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A song on Madonna's upcoming album dedicated to a Kabbalist rabbi is drawing criticism from other rabbis, the Israeli Maariv daily reported Sunday. The album, "Confessions on a Dance Floor," is to be released on Nov. 15 and features a track entitled "Isaac" about Yitzhak Luria, a 16th century Jewish mystic and Kabbalah scholar. Rabbis who oversee Luria's tomb and a seminary in the northern town of Safed are unimpressed with Madonna's musical tribute and see the inclusion of the song about Luria on the album as an attempt by the pop star to profit from his name. Rabbi Rafael...

 ANTONIN SCALIA, US SUPREME COURT JUSTICE, NAMED GRAND MARSHAL OF NEW YORK’S COLUMBUS DAY PARADEJustice Celebrated In Pageant of Italian-American AchievementNew York, NY, September 23, 2005 - Antonin Scalia, Associate Justice of the United States Supreme Court, will be Grand Marshal of Manhattan’s 2005 Columbus Day Parade, Lawrence Auriana, president of the Columbus Citizens Foundation, announced today. The parade, which is produced by the non-profit Foundation, is the largest Columbus Day event in the world and will be held on New York’s Fifth Avenue on October 10, 2005.  "We are honored that Justice Scalia has accepted our invitation to be...

BELLEVUE, WA – The Second Amendment Foundation (SAF) today expressed shock and disbelief that authorities are continuing to target firearms held by private citizens who are now seeking refuge at a relief center outside Baker, Louisiana, a bedroom community near Baton Rouge. According to a report that aired on the Lehrer News Hour on Thursday, displaced New Orleans residents are being allowed to move into a compound called “FEMA City,” where trailers and RVs have been assembled to provide temporary housing. Among the conditions for being allowed to move in – and the only one detailed by Baker Mayor Harold...

It looks like the third and final vote on the national ID cards Bill in the House of Commons will be on the 18th of this month.If you are a British citizen and you oppose the national ID card/NIR scheme then you need to write to your MP in the next few days (for convenience you can use this website) or else it will be too late to make your opinion count.Here is some useful information to use in a message to your MP: Misleading government claims for ID cardsIf we assume that the ID cards will be impossible to...

In 2000, Locke Liddell & Sapp, the Texas legal firm of which Harriet Miers was then co-manager, paid out $22 million to settle out-of-court with investors, many of whom had been defrauded of their life savings in the Austin Forex International currency-trading Ponzi scheme run by former Texas football star Russell Erxleben. Locke Liddell agreed to pay the $22 million restitution to investors because legal representation the firm provided Erxleben figured prominently in the perpetration of the fraud itself. Michael Shaunessy, the Austin attorney who represented the investors in the Locke Liddell settlement, told WND that Erxleben's Ponzi scheme defrauded...

DUBAI (Reuters) - Al Qaeda has put job advertisements on the Internet asking for supporters to help put together its Web statements and video montages, an Arabic newspaper reported. The London-based Asharq al-Awsat said on its Web site this week that al Qaeda had "vacant positions" for video production and editing statements, footage and international media coverage about militants in Iraq, the Palestinian territories, Chechnya and other conflict zones where militants are active. The paper said the Global Islamic Media Front, an al Qaeda-linked Web-based organization, would "follow up with members interested in joining and contact them via email." The...

Transcript: Conservatives Debate Miers' Nomination on 'FNS' BAUER: Look, I'm confused here. I can't tell whether Judge Hecht is arguing that she is going to overturn Roe or she's not going to overturn Roe. If he wants to reassure his fellow pro-life conservatives, that's the last argument he should be making, the argument that he just made. He said he hasn't talked to her about Roe. The fact of the matter is for over 20 years of her being involved in the law, she has not written one word, said one word, given a speech, written a letter to the...

Moses' Comet Moses’ Comet, by Mike Baillie Discovering Archeology, July/August 1999 Moses called down a host of calamities upon Egypt until the pharaoh finally freed the Israelites. Perhaps he had the help of a comet impact coupled with a volcano. A volcano destroyed the island of Santorini in the Aegean Sea (between today's Greece and Turkey) around the middle of the second millennium B.C. Researchers Val LaMarche and Kathy Hirschboeck suggest the volcano might be associated with tree-ring evidence for several years of intense cold beginning in 1627 B.C. Could that form the basis for strange meteorological phenomena recorded in...

Terry Nichols, Philippines, bombs, etc. See Mark Tapscott here: “Before Able Danger and Mohamed Atta, There Was Murrah Building Bombing and Hussain Al-Hussaini; Journalist Uncovers OKC Links to 9/11, which links to this L.A. Weekly article: “The Rohrabacher Test: Congressman questions Terry Nichols about Oklahoma City bombing”. The Mark Tapscott link also has a comprehensive statement from Jayna Davis, who has pursued this story for ten long years and has now written a book entitled “The Third Terrorist”. One interesting quote — among many — in the L.A. Weekly piece is from Richard Clarke: Clarke wrote that the theory of...

I had a PI investigate the name and address of a cell phone number for personal reasons and they came back with information which is not the name of the person who uses the phone. Is it possible that cell phone companies do not update their information? I got the name, address, cell phone carrier for the party but it is not who it is supposed to be. Does anyone know how accurate cell phone data is?

A U.S. Marine from the 3rd Battalion, 1st Marine Regiment monitors a grove of palm trees and fields near the Euphrates River in Haditha, Iraq, on Friday Oct. 7, 2005. (AP Photo/Antonio Castaneda)

Jessica Biel has been proclaimed "the sexiest woman alive" by Esquire magazine. The actress is featured on the cover of Esquire's November issue, following last year's honoree, Angelina Jolie. The 23-year-old Biel, who began as a teenager on the family TV series "7th Heaven," plays a supporting role in the upcoming "Elizabethtown" and starred earlier this year in "Stealth." "It seemed like it would be great having named Angelina Jolie sexiest woman of the year last year to try to come up with somebody who was on everyone's radar screen, but who was also fresh," said Esquire editor-in-chief David Granger....

WASHINGTON - The FBI, famous for its straight-laced crime-fighting image, is considering whether to relax its hiring rules over how often applicants could have used marijuana or other illegal drugs earlier in life. Some senior FBI managers have been deeply frustrated that they could not hire applicants who acknowledged occasional marijuana use in college, but in some cases already perform top-secret work at other government agencies, such as the CIA or State Department. FBI Director Robert Mueller will make the final decision. "We can't say when or if this is going to happen, but we are exploring the possibility," spokesman...

MK Avraham Poraz (Shinui) called on Prime Minister Ariel Sharon Sunday to halt state funding for a Yom Kippur campaign, which in his words "encourages religiosity among secular Israelis". But legal experts rebuffed Poraz's claims. Poraz was referring to an advertising campaign funded in part by the Prime Minister's Office, which calls on citizens to take part in prayer and discussions on Yom Kippur eve at 250 community centers across the nation. In one radio commercial a young man recounts his positive experience last Yom Kippur with the liturgy and prayer. "As a result of the prayers I experienced a...

BAGHDAD, Iraq — The government on Sunday urged Iraqis to vote in next week's constitutional referendum, condemning insurgent groups for demanding a boycott and for killing scores of civilians in an effort to wreck the ballot.

I’d always heard dogs are chick magnets, but I’d never gathered any direct evidence while occasionally dog-sitting Benji, a midsize mutt who doesn’t exert one gauss of magnetizing action. Then, shortly after a broken engagement left me suddenly single, a friend asked me to look after the sort of animal I have always considered useless: a quivering, rat-faced toy poodle. Well, Hugo cannot herd sheep or scare off intruders or catch a Frisbee. But, Lord, he pulls human females. Fifteen seconds after I hit the pavement with Hugo, women were positively yelping with pleasure at my little friend. In Columbus...

The Japanese and U.S. governments have agreed in principle to relocate the headquarters of the U.S. Marine Corps' III Marine Expeditionary Force--now located at Camp Courtney in Okinawa Prefecture--to Guam and to cut the number of marines in the prefecture by several thousand as part of measures to reduce the burden of U.S. forces in the prefecture, sources said Saturday. The two governments also are considering moving some exercises conducted by F-15 fighters based at Kadena Air Base to Air Self-Defense Force bases outside the prefecture. The two governments are considering including measures aimed at reducing the burden imposed on...

Is it simple selling or selling out? We report on a band at odds over ad revenue THE drummer of the Doors has infuriated his former bandmates by turning down nearly $20 million to use their music to sell computers and cars. John Densmore has a legal right to veto the use of the band’s music for advertising. And that is exactly what he is doing. He says that he is holding out to honour the memory of the band’s lead singer, Jim Morrison, who died in Paris from a suspected heroin overdose in 1971, aged 27. “People lost their...

AUSTIN - The first of nine state constitutional amendments proposed on the Nov. 8 ballot would establish a fund through which taxpayers would help pay for relocating freight rail lines from congested urban areas. Like most of the ballot proposals, except for the ban on same-sex marriages, Proposition 1 has received little attention. But it is beginning to spark some debate and, depending on how it fares at the polls, could become an issue in the March Republican governor's primary. Proposition 1 supporters, including Gov. Rick Perry, think the new fund would be an important step toward easing traffic congestion...