June 26, 2009

The Rev. Billy Graham informed Richard Nixon of the Jewish community's concern about Jews for Jesus in a private telephone conversation in February 1973. Graham represented the group as being "set up all over the country," at a time when the organization was in its fledgling stage, with just a handful of workers.

The 20-minute conversation, released on Tuesday as part of 154 hours of tape recordings from the Nixon White House, took place on February 21, 1973, the day Israeli jets fired on a Libyan passenger plane that violated its airspace, causing the plane to crash and killing 108 people on board...

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The phone rang. It was Dan Sered calling from Israel, and he sounded very discouraged. Dan leads our Jews for Jesus branch in Tel Aviv. We were in the midst of our third Behold Your God Israel campaign and the opposition was heated. But that wasn't why Dan was discouraged.

I enjoyed screening the new Star Trek movie the other week.  It was great seeing Spock, Kirk, Bones et al. in their more formative years, and wonderful to see Leonard Nimoy reprise his role as the "older" Spock.

Conspicuous by his absence, of course, was William Shatner.  Which made me wonder … in the years since the original Gene Roddenberry Star Trek, William Shatner has shown up just about everywhere.

He was T. J. Hooker. He was (and is) the pitch guy for Priceline.com. He was (and is, if you count reruns and DVDs) Denny Crane on Boston Legal. He has his own interview show, William Shatner's Raw Nerve.[Continue Reading]