In an interview with Politico yesterday, Rep. Joe Walsh (R-IL) downplayed his opponent Tammy Duckworth’s military service and injury.

Duckworth, who served in Iraq and then at the VA, lost both legs and part of her arm in combat. Walsh’s response? Ehhh:

“I have so much respect for what she did in the fact that she sacrificed her body for this country,” said Walsh, simultaneously lowering his voice as he leaned forward before pausing for dramatic effect. “Ehhh. Now let’s move on.”

“What else has she done? Female, wounded veteran … ehhh,” he continued. “She is nothing more than a handpicked Washington bureaucrat. David Axelrod, Rahm Emanuel just picked her up and dropped her into this district.”

Walsh has since tried to walk back his statement. “I often catch myself when I’m talking. I meant something other than how it came out,” he told Chicagomag.com, although he did not expound on what he meant. But Walsh’s insulting comment is just another instance in a long, long, long line of offensive behavior against a range of marginalized groups.

Tensions are high today in Israel-Palestine as thousands of protesters are expected to participate in what organizers have billed a “Global March to Jerusalem.” Activists from neighboring countries will march to the Israeli border, according to organizers, to “demonstrate solidarity with Palestinians and to protect Jerusalem.”

The march coincides with Palestinian “Land Day,” which commemorates the 1976 protests against Israeli expropriation of Palestinian land, in which six Palestinian Israelis were killed and hundreds wounded by Israeli forces. Clashes have already occurred between Palestinian protesters and Israeli security forces inside the occupied West Bank and East Jerusalem earlier today.

While the march was planned as “non-violent civil resistance,” the event has received legitimate criticism because of organizers’ condemnation of Israel as a “racist, Zionist state,” and because of the support it has received from groups like Hamas, Hezbollah, and the government of Iran. Critics note that the goal of some extremists is to create a crisis by provoking a violent Israeli response.

Unfortunately, some conservatives are also quite happy to encourage that violence. Noah Pollak, the executive director of the neoconservative Emergency Committee for Israel (ECI), tweeted his own preferences this morning:

Much like his ECI colleague Rachel Abrams, Pollak has a history of exhorting violence on Twitter:

Pollak also raised eyebrows last year when, after he praised President Obama’s May 19 speech calling for Israeli-Palestinian negotiations based on the 1967 lines with mutually agreed swaps, ECI turned around and attacked the president for the speech.

Yesterday during a policy discussion hosted by the National Journal, Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI), the House GOP’s supposed budget guru, said that America’s top military brass were lying about their support for President Obama’s Pentagon budget. When asked why the GOP’s budget — which passed the House yesterday — ignores the generals advice and increases military spending, Ryan replied, “We don’t think the generals are giving us their true advice.”

Joint Chiefs of Staff chairman Martin Dempsey fired back at Ryan, the Wall Street Journal reports:

“There’s a difference between having someone say they don’t believe what you said versus … calling us, collectively, liars,” Gen. Dempsey told reporters aboard a U.S. military aircraft after a four day visit to Latin America. ”My response is: I stand by my testimony. This was very much a strategy-driven process to which we mapped the budget.”

Dempsey — who said in February that the Pentagon’s new budget will “maintain our military’s decisive edge and help sustain America’s global leadership” — added that the budget “was a collaborative effort” among the nation’s top military officers as well as combat leaders.

Pentagon spokesman George Little also responded to Ryan’s comments yesterday. “We value Congress’s oversight role and the secretary expects honest, straightforward input from our military leadership,” he said, adding, “and he believes that’s precisely what they do on a military basis time and time and time again.”