Judy Bart Kancigor
Semifinal winners Evan Levy and Julie Hession with emcee Brian Malarkey (left) and Manischewitz VP of Marketing David Rossi (right).Don your aprons, light those ovens and…go!
Thirty contestants in last month’s Second Annual Simply Manischewitz Cook-Off semi-finals chopped, seared and sautéed their way for the chance to compete in the finals, to be held in New York on February 27. The grand prizewinner will take home a $25,000 prize package, including a GE Profile kitchen, cash and more.
Three semi-final events were held in Chicago, Philadelphia and San Francisco. Ten contestants in each area, selected from thousands of entrants, had one hour to prepare and serve their original recipes, each using at least one Manischewitz product and containing no more than eight ingredients.
As one of the judges in the Western competition held on December 20 at the Hilton Hotel in San Francisco, I sampled all the entries (yum!) and voted with my peers on taste, appearance, ease of preparation and originality.
Over 200 onlookers attended the event, free to the public, which included a kosher lunch and a first-hand look at the contestants as they donned their aprons and used their allotted hour to produce their ...   more »

Syrian foreign minister says his country to 'punish US' for decision to impose fresh sanctions against Syrian officials
Associated Press
Syrians are preparing to sue the United States for supplying weapons to Israel that later killed Syrians during the Second Lebanon War, said Syria's foreign minister, a day after Washington announced new sanctions against Damascus. 
Speaking at a press conference with his Iranian counterpart, Manouchehr Mottaki, Walid Moallem promised that Syria would punish the US for its decision to impose fresh sanctions against Syrian officials.  
"This time I tell you we will punish the United States ... There are scores of Syrians who became victims during the Israeli war against Lebanon, they will file lawsuits against America," which provided Israel with the weapons, he said.  
'No country more corrupt than US'
On Wednesday, US President George W. Bush, in an executive order, said he was expanding sanctions against senior government officials in Syria and their associates deemed responsible for or to have benefited from public corruption. The order named no specific officials.  
A high ranking Syrian official on Thursday ridiculed Bush's decision, saying that a country occupying the land of others has no right to hurl accusations. ...   more »

By Caroline B. Glick      
It is quite possible that terror master Imad Mughniyah was not killed Tuesday night in Damascus for his past crimes, but to prevent him from carrying out additional attacks in the future.
On January 30, French security services raided a Paris apartment and arrested six Arab men. Three of the men — two Lebanese and one Syrian — were travelling on diplomatic passports. According to the Italian Libero newspaper, the six were members of a Hizbullah cell. Seized documents included tourist maps of Paris, London, Madrid, Berlin and Rome marked up with red highlighter to indicate routes, addresses, parking lots and "truck stopping points."The maps pointed to several routes to Vatican back entrances.
Libero's report explained that the "truck stopping points" aligned with information the French had received the week before from Beirut. There, Hizbullah chief Hassan Nasrallah convened a conference of his senior terror leaders where he ordered them to activate Hizbullah cells throughout Europe to kidnap senior European leaders.
The day of the arrests, French Defense Minister Herve Morin was meeting with his American counterpart Defense Secretary Robert Gates and with Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice in Washington on a previously unannounced visit. ...   more »

by Hillel Fendel
(IsraelNN.com) One of the most venerated Sephardic Torah scholars in Israel, Rabbi Meir Mazuz of Bnei Brak, has written a letter to the political leaders of the Shas party, warning them against the mortal dangers to the State of Israel posed by the government of which they are a part.
The sharply worded letter by Rabbi Mazuz, head of the Kisei Rachamim yeshiva in Bnei Brak, demands that Shas immediately quit the government.  He also says that the Shas MKs must present to Rabbi Ovadiah Yosef - a former Chief Sephardic Rabbi and the spiritual leader of Shas - the "true and complete data regarding the diplomatic processes the government is weaving, which are damaging to the status of Jerusalem and bring closer the uprooting of the communities of Judea and Samaria."
Olmert and Barak do nothing "except for a targeted killing here and there every two months and then they go on to other things - and you [Shas] remain silent?!"
"We hear daily," Rabbi Mazuz writes, "from reliable sources that construction in Jerusalem has been stopped, and that [the government] has already (secretly) sold to the enemy many communities around Jerusalem.  The situation has become ...   more »

Southern residents to protest in Jerusalem Sunday during ministerial committee meeting called to rule on fortification of homes; Defense Minister Barak takes jab at Olmert, says he's puzzled by delay in transferring funds earmarked for fortification
Shmulik Hadad
Southern residents demand security: Residents of the southern Negev desert will be holding a demonstration outside the Prime Minister's Office in Jerusalem on Sunday.  
Local residents, headed by regional council head Alon Shuster, will be protesting while a ministerial committee headed by Prime Minister Ehud Olmert convenes in order to rule on fortifying Sderot and Gaza-region homes.
Southern Protest  
"We will not accept any solution except for secured rooms," Shuster said.  
Barak: Puzzled by delay
Meanwhile, another conflict seems to be brewing between Olmert and Defense Minister Barak, who said he is puzzled by the continuing delay in handing over the NIS 300 million (roughly $70 million) earmarked for the fortification of Sderot and Gaza-region communities.
"We've head enough delays. That money should have been transferred a while ago," Barak said during closed-door conversations over the weekend. "I'm puzzled by the reasons for the continued delay."  
Olmert announced his intention to earmarked approximately NIS 320 million for the ...   more »

By Yoav Stern,
The Lebanese newspaper A-Safir reported Saturday that the Lebanon-based guerilla group Hezbollah has deployed 50,000 "activists" along the southern border with Israel and declared a state of high alert in southern Lebanon.
According to the report, the organization has also evacuated all buildings in the area designated for social or political purposes in recent days, in preparation for a confrontation with Israel in the wake of the assassination of Hezbollah terror chief Imad Mughniyah.
Mughniyah, the organization's deputy secretary general, was killed in a blast in an upscale Damascus neighborhood late Tuesday. On Thursday, Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah blamed Israel for the assassination and vowed to retaliate. Israel denied any involvement in the incident.
Meanwhile Saturday, another Lebanese newspaper reported that Lebanese officials believe a serious military confrontation with Israel will erupt in the near future.
According to a report in the Hezbollah-affiliated newspaper Al-Akhbar this possibility has been raised in intensive discussions being held between Hezbollah officials and Iranian and Syrian officials. The various militant Palestinian organizations have also declared a state of high alert, the report added.
Al-Akhbar also reported that Syrian investigators probing the assassination suspect that "official security organizations operating in Arab nations" ...   more »

Officials accused of quietly forming institutions in Israel's capital
By Aaron Klein
Jerusalem
JERUSALEM – The Palestinian Authority has been quietly attempting to establish elements of a functioning government in Jerusalem, WND has learned.
According to security officials, earlier this week Israeli police arrested Hatem Abdel Khader, a member of Palestinian Authority President Mahmad Abbas' Fatah party and a former member of the Palestinian Legislative Council, accusing him of setting up a Palestinian council in Jerusalem to attend to the needs of the city's Israeli Arab population.
Khader, who was released from custody after a few hours, also was accused of trying to set up a community police unit in Jerusalem that would answer to the PA.
In line with previous Israeli-Palestinian accords, the PA has been barred from conducting political activity in Jerusalem, although it maintained an office, called Orient House, in an eastern Jerusalem neighborhood that previously functioned as a de facto PA headquarters. 
Orient House was closed down by Israel in 2001 following a series of suicide bombings in Jerusalem and information Israel said indicated the House was used to plan and fund terrorism.
Thousands of documents and copies of bank certificates and checks captured by Israel ...   more »

By Robert Spencer
With jihad terrorists around the world making recruits and justifying their actions by reference to Islamic teachings, academic study of Islam is needed more urgently than ever. Yet in today’s universities, political correctness almost completely forecloses any honest examination of the elements of Islamic culture or belief. Much of this is the result of the work of the late Edward Said, a hugely influential professor and author of the book Orientalism, which has set the tone for Middle East Studies in the United States ever since its first appearance in the 1970s. Said contended that Western academic study of Islam and the Middle East was deformed by notions of cultural superiority, and was a racist handmaiden of Western colonialism and imperialism.
Said’s word has become law. On most campuses today any examination of matters Islamic that is even remotely critical is shouted down and labeled bigotry and “hate speech.” Pre-1960 works by Western scholars on Islamic and Middle Eastern studies are disparaged or ignored. Said’s influence has for three decades now had the baneful effect of inhibiting academic and public debate about crucial issues such as how Islam must be reformed and whether or not this reform ...   more »

NEW YORK (AP) — Leaders from five Anglican provinces said yesterday they will boycott a once-a-decade world Anglican summit because the U.S. Episcopal Church ordained an openly practicing homosexual as a bishop.
The five leaders from Africa and South America said they could not share communion with Episcopal bishops who in 2003 consecrated V. Gene Robinson as bishop of New Hampshire.
The Episcopal Church is the Anglican body in the U.S.
Yesterday's announcement came from Archbishops Peter Akinola of Nigeria, Emmanuel Kolini of Rwanda, Benjamin Nzimbi of Kenya, Henry Orombi of Uganda and Gregory Venables of the Southern Cone, which is in South America.
"There is no serious space for those of an orthodox persuasion ... to be themselves or to be taken seriously," the archbishops said in a statement. They lead some of the largest or fastest-growing Anglican provinces in the world.
"The gathering will be diminished by their absence, and I imagine that they, themselves, will miss a gift they might have otherwise received" by attending, Episcopal Presiding Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori said.
Anglicans are deeply divided over how they should interpret what the Bible says about truth, salvation, homosexuality and other issues. Bishop Robinson's elevation has pushed ...   more »

An ex-bin Laden hunter on why the U.S. hasn't beaten Al Qaeda.
By John Barry
Michael Scheuer is a worried man—and an angry one. He's worried by what he regards as the United States's failure to devise a successful strategy against Osama bin Laden and angered by what he sees as the political timidity behind that failure. Scheuer has a claim to be heard. He was a CIA officer for almost 20 years. In the 1980s he was involved in the arming of the Afghan mujahedin against the Soviets. For much of the 1990s he ran the team hunting for Osama bin Laden. In 2004 he quit the CIA to write a book titled "Imperial Hubris," an account of years of Western failure to take seriously the growing threat of Islamist terrorism. Now Scheuer has written a new book, "Marching Toward Hell: America and Islam After Iraq." He spoke with NEWSWEEK'S John Barry about it. Excerpts:
NEWSWEEK: Why did you write this new book?
Michael Scheuer: Because I think our country is in trouble. The enemy we are facing, Osama bin Laden and the movement he heads, is much more dangerous than anyone gives him credit for. Much smarter, much ...   more »

 it's a Symbol of Western Freedom by Susan MacAllen
In 1978-79, I was living and studying in Denmark. But in 1978, even in Copenhagen, one didn't see Muslim immigrants. The Danish population embraced visitors, celebrated the exotic, and went out of its way to protect each of its citizens. It was proud of its new brand of socialist liberalism one in development since the conservatives had lost power in 1929 - a system where no worker had to struggle to survive, where one ultimately could count upon the state as in, perhaps, no other western nation at the time.
The rest of Europe saw the Scandinavians as free-thinking, progressive and infinitely generous in their welfare policies. Denmark boasted low crime rates, devotion to the environment, a superior educational syst em and a history of humanitarianism.
Denmark was also most generous in its immigration policies - it offered the best welcome in Europe to the new immigrant: generous welfare payments from first arrival plus additional perks in transportation, housing and education. It was determined to set a world example for inclusiveness and multiculturalism.
How could it have predicted that one day in 2005 a series of political cartoons in a newspaper ...   more »

Candidate prepared with water bottle,
call for EMTs – fakery or fanaticism? 
Barack Obama tosses a water bottle after woman faints at Seattle campaign rally (Courtesy Seattle Post-Intelligencer) 
Call it the Barack Obama traveling salvation show – campaign rallies and speeches that seem like the secular counterpart of tent-meeting revivals and evangelistic sermons common in the U.S. a century ago.
And, in apparent similarity to the religious enthusiasm of that bygone era, some of those coming to hear the Democrat presidential candidate "preach" his message are fainting as he speaks.
A video compilation by Breitbart.TV shows Obama on several occasions breaking off his speeches to address someone who has collapsed, usually close to the stage, and to call for medical personnel while he offers bottled water to the overcome supporter.
The similarity between the events and the emotive opportunity it offers the candidate has some on the web questioning whether the campaign is employing shills or whether the phenomenon is evidence of fanaticism and cause for concern.
WND reported on the latest instance when Obama spoke to a crowd of 18,000 in Seattle a week ago:
"Democratic Sen. Barack Obama eschews the savior language used to describe his campaign for ...   more »

Barack Obama has a messiah complex and no one will convince me otherwise.
You can find the prepared version of last night's victory speech here, and you can video of his delivery here. Comparing the two reveals that Obama improvises quite a bit, and does so impressively. But what he improvises is some awfully heady, almost messianic, stuff.
Follow me after the jump.
Here's a lengthy improvised section that I transcribed off the video. It's gorgeous, especially when you hear the crowd respond to it. But Obama puts himself in some exclusive company.
Nothing worthwhile in this country has ever happened unless somebody, somewhere is willing to hope. Somebody is willing to stand up.
Somebody who is willing to stand up when they are told "No you can't" and instead they say, "Yes we can."
That's how this country was founded. A group of patriots declaring independence against a mighty British empire—nobody gave them a chance—but they said, "Yes we can." That's how slaves and abolitionists resisted that wicked system, and how a new president charted a course to ensure we would not remain half slave and half free.
That's how the greatest generation—my grandfather fighting in Patton's Army, my ...   more »

Abstinence education critic says instruction doesn't 'go far enough'
Another Florida school district is planning to give its 6th-graders lessons in how to use contraceptives, starting in April, a move that Planned Parenthood is promoting in the state.
WND earlier reported when the St. Lucie school board adopted a sex-ed curriculum that included a field trip to buy condoms, although district officials there decided not to use that lesson after parents objected.
Now officials in Palm Beach County have decided to teach their 6th-graders the use of contraceptives such as condoms, according to a report in the Palm Beach Post.
"Florida is the sixth-highest in the nation for pregnant teens, and that tells us we need to get information to our students," Judy Klinek, who oversees health education for the district, told the newspaper.
Since Florida law requires abstinence-based education, 6th-graders in the past have learned about sexually transmitted diseases and taught how to resist pressure to engage in sexual behavior, the report said 
Now, however, students will get "detailed" lessons in contraceptives, a move that is part of a larger effort to make such lessons mandatory statewide.
"[The Florida Planned Parenthood abortion providers are] proud to work with Sen. ...   more »