Politics apparently continued over the winter holidays. What did that crafty Barack Obama do while the rest of us were worshiping the Baby Jesus or whatever? He is suggesting that America allow Chuck Hagel to be the Secretary of Defense, that's what! Who would let Chuck Hagel do something as important as overseeing the continued American defeat in Afghanistan, when he has controversial opinions about The Gays and Israel?

But, like all cabinet battles, the controversy around Chuck Hagel is both a) limited to Politico reporters/editors and the people who actually read the Politico, and b) not really about the Defense Department but actually about right-wing Christians who hate gays [...]

We've never met. My name's Dave. I don't know much about you personally, but from what I have read about you, and from watching you talk on TV about the proposal two years ago to build a mosque five blocks from where the World Trade Center once stood, your public persona is one that makes me ashamed to be American and Jewish and a human being alive in the 21st century who has the letters "a" and "r" in his name. Because those two letters are also in your name.

You and the organization you lead, the American Freedom Defense Organization, recently won a law suit forcing [...]

Back in April, Egyptians received a violent reminder that their post-revolutionary freedom to assemble in protest was a conditional one. That night was the first time activists moved demonstrations from Tahrir Square to the Israeli embassy in protest the Gaza occupation. By 2 a.m., the Egyptian army (known as the SCAF) had received orders to attack the group. Soldiers fired rubber bullets into the crowds and tear-gassed the corridor, killing one and taking hundreds into custody.

The message from the SCAF was clear: “You may gather in protest with our blessing—but Israel is off limits.”

But last Friday, five Egyptian border security guards were accidentally killed by [...]

It starts at a very young age. The summer after third grade, my parents sent me to Jewish sleepaway camp. I was deeply homesick at first and cried a lot in my bunk bed, but by the end of the month I didn't want to leave. So I went back, summer after summer—boarding the plane with a few other Jewish kids from my hometown of Youngstown, Ohio, and flying to Appleton, Wisconsin, with a stop-over at O'Hare, where a volunteer from Hadassah would meet us at the gate and try to keep us from the moo shu pork at Wok-N-Roll.

Those summers blur together, but each day begins [...]

Nice video, right? A griffon vulture soars in the sky, its mighty 8-foot-wingspan holding it aloft above the desert. Beautiful to watch, right? Yeah, well, that's what he wants you to think. Actually, that vulture is a Mossad operative, collecting information that will help Israel take over the world. He and his friends, a Zionist cabal down in the sands of the Negev, are plotting against the governments of the surrounding Arab countries. And eating carrion, of course. They're very sneaky, those bald, large-beaked Jew spy vultures. But for one of them, on a secret surveillance mission to the Saudi Arabian city of Hyaal, the jig is up! [...]

"The result is a vicious circle in which Israel feels that its existential fears are not taken seriously. Israel's electorate moves towards leaders who address but also keep reinforcing its fears. International opinion becomes ever more negative, which in turn reinforces Israel's isolation which in turn raises existential fears. This has one, very unfortunate, consequence. Israel's best chance of minimizing the threat from Hamas and Hezbollah and minimizing Iranian influence in the Middle East is to engage with the Arab League peace initiative. If Israel were to normalize relations with all of the Arab and most of the Islamic world, particularly Syria, Hezbollah and Hamas would be isolated to the [...]

The Israeli soldiers that took a video of themselves dancing to "Tik Tok" are now being ordered to make an anti-soldier-dancing video to educate and prevent the possible spread of military-endorsed pop music dance videos. Ynet broke the news of the new anti-soldier-dance education video. In a published statement, the IDF explains how displeased they are that their men and women in uniform are waking up in the morning feeling like P Diddy. Well, isn't that just a bummer. I bet those soldiers are real sick of the blah, blah, blah coming from their superior officers, har har.

That chill in the air tonight is not just a real alive Halloween monster crawling up your leg. It's actually Josh Romney, helping the Halloween monster, because there is a chance you are a liberal who "offended Dad" by thinking maybe Barack Obama sort of won the second debate? Whatever happens tonight, during this third and final human-hybrid death wrangle, consider this live blog a "safe house" that Chris Matthews can never enter, because of the voodoo amulets we've hung from all the windows and doors. And yet we enjoy the online video from MSNBC, because it works so well … and Brian Williams is being super [...]

While Mike Wallace’s legacy will be of a tough, hard-hitting newsman, one brief incident in my life will always make me think of him as a mensch.

In 1968, I was a college junior spending a year studying at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem. I’d begun intensive language classes in August and communicated with my Brooklyn family via mail (snail) and biweekly phone calls, whose quality, at best, could be described as an underwater-echo chamber.

One December afternoon, after leaving class, I heard the wail of sirens. As I turned a corner towards the campus square, I saw clusters of agitated students, faculty and staff congregating, most of whom appeared [...]

"A chicken with four legs causing a stir in Jersualem." This is an end times thing, right?

Each year for as long as I can remember, I've been invited to go to Israel for free, to see the country: the discos of Haifa! The towers of Tel Aviv! The horrible, horrible weather! Sometimes this solicitation comes from the government or the foreign ministry or its tourist bureau; sometimes from various nonprofits, or sometimes from the Emergency Committee for Israel. It makes a lot of sense, of course: you go over, you see some beautiful countryside, you meet some nice people—and suddenly you feel personally interested and even invested (if you aren't already) in the future of Israel. And then you're all like: Palestine? What Palestine? [...]

Hezbollah and Jeffrey Goldberg ended up on similar pages regarding the giant forest fire in Israel, which killed 41 at last count as well as 5 million trees. "This fire revealed sheer helplessness on Israel's part," wrote a columnist in Palestine—and others came to this position with a little more glee. Meanwhile, stateside, the Atlantic's Jeffrey Goldberg had this to say: "Israel's per capita GDP is nearly $30,000. Israel is a rich country. The fact that it doesn't possess adequate firefighting equipment is its own fault."

"Rubicon," the new AMC conspiracy theory show that celebrated its upcoming premiere with a party at The Standard Wednesday night, is named for the river in Italy that inspired the idiom "crossing the Rubicon"-as in, passing a point of no return. The phase refers to Caesar's decision to lead his army across the river, which was equated with an act of war. And taking that elevator to The Top Of The Standard is something akin to that act-it is, in some respects, like passing a point of no return. But before we got to the Boom Boom Room there was the real reason for the event: a roundtable discussion [...]

It was an event in which egotistical agitators provoked the fragile, isolated state of Israel. Or it was a case of baldly shameless Israeli commandos attacking ambassadors of humanity. Or a little of both. Or, maybe, neither. It all depends on where you stand. The attempt of the Mavi Marmara ship to pass through the Gaza blockade ballooned an already intractable conflict, one that has been waging for years and years.

And for a couple hours last Thursday evening, motivated New Yorkers stood firmly on the sidewalks of Atlantic Avenue, entrenched on their respective sides.

The serial grifter behind the notorious anti-Islam YouTube video The Innocence of Muslims goes to court today in Los Angeles. Mark Basseley Youssef, which is kind of a Muslim-sounding name, is accused of violating his parole for something or other. (Inciting global riots that led to many deaths, including the death of a brave U.S. ambassador in Libya? No, not for that.) Anyway, you will be surprised not at all to learn that this sketchy character looks exactly like you'd expect! (A serious role for Danny DeVito, perhaps, to constructively use the anger from his marriage troubles?) The same courtroom artist also did some amazing portraits of [...]

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My office was invaded by the Occupy Protesters today & all I saw were $1000 laptops & vomit on the carpet. Thank God for #febrezeWed Dec 07 03:49:02 via TweetDeckRep. Joe WalshRepJoeWalsh

I'll just leave this here. Oh, okay, how about a review of Joe Walsh's work activity this year, his first in Congress? Well, it's pretty amazing actually.

“There was no talk of reincarnation, a lawyer has never been mentioned, either now or 20 years ago, and there was no stoning. Such inventions are a kind of blood libel, and we wonder why the inventor of the story did not continue to describe how we collected the blood of the dog to make our matzah.” —The secretariat of the Monetary Affairs Court in Jerusalem's ultra-Orthodox Mea Shearim neighborhood released a statement denying reports in the Israeli newspaper Maariv earlier this month that a dog had been sentenced to death by stoning because plaintifs and judges thought that it was a gilgul, or the reincarnated soul, [...]