Day: September 4, 2013

Rosh Hashanah is a time for new beginnings. So, as the holiday approaches, that probably means we should all take this opportunity to officially retire Daft Punk’s “Get Lucky” and find a new song to obsess over. But first, before we do that, let’s take a moment to appreciate the latest version of the song to surface on the Internet: a delightful tribute to the Jewish new year, which begins this Wednesday evening.

Seriously, this has everything you could ever want: introspective lyrics, epic beards, plenty of shofar, breakdancing, and choreography so intense that kippahs are literally flying off heads. Kippahs are flying off heads!

(PHOTOS: Ultra-Orthodox Jews Mark Talmudic Rites)

The video comes from the folks at Aish.com, who’ve made a tradition of giving pop songs the Rosh Hashanah treatment. Past installations have included “Rosh Hashanah Rock Anthem,” a parody of “Party Rock Anthem” by LMFAO:

As well…

A Montana judge who has been fiercely criticized for giving an admitted rapist only 30 days in prison acknowledged Tuesday the sentence may have been illegal and ordered the defendant back to court for a new hearing.

District Judge G. Todd Baugh said state law appears to require a mandatory minimum sentence of two years for Stacey Rambold, 54, who was convicted of raping a 14-year-old student who later committed suicide, the Associated Press reports. Baugh has been the target of protests and petitions seeking his resignation since issuing the short sentence, in which he said the girl was in “as much in control of the situation” as her teacher and “older than her chronological age.”

But the judge’s attempted course correction — he wants Rambold back in court Friday — has done little to win over Baugh’s critics.

“I wish the judge had been thoughtful enough to get it…

Anthony Zinni is a retired US MarineGeneral who was our Commander-in-Chief of CENTCOM in the Middle East from 1997 to 2000. Today he is Chairman of the Board of Governors of the Middle East Institute in Washington, DC. He is also the author of a book entitled, The Battle for Peace: A Frontline Vision of America’s Power and Purpose which I recommend highly. If anyone knows the Middle East and can speak with authority about Syria, it is Tony Zinni. Many have commented on Syria recently and many more will comment in the coming days. Of all the comments I have heard, his make the most sense. He believes that now is a good time for a discussion of America’s future role in the world. Do we want to be the world’s policeman and are we able to fulfill that function?

Some of the reasons for…

Chelsea Manning is formally seeking a presidential pardon for leaking classified documents that her lawyer says should never have been classified in the first place.

Manning’s lawyer, David Coombs, filed the papers on Tuesday requesting a pardon from President Barack Obama, the Associated Press reports. Manning, the army private formerly known as Bradley Manning before voicing her desire to live as a woman, was convicted last month of leaking a trove of diplomatic cables and other documents to the website WikiLeaks. Manning was sentenced to 35 years in prison.

“The decisions I made in 2010 were made out of a concern for my country and the world we live in,” Manning wrote in her pardon petition.

[AP]

Boston’s mayor has a solution for fixing downtrodden Detroit: Just blow it all up.

Beantown’s Thomas Menino toldthe New York Times Magazine that if he had to live in a different city, he’d move to Detroit. And what would he do when he got there? “I’d blow up the place and start all over,” he said.

Detroit, under the control of a state-appointed emergency manager, recently became the largest city to file for bankruptcy. But Mayor Dave Bing didn’t appreciate Menino’s slight — especially in light of the bombing at the Boston Marathon earlier this year.

“It’s extremely regrettable that Boston Mayor Thomas Menino used such an unfortunate choice of words to describe what he would do if he came to Detroit,” Bing said in a statement on Tuesday. “I would think they mayor of a city that recently experienced a deadly bombing attack would be more sensitive and not…