Some lawmakers on both sides agreed that the legislation's proposed process to block gun sales would not work in practice.
The decision was a blow to conservationists who had used the permit process to block the silty runoff from logging, which they said choked forest streams.
While the White House has blamed recalcitrant Senate Democrats for the larger appropriations stalemate, Democrats have charged that the administration is manipulating the process to block spending increases, even for vital national security projects.
Prof Rodney Brazier of Manchester University told MPs he could think of four examples between 1868 and 1999 when the government used the process to block a private member's bill.
In Washington, Gov. Christine Gregoire, a Democrat, said she was open to using the state budget process to block Attorney General Rob McKenna, a Republican, from spending money on the suit.
Three years ago, Mr. Giuliani used the charter revision process to block a referendum on whether the city should be allowed to build a new Yankee Stadium outside the Bronx, and two years ago, he appointed the commission to review the charter with the goal of stopping Public Advocate Mark Green from taking over the city if the mayor left his job for the United States Senate.
North acknowledged that he wasn't shy in voicing his opposition to Pebble, or advocating the use of the 404(c) process to block it, but he said that this, too, was in keeping with his appropriate role under the Clean Water Act.
Throughout his career, however, those enemies regularly rescued him: in the 80s, the banning of his cheap fares policies by the Law Lords, and Thatcher's abolition of the GLC, turned him into a democratic martyr; 15 years later, Blair's shameless rigging of Labour's selection process to block Livingstone helped him win a landslide as London's first elected mayor.
The blocks were made by our partner as a result of their process to block harmful URLs.
With iOS 7, it's finally a pretty straightforward process to block people from calling, messaging, or FaceTime-ing (FaceTiming? Facing? Agh).
