OpinionJournal.com

I wound up chatting at a reception a couple years ago with Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia about his love of opera and his taste in popular culture. It turned out he was a huge fan of Fox's anti-terrorist drama "24," and he convinced me to watch it for the first time.Well, little did I know just how much of a fan Justice Scalia is of the fast-paced show. The Globe and Mail newspaper in Canada reports he positively gushed about the Fox series recently at a conference on homeland security in the Canadian capital of Ottawa that was attended by an international panel of judges. Mr. Scalia couldn't refrain from commenting after Canadian federal Judge Richard Mosley opined: "Thankfully, security agencies in all our countries do not subscribe to the mantra, 'What would Jack Bauer do?'"As viewers know, Jack Bauer, played by Kiefer Sutherland, is a federal agent known for roughing up suspected terrorists who are holding out on important information."Jack Bauer saved Los Angeles!" Mr. Scalia interjected. "He saved hundreds of thousands of lives!" Indeed, Mr. Scalia was just warming up. "Are you going to convict Jack Bauer? Say that criminal law is against him?" he asked rhetorically. "Is any jury going to convict Jack Bauer? I don't think so!"Other panelists promptly challenged the American jurist, arguing that some prisoners held in Guantanamo Bay on terrorism charges could be innocent. "I don't care about holding people. I really don't," Judge Scalia replied. After the panel broke up, he continued to wax enthusiastically about his favorite show.If I were the producers of "24" I would immediately invite Mr. Scalia to make a guest appearance on the series. Judicial decorum would probably prevent him from doing so, but who wouldn't want to see the highly expressive Mr. Scalia in the role of a judge presiding over the trial of an accused terrorist? -- John Fund

Roger Kimball On The Dangerous Book for Boys; also John Podhoretz On The Yiddish Policemen's Union (yulis links)

Minhagei Kalbisov

Rabbi Daniel Z. Feldman:

Some sefarim relate a story involving a meeting between the Nefesh Chayah, R. Yehoshua of Kutno, and the Avnei Nezer, in which the [Avnei Nezer] quoted a ruling in the name of the Ba’al Shem Tov. This ruling, based on a comment of Tosafot, was that if one began to pray before the latest time for davening, the prayer is acceptable, even if the prayer continues after the time has passed. R. Yehoshua of Kutno responded that he had heard this as well, but did not know where the Tosafot was. The Avnei Nezer thought for a moment, and then replied that he knew where it was: Berakhot 7a.

That Tosafot (s.v. Sh’ilmalei) comments on the gemara’s statement that Bilaam was able to discern G-d’s very brief moment of anger and use that opportunity to curse the Jews. If , however, the moment was so brief, how much could he have said in that time? The Tosafot offer two answers, the second being that if he started his curse at that moment, it would not have mattered had the remaining words taken beyond that time to complete. Thus, explained the Avnei Nezer, since Chazal tell us that the “measurement of good is greater than the measurement of disaster”, if a curse is effective under such circumstance, prayer certainly is. [The Kogaglover Rav (Resp. Eretz Zvi, I, 121, and II, p. 171), who was a student of the Avnei Nezer, quotes this idea as well, but attributes it not to him but to the Yid haKodesh of Psischa, and uses it to consider the question of Purim meals that start on Purim but continue into the next day. Resp. Dovev Meisharim, III, 11, also alludes to this point in the Purim Seudah context.]

The Responsa Minchat Yitzchak (IV, 48) questioned the veracity of this story, noting that its conclusion is contradicted by the poskim (See Shulchan Arukh O.C. 124:2, Magen Avraham, 4; and 232:2, Magen Avraham, 2, and 89:4 ). However, after considering some possible support for this idea in other contexts, he concludes that the logic is effective in allowing a prayer to be considered with the community, as long as it began with the community

Perhaps this can explain the longstanding Kalbisover minhag of missing z'man tefilah by approximately two minutes, which has become a point of mockery for the scoffers who do not understand why they cannot just start two minutes earlier, or else much later. In truth, this minhag is based wish to simultaneously demonstrate support for the Ba'al Shem Tov's position and for the hasidic tradition of missing the z'man. Were they to start just before the z'man, that would indicate either: that they disagree with the Ba'al Shem Tov and consider finishing after the z'man to be like missing the z'man; or, that they agree with the Ba'al Shem Tov but disregard hasidic tradition. However, by missing the z'man by two minutes they show that they indeed careful to follow tradition, and that they are in agreement with the Ba'al Shem Tov's position.

It's like Making of a Godol Online! BTW, rumor has it YU fired Perl, by all accounts their most popular teacher, probably because he was popular. But then maybe they didn't like the attacks on the Soloveichiks.

The Pressing Issues We Face

Pardon the pun. But seriously, I think it's about time somebody has brought attention to this issue.
Judge Who Seeks Millions for Lost Pants Has His (Emotional) Day in Court

The "willful and malicious conduct" Pearson described consisted of this: In 2005, Pearson was starting his new job as a judge and therefore needed to start wearing suits again after a couple of years of unemployment. He brought five suits in for alterations because he'd put on 20 pounds and needed to have the pants let out. Four suits came back fine. One came back without the pants. Pearson says the Chung family -- Korean immigrants who came here from the charcoal factories of Seoul in 1992 and now own three cleaners, including the one a short walk from Pearson's place in the Fort Lincoln section of Northeast -- had no intention of living up to the sign in their shop that said "Satisfaction Guaranteed." Therefore, Pearson said, he had no choice but to take on "the awesome responsibility" of suing the Chungs on behalf of every resident of the District of Columbia...

Pearson presented a series of witnesses who told of unhappy experiences at Custom. Their satisfaction, they said, was hardly guaranteed. But every one of Pearson's witnesses told the defense that in fact, they would have been entirely satisfied if they had been given credit for free cleaning or compensation in the amount of the value of their damaged or lost garment. Most of the witnesses said they'd generally had good experiences at Custom, and not one of Pearson's witnesses said anything about deserving millions of dollars. Witnesses depicted Soo Chung, the mom in the Mom and Pop operation, as someone who was pleasant and professional -- until a dispute arose, at which point she told several of the customers that it was they who had brought in damaged goods, not the shop that had caused any problem with an article of clothing. Grace Hewell, a retired congressional staffer, said Jin Chung, Soo's husband, "chased me out of the store" when she complained that her suit pants "looked like they had been washed" and no longer fit properly. "At 89, I'm not ready to be chased," she said. "But I was in World War II as a WAC, so I think I can take care of myself. Having lived in Germany and knowing the people who were victims of the Nazis, I thought he was going to beat me up. I thought of what Hitler had done to thousands of Jews." After questioning eight witnesses, Pearson spent two hours telling his own story, but as he came to the part about when Soo Chung finally told him she had found the missing pants, the tale of the $10.50 alteration that went awry proved to be too much. "These are not my pants," Pearson recalled telling Chung when she handed him a pair of gray pants with cuffs. "I have in my adult life, with one exception, never worn pants with cuffs." "And she said, 'These are your pants.' " Pearson paused. He struggled to breathe deeply. He could not continue. Pearson blurted a request for a break, stood up, turned around and walked out of the courtroom, tears dripping from his full and reddened eyes. When he returned, he called that moment when Chung offered him the wrong pants "a Twilight Zone experience," and again, he welled up and had to halt the proceedings.

The Democratic Party: Hezb No Allah?

Good article at the Spectator about religion in politics:

The dirty little secret of Democrat party politics is that secularists fill a role very similar to the one occupied by evangelicals on the Republican side. They are becoming a reliable voting bloc. There is a far larger religion gap than there is a gender gap, but only the latter has been extensively covered. Christian fundamentalism is frequently emphasized, but secularism is completely missed. It has only been in the most recent election cycle (2006) that the "God gap" has received significant attention and then it was to emphasize that religious voters were coming back to the Democratic party. Coverage has typically been short on attention to secularists, focusing instead on the movement of religious voters.Political scientists Gerald De Maio and Louis Bolce have pointed out that one never hears about how the Democrats "have shorn up their base among the unchurched, atheists, and agnostics." Nevertheless, when you see evolution suddenly become a persistent issue in presidential debates, something very much like that shoring up is happening. Markers are being set out. "Stay away from this wicked person, my son. He has inadequate respect for the marriage of molecules and random chance."