I really enjoyed Larry Derfner's piece in the Jerusalem Post, which was a response to Israeli author A.B. Yehoshua who said...

[Being] Israeli is my skin, not my jacket. You are changing jackets... you are changing countries like changing jackets. I have my skin, the territory," the author told the audience, adding that Israeli Jews live a Jewish life in a totality that the American Jews do not know.

...or in other words, you can't be as good a Jew in America as you can in Israel.

Derfner: Who's living an incomplete Jewish life?

For serious, honest-to-God religious Jews in the Diaspora - people whose days revolve around Jewish law, prayer, mitzvot and usually religious study as well - Judaism isn't in the outer shell of their lives, it's in the core. It suffuses their personal life, and usually their communal life as well. Imagine the Jewish Diaspora without the State of Israel. Then imagine a 100% secular State of Israel in a whole world without any practicing, believing Jews. Obviously I wouldn't want to choose either one, but if I had to, as an atheist Israeli but also a Jew, I'd choose the former.

Yes, their lives would be more Jewish, completely Jewish, if they lived in Israel. But the lives of us secular Israeli Jews would be so much more Jewish, completely Jewish, if we were religious.....

I, being neither Orthodox nor Israeli have a long way to go. The majority of Jews in the U.S. obviously don't think you need to be either to be a good, or "complete Jew". I disagree, but that's a topic to write a book about or to fill future hours on a psychiatrist's couch when I have some time to kill.

This is just really, really bad.

Murtha: Iraqis were killed 'in cold blood'

WASHINGTON, May 17 (UPI) -- A Pentagon investigation will show that U.S. Marines killed 15 civilians in Iraq "in cold blood" a U.S. congressman said in Washington.

Rep. Jack Murtha, D-Pa., confirmed Wednesday that Iraqis in Haditha said Marines killed the unarmed Iraqi civilians, including seven women and three children, NBC News reported. Military officials told NBC the Marine Corps' own evidence appears to confirm Murtha's statement.

A Marine spokesman issued a statement in November saying a roadside bomb had killed 15 civilians and a Marine, but U.S. military officials later retracted that account.

Murtha said military sources have told him the Pentagon investigation will show the troops "overreacted because of the pressure on them, and they killed innocent civilians in cold blood."

Three officers in a California-based Marine battalion involved in the incident were relieved of command. A spokesman for the 1st Marine Division said the officers were removed "due to lack of confidence in their leadership abilities stemming from their performance during a recent deployment to Iraq," the Marine Corps Times reported last month.

I so want to believe that this is all a big misunderstanding.

If it's true, it's awful and the full measure of the law should be brought to bear against those directly responsible. That does not include Rumsfeld or Bush although the Left will protray it that way.

Also, I hope that those on the Right who try to put this event into perspective and our soldiers (99.99% of who have followed the letter of the law) are not all called baby-killers.

Of course if Murtha has leaked the story incorrectly, he should resign immediately. In fact even if the report turns out to be inconclusive, Murtha should resign.

Should this affect our decision whether to stay in Iraq if it is true? Of course not. To me logic says that one illegal action, no matter how heinous, should undo an entire operation involving hundreds of thousands of people which will effect tens of millions. If such was the case, major urban police departments would have been taken off the streets long ago.

I pray that this didn't happen as the news is reporting - for all of our sakes.

Man does Glenn Reynolds hit the nail on the head with this one.  He looks at the "industrial societies are having fewer children" story and takes it one step further.

The Parent Trap (excerpts below)

We've taken a lot of the fun out of parenting. Or to echo Longman, the "social costs" of parenting continue to rise, and, more significantly, perhaps, the "social returns" continue to decline...

You're responsible for your kids in ways previous generations weren't, but your ability to discipline them is much reduced, and as my wife (a forensic psychologist) notes, the bad kids know that they can cow most adults by threatening to call 911 and make a bogus abuse charge. And forget disciplining your child, even with a harsh word, in a public place: At the very least, if you do you'll be looked on not as a virtuous parent helping to preserve the social fabric, but as that worst of all sinners in contemporary American culture: a meanie....

My mother reports that when she was a newlywed (she was married in 1959) you weren't seen as fully a member of the adult world until you had kids. Nowadays to have kids means something closer to an expulsion from the adult world. People in the suburbs buy SUVs instead of minivans not because they need the four-wheel-drive capabilities, but because the SUVs lack the minivan's close association with low-prestige activities like parenting, and instead provide the aura of high-prestige activities like whitewater kayaking. Why should kayaking be more prestigious than parenting? Because parenting isn't prestigious in our society. If it were, childless people would drive minivans just to partake of the aura.

Of course I don't agree with everything - I don't think the elderly of past generations all had comfy retirements because of the number of children they had - but all in all an excellent piece.

Jimmy "I never have anything bad to say about the Palestinians" Carter has an op-ed piece on Israel in USA Today. Need I say more?

Israel's new plan: A land grab

The barrier is not located on the internationally recognized boundary between Israel and Palestine....

I didn't realize there was a country called Palestine - who exactly has recognized this imaginary country's borders?

Only about twice the size of Washington, D.C., Gaza is now a politically and economically non-viable region, almost completely isolated from the West Bank, Israel and the outside world.

Only half the size of Gaza, Washington D.C. is now a politically and economically non-viable region, almost completely isolated from Maryland, Virginia and the outside world. - OK, I just threw that in for laughs :-)

It would be a mistake to underestimate the difficulty of finding a mutually acceptable agreement, but many Israelis, Palestinians and international representatives are familiar with what must be its ultimate basic terms. They include reasonable border compromises based on the swapping of land, which could leave a substantial number of Israeli settlers undisturbed on Palestinian land.

I know that Israel was willing to swap land when Arafat rejected their proposals in the past. I wasn't aware that any Palestinians were open to that. Besides, as Carter mentions himself...

"..The recently elected Hamas legislators will neither recognize nor negotiate with Israel while Palestinian land is being occupied."

So if I follow the logic "many Palestinians" know what must be done for peace yet the majority elected Hamas. Sorry Jimmy, peace isn't made with "many people", it is made with governments. "Many Palestinians" are straw men if I ever saw some.

A mutual Israeli-Palestinian agreement would undoubtedly result in full recognition of Israel by all Arab nations, with normal diplomatic and economic relations, and permanent peace and justice for the Palestinians.

Right - and the Emancipation Proclamation of 1863 freed the United States from a legacy of hate and discrimination and ensured the eternal equality of African-Americans. Oh puh-leeze.

Now, if the Washington Post can get a Pulitzer Prize for reporting secret government programs that no one can confirm, why not give one to USA Today for their error-prone reporting about the NSA's secret tracking of all our phone calls.

BellSouth Says It Gave NSA No Call Records

ATLANTA (AP) - BellSouth Corp. said Monday its "thorough review" found no indication it gave telephone records to the National Security Agency as part of a federal anti-terrorism surveillance program.....

"Based on our review to date, we have confirmed no such contract exists and we have not provided bulk customer calling records to the NSA," the Atlanta-based regional Bell said in a statement.

BellSouth spokesman Jeff Battcher said the company's investigation found "no contract with the NSA and we are confident that we have turned over no phone records."Last week, Battcher said the company had "not provided any information we would need a subpoena for." On Monday night, Battcher said "we cannot find anyone within BellSouth who has ever been approached by the NSA."

I am about to write an article about the secret government plan to collect information on everyone's earnings and then force them to pay a large percentage under threat of jailtime or seizure of assets! I'm going to call it - The Federal Tax Code: a Bill of No Rights. Where's my Pulitzer?

Comedian Judson Laipply spends seven minutes showing us famous dance moves of the last 50 years. It's helpful if you have a working knowledge of some of the more popular music videos since MTV's been on the air. An explanation of the act can't do it justice. Via GVOD. Enjoy.

Imagine you're only married two weeks. Four days ago you moved into a new apartment with your husband. Around lunchtime, your husband invites you to lunch but you say no thanks, you're busy and not really hungry. Not too long afterwards your husband goes into a small restaurant, maybe somewhere he wouldn't have gone if he wasn't eating alone...and is mortally woudned by a suicide bomber.

Please say a prayer for Maya Anidzar and her husband Lior.



P.S. Lior's sister is six months pregnant and is planning to name the child after his uncle, may he rest in peace. A rare thank you goes out to the New York Times.

I thought I had my TV habits under control, just watching 2 hours a week religiously - 24 and The Sopranos.

Just out of curiosity, I started recording a show on TLC called Shalom in the Home. It's hosted by modern orthodox Rabbi Shmuley Boteach who I formerly thought of as kind of a quack, rabbi to the stars (including Michael Jackson.)

Shalom in the Home is a reality show where families who are having significant problems (kids, remarriage, finances, etc.) call in Shmuley who works with the family in question for a week after having recorded their homelife to figure out what's going wrong. The Rabbi uses counseling sessions in his Airstream mobile home and group activities to try to bring the families back together. The thing that gets us is that the families are very real - these are not freaks or white trash. And the families are not all Jewish - in fact a recent episode had an adopted Jew who converted to Islam to marry his Turkish wife.

Shmuley has some beautiful words of wisdom that he doles out in the counseling sessions and in the breaks that really hit home. There's a list of "Shmuleyisms" on the show's website.

The greatest gift that a man can give his children is to love their mother. Conversely, the greatest gift that a mother can give her children is to love their father.

The man who has a woman who believes in him is impregnable and invincible. Nothing in life can hurt him because he has peace at this center.

A parent’s bedroom is not a family sitting room or family dormitory. Children should never sleep in their parents’ bedroom. If you need to hire a security guard to make your bedroom into Fort Knox, that is still better than allowing your role as parent to conflict with your role as lover to your spouse.

Boy, do we have to work on that last one. I now admire this man tremendously. He's a child of divorce who has eight children of his own who seems to have it all together.

Yeeeehaaaaaaaaaaaa!

Texas to consider 80 mph limit

Via Instapundit, I bring you the following charge that the at least some in the MSM are willing to portray people with similar problems differently depending on whether they are well-liked or not

Kennedy's "Stigma" Is Limbaugh's "Crime"

Now, I'm not one to normally jump on "if they were black" or "if they were conservative" debates. However, I figured I have some time to kill, so let's see which is the easiest liberal source of any kind that is willing to make fun of Limbaugh yet be sorry for Kennedy. Keeping in mind of course that Limbaugh was never accused of doing anything to harm anyone yet Kennedy could have been killed or killed someone else in the process.

General criticism of Limbaugh's political views and even jokes about his weight didn't count. I wanted to find someone who specifically makes fun of his drug addiction.

The Democratic Daily Blog had this to say about Patrick Kennedy on May 5, 2006:

Patrick Kennedy said he hoped that his “openness today and in the past, and my acknowledgment that I need help, will give others the courage to get help if they need it.”

For anyone who has struggled with addiction, or has had a friend or loved one who has (or worse, lost a friend or loved one to addiction) , they understand the courage it takes to speak publicly, as Patrick Kennedy has. For the media and right-wing blogosphere who have twisted this a thousand different ways — you should all be ashamed.

On December 22, 2005 however, the following comments were made regarding Rush Limbaugh:

Conservative parnaoia hits childrens books. In efforts to brainwash children, they use their usual tactic of creating strawmen to attack rather than actually responding to liberal ideas....The Oregonean reports that, thanks to promotion from Rush Limbaugh (who perhaps will also teach kids how to take OxyContin)...

Ashamed indeed. That was easy.

OK, just finished watching the Frontline special on Hamas. While I can't claim anti-Israel bias because there was no intention to get the Israeli point of view, I do think the reporting was incredibly shoddy and failed to provide any historical perspective at all. If one didn't know anything about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict you would have learned the following:

Hamas were the original Palestinian terrorists but a year or so ago they declared a cease fire and no longer attack Israel. They are the party of peace - all they ask is for the Israelis to pull back to the 1967 borders.

Hamas can't be held responsible for any of it's actions. Fighting would end tomorrow if it didn't have to fend off agressors like Fatah, Islamic Jihad and the Israelis. Palestinian economic problems would end tomorrow if it weren't for the Israelis and Americans.

Qassam rockets are inaccurate and therefore cause no real threat to anyone in Israel.

I think the most uncomfortable thing to watch was when a friendly looking Hamas supporter led the reporter (Kate Seelye) through the streets of Gaza where Fatah political slogans were written on all the walls. The Hamas supporter laughed at the "Elect Fatah" slogans commenting that there is no reason given to actually vote for them. All Seelye could do was laugh along with him like a little girl with some kind of commentary along the line of "Youre right, how silly of them!"

I don't want to give the impression that Hamas was portrayed as liberal democrats that just want everyone to get along, but I'm sure the piece is not what many expected, myself included.

UPDATE: I just delved into the more detailed Frontline website on their Hamas report. There seems to be some better reporting from others and it's worth taking a look at the site in it's entirety. However, someone's going to have to explain to me how this obviously contradictory reporting came to be placed in pieces that are adjacent to each other on the "Dispatches from Gaza" page.

Idiotarian Kate Seelye: "Realizing I wasn’t entirely prepared, I did a quick Google search on Qassam rockets. Named after the Hamas militia, the homemade projectiles are among the Palestinian militants’ favorite weapon. With a range of about 12 miles, Qassams frequently were launched at Israeli settlements and into Israel proper during the second intifada...Hundreds of Qassam rockets have rained down on Israel over the last few years, and although they succeeded in sowing terror, they have done relatively little damage. Qassams lack a missile guidance system and are famously inaccurate."

Reporter Marcela Gaviria: "Every so often, a Qassam makes its way across the security perimeter, killing or wounding Israeli civilians. According to B’Tselm, an Israeli human rights organization, since the Israeli withdrawal from Gaza in September 2005, 34 Israelis have been killed by Palestinian rockets."

Just so that I understand....and please correct me if I'm wrong....

Jewish leftist groups support a boycott of Caterpillar because it's equipment is often used by the Israeli government to illegally destroy Palestinian homes and farmland. Yet...

Those same groups support providing Hamas with millions of dollars which they often use to provide arms to it's members that actually kill, injure,  kidnap, etc. other Palestinians. (Not to mention their use of weapons to kill Israeli Jews or the force the slow reversal of women's rights).

I urge everyone who can to watch or record Frontline tonight - Looking Inside Hamas: Search for Martyrdom, Hatred of Israel.  It should be noted that Frontline is no right wing mouthpiece as can be seen by their show on the danger of the radical Israeli settlers.

On a separate note, and I'd like to find a more independent source for this, one may not be safe speaking Hebrew on the streets of Berlin.  And it ain't neo-Nazis that are the problem.

Bush approval rating hits new low

31% ?!?

My gut reaction to this article was a combination of disgust at the babyish threat, and then pride that (perhaps) it could actually be carried out should they actually be attacked.

Iran can also be wiped off the map (says Israel)

Not only that, but the liberal leader Shimon Peres was the one making the threat!

"In every generation they rise up again to destroy us.,.".   Too bad we probably have to wait for the messiah before it stops happening.

How awesome is this! They are now coming out with standard looking radios that actually capture radio stations that broadcast over the internet.

Pick up online stations without the computer

The AE Wi-Fi Internet radio is a standalone receiver, preprogrammed with more than 2,500 online stations. Designed to operate more like a radio than a computer, it's made by Acoustic Energy in Britain and is scheduled to hit the U.S. marketplace later this month.



At $300-400, I won't be buying one anytime soon, but when they get down to the inevitable $100-150 range I might.

Ripped from the pages of Google Video of the Day (GVOD), here's the video of Bush alongside his impersonator at the recent White House Correspondent's Dinner. Hilarious. I really have to remember to TIVO this next year off of C-Span.

Did anyone notice that the deficit may actually shrink for a second year in a row?  I found this one buried on the U.S. page of the NY Times website.  Isn't this truly a "man bites dog" story that goes against conventional wisdom that should appear near the top? 

Decline In Deficit is Seen

Tax revenues in April, when most people file their annual tax returns, were 14 percent higher than the year before. Despite continued spending on the war in Iraq and hurricane recovery efforts, the budget deficit for the first seven months of the 2006 fiscal year was $53 billion lower than the same period last year.

Why use that, when you can put U.S Job Growth Slows on the home page.  And incase you think that news is more significant in some way, the sub-header reads,  "Analysts said the change in the employment picture does not appear to be the beginning of a broader retrenchment."

I may be biased, but I think think this stands up to scrutiny as a poor choice of placement.

I really need to read Andy Borowitz' website every day. I think he's one of the funniest satirists out there. Unfortunately, you can only link to the home page which changes daily, so catch it while you can.

SATAN’S TESTIMONY ROCKS ENRON TRIAL
Lord of Darkness Becomes Surprise Witness For Prosecution

The trial of former Enron CEO Ken Lay took a stunning turn today as the prosecution introduced Satan as a surprise witness, attempting to establish a long-running business relationship between Mr. Lay and the Lord of Darkness.

I think this article pretty much sounds about the same as if I would have written it myself.

A rabbi's struggle: To allow gay clergy or not?

As I have become acquainted with more pious and knowledgeable gay and lesbian Jews, I have asked myself why God would design some people with a trait — for which there is paltry evidence that it can be reversed — and then designate individuals with that characteristic as "sinners?" Even if triggered by a gene mutation, as some argue, what is sinful about that?...

The biblical demand of "an eye for an eye" was interpreted in the Talmud as the monetary value of a wounded eye, and not an actual gouging. The Bible also orders the stoning of an unruly son, but the Talmud already qualified that as theoretical, saying, "It was never done nor will it be done.".....

I need to get comfortable, for example, witnessing a rabbi and his male partner dancing at my synagogue's spring social, or seeing two lesbians hand-in-hand at the Torah while celebrating their daughter's bat mitzvah. I am confident that, eventually, religious commitment will trump sexual orientation.

Has Bob Herbert managed to write a regular column for three years without ever saying anything new? Just go to Automatic Bob Herbert and see for yourself.  The site uses a database of quotes from Herbert's columns since 2003 and mixes them around and creates a randomly ordered anti-Bush column whenever you hit the refresh button.   As the site suggests, why pay the author when you can just mix around his old work and present it as new?