In Saturday's Washington Post, Deborah Lipstadt, the Dorot Professor of Modern Jewish and Holocaust Studies at Emory University, took aim at Jimmy Carter and his recent book, Palestine: Peace Not Aparthied.

The column was a perfect example of how to baselessly smear an ideological opponent without engaging -- in any way -- that opponent's argument; it was a case study.

Its title -- drawing a not-terribly-subtle parallel between the former president who put human rights squarely in the middle of U.S. foreign policy and Adolph Hitler, a genocidal maniac -- was: "Jimmy Carter's Jewish Problem."

Lipstadt accuses Carter of giving "inadvertent comfort" to Holocaust deniers -- the subject of much of Lipstadt's scholarship and two of the three books she's authored. Carter, she wrote, has responded to "criticism" -- "witch-hunt" would be a more appropriate description -- by "reflexively" offering up "innuendo about Jewish control of the media and government." She adds, "When David Duke spouts it, I yawn. When Jimmy Carter does, I shudder."