dajafi wrote:

pacino wrote:House GOP pulls their own border bill because speaker/majority leader can't get enough Republicans to vote for the bill

This is why the impeachment thing isn't as far-fetched as Republican leaders keep saying. They can't control their own caucus, and if they win big in November (which I doubt, just because I can't imagine there are very many winnable Dem seats left for them, but who knows), that problem likely gets worse.

The Israeli military says a Gaza ceasefire that went into effect earlier on Friday is now over and military operations are in progress on the ground.

Asked during a media conference call if the ceasefire was over, Lieutenant-Colonel Peter Lerner, a military spokesman, said: "Yes. We are continuing our activities on the ground."

His comments came after medics said dozens of Palestinians were killed by tank shelling.

The ceasefire, that had been agreed by Israel and Hamas to last for 72 hours, had started with a brief lull in fighting at 8am local time (05:00 GMT). Less than three hours later, medics reported deaths in the south of the Palestinian territory. They said at least 40 people were killed as Israeli tanks fired shells into eastern Rafah.

Meanwhile, there were also rocket alarms sounding in Israel's Eshkol region, signalling that rockets had been fired from Gaza.

Israel and Hamas accused each other of breaking the ceasefire, which had been announced by the US and the UN.

The US-Israeli relationship has been frosty for years: Barack Obama and Benjamin Netanyahu have never been close. But the relationship has deteriorated sharply since Kerry took office last year and initiated nine months of talks between Israel and the Palestinian leadership.

Moshe Yaalon, the Israeli defence minister, called Kerry's diplomatic efforts "obsessive" and "messianic", comments for which he later made an apology. Talks stalled in April after Israel refused to honour the final round of a Palestinian prisoner release. Washington then endorsed a "national consensus" government agreed to between Hamas and Fatah, further angering Netanyahu, who had worked frantically to scupper the deal.

Kerry distanced himself from the region, and did not return until last week, when he shuttled between Cairo, Tel Aviv, and Ramallah for meetings about the war.

"What Israel was doing to Kerry … basically was 'Swift Boating' him," said Alon Pinkas, a former Israeli consul-general in New York, referring to a now-discredited attempt to smear Kerry's army record when he ran for president in 2004.

"There was bad blood going back to the peace process … and the right wing has now used the draft [ceasefire] proposal to lash out at him," Pinkas told Al Jazeera.

On Friday night, Kerry called a press conference in Cairo to unveil that proposal. A few hours beforehand, though, an unnamed Israeli official leaked word that the cabinet had rejected it; CNN later identified the source as Yuval Steinitz, the country's intelligence minister and a Netanyahu confidante.

Ministers denounced the Kerry plan as too sympathetic to Hamas, saying it would ease the siege of Gaza without giving "security guarantees" to Israel, while Israeli journalists joined the condemnation. "It's as if [Kerry] is … an alien, who just disembarked his spaceship in the Mideast," wrote Barak Ravid, the diplomatic correspondent for Israeli daily Haaretz. Ari Shavit, a columnist who is considered to be close to Netanyahu, said that "very senior officials" in Jerusalem viewed Kerry's proposal as a "strategic terrorist attack".
Kerry's draft for a ceasefire was not significantly different from an Egyptian plan that Netanyahu eagerly accepted earlier this month. The only real difference was added detail on how Israel and Egypt would lift the siege, an attempt to bridge the gaps between the Egyptian proposal and Hamas' demands.

While Obama has been staunchly supportive of Israel's offensive in Gaza - telling Muslim leaders at a White House Iftar on July 14 that "Israel has the right to defend itself against what I consider to be inexcusable attacks from Hamas" - his vocal support has not been enough to convince most Israelis.

Indeed, police warned the US embassy on Tuesday about a planned protest by a group demanding "full US government support" for the military operation. "Netanyahu has succeeded in one thing: to instill in Israeli public opinion that Obama is hostile to Israel," Pinkas said. "People think this is an unfriendly administration. So I don't think relations with the US are going to play against him."

David Roth
‏@david_j_roth
Wow surprising to see the so-called tolerant left mocking a writer just because he endorsed genocide. This mockery is in a sense genoc

The cease-fire appears to have eroded after about 90 minutes with an attack on Israeli soldiers in Rafah where Palestinian militants (the al Qassam Brigades) killed two Israeli soldiers and captured one. The soldiers were working to destroy a tunnel built by militants to breach Israel's border when a militant emerged from it and detonated a suicide bomb. At the same time, rockets were fired from Gaza into southern Israel. Blaming Hamas and its militant allies for the attack on the soldiers, Israel resumed shelling of what have been described as militant strongholds in Gaza. The IDF identified the captured soldier as Israeli Army 2nd. Lt. Hadar Goldin, 23.

In an unusual breach of decorum, even for the divided Congress, House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi chased Rep. Tom Marino across the House floor, taking offense at comments by the Pennsylvania Republican during debate on the border funding bill Friday night.

“We don’t have law and order,” Marino began as he wrapped up his comments on the border supplemental. “My colleagues on the other side don’t want to do anything about it.”

“You know something that I find quite interesting about the other side? Under the leadership of the former Speaker [Pelosi], and under the leadership of their former leader [Rep. Steny Hoyer], when in 2009 and 2010, they had the House, the Senate and the White House, and they knew this problem existed,” he continued. “They didn’t have the strength to go after it back then. But now are trying to make a political issue out of it now.”

Off-mic, Pelosi then approached Marino, crossing the aisle in view of cameras, and apparently challenged Marino’s assertion that Democrats did not do anything about the issue when they had majority control.

“Yes it is true,” Marino replied directly to Pelosi, who was House speaker in those years. “I did the research on it. You might want to try it. You might want to try it, Madam Leader. Do the research on it. Do the research. I did it. That’s one thing that you don’t do.”

Marino then urged lawmakers to support the border supplemental “because apparently I hit the right nerve.”

After Marino concluded his remarks and as many Republicans applauded their colleague, Pelosi crossed the chamber again in view of cameras, enraged, pointing and sticking her finger at Marino.

She then followed Marino up a Republican aisle, gesturing and arguing with him. Lawmakers on the GOP side gathered in dismay as one spoke out to tell the chair that the House was not in order, in an effort to halt the bickering.

Pelosi finally relented after Republicans tried to get between Pelosi and Marino, and she returned to the Democratic side of the chamber. The House then promptly voted to approve the $694 million border supplemental, 223-189.

*UPDATE: According to Pelosi spokeswoman Evangeline George, “Leader Pelosi just wanted to remind the Congressman that House Democrats had the courage to pass the DREAM Act – and have the courage to stand up for what the American people want: bipartisan, comprehensive immigration reform.”

George added that “Pelosi accepted the Congressman’s apology.”

But Marino’s chief of staff, Bill Tighe, stressed that Marino did not apologize to Pelosi, and will not apologize.

“[Rep. Marino] did not apologize to Leader Pelosi and does not intend to do so as he has nothing to apologize for. She was entirely out of line in approaching him while he was recognized and delivering remarks on the Floor,” Tighe wrote in an email. “Her staff’s comment in your story about her accepting his apology in simply not true.”

jerseyhoya wrote:Pelosi Chases Republican Tom Marino Across House Chamber

Id directly to Pelosi, who was House speaker in those years. “I did the research on it. You might want to try it. You might want to try it, Madam Leader. Do the research on it. Do the research. I did it. That’s one thing that you don’t do”

Sheldon Whitehouse said, but also may have wrote:Let me tell you some of the government agencies who are so-called colluding together. How about NASA? We trust them to send our astronauts into space. We trust them to deliver a rover the size of an S.U.V. to the surface of Mars safely and drive it around, sending data and pictures back from Mars to us. You think these people know what they’re talking about? … How about the United States Navy? The commander in chief of our Pacific Command? Is he colluding when he says that? …

If you want to ignore the federal government, if you live in a world in which you think the federal government colludes with itself to make up things that aren’t true, okay. But look at the property casualty insurance and reinsurance industry. They’re the people with the biggest bet on this. They have billions of dollars riding on getting it right, and they say climate change is real, carbon pollution is causing it, we’ve got to do something about it. So does the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, because they care about the poor and the effect this will have on the people who have the least. So does every major U.S. scientific society. Every single one.