Is someone trying to burn L.A.'s majestic mormon temple?

​A midnight fire on the grounds of the Los Angeles California Temple -- the gargantuan Mormon structure that can be seen from all over the city -- has given the Los Angeles Fire Department's arson investigators their highest-profile job since the Hollywood car-fire debacle.

Awesomely, the department has a "house of worship task force," and they're on the scene this morning to investigate the origins of the blaze, an LAFD spokesman tells Patch. (As is "the standard response for any fire at a religious site.") It began at about 1 a.m. and was extinguished a half-hour later.

The Westwood temple is the second largest...

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Beastie Boys

​Updated at the bottom: The attempt's a FAIL. First posted at 12:57 p.m. on Dec. 2.

Sunday, SUNDAY, SUNDAY!!! Jews, JEWS, JEWS!!!

If you're not burned out after raging on Saturday night, the Sinai Temple in Holmby Hills is where the after-party is. The world-record-breaking after-party, that is.

You read right: The folks at Sinai are set to attempt an official, Guinness-sanctioned record-breaking attempt at ...

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​The L.A. City Council is contemplating another boycott -- this time against Delta Airlines.

Councilman Paul Koretz has introduced a resolution to boycott the airline over its controversial "no Jew" policy.

Wait. What?
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PHOTO BY ERIN BROADLEY

The Venice Beach Boardwalk is about to get a little weirder.

​What could be more fun-lovin' and lighthearted than a local celebration of national Go Topless Day, in which a bunch of free-titted gals (save for pasties, some engineered to look "EXACTLY like nipples") march down the Venice Beach Boardwalk, chanting for their right to be busty or saggy or however they may be, all out in the open and stuff? Activism!

But the August 21 protest, in its fourth year now, has some strange-ish philosophies behind it, if you for some reason happen to care why you're parading around in nipple-looking pasties.

Turns out the group behind Go Topless Day is the one-and-only Raëlian cult:

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news.va

Don't strain a knuckle there, champ.

​Was it something about the visit of modern-minded Los Angeles Archbishop Jose H. Gomez, currently in Vatican City for to receive a special wool pallium, that inspired Pope Benedict XVI to warble out his first Tweet, via Twitter for iPad, this afternoon? Whatever the inspiration, let us just say: What a marvelous Tweet it was. Benedict hasn't quite tested out his holy hashtag yet, but he's got self-promotional linking (to the Vatican's brand-new website) down to an art.

Continuing with the 21st century theme, video of the Historic First Tweet's issuance was quickly posted to YouTube, for all the Internets to worship. Also kind of revealing that the Pope didn't actually type the Tweet, more just pressed the "Send" button, but it warms our cold digital hearts all the same:

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Dude better come with a diamond grill

​Like the rest of Jesus' children, we were pretty mystified last winter when his likeness showed up in the buttspace of an old rocking chair in Costa Mesa, etched from chipping paint.

Orange County chair-owner Lou Balducci, after being informed by his housekeeper that the funny-lookin' wood knot was a blessing on his home, acted admirably humble about the whole thing, telling NBC LA, "I am not sure what I want to do with it. Right now, I am enjoying having it in my home and showing it to friends and family."

In the time between then and now, however, Chair Jesus (AS SEEN ON TV!) seems to have reached celebrity status:

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Unidosporlavida.org.mx

​Happy hump day, everybody! Here's what's in store for your commute home: An extremist group of religious right-wingers from Mexico City has erected a pro-life billboard at the corner of Figueroa Street and Martin Luther King, Jr. Boulevard in South Los Angeles [OC Weekly].

It's the evil, badly designed cousin of that infamous billboard in Manhattan's Soho district which read, "The most dangerous place for an African-American is in the womb." (During Black History Month, no less.) This time, though, psychotic pro-lifers are targeting L.A.'s fastest-growing population:

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Temple Israel of Hollywood

​Updated after the jump: Another transient is wanted for setting the Hollywood synagogue on fire.

Suspected synagogue bomber Ron Hirsch may be behind bars after allegedly planting a homemade explosive device in the Chabad House of Santa Monica, but the scares continue to roll in for the vast Los Angeles Jewish community this month:

The Temple Israel of Hollywood, located at 7300 Hollywood Boulevard, was targeted by a thief this morning, according to City News Service.

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Santa Monica Police Department

Ron Hirsch is suspected of trying to blow a hole in the Chabad House

​Update: Santa Monica police say they nabbed the suspect last night in Cleveland Heights, Ohio, where he was lurking near another synagogue. More after the jump.

The homeless man suspected of planting an explosive in the Chabad House Lubavitch of Santa Monica synagogue on Thursday, April 7 is now believed to have skipped town the same day.

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Santa Monica Patch

​Update, April 11: "Ron Hirsch, Synagogue Explosion Suspect, on a Greyhound to New York."

Urgent update: The explosion WAS CAUSED BY GUN POWDER, police say. Details after the jump.

Update, April 7, 11 a.m.: Santa Monica police and the FBI confirm that this was not a bomb, but some sort of mechanical issue within the building. The evacuation will soon be lifted.

Updated after the jump with various guesses as to whether this was a hate crime or just a gas leak.

The Chabad House Lubavitch of Santa Monica, a Jewish place of worship located at 1428 17th Street, was just evacuated after an explosion -- possibly a pipe bomb, according to authorities at the scene.

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democraticunderground.com

Do prisoners have a right to beard?

​We take personal freedoms very seriously in California -- as do we our right to sue the shit out of anyone who treads on our land of the free.

To demonstrate, SoCal ACLU lawyers pounced on the religious-freedom case of Sukhjinder Basra -- who's incarcerated at the California Men's Colony in San Luis Obispo for a drug offense -- last month, knowing they had this one in the bag.

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newvoices.org

Mini Torrah pouches: terrorist threat?

​It's good to see a religious group besides Muslims profiled for suspicious behavior by a paranoid American airline -- but still, this is a little silly.

The LA Daily News reported yesterday that a traditional prayer conducted by three orthodox Jews on a red-eye from Mexico City was enough for flight attendants and pilots to declare a "security threat," lock down the cockpit and call in FBI agents to meet the plane as it taxied into Gate 210 at LAX.

Things started to get really crazy when, mid-flight, the three suspects broke out their tefillin...

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Enough love to squash the Bruin-Trojan rivalry?

​Following the most devastating natural disaster of the new century, we could all use a little Dalai Lama in our lives. Lucky for Los Angeles, His Holiness has chosen our smog basin as one of the longest legs of his 2011 world tour -- and lucky for the college kids at UCLA and USC, their campuses will host about half his trip.

Then again, USC just got sprinkled with the holy teachings of President Obama in October. Hard to beat that.

Here's where you can catch the one and only Lama on his way through in May:

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Kids: Hide your bling

​We've heard of middle-aged moms who scratch babies. Also, middle-aged moms who whip men dressed as babies. Also, ones who send young boys dirty pics of their middle-aged mom bods via cell phone.

But Belinda Berumen, the 42-year-old mom from Montebello who police say has been stealing religious jewelry from her child's first- and second-grade classmates at Washington Elementary School, creeps us out on another level. A spiritual level, even [Pasadena Star-News].

Something about those golden, glittering little treasures made Berumen into a crazed mama bird at nesting time:

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svquest.com

Jean and Scott Adam, L.A.'s gutsiest missionaries, hand out Bibles in the Cook Islands

​Update: Jean and Scott Adam were fatally shot on their boat by pirates, authorities said today -- even as U.S. Navy ships trailed the vessel. Two pirates were then killed and 13 were captured, according to reports. Phyllis Macay and Bob Riggle, fellow voyagers from Seattle, were also killed.

Jean and Scott Adam, two outdoorsy Orange County missionaries who belong to Saint Monica Catholic Church in Santa Monica and the Del Rey Yacht Club in Marina Del Rey, decided in 2001 to take the Holy Word to the open seas, sailing to foreign lands on their custom-built "S/V Quest" and handing out Bibles to the natives.

But on February 18, their mission took a turn into darkness. An adventurous detour through the Indian Ocean led the SoCal couple (and their passengers, Seattle couple Phyllis Macay and Bob Riggle) straight into skull-and-crossbones territory:

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Hollywood United Methodist Church

The Hollywood church wears a red AIDS ribbon on its steeple

​Updated after the jump: Sassy retaliation!

Of all L.A. neighborhoods, you'd think at least free-wheelin' Hollywood (well, and its sister city to the West) would be a safe place to pray to whomever we choose while loving whomever we choose -- a simple concept with big conservative enemies.

That's what the progressive Hollywood United Methodist Church, located on the corner of Franklin Avenue and North Highland Avenue, has always been about; theirs is a refreshingly open-minded take on tradition. So it was a real bummer, yesterday evening, to find out that some asshole had decided to subject his/her own homophobic self-loathing onto such an awesome community -- the kind that makes Los Angeles the place to be.

A photo of the damage:

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Simpsons' Homer and Bart are said to be Catholics.

​The be a cartoon character is apparently divine in the Vatican's eyes. The Catholic church's house organ, L'Osservatore Roman, has declared that "Homer J Simpson is a Catholic" in an article titled "Homer and Bart Are Catholics."

To drink on Saturday night and worship on Sunday morning, a la Homer, is indeed quite Catholic: So too was Homer's near-affair with a co-worker, his apologies after after angry outbursts, and his neck-chocking corporal punishment on little Bart. Amen.

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Cardinal Roger Mahony

​With Cardinal Roger Mahony getting ready to retire from the Roman Catholic Los Angeles Archdiocese, his eminence is pulling some strange, ill-conceived moves again, now refusing to maintain an updated list of sexually abusive priests on the archdiocese's web site.

The Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests (SNAP), a national watchdog group, is livid.

"If Mahony can't do the easy thing and warn parishioners about dangerous men who worked with and around their kids," Joelle Casteix, a leader of SNAP, emails L.A. Weekly, "how can we expect him to do the right thing? ... We simply can't."

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​The San Gabriel Valley city of Walnut is being sued by the federal government for alleged religious discrimination after it blocked the construction of a Buddhist house of worship, the U.S. Department of Justice announced Monday.

The Chung Tai Zen Center was denied a conditional use permit in 2008. It was the first time Walnut turned down a house of worship since 1980, the DOJ stated. What's more, the Department of Justice points out in a statement that Walnut approved another house of worship the same year:

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​Rep. Maxine Waters, the South L.A. Democratic congresswoman currently fighting House ethics charges, will be joined by other dignitaries and religious leaders, who will courageously come out against Quran burning this morning at the First AME Church on South Harvard Blvd.

In case you missed it, a guy in Florida who tends not so much to a congregation as a little cult, had been threatening to burn some Quran's Saturday, the anniversary of the 9/11 atrocities. (He seems to have backed down.) To give you some idea of how uncontroversial the Don't Burn the Quran Movement is now, Waters joins Haley Barbour, the Republican governor of Mississippi sometimes compared to Boss Hogg, in condemning the Quran burning.

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