by Moshe Kempinski
The road forward for the Jewish people is meant to be long, circuitous and torturous. The road for the people of this country is especially convoluted and confusing. It is a road beset by many pitfalls and many precipitous drops. Yet it is a road that must be taken, as the history of the Jewish people in particular, and that of mankind in general, continue forward towards their destiny. 
At times, in the midst of that journey, the Jewish people seem to lose
In the midst of that journey, the Jewish people seem to lose direction and purpose.
direction and purpose as they wander into pastures and hills that were not meant for them. That too is part of the exile and is also part of the wilderness that must be traveled. Original Source   more »

by Nissan Ratzlav-Katz
(IsraelNN.com) A specially commissioned Torah scroll was dedicated on Sunday for use aboard a commuter train by a traveling prayer quorum on the Jerusalem-Tel Aviv line.
Between 20 and 40 people pray in the train's Mesilat Yesharim Minyan each morning.
A group of commuters living in Beit Shemesh commissioned the small Torah scroll and custom-made carrying case for their daily prayers. The Torah dedication was arranged together with BeLev Echad, an organization which teaches secular and unaffiliated Jews in the communities around Beit Shemesh about Torah Judaism.
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by Hana Levi Julian
(IsraelNN.com) The National Security Council Counter-Terrorism Bureau issued a warning Tuesday afternoon to Israeli citizens to avoid traveling in the Sinai Peninsula. According to the report, intelligence sources received a credible terror alert of an immediate threat of attack by a terror cell operating in Sinai.
"Activity by terrorist elements in the Sinai Peninsula, who are working in order to abduct Israelis raises the possibility that they intend to perpetrate such an abduction in the very near, even immediate, future," said the warning.
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Israel's largest daily newspaper on Tuesday published photographs of a synagogue in a former Jewish town in Gaza that has now been transformed into a Hamas training center.
Where Jews once worshipped God, Islamic terrorists now rehearse the murder and abduction of Israelis, reported Yediot Ahronot.
In the run-up to the 2005 forced evacuation of Gaza's Jewish population, Israel wrestled over what to do with synagogues and other public buildings in the 21 Jewish communities across the coastal territory.
Ultimately, those who argued it was not permitted to destroy places of worship won out, and the synagogues were left standing amid naive hopes that the Palestinians would refrain from desecrating them.
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Israeli strike may not be imminent, but there's no doubt these two countries are edging down the road to conflict
Jonathan Spyer
Ehud Barak, the Israeli defence minister, this week called the Iranian nuclear issue "a challenge not just for Israel but for the entire world". He added that "Israel is the strongest country in the region and we have proven in the past that we are not deterred from acting when our vital interests are at stake".
Barak's statement reflected the extent of gravity and urgency felt in Israel regarding the ongoing march of Iranian nuclear ambitions. Such remarks do not necessarily portend imminent confrontation. But they point to an underlying dynamic seemingly leading to conflict.
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By JOHN R. BOLTON
Iran's test salvo of ballistic missiles last week together with recent threatening rhetoric by commanders of the Islamic Republic's Revolutionary Guards emphasizes how close the Middle East is to a fundamental, in fact an irreversible, turning point.
Tehran's efforts to intimidate the United States and Israel from using military force against its nuclear program, combined with yet another diplomatic charm offensive with the Europeans, are two sides of the same policy coin. The regime is buying the short additional period of time it needs to produce deliverable nuclear weapons, the strategic objective it has been pursuing clandestinely for 20 years.
Between Iran and its long-sought objective, however, a shadow may fall: targeted military action, either Israeli or American. Yes, Iran cannot deliver a nuclear weapon on target today, and perhaps not for several years. Estimates vary widely, and no one knows for sure when it will have a deliverable weapon except the mullahs, and they're not telling. But that is not the key date. Rather, the crucial turning point is when Iran masters all the capabilities to weaponize without further external possibility of stopping it. Then the decision to weaponize, and its timing, is Tehran's alone. ...   more »

By Frank J. Gaffney, Jr. 
Try a little thought experiment. What would have happened in this country during the Cold War if the Soviet Union successfully neutralized anti-communists opposed to the Kremlin's plans for world domination?
Of course, Moscow strove to discredit those in America and elsewhere who opposed its totalitarian agenda — especially after Sen. Joseph McCarthy's excesses made it fashionable to vilify patriots by accusing them of believing communists were "under every bed."
But what if the USSR and its ideological soul-mates in places like China, North Korea, Cuba, Eastern Europe and parts of Africa had been able to criminalize efforts to oppose their quest for the triumph of world communism? What if it had been an internationally prosecutable offense even to talk about the dangers inherent in communist rule and the need to resist it?
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Jim Brown
A Catholic pro-life group warns Catholics and Evangelicals that a vote for Barack Obama is "a vote for the radical agenda of Planned Parenthood." The Democratic presidential nominee recently blasted his anticipated November opponent, Senator John McCain (R-Arizona), for saying he hopes to see Roe v. Wade overturned and appoint justices in the mold of Sam Alito and John Roberts.
Flanked by Hillary Clinton at a "Women for Obama" rally in New York, Obama welcomed the endorsement of Planned Parenthood and boasted he had a 100-percent approval rating from the abortion advocacy group compared to rival McCain's zero-percent rating. 
"I stand by my votes against confirming Justices Roberts and Alito," he stated to a cheering crowd. "I made it equally clear that I will never back down from making sure that women have their reproductive rights here in this country -- that's what's at stake in this election."
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'This used to be "Can Do America."
Conceived in liberty, generations of pragmatic, problem solving, inventive Americans produced the highest standard of living for the most people of any society in human history.
Conquering time and space, Americans invented worldwide instantaneous communications, a cornucopia of abundant cheap food, innumerable labor saving devices, a world of knowledge accessed in a hand-held computer and scads of other modern marvels.
It's difficult to know just when one era passes and something completely different takes its place. But evidence is piling up that "Can Do America" is giving way to "Can't Do America" where guilt about our past successes and the rising religion of environmentalism combine to lower our standard of living and teach us that this is good for us.
Our world is going BANANA, or Build Absolutely Nothing Anywhere Near Anybody.
To build a home in my city, a permit used to be required to satisfy the city that you would build according to fire and safety codes. What used to be a short review for practical purposes has ballooned in the past 20 years into a nightmare of expensive regulations that basically require the homeowner to prove that any use of ...   more »

By Noel S. Williams
Starting as a common market decades ago, the European Union has inexorably evolved from its economic mandate to a political body ever siphoning off powers from its 27 member states. Along the way, people throughout Europe have always been Eurosceptics, and when given the opportunity for referenda have voted down EU treaties.
In response, ogre-like Eurocrats with presumed superior wisdom circumvented the expressed wishes of ordinary citizens. For example, when the French and Dutch in referenda in 2005 both rejected the EU constitution, the ogres decided to bypass the people, instead pushing their supranational ambitions through executives and national parliaments.
Wounded by their 2005 defeat, their next attempt to create a European superstate was the 2007 Treaty of Lisbon. Now the beast from Brussels had mutated into a snarling monster intent on squashing all semblance of national autonomy.
Recognizing the gaping chasm between their ambitions and the will of the people, the Eurocratic ogres were surreptitious, only unleashing their monster in the shadowy underworld of Europe's bureaucratic labyrinth. However, their pernicious strategy to usurp democracy was flawed: Their treaty required ratification by all 27 member states, and in one country they simply could not bypass the ...   more »

Is there any doubt that the current U.S. Congress is the biggest collection of slimy, shady, demagoging snake-oil salespeople ever assembled? It's tough to watch C-Span anymore without needing a shower and comprehensive delousing afterwards.
Saying that this is the worst Congress in history is a stretch, mainly because the phrase "worst Congress in history" is an axiomatic redundancy, but an approval rating so low that Rasmussen needed to rent an earth-mover to retrieve the data would indicate that most Americans would agree with that statement.
Why don't Nancy Pelosi, Harry Reid, et al, appear to be worried about the fact that the approval ratings of the Democrat-controlled Congress are in the toilet? Why do they continue to buck public opinion on the drilling issue? Because they know their constituents will probably re-elect them anyway. The motto of the Democratic Party isn't "Dopes spring eternal" for nothing.
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By Paul Sperry
Sheik Muhammad Taqi Usmani has been a rock star of the Islamic finance world, sitting on the sharia supervisory boards of no fewer than a dozen Islamic banks and financial institutions worldwide.
For nearly a decade, the mufti also has advised the Dow Jones Islamic Market Index, which licenses more than 25 stock funds that comply with Islamic laws forbidding certain Western-style investments. The venerable Dow Jones & Co. first retained him in 1999.
Usmani's name is now missing from the Dow Jones website, where it had previously been prominently displayed. His bio and photo suddenly vanished without explanation.
Meanwhile, all references to Dow Jones disappeared from the website of the North American Islamic Trust, or NAIT, which runs a sharia-compliant mutual fund out of Burr Ridge, Ill.
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