July 2, 2009 Rabbi Abraham J. Twerski: The hallmark of a person Abe Novick: Up, up, and aliya July 1, 2009 Rabbi Avi Shafran: The Road Taken The Kosher Gourmet by Marialisa Calta: Get into the holiday spirit with these Star-Spangled desserts June 30, 2009 Rabbi Binyomin Ginsberg: What makes a great parent? Caroline B. Glick: Ideologue-in-Chief June 29, 2009 The Jewish Ethicist by Rabbi Dr. Asher Meir: Beware of 'Caveat Emptor' Steven Emerson: ACLU pushing for more money for Hamas June 26, 2009 Rabbi Yoni Posnick: Learn the secret to a healthy marriage from a scriptural villain Caroline B. Glick: Barack Obama vs. International Law June 25, 2009 Rabbi Shimon Apisdorf: The Absurd Power of Truth Jordan "Gorf" Gorfinkle's strip: Everything's Relative June 24, 2009 Rabbi Yonason Goldson: Advancement of technology is a wake-up call for humanity The Kosher Gourmet by Andrea Weigl: Summer on a stick: Making frozen treats can be easy, creative and fun June 23, 2009 Martin M. Bodek: 'On Surnames': And so, We Begin Caroline B. Glick: The Obama Effect June 22, 2009 The Jewish Ethicist by Rabbi Dr. Asher Meir: Working for a corrupt firm N. Richard Greenfield : Where are American Jews? June 19, 2009 Rabbi Abraham J. Twerski: Emotion v. intellect Caroline B. Glick: Israel's rare opportunity June 18, 2009 Jonathan Rosenblum: Sometimes it is more essential to define the nature of evil than good Jordan "Gorf" Gorfinkle's strip: Everything's Relative June 17, 2009 Rabbi Yonason Goldson: The Language of Confusion The Kosher Gourmet by Linda Gassenheimer: Nothing pleases Dad more than a thick, juicy onion-smothered steak. Add home-Baked Potato Chips and … June 16, 2009 The Jewish Ethicist by Rabbi Dr. Asher Meir: Career v. Careersism Caroline B. Glick: Obama's losing streak and Israel Richard Z. Chesnoff: ‘Palestinians’: Never Missing an Opportunity … June 15, 2009 Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu: How Judea and Samaria can become 'Palestine' Daniel Pipes: Where Netanyahu's speech failed June 12, 2009 Rabbi Abraham J. Twerski: Some big thoughts about not acting so big Caroline B. Glick: Obama's High Commissioner June 11, 2009 Victor Davis Hanson: Our historically challenged President Mitch Albom: Beware the True Believers Lewis Grossberger: What we learn from the new Hitler photos June 10, 2009 Mort Zuckerman: What Obama and his advisors won't -- or refuse to -- grasp about Israel and the Muslim world The Kosher Gourmet by Steve Petusevsky Lotsa pasta: Tips, techniques and (amazing) taste June 9, 2009 Anne Bayefsky: Obama's stunning offense to Israel and the Jewish people Frank J. Gaffney, Jr.: America's first Muslim president? June 8, 2009 The Jewish Ethicist by Rabbi Dr. Asher Meir: Merchant must take responsibility for careless shopper? Mark Steyn: A superpower that feeds on mediocrity cannot survive for long on leftovers from the past Richard Z. Chesnoff: How do you say 'kumbaya' in Arabic? June 5, 2009 Rabbi Abraham J. Twerski: In quest of spirituality Caroline B. Glick: Obama's Arabian dreams Charles Krauthammer: The Settlements Myth June 4, 2009 Paul Greenberg: The War Comes to Little Rock The Kosher Gourmet by Judy Hevrdejs: Splash it on! Tap your inner jazz musician and improvise when stirring up a vinaigrette June 3, 2009 The Jewish Ethicist by Rabbi Dr. Asher Meir: Q. Should terrible teacher be exposed? Jonathan Rosenblum: The Israel Lobby: Missing in Action June 2, 2009 Dennis Prager: The Speech President Obama Won't Dare Give in Egypt Frank J. Gaffney, Jr.: Pressure on Israel raises war risk Oct. 29, 2003 Mortimer B. Zuckerman: Graffiti On History's Walls (MUST-READ!)

Jewish World Review Oct. 9, 2006 / 17 Tishrei, 5767 Page scandal makes America look silly By Mark Steyn http://www.JewishWorldReview.com | I'm a foreigner, so I might not be up to speed on how things work around here. But, insofar as I understand it after the last week, American politics is divided between: teenage pages; guys who are hot for teenage pages; guys who are enablers for guys who are hot for teenage pages; guys who devote inordinate time and effort to entrapping guys who are hot for teenage pages; guys who are rattled by guys accusing them of having devoted insufficient time and effort to nailing the guys who are hot for teenage pages and get panicked into holding press conferences where they announce the following: "As the speaker I take responsibility for everything in the building. The buck stops here. ... That is why I directed the clerk of the House to establish a hotline for reporting any information concerning pages or the page program. As of this morning, the clerk of the House has activated the tip-line. . . . The page program tip line is 866-348-0481." (If the clerk's not there, you can have him paged.) J. Dennis Hastert actually stood up in public and made that announcement. And, of course, the Democrats immediately denounced the notorious Gay Pedophile Ringleader of the House for the pitiful inadequacy of his page tip-line: Oh, sure, now he wants to set up 1-800-GAY-PAGE and invite anyone with info to use the secure log-in at www.GOPpredators.com, but where was he when the buck stopped here en route to the end-of-legislative-session communal showers? Speaker Hastert called in the FBI, the CIA, the DEA and announced an emergency bill to rename the BATF the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Pages. He declared Mark Foley's pants a federal disaster area. He voted a $4 billion reconstruction earmark to the congress- ional page program and invited Dubai Page World to run it. And, with every press conference designed to get himself out of the hole he'd dug at the previous press conference, the 50 percent of Americans who pay minimal attention to politics (which, if there's any justice, will be up to 93 percent by now) caught Hastert floundering on the evening news and thought, "So that's the gay pedophile, eh? Disgusting. There oughtta be a law against it." Well, there is. Many laws, in fact. And it's not clear any of them were broken. It's a good basic rule of thumb that no matter how bad a scandal is, the political class' response will be worse, largely hysterical and lacking any sense of proportion. But, even by those minimal expectations, this last week has been unbecoming for a serious nation. In London, sex scandals come along every other week. You name it, British parliamentarians do it: three-in-a-bed, auto-erotic asphyxiation, gay teen flagellation, getting your toes sucked while wearing the soccer kit of Chelsea Football Club. But at least at Westminster, sex scandals require actual sex. That the governing party of the world's only superpower could be felled by one creepy pervert's masturbatory e-mails and IMs is an event historians will marvel at. Granted that the Roman Empire in its death throes got hung up on gay sex, the American hyperpower seems set to be the first to collapse over gay non-sex. And no, I'm not a "typical right-wing pedophile apologist" excusing Foley. But, in case you haven't noticed, he's gone. He quit quicker than his instant message. And, true, he's since done the usual contemptible redemption shtick, announcing he's going into alcohol rehab, etc., when the reality is he'd be a better man if he drank more and IMed teens about the size of their wedding tackle less. And yes, he'll get a book deal, just like New Jersey's revolting ex-governor. But no one will buy the book — and besides, what do you want? When a member of the House of Lords went abroad after a homosexual scandal, King George V is said to have remarked, "Good G-d, I thought fellows like that shot themselves." It may, indeed, be a less revolting spectacle for a chap to take a tumbler of whiskey and a loaded revolver into his study than to go on "Oprah" and bore on about his personal demons, abusive father, etc., etc. But we live in different times. Foley's history; he's the first footnote in history to a page in history. So the only question now is whether there is any larger issue here worth spending 10 minutes on. And the answer to that is obvious. This was a honey trap (as they used to say in the Cold War) designed to leverage one peripheral figure's squalid fantasies into political opportunity. It's as predictable as the leaves falling from the trees, except that it only occurs every other autumn. Still, I take my hat off to the media and Democratic Party. Indeed, in the spirit of Bill Clinton, I take my pants off to them. It is a remarkable achievement to have transformed, in little more than a week, the GOP into the Catholic Diocese of Boston with Speaker Hastert as Cardinal Law and the page program as the massed ranks of 7-year-old altar boys. What an awesome force the Dems would be if only the ruthless skill and cunning that went into this operation could be applied to, say, national security. But I very much doubt, despite the expertise with which the sheep have been rounded up and set baa-ing, that Showtime at the Foley Bergere will pay off in November. There are many legitimate reasons for electors to toss out the Republican Congress, but the notion that they're a hotbed of gay pedophile enablers is not one of them. Had Foley dug in and attempted to cling on, his GOP colleagues would have been all over TV deploring his behavior, calling on him to step down, expressing outrage, etc. After two or three days, a few lefties might even have piped up to assail the Republican theocrat sexual McCarthyites tormenting the poor chap. Had he actually had sex with congressional pages, affronted gay groups would have pointed out this was perfectly legal in the relevant jurisdictions and would have complained ferociously about the stigmatizing of gay relationships and Democrats would have declared there should be places for all at the American table, especially had Foley done a Jim McGreevey and announced that "my truth is I am a gay American." A few quirks of timing and the parties' respective roles might have been entirely reversed. Scandalwise, the Republicans always play the submissive masochists but the Dems are bi-swingers, happy to flay the GOP as either (a) uptight prudes or (b) pedophile enablers, according to what suits. What would have been consistent in both narratives is the assumption by the Democrats, the media and the Gay Page Tip-Line end of the Republican Party is that the electorate is stupid. In the sense that there's any "child abuse" going on here, the American people are being treated like children and abused by the politico-media class. This last week is unbecoming of a mature democracy. In the wider world, America can survive being the Great Satan, but not the Great Laughingstock. Every weekday JewishWorldReview.com publishes what many in in the media and Washington consider "must-reading". Sign up for the daily JWR update. It's free. Just click here. JWR contributor Mark Steyn is North American Editor of The (London) Spectator. Comment by clicking here. Mark Steyn Archives STEYN'S LATEST "The Face of the Tiger and Other Tales from the New War."   In this collection of essays, Mark Steyn considers the world since September 11th - war and peace, quagmires and root causes, new realities and indestructible myths. Incisive and witty as ever, Steyn takes on "the brutal Afghan winter", the "axels of evil", the death of Osama bin Laden and much more from the first phase of an extraordinary new war. Sales help fund JWR. © 2006, Mark Steyn

Mitch Albom  Michael Barone   Dave Barry  Tony Blankley  Andy Borowitz  David Broder  Stratfor Briefing  Mona Charen  Linda Chavez  Ann Coulter  Greg Crosby  Rod Dreher  Larry Elder  Suzanne Fields  John Fund  Frank J. Gaffney  Lloyd Garver  Jonah Goldberg  Julia Gorin  Jonathan Gurwitz  Paul Greenberg  Lewis Grossberger  Victor Davis Hanson  Betsy Hart  Nat Hentoff  David Horowitz  Laura Ingraham  Paul Johnson  Jack Kelly  Ed Koch  Ch. Krauthammer  Jonathan Last  Michael Ledeen  John Leo  David Limbaugh  Kathryn Lopez  Rich Lowry  Michelle Malkin  Jackie Mason  Dick Morris  Bill O'Reilly  Jim Mullen  Clarence Page  Kathleen Parker  Dennis Prager  Wesley Pruden  Tom Purcell  Jonathan Rauch  Celia Rivenbark  Robert Robb  Cokie & Steve Roberts  Pat Sajak  Debra J. Saunders  Culture Shlock  Roger Simon  Michael Smerconish  Thomas Sowell  Mark Steyn  John Stossel  Cal Thomas  Bob Tyrrell  Diana West  Dave Weinbaum  George Will  Walter Williams  Byron York  Mort Zuckerman  Robert Arial  Chuck Asay  Baloo  Chip Bok  Dry Bones   Lisa Benson  John Branch  Gary Brookins  John Cole  J. D. Crowe  John Deering  Brian Duffy  Everything's Relative  Mallard Fillmore  Jake Fuller  Bob Gorrel  Joe Heller  David Hitch  Jerry Holber  Steve Kelley  Jeff Koterba  Dick Locher  Chan Lowe  Ranan R. Lurie  Jimmy Margulies  Rick McKee  Michael Ramirez  Kevin Siers  Jeff Stahler  Ed Stein  Danna Summers  John Trever  Gary Varvel  Kirk Walters  How 2  Lori Borgman  The Savvy Consumer  Elder matters  Fixit  Dr. Peter Gott  Marybeth Hicks  GET A JOB! by Marty Nemko  Richard Lederer  Tech Maven  Every Monday Matters  Nutrition Myths  Bookmark These  Bruce Williams  How Stuff Works