Some interesting speculation, grounded in facts, from David Bernstein writing in the Washington Post. It appears that the White House engineered a controversy over the invitation from Speaker Boehner to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu by claiming the invite violated "protocol" because the Israeli PM didn't inform the White House he was coming. At issue is the timing of the invite. Boehner notififed the White House he was going to invite Bibi and a few hours later Netanyahu accepted - without first telling Washington. The administration twisted this admittedly questionable sequence by first claiming that Boehner never informed them of the invite, and the when that was exposed as a lie, came down on Bibi for his not following diplomatic procedures. The bottom line, as Bernstein notes and as AT's Ed Lasky pointed out in his article on January 31,what happened with the invitation was not dissimilar to circumstances surrounding the 2011 invite from...(Read Full Post)