Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas is a rising Republican power in House, as well as a whip  —  The beginning of the collapse of House Speaker John A. Boehner's border bill came Wednesday evening, when Texas Sen. Ted Cruz gathered more than a dozen House Republicans at his office in the Dirksen building on Capitol Hill.

LIVE UPDATES: IDF soldier feared taken captive in Gaza; U.S., UN chief condemn Hamas  —  Israel releases names to two soldiers killed Friday morning; heavy fighting in southern Gaza; mortars fire continues; Livni: Hamas will pay a heavy price.  —  Indications suggest an Israeli soldier …

Kaiser Health Tracking Poll: July 2014  —  Liz Hamel and Jamie Firth and Mollyann Brodie … Unfavorable Views Of ACA Increase In July  —  After remaining steady for several months, the share of the public expressing an unfavorable view of the health care law rose to 53 percent in July …

THE EMPLOYMENT SITUATION — JULY 2014  —  Total nonfarm payroll employment increased by 209,000 in July, and the unemployment rate was little changed at 6.2 percent, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics reported today.  Job gains occurred in professional and business services, manufacturing, retail trade, and construction.

It's About the Lying  —  John Brennan at the Council on Foreign Relations on March 11.  2014. Photo Credit: Council on Foreign Relations  —  I don't want to understate how seriously wrong it is that the CIA searched Senate computers.  Our constitutional order is seriously out of whack …

Vice President Biden loves to skinny dip, says tell-all book  —  Naked from head to Joe?  In ‘The First Family Detail,’ author Robert Kessler quotes unnamed Secret Service agents dishing about the private lives of Presidents and those they protect.  —  It's the Joe Biden you didn't know — and might not want to see.

Senate blocks aid to Israel  —  In the end, the Senate couldn't even agree to deliver emergency aid to one of the United States' closest allies.  —  A last-ditch effort to deliver aid to Israel during its war with Hamas died on the Senate floor, as Republicans blocked the proposal over concerns that it would increase the debt.

California Is Now Experiencing Its Most Severe Drought Ever Recorded  —  Irrigation water runs along a dried-up ditch between rice farms in Richvale, Calif.  —  California's drought has reached levels so high and widespread that it's now the most severe drought ever recorded by the federal government …

Ebola-Stricken Doc Gives ‘Experimental Serum’ to Coworker … An American doctor being treated for Ebola in Liberia has “taken a slight turn for the worse overnight,” according to Samaritan's Purse, an evangelical Christian Charity based in North Carolina.  —  An “experimental serum” …

The secret George W. Bush book project  —  George W. Bush worked on the book in secret for two years, without a book deal, without dribbling a word out to Bush alums or other Republicans who would have leaked it in a second.  As far as the outside world knew, he was just spending all of that time working on his paintings.

UN CONDEMNS ISRAEL'S LATEST WAR CRIME: NOT SHARING IRON DOME WITH HAMAS  —  The UN's top human rights official again condemned Israel for its military actions to stop Hamas rocket attacks against Israeli civilians, accusing the Jewish state of “deliberately defying International Law... in a way that may constitute war crimes.”