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July 18, 2008

Rabbi Nathan Lopes Cardozo: The Sanctification and Importance of Time

Caroline B. Glick: US wants it absolutely clear it has no intention of attacking Iran's nuclear installations

Mona Charen: What can you say about a people who welcome a child murderer as a hero?

JWisdom:: Living a dog's life, dawg? by Rabbi Dovid Gross

July 17, 2008

Steven Emerson: Deals with devils

Libby Lazewnik: One Step at a Time

JWisdom:: Leader the follower? by Rabbi Sroy Levitansky

July 16, 2008

The Jewish Ethicist by Rabbi Dr. Asher Meir: Poaching humans

The Kosher Gourmet by Linda Gassenheimer: Meaty pasta salad with summer berries perfect for warm evenings

JWisdom:: Keeping A Secret by Rabbi Mordechai Becher

July 15, 2008

Dennis Prager: False Equation: Opposing Same-Sex Marriage and Opposing Interracial Marriage

Joel Greenberg: Researchers look to Israeli circumcision program to help combat AIDS 'Alternatives' to Logic Won't Work

JWisdom:: Re-Jew-venating prayer, Part V: Why Judaism ISN'T Spiritual by Rabbi David Aaron

July 14, 2008

Jonathan Rosenblum: A warning from Canada to those who value life

Jonathan Tobin: 'Alternatives' to Logic Won't Work

JWisdom:: Holocaust in the Perspective of Faith by Rabbi Nosson Scherman: Poland's Unique Antisemitism, Part II

July 11, 2008

Rabbi Francis Nataf: It's hard to be humble when you're great

Caroline B. Glick: A tale of two hostages

JWisdom:: Profane for Prophet by Rabbi Sroy Levitansky

July 8, 2008

The Jewish Ethicist by Rabbi Dr. Asher Meir: Q. Duty to save gullible from themselves?

Frank J. Gaffney, Jr.: Islamists have the West just where they want us

JWisdom:: Putting the Spirit Back into Spirituality, Part 3: The Fully Loaded Human Being by Rabbi Dovid Gross

July 3, 2008

Rabbi Dr. Abraham J. Twerski: A spiritual budget (TOUCHING!)

Jeff Jacoby: Israel still paying for its defeat

JWisdom:: Re-Jew-venating prayer, Part IV by Rabbi David Aaron

JWisdom:: The Moses Method by Rabbi Sroy Levitansky

July 2, 2008

Jonathan Tobin: Appeasers Make Poor Patriots

The Kosher Gourmet By Kathleen Purvis: Slaw, y'all: For BBQs or Sabbath dinner, these southern recipes are something else!

JWisdom:: Rabbi Mordechai Becher: Jewish Rx for A Simpler Life

July 1, 2008

The Jewish Ethicist by Rabbi Dr. Asher Meir: Q. I think it's important to leave a legacy to my children. How much should I save towards this end?

Paul Greenberg:A President who is history deficient?

JWisdom:: Holocaust in the Perspective of Faith by Rabbi Nosson Scherman: Poland's Unique Antisemitism

June 30, 2008

Jonathan Rosenblum: Remembering the architect of Torah Judaism for the modern world

Abe Novick: Hulk: Still a Jew?

JWisdom: : Putting the Spirit Back into Spirituality, Part 2: The Abandoned Child

June 26, 2008

Rabbi Abraham J. Twerski: Quantum leap to evil

Caroline B. Glick: Victimized families must not be allowed to dictate policy

June 25, 2008

Rabbi Yonason Goldson: Today in Biblical History: King Jeroboam of Israel prevents pilgrimage to Jerusalem

Jonathan Tobin: Real Friends and Real Enemies

JWisdom: Raping of reason By Rabbi Sroy Levitansky

June 25, 2008

Steven Emerson: Kristof: Never Mind the Terrorists

Stratfor Intelligence Briefing: Mediterranean Flyover: Telegraphing an Israeli Punch?

JWisdom: Rabbi David Aaron: Re-Jew-venating prayer, Part III

June 24, 2008

Caroline B. Glick: What were they thinking!?

Frank J. Gaffney, Jr.: Guilty knowledge

JWisdom: Holocaust in the Perspective of Faith by Rabbi Nosson Scherman: Warping Innocence

June 23, 2008

The Jewish Ethicist by Rabbi Dr. Asher Meir: Diploma dilemma

Jeff Jacoby: A world without children

JWisdom: Rabbi Dovid Gross: Putting the Spirit Back into Spirituality --- Introduction

June 20, 2008

Rabbi A. Henach Leibowitz: Man: The Crowning Glory of Creation

Caroline B. Glick: Israel's darkest week

JWisdom: We aren't worthy? by Rabbi Sroy Levitansky

June 19, 2008

Rabbi Elazar Meisels: The saints who don't come marchin' in

Chris Christoff: Muslim woman demands an apology from Obama after camera snub

June 18, 2008

Jonathan Tobin: Still Dancing Around Jerusalem

The Kosher Gourmet by Steve Petusevsky: Chilled fruit and vegetable soups

JWisdom: Souls Need A Check Up? by Rabbi Mordechai Becher

June 17, 2008

Rabbi Avi Shafran: Baby Einstein

Caroline B. Glick: Bush's rhetoric, Bush's policies

JWisdom: Re-Jew-venating prayer, Part II by Rabbi David Aaron

June 16, 2008

Varda Branfman: Bob Dylan, won't you please come home?

Diana West: Academic dares to question the 'religion of peace'

JWisdom: Holocaust in the Perspective of Faith by Rabbi Nosson Scherman: Positive Backfire

March 22, 2007

J-Rhythms with Avraham Rosenblum: JWR's cutting-edge music program showcasing performers -- singers, song writers, musicians, and bands -- who learn and live the Torah lifestyle (OUR NEWEST IGODCAST !)

Oct. 29, 2003
Mortimer B. Zuckerman: Graffiti On History's Walls (MUST-READ!)

Jewish World Review April 28, 2008 / 23 Nissan 5768

Obama's ‘mainstream’ friends

By Jeff Jacoby

Jeff Jacoby
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http://www.JewishWorldReview.com | Should voters care that Barack Obama is friendly with William Ayers, a onetime leader of the Weather Underground terrorist group that committed dozens of bombings and other violent crimes between 1969 and 1975? That question came up during the recent Democratic debate in Philadelphia, and scorn by the bucketful was heaped on the ABC moderators who asked it.


The Washington Post's Tom Shales, for example, was appalled that Obama should be confronted with "such tired tripe" as the fact that he "once associated with a nutty bomb-throwing anarchist." Michael Grunwald of Time derided the "extremely stupid politics" responsible for questions like the one about the "obscure sixties radical" with whom Obama "was allegedly 'friendly.' " Other commentators were even more outraged.


The chorus of protests echoed Obama's own defense. When George Stephanopoulos challenged him to explain his relationship with the unrepentant former terrorists - "I don't regret setting bombs," Ayers told The New York Times. "I feel we didn't do enough" - the senator dismissed the issue as irrelevant.


"This is a guy who lives in my neighborhood, who's a professor of English in Chicago, who I know and who I have not received some official endorsement from. He's not somebody who I exchange ideas from on a regular basis. And the notion that [my] knowing somebody who engaged in detestable acts 40 years ago when I was 8 years old somehow reflects on me and my values, doesn't make much sense, George." His links to the ex-Weathermen he brushed aside as "flimsy," saying he was sure "the American people are smarter than" to think he shares the terrorists' radical views.


Obama didn't leave it there. His campaign issued a 1,300-word "fact check" pooh-poohing his connection to Ayers and his wife, Bernardine Dohrn (another former Weathermen terrorist), as "phony," "tenuous," "a stretch" - but simultaneously defending them as "respectable fixtures of the mainstream in Chicago."


Yet Obama's ties to Ayers and Dohrn aren't nearly as trifling as he suggests, and their views - today, not 40 years ago - are about as "respectable" and "mainstream" as those of, say, Reverend Jeremiah Wright, Obama's incendiary minister.


The key facts, reported by Ben Smith in Politico.com, are these: Barack Obama's political career was launched in Ayers's and Dohrn's home, when a group of "influential liberals" gathered in 1995 to meet the young organizer who was Illinois lawmaker Alice Palmer's chosen successor. In the years that followed, Obama and Ayers would serve together as (paid) board members of the Woods Fund, a leftist Chicago foundation, and appear jointly on academic panels, at least one of which was organized by Michelle Obama. Ayers would even donate money to one of Obama's political campaigns.


Arguably, none of this would matter if Ayers and Dohrn had long ago repudiated their violent extremism. But they have always refused to apologize for their monstrous behavior. "We weren't extreme enough in fighting against the war," Ayers told the Chicago Tribune in 2001. In a memoir published that year, he exulted: "Everything was absolutely ideal on the day I bombed the Pentagon." America, he said after Sept. 11, "is not a just and fair and decent place. . . . It makes me want to puke."


Is this Obama's idea of "respectable" and "mainstream" political thinking? If so, doesn't that tell us something about his judgment and standards?


In Chicago the other day, radio producer Guy Benson discovered video recordings of Ayers and Dohrn speaking at a reunion of antiwar radicals in November 2007. To live in the United States, Dohrn told the group, is to be "inside the heart of the monster" that is such a "purveyor of violence in the world." Ayers denounced America as an imperial warmonger steeped in "jingoistic patriotism, unprecedented and unapologetic military expansion, white supremacy . . . attacks on women and girls, violent attacks, growing surveillance in every sphere of our lives, on and on and on."


Even if Obama doesn't personally believe these things, is it really "tired tripe" to ask why he seems so comfortable in the company of people who do? Is it really "extremely stupid politics" to wonder whether such people might play a role in an Obama administration? Rather than slam the few journalists who raise such questions, might it not behoove others in the media to follow suit?

Every weekday JewishWorldReview.com publishes what many in the media and Washington consider "must-reading". Sign up for the daily JWR update. It's free. Just click here.

Jeff Jacoby is a Boston Globe columnist. Comment by clicking here.

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