Free Republic

Ex-CFO Dawn Schlegel Two women who were once top executives at DHB Industries were arrested yesterday on charges they made millions in ill-gotten gains by cooking the books of the company, which supplies body armor to U.S. troops in Iraq and Afghanistan. Dawn Schlegel, DHB's chief financial officer until she resigned early this year, and Sandra Hatfield, the company's chief operating officer before she stepped down late last year, turned themselves in to FBI agents in Melville, L.I., early yesterday. U.S. prosecutors in Brooklyn said they're still investigating DHB, which last month reached a $35 million settlement with irate...

History will forever record Elizabeth Brooks' bat mitzvah as "Mitzvahpalooza." For his daughter's coming-of-age celebration last weekend, multimillionaire Long Island defense contractor David H. Brooks booked two floors of the Rainbow Room, hauled in concert-ready equipment, built a stage, installed special carpeting, outfitted the space with Jumbotrons and arranged command performances by everyone from 50 Cent to Tom Petty to Aerosmith. I hear it was garish display of rock 'n' roll idol worship for which the famously irascible CEO of DHB Industries, a Westbury-based manufacturer of bulletproof vests, sent his company jet to retrieve Aerosmith's Steven Tyler and Joe Perry...

We Jews are a funny people. We celebrate the weirdest things. Everyone's heard of end-of-the-school-year parties, graduation parties, retirement parties. But who ever throws a get-to-work party? Let me explain. Imagine that you have this dream job that's the envy of all your friends. Then, one day you receive a summons to the boss's office. The conversation goes something like this: Boss: "Have a seat." You: "Thank you." Boss: "You've been here -- what is it, twelve years now?" You: "Yeah, it's almost that already. You guys take such good care of me..." Boss: "We pay you a comfortable living...

Israeli stereotypes of American Jews tend to center on the wealth and hedonism of their cousins across the ocean. It turns out that non-Jews here in America tend to feel the same way. Apparently non-Jewish adolescents in the United States are increasingly afflicted with a new problem: bat- and bar-mitzva envy. Laugh all you like, but this curious trend was the subject of a front-page article in The Wall Street Journal on January 14. In it, Journal staffer Elizabeth Bernstein reported that upscale non-Jewish kids are bummed out about the lavish parties their Jewish classmates are getting – and want...