The issue advantage has shifted as well, with Democrats facing the brunt of criticism about the pace of stimulus package spending, anxiety over rising unemployment rates and widespread uneasiness over the twin pillars of Obama's legislative agenda: his cap-and-trade approach to climate change and the emerging health care bill.

Bolstered by historical trends that work in the GOP's favor -- midterm elections are typically hostile to the party in power -- and the prospect of the first election in a decade without former President George W. Bush either on the ballot or in office, Republicans find themselves on the offensive for the first time since 2004.

Government Discovers That Paper Has Two Sides

Three months ago, President Barack Obama ordered his cabinet secretaries to find $100 million in budget cuts

An Ohio University student has been charged with involuntary manslaughter in the death of another student who fell from a fourth-floor dormitory window.

James Tyler Wagers, 20, is accused of providing hallucinogenic mushrooms to 20-year-old Eric Hansen, who died in an April 28 fall at Weld House, Athens County Prosecutor C. David Warren said this afternoon.

In another indication of the increasingly ambitious and global nature of Israeli organized crime, a trend I've been covering in a Tablet Magazine series this week, an Israeli court ruled yesterday that the brothers Meir and Yitzhak Abergil, two of Israel's most notorious gangsters, and a few of their associates will be extradited to the United States.There, they will face the music for allegedly running one of the world's largest Ecstasy rings in cooperation with the Vineland Boyz, a Los Angeles-based Latino gang. (The partnership had landed the brothers on the U.S. State Department's list of the top 40 drug importers.)

Headquartered in Israel's northern coastal city of Netanya, the Abergils were arrested last August following a sweeping FBI investigation that spanned six years and involved law enforcement from more than ten countries across North America, Europe, East Asia, and the Middle East.

Douglas Century via laura rozen

The Tablet Magazine is a blog that offers a "read on Jewish life". Had never seen it but it looks quite interesting as a daily bookmark.

Tablet is a daily online magazine of Jewish news, ideas, and culture. Launched in June 2009, it's a project of the not-for-profit Nextbook Inc. and the sister organization of Nextbook Press, which publishes a line of Jewish-themed books. Our archive holds all the articles and features that originally appeared on the website Nextbook.org.  

CAMBRIDGE, Mass. - The woman who dialed 911 to report a possible break-in at the home of black Harvard scholar Henry Louis Gates Jr. said Wednesday she was wrongly labeled a racist

It's a sign of the times when the Orthodox Union starts taking its cues from the Certified Organic crowd. After 2000 years of formalized Jewish dietary law, Israel's top Rabbi has threatened to revoke the kosher status of vegetables deemed excessively sprayed.

Chief Rabbi Yona Metzger, the country's top religious authority, said he would yank veggies' blanket kosher seal of approval over "insane quantities" of insecticides. Although even the man with the plan acknowledged that there is no precedent for decertifying fruits and vegetables, he said that health hazards alone make spraying a religious concern. (Kashrut, the body of law dictating what is and isn't kosher, forbids eating any known poison.) dictating what is and isn't kosher, forbids eating any known poison.)