Barack Obama has been busy – offering the Jewish People blessings for Rosh Hashanah, and recording a flattering video for the President’s Conference in Jerusalem and another for Yitzhak Rabin’s memorial rally. Only Sheikh Hassan Nasrallah surpasses him in terms of sheer output of recorded remarks.

In all the videos, Obama heaps sticky-sweet praise on Israel, even though he has spent nearly a year fruitlessly lobbying for Israel to be so kind as to do something, anything – even just a temporary freeze on settlement building – to advance the peace process.

Before no other country on the planet does the United States kneel and plead like this. In other trouble spots, America takes a different tone. It bombs in Afghanistan, invades Iraq and threatens sanctions against Iran and North Korea. Did anyone in Washington consider begging Saddam Hussein to withdraw from occupied territory in Kuwait?

But Israel the occupier, the stubborn contrarian that continues to mock America and the world by building settlements and abusing the Palestinians, receives different treatment. Another massage to the national ego in one video, more embarrassing praise in another.

For most people, the use of nuclear weapons is probably not even a matter for debate. But there’s another opinion. Its current champion, in the media at least, is John Bolton, George W. Bush’s former ambassador to the UN.

I would guess that, for most people, the use of nuclear weapons is not even a matter for debate. Indeed, since the last actively deployed nuclear weapon showed its true colours 64 years ago, even the most belligerent of world leaders have yielded to a saner instinct and kept their fingers off the button, to few complaints.

But there’s another opinion. Its current champion, in the media at least, is John Bolton, George W. Bush’s one-time pick as Ambassador to the United Nations. In a conference ironically entitled “Ensuring Peace”, Bolton argued that the only sure way to stopping a nuclear first strike is – to initiate a nuclear first strike.

“So we’re at a very unhappy point — a very unhappy point — where unless Israel is prepared to use nuclear weapons against Iran’s program, Iran will have nuclear weapons in the very near future.”

House Republicans have a new foreign policy adviser with a controversial pedigree: Oliver North.

North, an aide on Ronald Reagan’s National Security Council who is best known for his role in the Iran-Contra scheme to sell arms to Iran and divert the funds to Nicaraguan revolutionaries in the 1980s, was the special guest at a House Republican Conference meeting on Tuesday. North was convicted on three counts related to the Iran-Contra scandal and his efforts to cover it up, but the convictions were later overturned.

Republican Conference Chairman Mike Pence of Indiana and Rep. Buck McKeon (R-Calif.), who is the top Republican on the Armed Services Committee, joined forces to issue the invitation to North.

“Col. North is someone who enjoys the very broad respect of the House Republican Conference,” Pence said.