GOP senators block Ted Cruz move to hold up Loretta Lynch vote  —  Texas Sen. Ted Cruz's strategy of blocking a vote on President Barack Obama's attorney general nominee until the White House relents on immigration executive actions ran into a brick wall Wednesday: his own GOP colleagues.

Boehner's sea of troubles  —  The TV drama “House of Cards,” with all of its fictional backstabbing, looks lame compared to the current, real-life political drama on Capitol Hill starring Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio).  —  The Speaker has the biggest GOP caucus in Congress since the 1920s.

Sources: HHS' Obamacare Contingency Plan Is To Ask States To Contract Exchange Work To The Feds  —  Something odd has been happening with the Supreme Court battle over the legality of subsidies for Obamacare's federally-organized health insurance exchange.  The Obama administration has been claiming …

Furniture Company: Aaron Schock Likely Spent $5,000 On A Replica Of President Obama's Podium  —  The Illinois Republican has a podium that appears to be “The Presidential.”  —  Schock standing behind his custom podium back in his home district of Peoria, Illinois in 2013.

Netanyahu Says No Palestinian State if He Is Re-elected  —  JERUSALEM — Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel said Monday that as long as he is the leader, a Palestinian state would not be established, reversing his support for a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

Op-Ed Michael Douglas finds Judaism and faces anti-Semitism  —  Last summer our family went to Southern Europe on holiday.  During our stay at a hotel, our son Dylan went to the swimming pool.  A short time later he came running back to the room, upset.  A man at the pool had started hurling insults at him.

A Post-Netanyahu Republican Foreign Policy  —  As Israelis prepare to go to the polls tomorrow, it's dawning on a lot of American observers that a defeat for Benjamin Yetanyahu's government—not exactly “likely,” but certainly a decent possibility—could represent a turning point in American as well as Israeli politics.

Al Gore should run for president  —  Democrats need a debate about where their party goes next.  Obamacare's passage marked the rough completion of the social safety net that liberals began constructing during Franklin Delano Roosevelt's presidency.  The end of the Iraq War drained Democrats of their foreign policy fervor.

Marco Rubio's house of horrors  —  A Tallahassee home co-owned by a scandal-plagued ex-congressman is the locus of questions about the senator's finances and judgment.  —  TALLAHASSEE — The brick-fronted tract house with a satellite dish and a yellow fire hydrant in front looks …

Santorum On Putting Bibles In Public Schools: ‘Yes We Can!  Yes We Can!’  —  Former Sen. Rick Santorum (R-PA) issued a passionate call for Bibles in public schools on Saturday during an appearance at a convention of social conservatives in Orlando, Florida.

Ikea Stamps Out Hide-and-Seek Games in Furniture Stores … (Bloomberg) — Ikea has stopped plans by thousands of people to play hide-and-seek in its maze-like stores in the Netherlands.  —  After a spirited round of the children's game attracted hundreds of people to a Belgian Ikea outlet last summer …

The U.K. vs. the U.S. minimum-wage debate: What can we learn?  —  In a recent lecture at the London School of Economics, Prof. Alan Manning, a British economist who has done extensive research on the impact of the national minimum wage in the United Kingdom, said something that caught my ear.

White House office to delete its FOIA regulations  —  WASHINGTON — The White House is removing a federal regulation that subjects its Office of Administration to the Freedom of Information Act, making official a policy under Presidents Bush and Obama to reject all requests for records to that office.

Mother abducts Dutch children to ISIL-held Syrian city  —  32-year-old woman, a Chechnyian native, took her children, aged 7 and 8, to Raqqa, Dutch prosecutors confirm  —  Two Dutch children have been abducted by their mother and taken to the ISIL-held city of Raqqa in Syria, Dutch prosecutors confirmed Monday.

What Jeb Bush is like in person  —  HUDSON, N.H.—Being with former Florida governor Jeb Bush for his first trips to Iowa and New Hampshire last weekend and this one, I found his demeanor to be completely different from those of the dozens of other candidates I have covered in these two states as they tested the presidential waters.

Huckabee Pursues Unconventional Ways to Fund a Campaign  —  In a wood-paneled study lined with books and framed family photos, the prospective presidential candidate looks into the camera.  “I'm Mike Huckabee,” he says with all the folksy charm that propelled a career as a preacher, politician and broadcaster.