Back in March of this year at a University of Minnesota forum, renowned investigative reporter Seymour Hersh roiled the staid proceedings with his casual mention that former Vice President Dick Cheney was running an “executive assassination wing:
It’s been going, under President Bush’s authority, they’ve been going into countries, not talking to the ambassador or to [...]

Everybody’s weighing in on Minnesota’s new junior senator.
Writing in The New York Times, Victor Navasky, former publisher of The Nation and chairman of the Columbia Journalism Review, has a message for Al Franken: “Turning your back on your comedic past would be a big mistake.”
Navasky writes:
The Senate, let’s not forget, is already filled with blowhards, [...]

Haaretz correspondent Barak Ravid reports today that an “atmosphere of permanent crisis has surrounded” Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s bureau since he took office:
Netanyahu appears to be suffering from confusion and paranoia. He is convinced that the media are after him, that his aides are leaking information against him and that the American administration wants him [...]

Charles and Phyllis Newman Family Foundation will sponsor Beyoncé concert as a fundraiser for shul, other charities
By STEVEN ROSENBAUM
In 2005, Adath Jeshurun Congregation’s TAMID program staged a fundraising concert featuring renowned folksinger Theodore Bikel, and the Klezmatics, a world-class klezmer ensemble. Other great Jewish artists — classical violinist Itzhak Perlman, pop songwriter Neil Sedaka, Art [...]

Minnesota’s junior senator will have a full plate, sitting on committees dealing with health care and the confirmation of a Supreme Court justice
By MORDECAI SPECKTOR
A year before the 2004 elections, Al Franken was working with Democrats to stop Pres. George W. Bush from winning a second term as president; and he also was mulling a [...]

First, a big Mazal Tov! The American Jewish World’s editorial on Oct. 24, 2008, carried the headline “Al Franken for U.S. Senate.” Without being too presumptuous, it seems that the Jewish community of Minnesota, in the main, got its wish with the outcome of the cliffhanger 2008 Senate election. (Al Franken is better at math than [...]

A Great Miracle Happened Here will be staged July 16-19 as part of Illusion Theater’s Fresh Ink series
By ERIN ELLIOTT / Community News Editor
Jenna Zark’s son Josh was just 12 years old on Sept. 11, 2001, but Zark described the events of that day as a “formative experience” for him.
“The first thing he said to me [...]

Craig Breslow, who plied his trade in the Twins bullpen for a time, has moved on to Oakland. But Jewish baseball fans will always remember another lefty who made a bit of baseball and Jewish history when he sat out a World Series opener, in Minnesota, in observance of Yom Kippur. The decision by Sandy [...]

New Voices magazine (Spring 2009) looks at Jews and Money, and the features on the theme include an interview with J.J. Goldberg, the former editor of the Forward and now the paper’s editorial director. The interview is titled “Why it matters that Madoff is Jewish.”
Why does it matter that Madoff is Jewish? According to Goldberg, [...]