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Turkey has summoned the Vatican ambassador after Pope Francis used the word "genocide" to describe mass killing of Armenians under Ottoman rule in WW1 100 years ago.The foreign ministry requested a meeting with the Vatican's envoy in Ankara, Turkish media reported. Armenia and many historians say up to 1.5 million people were systematically killed by Ottoman forces in 1915. Turkey has consistently denied that the killings were genocide. The Pope's comments came at a service in Rome to honour a 10th Century mystic, attended by Armenia's president. The dispute has continued to sour relations between Armenia and Turkey. 'Bleeding wound'The...

[ .... " Bayh, though, suggested the friction now could give way to better times soon for Democrats. “I do think with a new president, potentially new leaders, certainly for Democrats in the Senate --who knows about the House -- there may be a season for governing where people might actually find more common ground,starting all over with a blank sheet of paper,” Bayh said. “That would be a good thing for the country.”

WASHINGTON D.C. (CBS SF)– Two Democratic stalwarts from Massachusetts are suggesting that Rep. Nancy Pelosi should leave the party’s leadership team in Congress after big electoral loses last year and in 2010. Reps. Michael Capuano and Stephen Lynch made the statements on WGBH’s “Greater Boston,” with Lynch predicting outright that “Nancy Pelosi will not lead us back into the majority.” Asked by host Jim Braude if the answer to the question whether Pelosi “should go?” is “yes,” Lynch said, “Right.” Capuano was also asked if the 75-year-old Pelosi should quit leadership ranks. He said: “That, or she should change, one...

It might be fun to poke fun at Texas Senator and GOP Presidential candidate Ted Cruz for signing up for Obamacare but he is far from alone. As a matter of fact some other top GOP candidates for the 2016 Republican nomination are right there with Cruz. In fact almost every member of the House and the Senate who have voted over 50 times to repeal Obamacare are enrolled in the plan. It is important to be clear there is no such thing as being “on Obamacare.” It’s not an insurance plan, or a single program like Medicare or Social...

see, two landslide elections did accomplish something. ... the “doc fix” is simply and end run around the deficit accounting process. What is more unsettling is the way this piece of legislation came about. It seems to signal that the era of the “Hastert Rule,” where the Speaker will not entertain legislation without the consent of the majority of his caucus, is dead. ... The fact that the Speaker went to the Democrats first to get votes on this spending deal shows the extent to which Boehner has been mortally injured as a leader. It also tells us that the...

Democrats are calling republican senators traitors. If they truly believe that then Ted Kennedy, John Kerry and Nancy Pelosi are traitors, too. With the exception of Pelosi, the democrats would be worse traitors because they operated in secrecy, not having the intestinal fortitude to act out in the open. Let’s see how these three stack up against a letter written by 47 senators. First, to establish context, let’s examine exactly what the republican senators did. They wrote a letter to the Iranian government explaining US law. No only were they direct and open, but they are also correct. Any agreement...

Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) is pushing back hard against conservative claims that the recent Republican letter to Iranian leaders, which has infuriated the White House amid delicate nuclear talks, is akin to her 2007 visit to Syria against the wishes of the Bush administration. The office of the House minority leader issued a scathing statement Wednesday night saying her meeting with Syrian dictator Bashar Assad was part of a bipartisan effort — conducted through the Bush administration — to encourage peace in the region, and accusing Republicans of launching a "desperate" defense of their Iran letter to mask criticisms coming...

A new bombshell report from Politico found that House Speaker John Boehner had several days of secret negotiations with Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, the recently emboldened former Speaker, leading up to his decision to flip-flop and fund President Obama’s executive amnesty—including a pre-hashed out deal to use the hoopla around Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s Tuesday address to Congress over Iran’s nuclear ambitions as political cover to sneak in the extraordinarily controversial vote. Even with the bombshell report, however, Boehner’s office continues to deny any deal took place. “It was Monday at 5:30 p.m. when Pelosi and Boehner agreed that...

House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D., Calif.) made her lack of enthusiasm for Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu’s speech apparent throughout the remarks, applauding half-heartedly and then quickly exiting the chamber after the speech, before Netanyahu did.

House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) hammered Benjamin Netanyahu Tuesday, saying the Israeli prime minister's speech to Congress was an "insult" to the country. “The unbreakable bonds between the United States and Israel are rooted in our shared values, our common ideals and mutual interests," Pelosi said in a statement just after the speech. “That is why, as one who values the U.S. — Israel relationship, and loves Israel, I was near tears

The House of Representatives’ senior ranking Democrat, Nancy Pelosi, said on Wednesday she was concerned that if Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu spoke to the U.S. Congress in March, it may result in negative ramifications for the ongoing nuclear talks with Iran. The fact that Israel is America’s only ideological ally in the Middle East and that Iran is sworn to the United States’ destruction did not make an appearance in the remarks of the House Minority Leader. “Such a presentation could send the wrong message in terms of giving diplomacy a chance,” Pelosi told reporters outside of a conference...

Whatever. Here’s how seriously you should take her alleged outrage over Netanyahu’s “Bibi knows best” attitude. Back in 2007, while George W. Bush was warning people that Bashar Assad might not be the cuddly would-be “reformer” that Democrats like Hillary Clinton were convinced he was, one prominent liberal flew all the way to Damascus to sit down with Assad and pose for photos. Bush wanted to isolate him; the Democrat in question, convinced that she and her party knew best, had other ideas. Guess who.I also like the idea here that when U.S. intelligence tells you something, you can...

Imagine it is 1942 and Democrat President Franklin D. Roosevelt has just announced a series of appointments to his inner circle and the then Democrat infected Congress did the same. Now imagine the word “Nazi” before the names of each of the people they appointed. Imagine these people actually being certified Nazis instead of certified Muslims: John Brennan, current head of the CIA: Nazi/Muslim; Obama top advisor Valerie Jarrett: Nazi/Muslim born in [Germany] – Iran where her parents still live; Leading Democrat pretender to the presidency, Hillary Clinton’s top advisor, Huma Abedin is a Nazi/Muslim whose mother and brother are...

A solar-power project set to open next month in Nevada has fried 130 birds during tests and will soon join another solar farm in California in avian incineration. If as many birds being burned by solar power farms built in the U.S. were to wash up on our beaches soaked in crude oil from a leaking offshore well, the outrage would be deafening. But as with the wind turbines that now cover acre upon acre of former "pristine" countryside, what amount to avian Cuisinarts slicing and dicing everything that flies, including endangered species, only the crickets are chirping. House Minority...

House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) is leading a delegation to Cuba on Tuesday while Congress is out on recess. It is the first official House delegation trip to Cuba since President Obama announced lifting certain restrictions on Cuba in December. The delegation, which is comprised of eight other Democratic lawmakers specializing in foreign affairs, trade and agriculture, will meet with Cuban government officials, local community leaders, American officials stationed in Cuba, and Cardinal Jaime Ortega y Alamino, the archbishop of Havana. Pelosi said the lawmakers will discuss potential changes in U.S. policies toward Cuba regarding agriculture and trade issues....

Senate Democrats’ filibuster of a funding bill for the Department of Homeland Security that would block deportation amnesty is not about the immigration issue but about respecting President Obama, House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi said Thursday. “This is not a question of protecting illegal people in our country, it’s a question of respecting the authority of the president of the United States,” Mrs. Pelosi, California Democrat, told reporters at her weekly press conference at the Capitol. Current funding for the Department of Homeland Security runs out Feb. 27, but Senate Democrats are blocking the spending bill that includes a prohibition...

In a sometimes heated meeting with Israel’s ambassador to the U.S., several House Democrats expressed anger Wednesday over Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s acceptance of a Republican invitation to address Congress next month. Some of the seven lawmakers—all of whom are Jewish and strong supporters of Israel—urged the prime minister to postpone the speech or hold it somewhere other than Congress, participants said. They told Ambassador Ron Dermer that Netanyahu was unwise to accept a GOP invitation that bypassed President Barack Obama, and to schedule the speech only two weeks before Netanyahu seeks another term in Israel’s elections. The meeting’s purpose...

WASHINGTON — When Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu addresses a joint session of Congress in March, it is unclear whether everybody invited will actually show up. Democrats have criticized House Speaker John Boehner for circumventing the administration when he invited Netanyahu to speak, and the White House has already said Obama will not meet with him when he’s here. BuzzFeed News asked several Senate Democrats whether they planned on skipping the speech or not. Most said they either hadn’t thought about it or they hadn’t decided. But there were no hard answers in the negative. Only one senator definitively said...

Pelosi gropes for a game plan Heading into a retreat in Philadelphia, House members say Democrats have no message and no clear strategy to retake the majority. By LAUREN FRENCH and ANNA PALMER 1/26/15 5:36 AM EST Nancy Pelosi has big problems in her ranks. The California lawmaker is facing some of the most serious unrest she’s ever seen in her dozen years as the leader of the House Democrats: Members complain that the party has no message and no clear plan to retake the majority, despite good news on the economy that should have brought rewards at the polls....

Soon after becoming House Speaker in 2011, Republican John Boehner started running the traps on inviting Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to speak to a joint meeting of Congress. But when Barry Jackson, then Boehner’s chief-of-staff, checked with President Barack Obama’s top advisers, Jackson said he was left waiting a month only to get no response. Ultimately the Netanyahu speech went ahead in May but soon after Jackson faced the opposite problem: the White House had promised South Korea’s leadership an appearance before Congress, he said, without checking first with the speaker. None of these slights justify what seems like...