Anti-Semitism in America has, with some notable exceptions, been limited to the laughable fringe—witness the spectacle of “crazy anti-Semitic Elmo” being carted away from Central Park. In Iran, on the other hand, out-to-lunch, looney tunes Jew hatred is the basis for mainstream, respectable socio-political analysis, as revealed in the state-run Fars News Agency: Iranian First […]

The Society of Biblical Literature (SBL) was founded in 1880 as an association of Biblical scholars with a Protestant theological commitment. Since then it has developed into the largest professional association concerned with Biblical and related studies; it is now strongly committed to a theologically neutral methodology of modern historical scholarship. The SBL has just […]

Has the Arab spring come to Khartoum? Since anti-regime protests began in Sudan on June 16, that question has been on the tip of everyone’s tongue, both Sudanese and outsider. The protesters have hopes that President Omar al Bashir will face the same fate as Tunisia’s ex-President Zine el Abidine Ben Ali and Egypt’s ex-President […]

Reportedly, Chief Justice John Roberts was initially inclined to strike down the individual mandate in Obamacare but switched sides after something changed his mind. Speculation has been that it was concern over the Supreme Court’s prestige and susceptibility to public criticism. But I think there was an irresolvable dispute over a crucial question of constitutional […]

Israeli Prime Minister Golda Meir famously lamented that Moses led the children of Israel for forty years of wandering in the desert until he found the only place in the Middle East where there wasn’t any oil.But could Moses have been smarter than believed? Apparently the Canadians and the Russians think so, as both countries […]

I review books on the United States for Foreign Affairs; that means every couple of months a huge box of books arrives at the stately Mead manor and I go through piles of books trying to decide which ones to read for review. It’s a lot of work for not much product; the “capsule” reviews […]

On Wednesday the New York Times ran a fascinating piece authored by Thomas Erdbrink, dateline Tehran, under the title “Iran’s Vice President Makes Anti-Semitic Speech at Forum.” The twelve-paragraph article describes the remarks of Iranian Vice President Mohammad-Reza Rahimi at a United Nations-sponsored conference on the illegal drug trade. For those who have not seen […]

Yet another European summit ended today with yet another round of announcements. Yet again Germany brought Europe and the world to the edge of a global market meltdown and yet again Germany blinked at the last moment. As the relief rally sweeps around the globe (many European stock markets are up two percent or more […]

Not Democrats, not Republicans. The biggest winner in the Obamacare ruling was the Supreme Court.Regular readers know that I think that Obamacare is a flawed approach to some real problems and will end up giving us a health care system under which the young subsidize the middle age as costs continue to rise. Worse, we […]

On Tuesday Via Meadia blogged about a decision by a court in Cologne that ruled “the body of the child is irreparably and permanently changed by a circumcision.” Our take was that by banning what for thousands of years has been seen as a core element of Jewish identity, law and tradition, the court was […]