring down gas prices to that level would be nearly impossible. But aside from that reality, the Hill newspaper reports that oil experts say that an Israeli attack would probably cause gas prices to rise significantly:

An Israeli military strike against Iranian nuclear enrichment sites would spike gas prices to between $5 and $6 per gallon, according to market analysts. [...]

“I think you will see $5 and $6 dollar a gallon gas,” said Andrew Lipow, president of Lipow Oil Associates.

Other analysts agreed that airstrikes would cause a spike in global crude oil prices, and a corresponding jump in U.S. gasoline prices that are currently averaging $3.82-per-gallon. But some declined to predict how large that spike would be.

Indeed, the Council on Foreign Relations released a brief last month (PDF) by oil market analyst Robert McNally of the Rapidan Group looking at how rising tensions with Iran — including a possible military strike — could affect global oil markets. McNally writes:

A military attack by Israel or the United States on Iran’s nuclear facilities would likely lead to a sudden price shock (about $23 per barrel in the first days should Israel strike according to a Rapidan Group survey of market participants) as traders priced in risk of a wider conflict.

If Iran’s energy export infrastructure remains in tact and disruption of the crucial oil transit point at the Strait of Hormuz (which Iran has already threatened to shut in the face of sanctions) is minimal, the price spike would be up about $11 per barrel after 30 days. Were there a prolonged disruption where the International Energy Agency countries opened up their reserves, prices would settle at a $39 per barrel bump after a month. If those reserves remained off the market, a $61 bump can be expected, with at least one of the market participants surveyed responding that the spike could nearly triple the price of a barrel.

President Obama has warned about the dangers of Iran acquiring nuclear weapons, including undermining the nonproliferation regime, endangering regional security and risking a bomb falling into the hands of terrorists. But he also stressed just last weekend that “an opportunity still remains for diplomacy — backed by pressure — to succeed.”

A contentious CNN interview by Soledad O’Brien with Breitbart.com editor Joel Pollak set off a firestorm of vitriolic name-calling against O’Brien from the far-right, with some critics going so far as to falsely accuse the CNN anchor of anti-Semitism.

In a March 8, interview, O’Brien challenged Pollak’s assertion that a video from 1990 showing President Obama, then a law student, hugging late Harvard Law Professor Derrick Bell was a “smoking gun” for Obama’s true beliefs on “racial division and class warfare.” Pollak’s manufactured controversy hinged on characterizing Critical Race Theory (CRT) as “hold[ing] that the Civil Rights Movement was a sham and that White Supremacy is the order and it must be overthrown.” Prodded by Pollak to define CRT, O’Brien accurately characterized it as a theory that “looks into the intersection of race and politics and the law.” (Watch it here.)

While Pollak in his eagerness to hype his “bombshell” video mischaracterized CRT as a radical theory that calls for a war against white people, animosity on the far right has been pointed at Soledad O’Brien for correcting his inaccurate statements. Chris Loesch, husband of CNN contributor Dana Loesch, tweeted (HT: Little Green Footballs):

And Michelle Malkin, writing on David Horowitz’s FrontPageMag.com, claimed that O’Brien defended CRT and Bell because “she masks her political activism under the banner of corporate media ‘diversity.’” Malkin continues:

…[L]iberal minority journalists simply can’t resist carrying water for Obama. That’s because their journalistic unity demands political unanimity. If you don’t accept the left-leaning agenda of “social change” journalism, you’re enabling racism. If you don’t support the pursuit of racial hiring goals as a primary journalistic and academic goal, you’re selling out.

Noticeably, neither Loesch and Malkin offer any evidence that CRT calls for “war against white people” or that O’Brien’s comments were rooted in anti-Semitism or racism. Indeed, the increasing politicization of anti-Semitism accusations has raised eyebrows among many in the Jewish community. Sarah Wildman, a columnist for the International Herald Tribune and PBS, wrote in The Jewish Daily Forward last January:

…[W]hen anti-Semitism is falsely applied, we must also stand up and decry it as defamation, as character assault, as unjust. That is why when we debase the term by using it as a rhetorical conceit against those with whom we disagree on policy matters, we have sullied our own promises to our grandparents. For if we dilute the term, if we render the label meaningless, defanged, we have failed ourselves, our legacy, our ancestors, our children.

While Loesch and Malkin are quick to throw around incendiary accusations, it might be helpful for them to explain why they believe O’Brien’s defense of CRT and critical questioning of Joel Pollak justify accusing an award winning CNN anchor of racism and anti-Semitism.