Blog Entries by dan pine

Rush Limbaugh really IS a big fat idiot

I don't care who you are, where you fall on the political spectrum, or how you feel about the Democratic Party: nobody could condone the sickening remarks that talk show host Rush Limbuagh made the other day comparing Democrats to the Nazi Party, as part of the heated health care…

What’s That You Say, Mrs. Robinson?

For Jews who already feel the Obama Adminstration is hostile to Israel, the news that Mary Robinson will receive a Presidential Medal of Freedom must have gone down like a dirt milkshake.

The former president of Ireland will accept her award at an Aug. 12 White House ceremony. Among the…

Benedict: shun?

So apparently a lot of Jews are unhappy with the speech Pope Benedict XVI gave at Yad Vashem in Jerusalem this week. Apparently he was not contrite enough, not specific enough, nor did he say anything about Nazis or Germany or Auschwitz, or whether the German-born pontiff used to sing…

Natan Sharansky and the silence of critics

Before Natan Sharansky’s lecture last Tuesday evening, May 5, I expected the worst. (Read my story here.)

This was U.C. Berkeley after all, the Bay Area’s happiest of happy hunting grounds for anti-Israel cranks. And Sharansky – the one-time imprisoned Refusenik  --  is today a proud Israeli…

The Boy Wonder and me

If ever I enjoyed doing a story more than my piece on the little Torah savant, Mishael Hibshoosh, well, I can’t think of one. (Read the story here.)

He may be a Torah-chanting expert. He may be a keeper of the flame for Yemenite Judaism. But to me,…

The Berkeley contre-temps

This week I filed my third -- maybe fourth -- story about the recall of John Moghtader, the 21-year-old U.C. Berkeley student, Associated Students senator and ardent Zionist. I have a feeling it won't be my last.

Moghtader lost his bid to keep his seat, and by a wide margin,…

Taking it to the Max: my encounter with a teenaged Jewish terrorist

When I was 19, I considered myself a radical: left wing politics, disdain for authority, untucked blue work shirt, long hair. It all added up to a portrait of a typical teenage Baby Boomer. Though I left those days (and the scruffy coif) behind long ago, I have never forgotten…