Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is canceling a planned visit to the White House on Tuesday, rushing home instead in the wake of an Israeli military raid on ships near its blockade of the Gaza strip.
 

Netanyahu spoke by phone with President Barack Obama Monday morning to inform him of the decision to cancel the visit.

“They agreed to reschedule their meeting at the first opportunity,” the White House said in a statement.

“The President expressed deep regret at the loss of life in today's incident, and concern for the wounded, many of whom are being treated in Israeli hospitals. The President also expressed the importance of learning all the facts and circumstances around this morning's tragic events as soon as possible.”

Obama is scheduled to host Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas at the White House on June 9. Abbas on Monday called the Israeli raid a “slaughter.”

A fast-developing, violent thunderstorm Monday forced President Barack Obama to abruptly cut short Memorial Day remarks at a national cemetery outside Chicago and urge guests to take shelter in their cars until the storm passed.

Obama had just placed a wreath at the edge of a small burial section in Abraham Lincoln National Cemetery and was heading toward the main memorial event when the storm erupted.

“It grew so violent so quickly -- lightning everywhere, very heavy, gusting rains -- that the White House pulled the president out, but not before he went to the microphone and ordered thousands to get to a
place of safety,” said a White House pool report from Anne Kornblut of the Washington Post.

White House Counsel Robert Bauer released a brief statement today saying the White House did nothing wrong at the time it was tryign to get Rep. Joe Sestak, D-Pa., to drop a planned primary challenge against White House favorite Sen Arlen Specter, D-Pa.

Bauer confirmed that White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel enlisted former President Bill Clinton to approach Sestak. Bauer said that Clinton discussed possible appointments to a presidential or Senior Executive Branch Advisory Board.

"Congressman Sestak declined the suggested alternatives, remaining committed to his Senate candidacy," Bauer said.

Sestak went on to defeat Specter in a May 18 primary.

Despite demands that Obama appoint a special prosecutor. Bauer insisted that the talks did not violate federal law. 

"We have concluded that allegations of improper conduct rest on factual errors and lack a basis in the law," Bauer said.

From the White House Press Secretary ...

The President will welcome Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas to the White House on June 9. The President looks forward to reviewing with President Abbas the progress so far in Israeli-Palestinian proximity talks, and how the United States can work with the parties to transition to direct talks. They will also discuss our continuing effort to work cooperatively to develop the institutions that can advance the aspirations of the Palestinian people, and support the establishment of a Palestinian state.

Well, today was the day I went from knucklehead to “ballso” in the annals of presidential press conferences.

Last summer, I was sitting in the first row of the White House East Room during a prime time press conference when I heard President Barack Obama call on me. I grabbed the microphone from the aide kneeling next to me, jumped up, asked a question, then a couple of follow ups.

Alas, my bad hearing led me astray. The president had actually called on Steve Koff of the Cleveland Plain Dealer. I heard it wrong. I later apologized to Koff and took him to lunch at the National Press Club. He was very gracious.

Now, fast forward to Thursday. We were back in the East Room, back for the first full, solo press conference there since the July 22 one last year. Scene of the crime.

To my surprise, we were a few questions in when I thought I heard the president call on me again.

Even the Federal News Service wasn’t sure. Its transcript quoted Obama as saying, “All right. Steve (inaudible surname).”

I wasn’t taking any chances. As Obama waited, I turned to April Ryan of American Urban Radio next to me and asked if he did call on me. She laughed and said yes. Then I turned to Ann Compton of ABC for a second opinion. She nodded yes.

So, I stood and asked my question about the federal response to the Gulf oil spill.

“On April 21st, Admiral Allen tells us, the government started dispatching equipment rapidly to the Gulf, and you just said, on day one, you recognized the enormity of the situation,” I said.

“Yet here we are, 39, 40 days later. You're still having to rush more equipment, more boom. There are still areas of the coast unprotected. Why is it taking so long? And did you really act from day one for a worst-case scenario?”

Within an hour, the Village Voice had kind words about my question in a critique of the reporters who were called on. They gave me a B+, sharing the high grade with Jackie Calmes of the New York Times.

“McClatchy gets the first good resignation towards guilt from Obama in the room. Score for him,” the review said.

“The Ballso of McClatchy shouldn't be underestimated!”

I’ll take it as a compliment. And I didn’t have to crowd out a colleague to get the question in.

So technology is supposed to the answer to stopping oil spills? Then stop asking for my hair, says House Speaker Nancy Pelosi.

"I can tell you, as one who has not been a supporter of expanded offshore drilling, that the industry (has been) coming in very persuasively to say, 'You're thinking in old ways.  The technology is much different.' Well, the technology to drill may be different, but the technology to clean up is not." 

And here's her evidence:

"I went to get a haircut the other day and it asked — they had a sign in there that said:  Will all of you donate your hair to send to the Gulf for cleanup?

"Could that be more primitive?  And I don't even have to go into some of the others, the other suggestions that are there." 

So Pelosi, D-Calif., figures it this way: "If the technology has advanced that the drilling is okay, they should have said: 'Women across America have to donate their hair if this doesn't work.'

"But they didn't really say it that way.  The technology making it safer implied, I think, that we would avoid this kind of thing." 

The director of the Minerals Management Service, Elizabeth Birnbaum, has been fired in the wake of the Gulf oil spill, a govemrment official tells McClatchy.

The House of Representatives Thursday will try to end its struggle over extending jobless benefits and changing Medicare payment rates to doctors, after some last-minute revisions aimed at wooing moderate Democrats.

The House is expected to consider revised legislation that would extend funding for benefits for long-term jobless workers through the end of November, and scale back Medicare payment cuts through next year, not 2013 as originally proposed.

That change, as well as others, should mean the bill increases the deficit $84 billion over 10 years, according to the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office. CBO had pegged the deficit increase of the original legislation at $133.8 billion, too much for many Democratic moderates as well as Republicans.

The new plan is expected to attract few if any GOP votes, but is seen as getting enough Democrats to pass. It would then go to the Senate, where 60 votes would be needed to cut off debate, and Democrats control 59 seats.

President Obama at a news conference today -- his first in nearly a year -- will discuss the findings of a 30-day safety review on offshore drilling.

According to an administration official he'll announce standards "to strengthen oversight of the industry and enhance safety." He'll also announce that a moratorium on permits to drill new deepwater wells will continue for a period of six months.

"In addition, the planned exploration off the coast of Alaska in the Chukchi and Beaufort seas will be delayed pending the (presidential) commission's review and the August lease sale in the Western Gulf will be cancelled. The lease sale off the coast of Virginia will also be cancelled due to environmental concerns and concerns raised by the Defense Department."

Interior Secretary Ken Salazar briefed Obama and senior advisors on the report Wednesday night in the Oval Office.