For the first time in American history, a chamber of Congress has authorized its leader to sue the President of the United States.

In a 225-201 vote, the House of Representatives backed Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) in his decision to file a lawsuit against President Obama over his handling of the Affordable Care Act. Boehner and other Republicans allege that Obama has flouted his constitutional authority by unilaterally extending deadlines in the law, particularly those related to the employer mandate penalties.

As RT noted previously, the president delayed the mandate - which would penalize employers who chose not to offer health insurance to their workers - for one year back in July 2013. When it was supposed to take effect this year, it was again pushed back into 2015. If filed, the lawsuit would attempt to make Obama implement the ACA exactly on the timetable that was originally passed by Congress - despite Republican attempts to repeal the legislation in its entirety.

A friend of mine recently sent me a link to a podcast and transcript from prominent author, neuroscientist, and atheist Sam Harris entitled Why Don't I Criticize Israel?. In it, Harris expressed his "enlightened" position on Israel/Palestine, one which he obviously feels is rooted in fairness, morality, and reason. I mean, hell, this is the founder and CEO of Project Reason after all. Despite my inclination to throw my laptop against the wall, lose my lunch, or simply rip out my hair, I managed to force myself to read the entire screed. Finally, with beads of rage-sweat forming on my forehead, and my face turning the color of Harris's Stanford alma mater, I felt compelled to respond.

Now, I should admit that I know little about Harris's other works - I haven't read his books on religion and neuroscience for example - so I am not attacking his body of work. In doing some basic research, I've found many statements he's made regarding Islam, Israel, and a host of issues with which I take major issue and, in a different context, would vigorously challenge. However, here I am restricting myself solely to his recent comments on Israel/Palestine. It should be remembered, especially by people who might read this months or even years from now, that Harris's comments (July 27, 2014) were made in the midst of one of the most vicious and brutal Israeli aggressions against the Palestinian people in recent years. And that's saying a lot considering the long and sordid recent history of Israeli aggressions.

This is not to say that I want to base my refutation solely on emotional arguments. On the contrary, I prefer to ground my comments on factual bases that not only refute Harris's distortions, but hopefully provide ammunition to others to take on Israeli apologists, Jewish and Christian Zionists of all stripes, and generally anyone who tries to "condemn everyone equally." Why? Because the war against the Palestinian people is a war against all people who believe in justice and morality, peace and progress. It is a propaganda war and, despite their millions of dollars, lobbyists, public relations teams, and apologists in every field from academia to entertainment and politics, we are winning. That being said, part of the fight is in never letting them go unchallenged. And Sam Harris will not go unchallenged.

Below, I will reproduce a few of the key quotes from Harris's podcast/transcript in quotes.

Israel has said it is calling up another 16,000 reserves following a security cabinet meeting that decided to keep up military operations in Gaza, ignoring international pressure for an immediate ceasefire.

The move will allow the Israeli military to substantially widen its 23-day campaign against Hamas, which has already claimed more than 1,360 Palestinian lives - most of them civilians - and reduced entire Gaza neighbourhoods to rubble. Fifty-six Israeli soldiers and three Israeli civilians have died during the campaign.

Israel has now called up a total of 86,000 reserves during the Gaza conflict. At least 19 air strikes were carried out overnight, officials said.

Against a background of heavy fighting in Gaza and the shelling of a UN-run school, the Israeli prime minister, Binyamin Netanyahu, convened his senior colleagues in a security cabinet on Wednesday to discuss the crisis amid warnings that Hamas's demands for lifting the siege of the Palestinian coastal enclave were a "non-starter" and stalling ceasefire efforts in Cairo.

A global outpouring of sympathy for the Palestinian cause has again arisen since Israel launched Operation Protective Edge in Gaza earlier this month. And the only people who seem unmoved by scenes of indiscriminate bloodletting are Israelis themselves.

As the operation enters its fourth week, the death toll has reached almost 1,400, while over 7,000 have been injured. Cases of entire families being killed in airstrikes have become routine. Images depicting mangled and dismembered men, women and children showcase the appalling violence that the people of Gaza are forced to endure.

Gaza's only power plant, which supplies the territory with two-thirds of its energy needs, has recently been destroyed, which further impedes the work of overcrowded and under supplied medical facilities tasked with treating the thousands of injured civilians who have fallen victim to Israel's strikes from air, land and sea.

Hospitals, schools, refugee camps, and mosques have been targeted by Israel, whose leadership has defied international calls for an unconditional ceasefire. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has signaled that the operation will continue in the long-term, appeasing hawkish ministers and media figures that have called for an expanded assault on Gaza.

Israel claims the ongoing operation is necessary to impede the military capabilities of Hamas, which it accuses of launching unprovoked rocket fire into Israel's territory. Another precursor was the kidnapping and murder of three teenage Jewish settlers who were hitchhiking in the West Bank, whose bodies were discovered in late June.

A new Holocaust is imminent, if one is to believe Israeli MPs, who spent the afternoon berating European officials about the growing antiwar protests across their countries, centered on criticizing the Israeli invasion of the Gaza Strip.

Officials blamed "one-sided" media reports on the large number of dead civilians in Israel's attack, and demanded the European Union impose "strict regulations on the format and content" of antiwar demonstrations going forward.

A UK battle group will take part in a major military training exercise with other NATO forces to "reassure" allies in Eastern Europe during a period of heightened regional tensions, the Foreign Office has announced.

In the biggest commitment to the region since 2008, the UK's full battle group will comprise of 1,350 personnel and more than 350 armored and other vehicles.

Speaking during a visit to Warsaw with UK Foreign Secretary Philip Hammond, Defense Secretary Michael Fallon said Exercise Black Eagle was one of a series of planned NATO maneuvers due to take place throughout the autumn in support of its allies in Eastern Europe and the Baltic states.

It is right that #NATO members & partners demonstrate commitment to the collective security of our allies in Eastern Europe- Michael Fallon
- UK Delegation, NATO (@UKNATO) July 29, 2014

"We have a strong opportunity at the NATO summit to discuss how we will continue our response to Russia's illegal annexation of Crimea and its destabilization of eastern Ukraine," Fallon said. "The UK is playing a central role and we are not ruling out further enhancements."

EU migrants in Britain will be stripped of benefits after three months as part of a broader policy shift to tighten the UK's stance on immigration, Prime Minister David Cameron said.

The new measures are designed to relay the message to immigrants that they cannot expect "something for nothing", Cameron announced Tuesday. The Prime Minister also hopes they will address what he describes as a "magnetic pull of Britain's benefit system".

The planned policy shift has been announced as the Prime Minister attempts to deflate heated criticism from right-wing Tory factions about the coalition's probable failure of reaching previously outlined targets on reducing immigration levels.

Labour have dubbed the proposed measures a convenient diversionary tactic cultivated to detract attention from the government's effective failure on immigration.

These legislative changes, which apply to child tax credit, child benefit and job seeker's allowance will be implemented in November and are compatible with EU law, according to the government.

Quantifying the Effects of Regime Change

Since 2001, the U.S. has undertaken regime change in Iraq, Afghanistan and Libya.

All 3 countries are now in chaos ... and extremists are more in control than ever.

Iraq

In Iraq, hardcore Islamic jihadis known as ISIS have taken over much of the country - shown in red as the new "Islamic State" or self-described caliphate - using captured American weapons:

Christians are being rounded up and killed, and Christian leaders in Iraq say the end of Christianity in Iraq is "very near". But as we documented in 2012, Saddam Hussein - for all his faults - was a secular leader who tolerated Christians.

The cash filled three suitcases: 5 million euros.

The German official charged with delivering this cargo arrived here aboard a nearly empty military plane and was whisked away to a secret meeting with the president of Mali, who had offered Europe a face-saving solution to a vexing problem.

Officially, Germany had budgeted the money as humanitarian aid for the poor, landlocked nation of Mali. In truth, all sides understood that the cash was bound for an obscure group of Islamic extremists who were holding 32 European hostages, according to six senior diplomats directly involved in the exchange.

The suitcases were loaded onto pickup trucks and driven hundreds of miles north into the Sahara, where the bearded fighters, who would soon become an official arm of Al Qaeda, counted the money on a blanket thrown on the sand. The 2003 episode was a learning experience for both sides. Eleven years later, the handoff in Bamako has become a well-rehearsed ritual, one of dozens of such transactions repeated all over the world.

Kidnapping Europeans for ransom has become a global business for Al Qaeda, bankrolling its operations across the globe.

While European governments deny paying ransoms, an investigation by The New York Times found that Al Qaeda and its direct affiliates have taken in at least $125 million in revenue from kidnappings since 2008, of which $66 million was paid just last year.

In news releases and statements, the United States Treasury Department has cited ransom amounts that, taken together, put the total at around $165 million over the same period.

These payments were made almost exclusively by European governments, who funneled the money through a network of proxies, sometimes masking it as development aid, according to interviews conducted for this article with former hostages, negotiators, diplomats and government officials in 10 countries in Europe, Africa and the Middle East. The inner workings of the kidnapping business were also revealed in thousands of pages of internal Qaeda documents found by this reporter while on assignment for The Associated Press in northern Mali last year.

In its early years, Al Qaeda received most of its money from deep-pocketed donors, but counterterrorism officials now believe the group finances the bulk of its recruitment, training and arms purchases from ransoms paid to free Europeans.

Put more bluntly, Europe has become an inadvertent underwriter of Al Qaeda.

More evidence has been entered into the files of public record that terrorist organizations such as al-Qaeda, ISIS, and the al-Nusra Front are completely controlled by the CIA and other Western intelligence agencies.

In fact, according to Nabil Na'eem, founding member of the Islamic Democratic Jihad Party and a former commander of al-Qaeda, all current al-Qaeda affiliates are nothing more than offshoots of an overarching CIA terror operation. He also claimed that these groups will eventually be turned against Saudi Arabia, despite the fact that Saudi Arabia has acted as a bankroller and facilitator for them for years on end.

Na'eem made his statements during the course of an interview with al-Maydeen , a Beirut-based news agency that serves a number of countries in the Middle East. The interview was translated by Arabi Souri of Syria News.