Vox Sentences: Mr. Netanyahu goes to Washington

1. Bibi goes to Boehner

Obama and Netanyahu on October 1, 2014. (Win McNamee/Getty Images)

• House Speaker John Boehner has invited Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to address a joint session of Congress on February 11.

  [The Speaker of the House of Representatives]

• Netanyahu would become the first foreign leader since Winston Churchill to address Congress three times.

  [The Atlantic / Russell Berman]

• Boehner says he did not consult the White House before inviting Netanyahu.

  [Sean Sullivan]

• Max Fisher: "By reaching out to Netanyahu directly and setting up a visit without the knowledge of the White House, he is undermining not just Obama's policies but his very leadership of US foreign policy."

  [Vox / Max Fisher]

• Netanyahu will speak on Iran; he's taken a harder tack than Obama with regards to their nuclear ambitions.

• His visit comes as a bipartisan group of senators is trying to enact harsher sanctions against Iran.

  [NYT / Michael Shear]

• Sen. Bob Menendez (D-NJ), the top Democrat on the Foreign Relations committee: "The more I hear from the administration and its quotes, the more it sounds like talking points that come straight out of Tehran."

  [CNN / Dana Bash and Deirdre Walsh]

2. Yemen

Houthi rebels. (Mohammed Hamoud/Anadolu Agency/Getty Images)

• The Houthis, a Shia rebel group resisting the Sunni-dominated Yemeni government, took control of the presidential palace in the country's capital of Sana'a.

  [Vox / Zack Beauchamp]

• As of tonight, President Abdu Rabbu Mansour Hadi appears to have made a deal with the Houthis, acquiescing to many of their demands in exchange for withdrawing troops from the palace and other areas.

  [NYT / Shuaib Almosawa and Kareem Fahim]

• The deal reportedly includes a Houthi role in drafting a new constitution, greater Houthi representation in parliament, and turning Yemen into a federal state.

  [Washington Post / Ali al-Mujahed and Hugh Naylor]

• NYT: "Analysts and diplomats said on Wednesday that the Houthis had become Yemen’s de facto ruling power."

  [NYT / Shuaib Almosawa and Kareem Fahim]

• Many, including the US, claim that deposed president Ali Abdullah Saleh, who left office in 2012 following the Arab Spring, has been supporting the Houthis.

  [AFP]

• The Houthi rebellion is totally separate from the rebellion in southern Yemen by al-Qaeda in the Arab Peninsula (AQAP) and Ansar al-Sharia, a related group. AQAP has claimed responsibility in the Charlie Hebdo attack, though the true extent of its involvement is still unclear.

  [Vox / Zack Beauchamp]

• Under the deal, southern Yemen will also get greater participation in government, along with the Houthis.

  [Washington Post / Ali al-Mujahed and Hugh Naylor]

3. Scot-free

Photos of Officer Darren Wilson, found on Facebook by Yahoo News

• According to a New York Times report, ex-Ferguson police officer Darren Wilson won't face federal charges for shooting and killing Michael Brown.

  [Vox / German Lopez]

• The Justice Department has the option of pursuing charges against Wilson for violating Brown's civil rights, even though a grand jury declined to charge Wilson with murder or manslaughter in November.

  [Vox / German Lopez]

• The department's investigation of the Ferguson Police Department in general, however, remains open.

  [NYT / Matt Apuzzo and Michael Schmidt]

4. Misc.

• The Senate voted down an amendment saying that human activity is causing global warming 50-49 because individual senators don't accept science and Senate rules don't accept arithmetic.

  [Vox / Brad Plumer]

• Here's how Paper Magazine made sure their website could hold up when their Kim Kardashian photoshoot "broke the internet."

  [Medium / Paul Ford]

• Apocalypse Now, Zodiac, and a slew of Bond movies disappear from Netflix on February 1.

  [Slate / Dee Lockett]

• A stranger halfway across the world emails you to say he's about to kill himself. What do you do? What can you do?

  [Washington Post / Cynthia McCabe]

5. Verbatim

• "To even try to answer them is to enter a terrain where every assertion starts to sound like a plotline from Homeland."

  [Newsweek / Alexander Nazaryan]

• "The show was a sexualized riff on the Island of Misfit Toys, plus industrial metal (the soundtrack was Rammstein)."

  [Matter / Emily Witt]

• "The only operetta ever written about Subpart F of the Internal Revenue Code made its debut on a rainy Sunday evening in May 1990, in a Fifth Avenue apartment overlooking Central Park."

  [Businessweek / Zachary Mider]

• "Here's how Killer Mike says you should ask someone on a date: 'I like you. Do you like me? If so, let's go get some lunch.'"

  [The Verge / Lizzie Plaugic]

• "People ask me why I ski.¹ … ¹No one has ever asked me this. No one ever asks people questions like this."

  [Jason Kottke]

• "In a classic study of prisoners in Massachusetts, psychiatrist Stuart Grassian of Harvard identified a specific psychiatric syndrome associated with solitary confinement, whose symptoms include hyper-responsivity to external stimuli, such as noise; illusions and hallucinations; panic attacks; difficulties with thinking, concentration, and memory; intrusive obsessional thoughts; the emergence of primitive aggressive ruminations; overt paranoia; and problems with impulse control, sometimes involving violence and self-mutilation."

  [Vanity Fair / Ted Conover]