In a powerful Op-Ed, Haim Saban reviews President Obama's record on Israel and notes the "strategic relationship between the United States and Israel has never been stronger."

AS an Israeli-American who cares deeply about the survival of Israel and the future of the Jewish people, I will be voting for President Obama in November. Here’s why.

Even though he could have done a better job highlighting his friendship for Israel, there’s no denying that by every tangible measure, his support for Israel’s security and well-being has been rock solid.

Mitt Romney claims Mr. Obama has “thrown allies like Israel under the bus,” but in fact the president has taken concrete steps to make Israel more secure — a commitment he has described as “not negotiable.”

 

When he visited Israel as a candidate he saw firsthand how vulnerable Israeli villagers were to rocket attacks from Gaza. As president, he responded by providing full financing and technical assistance for Israel’s Iron Dome short-range anti-rocket defense system, which is now protecting those villagers. In July, he provided an additional $70 million to extend the Iron Dome system across southern Israel. That’s in addition to the $3 billion in annual military assistance to Israel that the president requests and that Congress routinely approves, assistance for which Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has expressed deep personal appreciation.

Read more at New York Times

Yesterday was Women's Equality Date - marking the anniversary of the 19th amendment to the Constitution, which secured the right to vote for American women.  In light of that, below is the Presidential Proclamation to that effect.

WOMEN'S EQUALITY DAY, 2012

- - - - - - -

BY THE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

A PROCLAMATION

On Women's Equality Day, we mark the anniversary of our Constitution's 19th Amendment, which secured the right to vote for America's women. The product of profound struggle and fierce hope, the 19th Amendment reaffirmed what we have always known: that America is a place where anything is possible and where each of us is entitled to the full pursuit of our own happiness. We also know that the defiant, can-do spirit that moved millions to seek suffrage is what runs through the veins of American history. It remains the wellspring of all our progress. And nearly a century after the battle for women's franchise was won, a new generation of young women stands ready to carry that spirit forward and bring us closer to a world where there are no limits on how big our children can dream or how high they can reach.

To keep our Nation moving ahead, all Americans -- men and women -- must be able to help provide for their families and contribute fully to our economy. That is why I have made supporting the needs and aspirations of women and girls a top priority for my Administration. From signing the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act into law and creating the White House Council on Women and Girls to combatting sexual assault and promoting women's economic and political empowerment at home and abroad, we have worked to ensure women have the opportunities they need and deserve at every stage of their lives. As women around the world continue to fight for their seat at the table, my Administration will keep their interests at the core of our policy decisions -- and we will join them every step of the way.

Today, women are nearly 50 percent of our workforce, the majority of students in our colleges and graduate schools, and a growing number of breadwinners in their families. From business to medicine to our military, women are leading the fields that were closed off to them only decades ago. We owe that legacy of progress to our mothers and aunts, grandmothers and great-grandmothers -- women who proved not only that opportunity and equality do not come without a fight, but also that they are possible. Even with the gains we have made, we still have work to do. As we mark this 92nd anniversary of the 19th Amendment, let us reflect on how far we have come toward fully realizing the basic freedoms enshrined in our founding documents, rededicate ourselves to closing the gaps that remain, and continue to widen the doors of opportunity for all of our daughters and sons.

NOW, THEREFORE, I, BARACK OBAMA, President of the United States of America, by virtue of the authority vested in me by the Constitution and the laws of the United States, do hereby proclaim August 26, 2012, as Women's Equality Day. I call upon the people of the United States to celebrate the achievements of women and recommit to realizing gender equality in this country.

IN WITNESS WHEREOF, I have hereunto set my hand this twenty-fourth day of August, in the year of our Lord two thousand twelve, and of the Independence of the United States of America the two hundred and thirty-seventh.

BARACK OBAMA

Read more at WhiteHouse.gov

Civil Rights icon Rep. John Lewis calls for Americans to make some noise about resent voter rights restrictions.

If there is an American alive today who is well suited to evaluate the partisan push for new restrictive voting laws this election cycle, it is Rep. John Lewis, the civil rights icon who put his skull where his heart and mind were on the Edmund Pettus Bridge all those years ago. But to merely read the words above doesn't do justice to what happened that day. Here's an interview the congressman did earlier this year with Stephen Colbert. In it you can hear, you can see, you can feel the profound impact the event had upon Rep. Lewis' life and, indeed, upon the life of the nation.

 

When young John Lewis marched that day, he was marching for the rights of blacks to register to vote. And it would take only 142 days, from the march on March 17, 1965 to the passage of the Voting Rights Act on August 6, 1965. Now that federal law is under siege. The conservatives of the United States Supreme Court are poised to strike down one of its central provisions. And Republicans in states like Florida, Texas, and South Carolina have passed photo identification laws that could disenfranchise hundreds of thousands of registered voters who have long cast their ballots without incident. Republicans in other states, like Pennsylvania, have done likewise.

 

Meanwhile, Republicans in Ohio have moved to restrict early voting access, which has traditionally been used by minority voters. As with the photo ID requirements, the new restrictions were enacted under the guise of protecting elections from "voter fraud." But, as with the other restrictions, there is virtually no evidence of such fraud. And the impact of the new restrictions will have a disproportionate impact upon minority voters, many of whom don't have the time or the money or the means of transportation to obtain the required new forms of identification.

Read more at The Atlantic

A federal court has ruled Texas may freeze funds to Planned Parenthood while a lawsuit to prevent the state from completely defunding it moves forward.

Planned Parenthood said Wednesday that Texas clinics are operating like normal for now, even as state officials move to quickly freeze funding after a federal court gave Republican lawmakers a victory in their efforts to punish health providers linked to abortion services.

 

The court ruling allows the state to cut off funding to Planned Parenthood, the largest provider in the Texas Women's Health Program, while a lawsuit over the issue moves forward. But just how fast Texas can sever funding remains unclear.

 

The health program provides family planning and other health services to more than 130,000 low-income women and is designed for those who might not otherwise qualify for Medicaid.

Read more at Businessweek

Clowning around is serious medicine in Israel.

Doctors in Israel are beginning to believe in the power of clowning around.

 

Over the last few years, Israeli clowns have been popping into hospital operating rooms and intensive care units with balloons and kazoos in hand, teaming up with doctors to develop laughter therapies they say help with disorders ranging from pain to infertility.

 

This is not how things are done in most of the world’s hospitals. Clowns often visit pediatric wards to cheer up young patients, but in most places the clowning ends where the medicine begins. When it comes time for a child to get a shot or go under the knife, the clowns step aside.

 

Israeli clowns thumb their shiny red noses at that approach. They quote studies which suggest that a clown’s participation in treatments can help patients — especially kids — endure painful procedures and speed their healing.

Read more at Washington Post

A very concise and informative video outlining the current War on Women's Health.

Rep. Akin is not the first to assert that women rarely get pregnant from rapes - it is a longstanding idea going back to 1988.

Rep. Todd Akin is far from the only conservative to suggest women rarely get pregnant from rape. He’s not even the first lawmaker to make the assertion (which flies in the face of medical evidence).

A search of news archives by TPM shows a short history of Republican politicians espousing the idea of a biological defense against pregnancy in cases of rape, though there’s little consistency in their explanations of how such a mechanism works.

In 1988, Stephen Freind, a state representative in Pennsylvania, defended his no-exceptions anti-abortion stance — as Akin was doing Sunday — by claiming that it was virtually impossible for a woman who is raped to become pregnant.

Read more at Talking Points Memo

What impact would Paul Ryan have on women as VP? From abortion to contraception to personhood and medicare, see how Rep. Ryan stands.

Abortion

Rep. Paul Ryan is on record saying that he believes life begins at conception. He opposes “partial-birth” abortions and has a 100 percent rating from the National Right to Life Committee. Ryan, a staunch Roman Catholic, also believes abortion should be illegal even in cases of rape and incest. Mitt Romney, by contrast, espoused pro-choice sentiments when he was running for office in Massachusetts but changed his position a few years ago. The former Massachusetts governor has said abortion should be available for women who are the victims of rape and incest or whose lives would be in danger if they carry the fetus to term.

 

Affordable Care Act

Both Romney and Ryan want to repeal the Affordable Care Act, the Obama administration’s signature legislation that extends health-care coverage to millions of Americans and prohibits insurance companies from discriminating against those with pre-existing conditions. Ryan voted in July to abolish the law and has called it “fiscally irresponsible” and said the regulations “threaten to cripple businesses both large and small.” For Ryan, incremental changes to the Affordable Care Act won’t be enough. He wants to get rid of it completely.

 

Contraception

Like Romney, Ryan vehemently opposed the Obama administration’s mandate that religious-affiliated institutions provide insurance coverage for birth control, calling it a violation of “our first amendment rights to religious freedom and conscience.” Also like Romney, Ryan has opposed federally funded family planning services, voting in 1999 to deny birth-control coverage to federal employees. During the primaries, Romney advocated eliminating Title X funding, a Nixon-era program that covers birth control and cancer screenings. Ryan has voted repeatedly against funding international family-planning programs.

The pick of Paul Ryan is sure to energize the anti-abortion social conservatives who had been lukewarm about Romney so far.

Paul Ryan’s budget-cutting zeal isn’t the only stance that has conservatives fired up. His anti-abortion record can energize social conservatives who had been slow to embrace Mitt Romney.

 

“We are thrilled with this pick,” Marjorie Dannenfelser, president of the Susan B. Anthony List said of Ryan. “He has a pristine pro-life voting record and will be an asset to Gov. Romney’s campaign.”

 

During the primary season, social conservatives were skeptical of Romney’s more moderate record on abortion and family planning while running for Senate and governor of Massachusetts. But they see the young Wisconsin Republican running mate, a Catholic, as one of their own.

Nate Silver takes a look at the numbers and rationale behind Mitt Romney's selection of Paul Ryan for Vice President.

When is it rational to take a big risk?

When the status quo isn’t proceeding in a way that you feel is favorable. When you have less to lose. When you need — pardon the cliché, but it’s appropriate here — a “game change.”

 

When a prudent candidate like Mitt Romney picks someone like Representative Paul D. Ryan of Wisconsin as his running mate, it suggests that he felt he held a losing position against President Obama. The theme that Mr. Romney’s campaign has emphasized for months and months — that the president has failed as an economic leader — may have persuaded 47 or 48 or 49 percent of voters to back him, he seems to have concluded. But not 50.1 percent of them, and not enough for Mr. Romney to secure 270 electoral votes.

Read more at NYTimes.com

Meet the father of the Paralympics, Sir Ludwig Guttmann - a ground-breaking doctor in paraplegia and a Holocaust refugee.

The Paralympics, the quadrennial competition for athletes with disabilities that follows the Olympics, will draw some 4,200 participants to London in late August to vie for medals before 1.5 million ticket-holders, 5,600 journalists, countless television viewers — and, for the first time, a bronze bust of the bespectacled physician and refugee from Nazi Germany who started it all.

 

Sir Ludwig Guttmann, whose groundbreaking treatments for traumatic paraplegia provided the platform for what has become the Paralympics, is getting some long-delayed official recognition at last.

 

The bust of Guttmann that will be on display at the London Paralympics was presented to the International Paralympic Committee’s president, Sir Philip Craven, last June by supporters of Guttmann. It will be lent out for display at all future Paralympic Games, as well, to visibly memorialize the father of what has become an enormous worldwide movement.

Read more at The Forward

The attack on the Israeli-Gaza border which left 16 Egyptian soldiers dead has set back relations between Cairo and Gaza.

Up until Sunday, relations between Cairo and Gaza were beginning to look bright. Hamas politicians from Gaza were working diligently on improving ties with Egypt’s new Islamist government, cautiously elevating them from the political low of the Mubarak years.

Just two weeks ago Hamas Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh spoke of “unprecedented positivity” following his meeting with President Mohammed Morsi in Cairo. The Egyptian president promised to ease Palestinians’ travel restrictions, and the Rafah border crossing gradually began broadening its scope of activity.

Now the terror attack on the Egyptian border police outpost Sunday night, in which 16 Egyptians were killed, has brought everything back to square one.

Read more at Times of Israel

A charter school in Louisiana has a formal policy that allows them to forcibly test any student suspected of being pregnant, and then banning them from school if they test positive or refuse to submit to the test.

The panty-sniffing brigade has always taken a special interest in teenage girls, both for reasons exactly as icky as you'd imagine and because the social permission for all adults to exert control over and humiliate teenagers gives the sex cops cover. Whether they're trying to prevent a pregnancy, terminating a pregnancy, or going through with a pregnancy, teenagers often have to contend with a bunch of adults who take way too much interest in their sex lives.

 

Now the ACLU is fighting a public school, Delhi Charter School in Louisiana, that is doing just that. The school has a formal policy banning pregnant students from attending the school, and they reserve the right to forcibly pregnancy-test any student. Here's the policy, in the school's own words:

Democratic Whip Steny Hoyer has teamed with Rep. Robert Brady to create on interactive voting rights app aimed at younger voters.  The app offers state-specific data for all 50 states and 6 US territories.  Click below to view the app and share it with friends and family!

In the last year, there has been a nationwide assault on the American citizen’s right to vote. Aside from the unnecessary, expensive, and ineffective new voter ID laws, there has also been targeted purges of eligible, registered voters from state rolls. Little has been done to educate the public about these actions. As a result, there are thousands of eligible voters are at risk of being turned away on Election Day.

 

These voting law changes have created unnecessary obstacles for many American citizens. In order to help navigate the changes, we are releasing a new voter registration app. This tool will allow anyone to check the status of their registration, learn about any new requirements, and provide all the information needed to successfully register in their state or territory.

 

Click on the link below to try out the app:

A terrorist attack on the Israeli-Egyptian-Gazan border has left 16 Egyptian soldiers dead and broke through the Israeli border, travelling a mile into Israel before being stopped by the Israeli Air Force.

The terrorists who smashed into Israel at the Kerem Shalom border crossing on Sunday night managed to drive about a mile into Israel, and were traveling at 70 kilometers an hour along the road toward Kibbutz Kerem Shalom, before the Israeli Air Force was able to get a clear shot and blow up their armored vehicle without risk to civilian traffic on the road or nearby.

That was one of the findings of the IDF’s initial investigation into what officials said Monday was a very carefully planned and complex terror attack.

The Shin Bet intelligence service on Friday gave the army a general warning of the danger of an attack at the Kerem Shalom crossing, two days before the terror cell — apparently comprised of Bedouin and other gunmen from the Sinai Peninsula, with close links to and possible participation of Gaza-based terrorists — launched the attack that left 16 Egyptian soldiers dead and penetrated the Israeli border.

Read more Times of Israel