RUTHFULLY YOURS

‘Nobody has a monopoly on making mistakes.” When I was Israel’s ambassador to the United States from 2009 to the end of 2013, that was my standard response to reporters asking who bore the greatest responsibility—President Barack Obama or Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu—for the crisis in U.S.-Israel relations.

I never felt like I was lying when I said it. But, in truth, while neither leader monopolized mistakes, only one leader made them deliberately.

Israel blundered in how it announced the expansion of Jewish neighborhoods and communities in Jerusalem over the border lines that existed before the Six Day War in 1967. On two occasions, the news came out during Mr. Netanyahu’s meetings with Vice President Joe Biden. A solid friend of Israel, Mr. Biden understandably took offense. Even when the White House stood by Israel, blocking hostile resolutions in the United Nations, settlement expansion often continued.

The text of Magna Carta of 1215 bears many traces of haste, and is the product of much bargaining,” the British Library website surprisingly states to individuals examining this iconic document for the first time. Yet Magna Carta, which turns 800 today, richly deserves being called, in the words of British Member of the European Parliament Daniel Hannan, the “most important bargain in the history of the human race.”

Driven to rebellion by abuses of royal taxation power, nobles imposed the Magna Carta (“Great Charter” in Latin) upon England’s King John at Runnymede on the Thames on June 15, 1215. The name merely reflects the document’s length, not any contemporary understanding that Magna Carta would become the “greatest constitutional document of all time,” as described by Britain’s most renowned jurist, Lord Denning. “Most of its clauses deal with specific, and often long-standing, grievances rather than with general principles of law,” the British Library notes. “Some of the grievances are clear; others can be understood only in the context of the feudal society in which they arose. The precise meaning of a few clauses is still uncertain.” Certain Magna Carta articles, for example, regulate borrowing from Jews, reflecting the money-lending role this people played in a medieval society that forbade Christians from earning interest.

On trade, terrorism and nuclear proliferation, Democrats would rather not know.

Because a wing of the Republican Party is hostile to immigrants, it’s tempting to see the GOP as a descendant of the mid-19th-century Know Nothing Party, infamous for its antipathy to Irish-Catholic newcomers—the Mexicans of their day. But if the Know Nothings have a 21st-century heir, it is Nancy Pelosi’s Democratic Party.

So much was made clear last week, when House Democrats did their best to torpedo the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) trade deal. So opposed is Mrs. Pelosi’s party to free trade—that is, so beholden are Democrats to organized labor—that the party was prepared to defy President Obama and vote against a $450 million retraining scheme to scuttle TPP.

ROME—Pope Francis calls global warming a major threat to life on the planet, says it is due mainly to human activity, and describes the need to reduce the use of fossil fuels as an urgent matter, in a published draft of a much-awaited upcoming letter on the environment.

The draft copy of “Laudato Si’ ” (“Be praised”), his encyclical on the environment, has been eagerly awaited by business, policy makers and environmental groups. It was published online on Monday by the Italian magazine L’Espresso, three days ahead of its scheduled publication date.

The Vatican said the posted text wasn’t the final document, which would remain under embargo until Thursday, but it didn’t say whether there were material differences between the draft and the final document.

Left to themselves, certain of Israel’s potentially nuclear adversaries could bring the Jewish state into eternal darkness, into fire, into ice. It is essential, therefore, that the country’s leadership take appropriate steps to ensure that any failure of national deterrence would never spark a regional nuclear war. In this connection, it is especially important that the IDF continue to plan conceptually around a distinctly fundamental understanding: Nuclear deterrence and conventional deterrence are not separate or discrete security postures. Always, these core protective strategies are more or less critically interrelated.

It is time to call things by their correct name. A nuclear war in the Middle East is no longer inconceivable. This is the case, moreover, even if Israel were somehow to remain the only nuclear weapons state in the chaotic region.

Thursday marks the 200th anniversary of the British and Prussian victory over Napoleon at Waterloo, a battle that changed Europe temporarily and France, perhaps, forever.

We all know the jokes: “Why do the French plant trees on the banks of the Seine? So the Germans can march in the shade.” “Used French army rifles: only dropped once.”

Since World War Two, there has been a sneering arrogance that characterizes our French ally, an arrogance unjustified by past achievement in peace and war. Their foreign minister at the time of the 2003 Iraq invasion was Dominique de Villepin. When asked who he hoped would win in Iraq, he refused to answer. But, as I said on Chris Matthews’ program “Hardball” at the time — before he went nuts – going to war without France is like going deer hunting without an accordion: you just leave a lot of noisy, useless baggage behind.

It wasn’t always this way. Hundreds of years ago they weren’t “cheese-eating surrender monkeys.” It’s taken centuries for the French to become what they are today.
To understand why France is what it is, you have to study both its national psychology and its history.

http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-33126723

King John of England sealed the original document in 1215 in Runnymede in Surrey, close to the River Thames.The charter first protected the rights and freedoms of society and established the king was subject to the law.

Magna Carta ‘changed the world’, David Cameron tells anniversary event

Mr Cameron told the audience Magna Carta would “alter forever the balance of power between the governed and the government”.And he said the document had inspired different generations and countries across the world.

He said: “Why do people set such store by Magna Carta?”Because they look to history. They see how the great charter shaped the world, for the best part of a millennium, helping to promote arguments for justice and for freedom.”

Pharrell Williams Schedules September Performance in Israel

Art Garfunkel performed in Israel on Wednesday, Bon Jovi will be here on October 3, and the list of artists arriving in Israel has now been joined by one of the hottest names in the world of music, American producer and rapper Pharrell Williams.

At the moment, the 42-year-old Williams is scheduled to perform at Tel Aviv’s Yarkon Park around September 9, a few days before the Jewish New Year.

The United States is not a Socialist country, but it has been trending toward paternalism for decades. About 35% of the nation’s GDP is a product of federal, state and local spending. Dependency on government has grown. Two-thirds of the federal budget is now dedicated to entitlements. Excessive regulation has hampered small-businesses, and annually costs consumers billions of dollars in hidden fees. Nanny state antics have had little effect on youth obesity, but have made a significant dent in their parent’s wallets.

While purporting to keep people safe from themselves, regulatory rules’ real function enables favored industries and provides job security for federal employees. The complexity of our tax code benefits America’s largest businesses and its richest citizens. One impediment to simplifying the code is the large numbers of people who have a vested interest in keeping it complicated. Our universities inculcate credulous students into a one-sided political philosophy. Overly sensitive students are taught politically-correct courses from syllabi that contain trigger warnings against microaggressions. It’s a narcissistic world, grown narrow.

Please welcome to the presidential race the latest version of the Democratic front-runner: Ms. Hillary Rodham Obama!

The speech Hillary delivered Saturday on Roosevelt Island made clear her presidency would be Barack Obama’s third term. The policies she would advance as president are intended to deepen Obama’s unprecedented enmeshment of the economy and the government.

Ms. Rodham Obama went through an exhaustive list of goodies her presidency would deliver to Americans. And when I say “exhaustive,” I mean exhaustive. The speech ran longer than 40 minutes, and despite the fact that she had been preparing to give it for weeks, Hillary also made it clear her rhetoric and her delivery are just not going to get much better. Ever.

Nothing she mentioned would be unfamiliar to anyone who has listened to an Obama State of the Union address every January. It’s the 21st Century Left Liberal Laundry List, down to the war she announced against “powerful forces” in hedge funds and on Wall Street who have brought “secret, unaccountable money” into the system — this from a woman who raised hundreds of millions from Wall Street and hedge-fund giants in 2008 and whose family foundation has become the poster child for secret and unaccountable money in American politics.