Free Republic

Merry Christmas to all, from your Jewish friends and from the State of Israel.

I missed this before, but found it on Legal Insurrection. This is the video of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's wishes to the Christian community of Israel and abroad that it have a Merry Christmas.

(Crain's) — Federal regulators hit an Oak Park community bank for failing to comply with the federal Community Reinvestment Act, a highly unusual censure. Community Bank of Oak Park River Forest, drew a rating of “substantial non-compliance” with the law that requires banks to lend and invest in low- and moderate-income neighborhoods. That's the worst CRA rating possible and very rare. Over the past 12 months, the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. has rated only two other banks nationwide so harshly, agency records show. Over the past ten years, just 14 of more than 7,500 banks nationwide have been rated substantially...

Here is an open letter sent today by the rabbi of a Chicago-based modern Orthodox synagogue. Dear Friends and Friends of Israel, Our thoughts and prayers are with the injured in Jerusalem and with their families after the cowardly bombing earlier today near the central bus station. We are also following closely the missile attacks in Ashkelon and Beer Sheva. I can only speak for myself in that "I wish I were there." I wish I were in Jerusalem to walk its holy streets and show solidarity with everyone who lives in the capital of the Jewish State. I wish...

Here is how one Israeli reacted to the massacre of the Fogel family in Itamar, Israel. This is an excerpt from a blog. The full note is below: Every day, Rami Levi comes by the shiva house to the Fogel family and fills the cupboards and refrigerator himself with food for the family and guests. Today, one of the relatives thanked him for this incredible kindness and his response brought me to tears,"You will get used to my face," he told this family in mourning, "I have committed myself that every week I will deliver food and stock your home...

Assume that President Obama is an ideologue who believes that the function of government is to redistribute the wealth and to concentrate power. With the great awakening of 2009-2010, he now is being asked not only to abandon his redistributive socialist agenda (as Mitch McConnell said, President Obama's legislative agenda is dead), but he also will have to dismantle other progressive programs, possibly dating back to the New Deal under President Franklin Roosevelt. President Obama has threatened to veto the Republican budget unless it advances his agenda. Let's posit that the Republicans in Congress will not agree to do that....

I just heard on WLS radio in Chicago that the Illinois Court of Appeals (the second-highest court in the state) overturned the recommendation of the electoral panel and ruled that Rahm Emanuel may NOT be on the ballot for Mayor. They ruled that he did not meet the statutory residence requirement nor did he meet any of the statutory exceptions. Wow.

ednesday, September 01, 2010 By Debbie Maimon, Yated The nation’s most prestigious authority in legal and judicial ethics has issued a scathing indictment of Judge Linda Reade’s conduct in the Rubashkin case. In a written legal opinion addressed to the Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals, Professor Mark Harrison, one of the key architects of the Code of Judicial Conduct - the country’s standard judicial ethics guidebook - asserts that Judge Reade repeatedly violated the Code’s provisions. Harrison’s affidavit accompanies a new motion, filed this week by Sholom Mordechai Rubashkin’s lawyers, for a stay [postponement] of the September 7 deadline for...

The Missouri referendum on Proposition C garnered 938.782 votes in total, including 667,680 in opposition to ObamaCare and 271,102 in its favor, for a lopsided victory of 71.7% to 28.9%. By contrast, only 898.784 votes were cast in the four primary elections for senator. We have seen in the past how referenda can drive voters to the polls. Many believe that President Bush's victory over Sen. Kerry in Ohio in 2004 is directly attributable to the referendum on same-sex marriage that was a hot-button issue after the Massachusetts court held that there was a constitutional right to same-sex marriage. In...

TOLEDO, Ohio -- Two cousins from the Chicago area who admitted they wanted to kill American soldiers in Iraq as part of a plot centered in Ohio were sentenced to prison terms Monday. Both men apologized in federal court, saying they became misguided after the U.S.-led invasion overseas. "I was caught up with the fervor of world events," said Zubair Ahmed. "At that time, I was looking at U.S. troops as my enemy." U.S. District Judge James Carr sentenced Ahmed, of suburban North Chicago, to 10 years, and his cousin, Khaleel Ahmed, of Chicago, to eight years, four months. Both...

Here is a video of Obama speaking to Organizing for America about the way that they plan to use the oil spill in the gulf to redo the American economy. Does anyone really believe that Obama is trying in good faith to stop the spill or mitigate the damage it is causing?

Associated Press - June 7, 2010 2:44 PM ET WATERLOO, Iowa (AP) - A manager of the Agriprocessors Inc. meatpacking plant has been found innocent of child labor violations uncovered during a 2008 immigration raid has been . Sholom Rubashkin was charged with 67 counts of child labor violations involving teenagers from Guatemala and Mexico who worked at Agriprocessors Inc.'s plant in Postville in 2007 and 2008. Rubashkin, whose father owned the operation, was described as the CEO and co-vice president of the company. The Black Hawk County District Court jury, which found Rubashkin not guilty Monday, began deliberations Friday...

Tonight we can see a concerted effort by the New York Times and other Mainstream media attributing their stories to the New York Times, to destroy the political career of Richard Blumenthal, the Democratic candidate for the US Senate from Connecticut. I assume the claims are accurate, and Blumenthal lied about serving in Vietnam and about being captain of his swim team at Harvard. We know that Blumenthal is despicable, as we saw him work hand in glove with ACORN to coerce private businesspeople into returning their compensation bonuses. My question is this: The New York Times is an agenda-driven...

Who is this man? He was identified by Dana Loesch (as the person who called the SWAT team on the Tea Party Demonstrators at Quincy, Illinois. http://thedanashow.files.wordpress.com/2010/04/picture-6.png?w=501&h=376 http://www.flickr.com/photos/39436131@N07/4561699425/in/set-72157623953865592/ Apparently the person who made the identification is named Doug Edelman. Thanks to penelopesire for posting the picture on Free Republic.

The House of Representatives will vote today, perhaps as early as noon, on a 1,300-page bill proposed by Barney Frank that would nationalize the financial services industry and give the President permanent bailout authority without additional congressional input. The bill was described by US Rep. Michelle Bachman (R-MN), who was a guest on the Don Wade and Roma morning radio show on WLS Radio, Chicago. According to Bachman, the bill would nationalize the entire financial system, representing nearly 20 percent of the US exonomy, and would give the economic Czar the power to regulate salaries down to the level of...

Here is a letter, posted on Politico, written by the Chairman & CEO of Comcast. Since Comcast is acquiring NBC, which -- as part of GE -- has been President Obama's biggest cheerleader, some may have had concerns that he was losing a tool. Not so. As this letter makes clear, Roberts is willing to degrade himself even more than Immelt in order to get his share of the golden goose. http://www.politico.com/static/PPM143_091203_wh_healthcare_letter.html

Obama we adore you. Your being is supreme. We know you stand for change, but what precisely does that mean? You have a massive fan base flaunting T-shirts of your face, And schools of intellectuals are focused on your race. “What progress” loudly preach your proud promoters with delight. “His policy is lacking, but at least he isn’t white.” And really this is perfect, for now we clearly see: Opponents of your politics are racist SOBs. But this can’t be the change we need, for it is no new news, The liberals have always pulled the race card when they...

Mary Robinson, U.N. Commissioner and former president of Ireland, is being awarded the Medal of Freedom by Obama. Well, isn’t that just dandy. Who is Mary Robinson? You may remember her role in presiding over the infamous Durban I Conference. At the time she joined Rashid Khalidi at Columbia University (no, you can’t make this up), this report summarized the objections to her hiring, given her record in overseeing the infamous Israel-bashing event: Columbia has “become a hotbed of anti-Israel haters,” said the president of the Zionist Organization of America, Morton Klein. “It’s especially astonishing that a school with such...

Now that the activation orders for Major Cook have been revoked, following his filing of a legal case challenging Barack Obama's eligibility to be President, I wonder if anyone is aware of whether this case has become widely known within the military, and if so what is the general military response to this development?

William Moorehead, the Oak Park resident sent to prison in 2007 for stealing more than $1 million from various federally supported public housing concerns, apparently ran with a powerful inside crowd connected to both Chicago Mayor Richard M. Daley and a then-state senator named Barack Obama. Published news reports show that Moorehead was once a "longtime business partner" and legal client of Allison Davis, who until recently was the business partner of Daley nephew Robert Vanecko. Davis is also often referred to as Obama's mentor, a role he reportedly fulfilled as the future president's first law firm boss. At one...

This is the photograph made public by the White House of President Obama talking with Prime Minsiter Netanyahu: http://www.smh.com.au/world/we-stand-behind-you-obama-assures-israeli-pm-20090609-c29e.html According to a 2003 editorial in the Wall Street Journal, one of the greatest insults one can make in Islam is to show the sole of your foot: As anyone who has been to the Middle East (or even to countries like India) knows, the foot and shoe are imbued with considerable significance. The foot occupies the lowest rung in the bodily hierarchy and the shoe, in addition to being something in which the foot is placed, is in constant contact...

Many evangelical Christians throughout the United States support a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and seek "justice" for both sides, reads an open letter to US President George W. Bush published in Sunday's New York Times. The letter, signed by several dozen evangelical clergy and activists, urged the Bush administration not to "grow weary" in its attempt to negotiate a "lasting peace" in the region. The letter's authors sought to correct what they called a "serious misperception" that all American evangelicals objected to the establishment of a Palestinian state, and said they hoped that the awareness of a large...

After Saddam Hussein was executed, the spokesman for President Nouri al-Maliki, Sami al-Askari, announced that Saddam's last words were: "Palestine is Arab." This was an attempt to refocus attention on Israel's battle for survival against Palestinian arab terrorists, and was entirely consistent with al-Maliki's announced support for Hezbollah. Unfortunately for Maliki and the rest of the evil-doers, the cellphone video was released shortly thereafter and demonstrated that the claim about Saddam's alleged comments about Israel were a blatantly false lie, a piece of propaganda. Once again, transparancy has been shown to be critically important. If this exposure assists in discrediting...

After Saddam Hussein was executed, the spokesman for President Nouri al-Maliki, Sami al-Askari, announced that Saddam's last words were: "Palestine is Arab." This was an attempt to refocus attention on Israel's battle for survival against Palestinian arab terrorists, and was entirely consistent with al-Maliki's announced support for Hezbollah. Unfortunately for Maliki and the rest of the evil-doers, the cellphone video was released shortly thereafter and demonstrated that the claim about Saddam's alleged comments about Israel were a blatantly false lie, a piece of propaganda. Once again, transparancy has been shown to be critically important. If this exposure assists in discrediting...

You have to wonder what thoughts passed through the minds of Bethlehem's Christians as Palestinian Authority Chairman and Fatah commander Mahmoud Abbas appeared at the Church of the Nativity for Midnight Mass on Christmas Eve. On April 2, 2002, as IDF forces swept into Bethlehem to root out the terrorists who had taken control of the city, between 150 and 180 Fatah terrorists under Yasser Arafat's command shot their way into the Church of the Nativity. For the next 39 days they held the sacred site and some 150 clergymen hostage. Three weeks into the siege, three Armenian monks escaped...

The birthplace of Jesus is facing one of the darkest chapters in its history, according to Bethlehem Mayor Victor Batarseh’s just-delivered annual Christmas address, and of course it’s all the fault of the Jews. The pro-Palestinian Middle East Online reports that the Roman Catholic mayor, a 71-year-old Marxist former “activist” in the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), sees Bethlehem today as little more than “a big prison,” thanks to the Israeli security fence. “Usually around Christmastime Bethlehem used to be packed with tourists and pilgrims,” the mayor said. “Now, as you can see, the little town seems...

I was having a discussion this evening, and someone asked me which US Senators I really like. I hadn't thought about it, and to my chagrin the only one I could think of was Norm Coleman (I'm from Illinois, not Minnesota). Who are the good Senators, of either party? My criteria are: acknowledgement of the Islamofascist threat, personal integrity, opposition to earmarks, opposition to amnesty for illegal immigrants, leadership traits (whether or not in the leadership) and intelligence. Are there any attributes that I am neglecting? Anyone? Anyone? Buehler?

A...third of Palestinians want to leave because of violence and economic woes. ...."Every young man wishes to have a job and have a life. But when he sees what we have here: occupation, siege, a low standard of living, security crisis - all of this creates a desire to leave. I want to get out of this crisis." ....[A] growing number of Palestinians are openly saying they'd like to leave the West Bank and Gaza if given the chance.... Birzeit University pollster Nader Said...says...that the percentage of Palestinians willing to relocate....surges to 44 percent among Palestinians in their 20s and...

(IsraelNN.com) The government is reviving plans to demolish several hilltop communities, often called outposts, according to Mideast Newsline. The demolitions were postponed because of the Hamas and Hizbullah terrorist attacks on Israel. Kadima officials have said the party's election platform to destroy dozens of towns in Judea and Samaria is no longer a high priority item, but the hilltop communities still are on the chopping block. Sources quoted by Mideast Newsline said demolition orders could force the deployment of thousands of policemen and soldiers to encounter expected resistance. As during last summer's expulsion of thousands of Jewish residents of Gaza...

Lebanese President Emile Lahoud said that "Lebanon has not only defeated Israel, but also the plans for the state's partition." Lahoud made the statement during a speech to the nation that was broadcast on Lebanese media channels. (Roee Nahmias)

http://www.israpundit.com/2006/?p=2088#more-2088

The Security Council extended the UN peacekeeping mission in Lebanon by just one month Monday, a move meant to ensure that the force does not conflict with a larger international deployment of peacekeepers if Hizbullah and Israel agree to end three weeks of war. The UN Interim Force in Lebanon has been deployed in the region since 1978, charged with reporting violations of peace along the UN-demarcated buffer zone between Israel and Lebanon known as the Blue Line. (AP)

Stephen Harper, Canada's Prime Minister, is asking a great question when he wonders why Kofi Annan chose to keep the UNIFIL forces in harm's way in Lebanon even after Israel asked for all non-Hezbollah personnel to evacuate from South Lebanon. In fact, not only does Kofi Annan want the UNIFIL troops to remain in place, but he has called for the UNIFIL troops to remain for an additional month after their mandate expires: http://www.un.org/radio/story.asp?NewsID=4888 . My theory is that Kofi did this in order to cover up evidence of UNIFIL collaboration with Hezbollah for the past several years. Conventional wisdom...

People have very short memories. Most Israelis do not even recall the events that have led up to the rain of Katyushas and other missiles on Israeli civilians this past week. In 1982, Israel invaded Lebanon after a long wave of terror attacks on Israel. At first, the announced Israeli goal was to advance 40 kilometers inside Lebanon and drive all the rocket shooters from range of Israel. The operation, called "Peace for Galilee", enjoyed over 90% support from the Israeli public, including Israeli Arabs. The army actually advanced more than 40 kilometers. It eventually took most of Beirut and...

Some 56 percent of Israelis oppose Prime Minister Ehud Olmert's convergence plan.... The poll, supervised by Professor Camille Fuchs of Tel Aviv University, also found that only 35 percent of the public is pleased with Olmert's performance as prime minister, while an equal portion is not. The poll ... found that only 37 percent of Israelis support the plan .... while 7 percent are undecided.... [M]ost of the supporters were people who had voted for ... Kadima and Labor. But a whopping 83 percent of people who voted for Shas, the third-largest coalition party, said that they oppose the plan....

NEW YORK - Members of the Quartet of Middle East peace brokers, which is meeting at the United Nations in New York, agreed Tuesday to back a "temporary international mechanism" to channel aid to the Palestinians for a trial period to ease the financial squeeze on the new government following the election of Hamas. The Quartet members - the European Union, United Nations, U.S. and Russia - reached a "silent agreement" to establish a trust fund that will pay the salaries of Palestinian civil servants through the office of Palestinian Authority Chairman Mahmoud Abbas. Advertisement The group issued a statement...

What are your predictions for the results of Israel's election to the 120-member Knesset? Mine are as follows: Kadima 28 Labor 20 Likud 17 Yisrael Beitenu 14 NU-NRP 13 Shas 11 United Torah Judaism 7 Arab parties 6 Meretz 4

American interference in elections? Washington has asked the Palestinians to delay the formation of a Hamas-led government until after the March 28 general elections in Israel for fears that the Islamic group’s effective control of Palestinian affairs might weaken Kadima’s showing in the poll. According to the London-based Arabic daily al-Quds al-Arabi, David Welch, the U.S. Envoy for Near Eastern Affairs, told leader Mahmoud Abbas on a visit last week that Washington wishes to see the formation of a Hamas-led government delayed. Under Palestinian law, Ismail Haniyeh, Hamas’ designated prime minister, has five weeks to form a government since Abbas...

It breaks my heart to post this link, but the brutality shown by Israel's police in evacuating Jewish citizens from 5 unauthorized houses in the West Bank is horrific. The film is here: http://www.rafflebuilder.com/Arutz7/ There is a widespread belief in Israel that the Acting Prime Minister, Ehud Olmert, personally ordered the brutality used by the police in this action. Currently, the Knesset (Israel's parliament)is investigating the government's handling of this evacuation. This investigation is being fought every step of the way by Ehud Olmert and his interim government. Today, the head of the police and the head of the military...

This morning, Judge Alito mentioned Stare Decisis, the issue of a precedential legal opinion that may have been decided incorrectly. He said that he had previously discussed the factors that come into play when a stare decisis situation arises. Is anyone here aware of what those factors are and how he said he would use them? I have not been listening to/watching the hearings regularly and I missed that analysis. Thank you.

Despite the disengagement, record numbers of Jews are moving into new homes in Judea and Samaria. The Jewish population living across the post 1967 lines (excluding Jerusalem) now tops 253,000. Proponents of the disengagement as well as government statisticians might have expected that the number of Jews living across the country’s post 1967 borders would have declined after the disengagement, at least in the short term. But in fact, the exact opposite has occurred. On the eve of the disengagement, 250,179 Jews were officially registered as living in Judea, Samaria, and Gaza, according statistics kept by the Israeli Interior Ministry....

IT'S STILL A CRESCENT [Kathryn Jean Lopez ] So says this blogger of the Flight 93 memorial to be. Posted at 08:25 AM

President George W. Bush decided Wednesday to waive any financial sanctions on Saudi Arabia, Washington's closest Arab ally in the war on terrorism, for failing to do enough to stop the modern-day slave trade in prostitutes, child sex workers and forced laborers. In June, the State Department listed 14 countries as failing to adequately address trafficking problems, subjecting them all to possible sanctions if they did not crack down. Of those 14, Bush concluded that Bolivia, Jamaica, Qatar, Sudan, Togo and the United Arab Emirates had made enough improvements to avoid any cut in US aid or, in the case...

Do Muslims in America lack the conviction of their religion to condemn sacrilege when it is committed by Muslims against others? Imagine if Jewish settlers in the Gaza Strip destroyed two dozen mosques. There would be mass rallies in front of Israeli embassies around the world, and in America organizations like CAIR and MPAC would issue righteous condemnations calling on the American government to restrain Israel. However, as we've seen today, when Palestinians streaming into liberated Gaza set fire to synagogues there is deafening silence from most Muslims and certainly from the leadership of the American Muslim community. Herein lies...

Christians in the Holy Land have handed a dossier detailing incidents of violence and intimidation by Muslim extremists to Church leaders in Jerusalem, one of whom said it was time for Christians to "raise our voices" against the sectarian violence. The dossier includes 93 alleged incidents of abuse by an "Islamic fundamentalist mafia" against Palestinian Christians, who accused the Palestinian Authority of doing nothing to stop the attacks. A Palestinian prays in the Church of the Nativity The dossier also includes a list of 140 cases of apparent land theft, in which Christians in the West Bank were allegedly forced...

Today is going to be a terrible day for millions of people in the United States as Hurricane Katrina comes roaring ashore on the northern Gulf Coast of the country. Hopefully, prayerfully, despite the worst-case scenarios being predicted by many weather experts and others in the media, there will not be an enormous loss of life. But even if no one dies, the thought of hundreds of thousands of people having to leave their homes in the last 48 hours to stream out of the hurricane’s path, not knowing what they will come back to – what will happen to...

In almost every news story or political commentary show aired of late, the same lie has been consistently repeated: that the majority of the Israeli people were in favor of the Disengagement Plan. In truth, every time the question of ceding to the Arabs those areas of Judea, Samaria and Gaza settled by Israelis was made a central issue in any authoritative vote, the Israeli people, or any part thereof, actually rejected the proposal. Prior to 1993, Yitzchak Rabin campaigned on two basic points: no talking with the PLO, and "Whoever considers descending from the Golan Heights is abandoning -...

When allegations were made that someone in the White House had "leaked" the information that Joe Wilson's wife, Valerie Plame, was a CIA agent, President Bush agreed to launch an investigation into the alleged leak. He also made comments about what he would do with any leaker who was found. On Fox News this evening, Brit Hume showed a clip in which President Bush vowed that if anyone in the White House had "broken the law", that person would be taken care of. This is extremely significant, since it appears that Karl Rove may have shared with Time correspondent Matt...

DURING THE DEBATE in the House on Tuesday over the stem cell research bill ..., Majority Leader Tom DeLay (R-Tex.) leveled a remarkable accusation: Supporters of liberalizing President Bush's ... approach to funding stem cell research ... were voting "to fund with taxpayer dollars the dismemberment of living, distinct human beings for the purposes of medical experimentation." .... [I]f Mr. DeLay believes [t]his ..., he should introduce legislation to ban the in vitro fertilization treatments that create these embryos in the first place. .... These 5-day-old embryos get created all the time in fertility clinics to help people who otherwise...

Philadelphia, May 6, 2005 – Columbia University's Middle East Institute has rejected an announcement for the Middle East Forum's summer internship program. The Middle East Forum requested that it be sent out on April 22, 2005. Noting the announcement had not gone out, the Forum sent a follow-up inquiry on May 5. In reply, Astrid Benedek, MEI's associate administrator, explained that she would not do so until the Forum made changes on its Campus Watch website. She also indicated she would not reply again to the MEF ("I think we best end our communication right here"). This refusal contradicts an...