In an exclusive interview with The Jerusalem Post, Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu dismissed as “completely groundless” allegations he is manufacturing a crisis with US President Barack Obama just before the November 6 American election to influence the outcome in favor of Republican candidate Mitt Romney.

Netanyahu, in a Rosh Hashana interview that will appear in full on Sunday, said his call for the United States and the international community to set red lines for Iran was not at all connected with the US political campaign.

“It has nothing to do with the American elections, because the Iranian nuclear program doesn’t care about the American political calendar,” the prime minister said.

“If the centrifuges stop miraculously, if they stop preparing enriched uranium to make atomic bombs, then I suppose I wouldn’t have to speak out.

“But the Iranian nuclear program proceeds unabated and they don’t care about the internal American political calendar. For me this is a policy issue, a security issue, and not a political issue,” he said.

Netanyahu characterized his post-midnight telephone call Wednesday with Obama as a “good conversation.”

“We spoke about our common goal of stopping Iran from developing its nuclear weapons program, and our desire to closely coordinate our efforts,” he related.

When asked whether Obama referred to his comments that those who do not place red lines in front of the Iranians cannot place a red light in front of Israel, Netanyahu replied that he was “not going to get into details of this discussion.

“Obviously I have my views and am not exactly shy about expressing them when I think that Israel’s vital security concerns are involved,” Netanyahu said. “This is my responsibility as the prime minister of the Jewish state.

We are facing the greatest security challenge of any country on the face of the earth, and when I feel I need to speak out, I do.”

Click here for more from The Jerusalem Post.  

Today, Hobby Lobby Stores, Inc., a privately held retail chain with more than 500 arts and crafts stores in 41 states, filed a lawsuit in the US District Court for the Western District of Oklahoma, opposing the Health and Human Services “preventive services” mandate, which forces the Christian-owned-and-operated business to provide, without co-pay, the “morning after pill” and “week after pill” in their health insurance plan, or face crippling fines up to 1.3 million dollars per day.

“By being required to make a choice between sacrificing our faith or paying millions of dollars in fines, we essentially must choose which poison pill to swallow,” said David Green, Hobby Lobby CEO and founder. “We simply cannot abandon our religious beliefs to comply with this mandate.”
 
Hobby Lobby is the largest and only non-Catholic-owned business to file a lawsuit against the HHS mandate, focusing sharp criticism on the administration’s regulation that forces all companies, regardless of religious conviction, to cover abortion-inducing drugs.
 
“Washington politicians cannot force families to abandon their faith just to earn a living,” said Lori Windham, Senior Counsel, Becket Fund for Religious Liberty.  “Every American, including family business owners like the Greens, should be free to live and do business according to their religious beliefs.”
 
Founded in an Oklahoma City garage in 1972, the Green family has grown Hobby Lobby from one 300-square-foot retail space into more than 500 stores in 41 states.
 
“It is by God’s grace and provision that Hobby Lobby has endured,” said Green.  “Therefore we seek to honor God by operating the company in a manner consistent with Biblical principles. The conflict for me is that our family is being forced to choose between following the laws of the country that we love or maintaining the religious beliefs that have made our business successful and have supported our family and thousands of our employees and their families.”
 
The business’s lawsuit acts to preserve its right to carry out its mission free from government coercion.
 
There are now 27 separate lawsuits challenging the HHS mandate, which is a regulation under the Affordable Care Act (aka “Obamacare”). These HHS challenges were not affected by the Supreme Court’s June 28th ruling on the constitutionality of the “individual mandate.”
 
The Becket Fund led the charge against the unconstitutional HHS mandate, and along with Hobby Lobby represents: Wheaton College, Belmont Abbey College, Colorado Christian University, the Eternal Word Television Network, and Ave Maria University.
 
The Becket Fund for Religious Liberty is a non-profit, public-interest legal and educational institute that protects the free expression of all faiths. The Becket Fund exists to vindicate a simple but frequently negated principle:  that because the religious impulse is natural to human beings, religious expressional is natural to human culture. 

TheBlaze is reporting that the Republican Jewish Coalition (RJC) and GOP supporters are slamming the Democratic Party for omitting strong language against Hamas and the Palestinian “right of return” from its 2012 platform, language that was part of the 2008 Democratic platform.

This is yet another significant omission — and it was not later fixed — contrary to the party’s reinstating language referring to Jerusalem as Israel’s capital.

In 2008, the Democratic platform included the statement that Hamas – the group that rules Gaza and which the State Department defines as a terrorist group – must renounce terrorism. The platform then stated: "The United States and its Quartet partners should continue to isolate Hamas until it renounces terrorism, recognizes Israel’s right to exist, and abides by past agreements."
 
That language is now gone. In fact, the word “Hamas” doesn’t appear at all in the 2012 platform.
 
Also in 2008, the Democratic platform stated: "The creation of a Palestinian state through final status negotiations, together with an international compensation mechanism, should resolve the issue of Palestinian refugees by allowing them to settle there, rather than in Israel."
 
The Palestinian Authority under President Mahmoud Abbas and Hamas are demanding what they call a “right of return” for Palestinian refugees and all their descendants, that is, a whopping five million people moving into the territory that is today the State of Israel; however, less than 1% — only 30,000 Arabs — actually ever lived in Palestine before 1948 and are still alive today. If five million Palestinians move to Israel, the question is: Where are the Israelis expected to go? The “right of return” implicitly means a destruction of the Jewish state through demography. In 2008, the Democratic platform said the refugees should be settled in a Palestinian state, not in Israel. The 2012 platform is silent on this major point.

Click here for more with video from The Blaze. 

Dr.
Barbara Bellar Candidate for Illinois State Senate, District 18 sums up
Obamacare in one sentence and it is well worth listening – if you enjoy a good laugh
regardless. 

As one
comment notes, "I don’t care who you’re voting for. If you can’t listen to
this and [laugh your a— off], you are taking the world WAY too seriously and
will die young from a catastrophic aneurism. Click here for the video.

Dr. Bellar
could also use some campaign donations as she writes, “I am running against the
Chicago Machine and I could use your financial help! Go to electbellar.com or
send your checks to Citizens to Elect Barbara Bellar – PO Box 557766, Chicago,
IL 60655.”  

Click here for the video on YouTube.

Hezbollah MP Walid Sakariya told Lebanese television this week that the nuclear weapon Iran is allegedly developing is intended to annihilate Israel.

In a segment recorded and translated by MEMRI (the Middle East Media
Research Institute), Sakariya, also a retired general, told his
interviewer on Hezbollah’s al-Manar TV Tuesday that should Iran acquire a
nuclear weapon it would serve Syrian as well as Iranian interests,
namely the eradication of the Jewish state.

“This nuclear weapon is intended to create a balance of terror with Israel, to finish off the Zionist enterprise, and to end all Israeli aggression against the Arab nation,” Sakariya said.
 
“The entire equation in the Middle East will change,” he asserted.
 
Iranian officials typically assert that their controversial nuclear program is meant solely for peaceful purposes.

Click here for the video from The Times of Israel.