RUTHFULLY YOURS

David and Jonah are obviously right that the immoral rules of engagement (ROE) the commander-in-chief has imposed on our troops have encouraged Islamic State jihadists to endanger civilians – not that terrorists need much encouragement in that regard. As David observes, this turns the laws of armed combat on their head.

I’ve been venting about this for a number of years now. The driving purpose of international humanitarian law is the protection of civilians. What makes honorable combatants honorable, and what triggers the international-law protections they are owed if captured, is their adherence to venerable standards requiring that they, among other things, identify themselves as soldiers, carry their weapons openly, and confine their combat operations to legitimate military objectives.

The Supreme Court’s breathtaking upholding of the constitutionality of Obamacare’s exchanges wasn’t the only case they got badly wrong Thursday. In both cases, ordinary Americans may be hurt in ways they don’t yet realize.In its second case yesterday, the Supreme Court had to decide the scope of the Fair Housing Act, a law passed in 1968 that makes it unlawful to discriminate on the basis of race and other factors in connection with the sale or lease of housing. The question before the court was: Can you be found guilty of racial discrimination if you never engaged in policies that had any intent to discriminate?

It is a desperate attempt by the French government to buy a few more days of quiet from its Muslim community, especially from the members of the Muslim Brotherhood and the terrorist organizations to which it gave birth — all waiting for the order to run riot through the streets of France.

If it succeeds, may Allah prevent it, it will lead to an ISIS and Hamas takeover of every inch of Palestinian soil from which Israel withdraws if coerced by the initiative.

It is evidently too frustrating and unrewarding just to sit in the U.N. and not think of some project supposedly to spread beneficence that could make your country look important to the other 190 members — even if this beneficence is lethal to its recipient.

This week’s Supreme Court ruling sets up the 2016 presidential election perfectly for Republicans.

The one fun part of this week’s Supreme Court decision on ObamaCare is that it has given the country a new way to evaluate everything Democrats say. Take Barack Obama’s pronouncement Thursday that the court’s ruling in King v. Burwell means “the Affordable Care Act is here to stay.”

Those words are pretty clear. Mr. Obama surely meant them. Yet all we have to do is give them the old Roberts High Court treatment, and—voilà!—we discover the exact opposite meaning. Far from putting this debate behind us, the ruling has freed Washington to take it up. Now that the long months of waiting silently and expectantly for the court’s decision are over, debate on ObamaCare is about to explode in a way not witnessed since 2010.

Emails in question uncovered as part of subpoena from congressional committee to Sidney Blumenthal

The State Department said Thursday that former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton didn’t turn over at least 15 emails that appear to be work-related from her personal server, contradicting her claims that all relevant emails were in the hands of the federal government.

The emails in question were uncovered as part of a subpoena from a congressional committee to Sidney Blumenthal, a longtime Clinton confidant and former White House aide in Bill Clinton’s administration.

Overcoming initial doubts, ‘Seinfeld’ became a hit with writing of unparalleled wit and a complete lack of timidity

It’s impossible to think of a television comedy that has rooted itself as deeply in the culture as “Seinfeld” has—no small irony given the grave doubts initially raised about its prospects for success. It was, the chief executive of NBC Entertainment objected when the show was under consideration, “too New York, too Jewish.” Initial tests of its appeal were discouraging.

Still, by the time the series ended its extraordinary nine-year run in 1998, advertisers were paying, as Advertising Age reported, virtually a million dollars a minute for airtime, the sort of rate usually commanded by the Super Bowl but never before by any regularly scheduled TV program. NBC itself was prepared to pay an astronomical sum for a 10th season if Jerry Seinfeld had agreed, but there would be none. The show (which began streaming in its entirety on Hulu this week) ended with a finale in which the by then world-renowned quartet—Jerry, George, Elaine, Kramer—was hauled into court and given a year in prison for callous indifference to humanity.

For the second time in three years, Chief Justice John Roberts has rewritten the Affordable Care Act in order to save it. Beyond its implications for health care, the Court’s 6-3 ruling in King v. Burwell is a landmark that betrays the Chief’s vow to be “an umpire,” not a legislator in robes. He stands revealed as a most political Justice.

The black-letter language of ObamaCare limits insurance subsidies to “an Exchange established by the State.” But the Democrats who wrote the bill in 2010 never imagined that 36 states would refuse to participate. So the White House through the IRS wrote a regulation that also opened the subsidy spigots to exchanges established by the federal government.
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Chief Justice Roberts has now become a co-conspirator in this executive law-making. With the verve of a legislator, he has effectively amended the statute to read “established by the State—or by the way the Federal Government.” His opinion—joined by the four liberal Justices and Anthony Kennedy—is all the more startling because it goes beyond normal deference to regulators.

Wilma Mankiller, was the first female chief of the Cherokee Nation….rsk

On June 18, Treasury Secretary Jack Lew announced that Alexander Hamilton would be replaced or diminished on the $10 bill by 2020. In the place of America’s first treasury secretary would be an as yet unannounced woman.

This decision was as disgraceful as it was bizarre. Though Lew said that the currency redesign was simply part of a scheduled update for the purpose of honoring the 100th anniversary of universal women’s suffrage, nobody expected the father of the American financial system to get the boot. Fortunately, there have been a chorus of voices from all parts of the political spectrum that have expressed anger and opposition to this unfathomable decision to remove the great Founding Father from our currency.

1. “Israelis are more satisfied with their lives than the OECD average,” according to the OECD’s (Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development) annual “Better Life Index.” Only Denmark, Iceland, Switzerland and Finland ranked ahead of 5th place Israel, among the 34 OECD members, as well as Brazil and Russia. The rating is based on 22 variables, such as education, health, life expectancy, average income, housing and general satisfaction. Israel’s high ranking defies its geo-political neighborhood, but is a derivative of its inherent state of mind: optimism, patriotism, family and communal responsibility and attachment to roots (Israel 21st Century, June 10, 2015).

2. “Israel was rated by expats as the most dynamic country in the world,” according to “InterNations,” the largest network for people who work and live abroad (The Huffington Report, June 12, 2015).

3. The June 15, 2015 issue of the Economist Intelligence Unit praises Israel’s economic performance, expecting a 3.4% growth in 2015 and rising in 2016, declining unemployment [currently at 5%], steady inflation (1.3%), an export surge in 2015, a narrowing 2015 trade deficit and a 2019 trade surplus, larger natural gas production/export, robust private consumption and expanding current account surplus (3% of GDP in 2014, 5.2% – 2015 and 7.4% -2019).

It’s De Blasio Time, and madmen with machetes are on the loose.
Twenty-three prior arrests, including menacing someone with a machete five years ago, and this madman is still walking the streets? Seeing a passerby’s video of Sook Yeong Im, a pretty young Korean tourist, lying on the 40th Street sidewalk after crazy career criminal Frederick Young, 43, had twice slashed open her arm with his viciously honed weapon—exposing muscle fiber and sending blood spurting everywhere—brought back in an instant the knot of fear New Yorkers carried in their stomachs in the pre-Rudy Giuliani era, when out-of-control crime was killing not just one person every four hours, 365 days a year, but also was killing Gotham itself. That the assault occurred in Bryant Park at 11:30 on a sun-drenched early-summer morning, as the victim was looking for a seat after her yoga class, seemed to unravel just about every gain that the tireless efforts of thousands over 20 years had achieved to make New York once more the capital of the world. Suddenly, it seems we’re back to Son of Sam or the Wild Man of West 96th Street.