The Ben-Ami – Kristol debate, coming on the heels of a similar debate held two weeks ago between controversial author Peter Beinart and the conservative Shalem Center’s Daniel Gordis at Columbia University, appears to signal an attempt by the Jewish community – at least in New York – to create an ongoing dialogue between its warring “factions” and to arrest the polarization of the community.

“I am happy to agree with Obama to a considerable degree,” said Kristol, one of America’s most well-known conservative commentators. He added that he does not expect Israel to be “that great an issue” in the upcoming November elections.

Nonetheless, Kristol elicited howls of protest from the audience when he predicted that the next U.S. secretary of state in a “Romney administration” would be former Democratic vice presidential nominee Senator Joe Lieberman. Ben-Ami wryly noted, “Israel already has a Lieberman as foreign minister.”

The House bill basically provides Israel with a blank check drawn on the U.S. taxpayer to maintain its “qualitative military edge” over all of its neighbors combined.

While Mayor Emanuel has bent backwards for Nato, first amendment free speech receives dramatically less accommodation.

Second, this police state serves, in reality, as our new welfare state. The security mania represents our truly unique way of stimulating the economy, of employing piece labor, of creating government jobs and subsidized contracts. Just think of the amount of overtime pay that we are disbursing with all this policing. Instead of investing in schools and education, in job training, or in re-entry programs, this is how we invest in our future.

Words that Tony Blair spoke over the phone to George Bush on the eve of the Iraq war are to be made public, a tribunal ordered today.

The Foreign Office has been ordered to release parts of the note detailing the conversation on 12 March 2003, a week before the invasion of Iraq began.

A panel chaired by tribunal judge Professor John Angel overruled objections from the Foreign Office that publishing any part of the conversation could do “serious damage” to relations with the USA

A federal appeals court rules that details about CIA torture methods are to remain off-limits to public while the CIA torturer in chief goes on a book tour bragging about the methods.