Rough Politics Over Some of Sen. Feinstein's Votes

Now some fresh pickings from the Political Grapevine:

Party Line

California Democratic Senator Dianne Feinstein is in hot water with members of her state party over her votes — along with the majority of the Senate — to confirm Bush administration nominees Michael Mukasey for attorney general and Leslie Southwick for the Federal Appeals Court.

Media reports say a group calling itself The Courage Campaign, backed by left-wing organizations such as MoveOn.org and Democracy for America, tried to have Feinstein censured during the state party's executive board meetings last week.

Feinstein supporters fought back — literally — with reports of shoving matches leading up to the sessions. Procedural rules kept the resolution from being considered, but supporters will try again at the next meeting.

Security Blanket

Columbia University is considering granting tenure to a professor who has compared Jews to Nazis, accused Israel of murder and has been criticized for having an adversarial relationship with his students.

Hudson Institute fellow Richard Mintier writes in The New York Post that associate professor of modern Arab politics Joseph Massad has stated that Israel massacred Palestinians at Jenin in 2002 — even though the United Nations found no evidence supporting that. He has suggested Israel poisoned Yasser Arafat, when in fact it facilitated his evacuation to a French hospital. And he was accused of threatening to expel a student from class after she denied that Israel committed atrocities.

Logging On

Among the many things people are thankful for this time of year might be the Internet. But executives in the porn industry do not feel that way. Conde Nast Portfolio reports the industry's lifeblood DVD sales were down 11 percent last year, largely because of Internet sites that let people download porn — for free.

The most popular of these is a knockoff of YouTube, called YouPorn. It features everything from amateur videos to professionally made films. YouPorn started up less than two years ago, its audience now grows at a rate of 37.5 percent a month and it is the No. 1 adult site in the world.

But since it is a free site, YouPorn does not make much money — only around $120,000-a-month in advertising.

Big Story

As many of you look forward to perhaps over-indulging at bit at the Thanksgiving dinner table, you may find it interesting that almost 2,000 people in Great Britain who are deemed too fat to work are being paid more than $9 million in what are called "incapacity benefits" by the British government.

The London Times reports there are nearly 3 million people receiving benefits for 480 different conditions, including 15,600 people for "malaise and fatigue"; 8,100 for "dizziness and giddiness"; 60 people with "nail disorders" and 50 who cannot work because of acne.

— FOX News Channel's Martin Hill contributed to this report.