In The News

Now that congressional Democrats have blocked a Republican effort to kill the Iran nuclear deal, attention is shifting to what America must do to reassure Israel and its American supporters that the agreement will not harm Israel’s security.

The second GOP presidential debate took place on the eve of a new round of debate in the House over Planned Parenthood funding, and a potential government shutdown fight looms over the issue.

Most Republican 2016 hopefuls are falling all over themselves to appeal to the party’s anti-choice base and talk about how badly they want to defund Planned Parenthood. In the process, they’re making some blatantly untrue statements. 

Here are five of the most absurd comments about Planned Parenthood from the people who want to be the Republican nominee for president.

As I write this as I prepare for Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish New Year. Every year the holiday brings an opportunity for reflection, and this year particularly so.

President Obama talks about his bagel choice, and ways that the Jewish community has shaped him.

At the end of my interview with President Obama the morning of Friday, August 28, after he had defended with lawyerly precision the pending multinational nuclear agreement with Iran and voiced a determined optimism that the toxic relations between his administration and Israel will be repaired, I asked him a more personal question.

The summer has been an ugly one for the American Jewish community. What should have been a policy debate over the Ian nuclear deal devolved into something much more pernicious and overwhelming. The Iran deal, as important as it is, has become so divisive that the damage it is doing to American Jewry, and even world Jewry, is on the verge of becoming permanent. It has taken on the appearance of the war of the Jews, as if only our community has a stake in the debate’s outcome.

One of the campaign issues that went underdiscussed during the first prime-time Republican presidential debate should really be at the top of the list: the future of the Supreme Court.

Why? When the next president is inaugurated in January 2017, three of the nine Supreme Court justices will be 80 or older. Anthony Kennedy, the swing vote, and Antonin Scalia, the bombastic conservative, will be almost 81, and Ruth Bader Ginsburg, the liberal icon, will be 83.

Hopefully, the fabricated “scandal” over Planned Parenthood will be wrapping up today. For the past few weeks, Republicans have been striking poses of outrage and disgust over a series of misleading videos created by the religious-right propagandists at the Center for Medical Progress. CMP claims the videos show illegal activity at Planned Parenthood, a claim that is, simply put, a lie. But Senate Republicans are performing outrage and pushing for a vote to defund Planned Parenthood.

Gun control's weary warriors have been searching for a way to appeal to Republicans and give the issue a pulse in Congress. A couple of Midwestern women Democrats may have found a way to do it, by tying it to domestic violence.

International negotiators assembled in Austria have announced the final terms of the Iranian nuclear deal. The purpose of the deal is to limit Iran's nuclear program to something that is small, safe, and peaceful — and to impose lots of invasive inspections to make sure Iran is keeping to its end of the deal. In exchange, Iran gets relief from some of the economic sanctions that have crippled its economy. Both sides, the thinking goes, also get to avert a war.

At JAC, we are united with the Jewish community in our fervent desire to see the threat from a nuclear-Iran eliminated through diplomatic means. The U.S. has always had a strong commitment to Israel's security, a goal that has always united the two countries. As Congress reviews the details of the deal, it is important they remain committed to maintaining a strong U.S.-Israel relationship, free from partisanship and that discussions are "rigorous and fact based."