http://www.americanthinker.com/2013/05/hope_and_fear_obama_into_2014.html#.UZt6badBefk.email

http://www.americanthinker.com/2011/07/tyrannus_obama_rex.html#.UZt2vabFeY0.email

Obama and the IRS: The Smoking Gun?
President met with anti-Tea Party IRS union chief the day before
agency targeted Tea Party.
http://spectator.org/archives/2013/05/20/obama-and-the-irs-the-smoking

http://www.americanthinker.com/2011/10/obama_cant_wait_for_the_rule_of_law.html#.UZt34cSDeiY.email

http://politicsdaily.com/2009/05/05/more-chrysler-investors-describe-obama-hardball-tactics/?a_dgi=aolshare_email

http://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2012/10/obama_lawlessness_part_ii.html#.UZt3bMStYZk.email

http://www.americanthinker.com/2012/07/the_amazing_presidential_power-grab.html#.UZt2EJB_WU4.email

Senate staffers told Breitbart News that Judiciary Committee Chairman Sen. Pat Leahy (D-VT) and “Gang of Eight” members appear to be attempting to use the cover of multiple scandals hitting the Obama administration to rush the proposed immigration reform bill out of committee and onto the Senate floor.

On Monday night, the Judiciary Committee worked on a markup until around 10 p.m. One Senate staffer close to the process told Breitbart News that “the expectation is that they will pull an all night session on Tuesday and try to pass the bill out of committee tomorrow.”
Another staffer, a Republican Senate aide, told Breitbart News that this is indicative of the the Gang of Eight push to pass this bill as fast as they can to minimize public scrutiny. “There is a relentless drive to push this bill through at any cost because it’s backers know that once the American people find out what’s in it they will rise up against it,” the aide said.
The bill is expected to eventually make it out of committee, but thus far it is unclear if it would pass the entire U.S. Senate.

http://www.breitbart.com/Big-Government/2013/05/20/Sources-Senate-Democrats-attempting-to-rush-immigration-bill-through-committee-process-under-cover-of-scandal

In politics, as in comedy, timing is everything. We have almost a year and a half until the midterms, three and a half until the presidential election. We can expect Obama to remain the worst crisis manager ever, making every mistake in the textbooks. He has already nudged a critical mass of MSM players out of playing defense for him and aggressively joining the hunt for the truth. Generations of journalists have longed for another Watergate, and here we have a president caught looking positively Nixonian.

Nixon, at least, had experience with a hostile press. Obama is so clueless that he thinks sending his spokesmen out to lie in the face of evidence or to claim “the law is irrelevant” might work, instead of making matters worse. One can only conclude that the truth must be highly damaging, and that, as the hoariest cliché of modern politics goes, the cover-up is always worse than the crime.

Congressional Democrats face a serious quandary. The most important single constituency of the party, blacks, provides, and will demand of their office holders, continuing overwhelming support for President Obama. But they risk losing other support if they make excuses for or try to obstruct discovery of what looks like a pervasive pattern of political abuse aimed at winning an election.

Our focus must be on getting out the truth, gathering evidence and accumulating a clear picture of who did what, with subpoenaed documents and sworn testimony. There is every sign there is plenty more to come when it comes to evidence of political abuse, some of it crossing the lines of legality. In the process of discovery, it is easy for process crimes to occur (ask Scooter Libby) and for the squeeze to be put on people implicated in conspiracy to obstruct justice or other process crimes. THey reveal who told them what to do. You follow the evidence upward. It takes time.

And that’s a good thing. Let Obama and his Democrat allies stew in the juices of scandal. We need to put them on the spot, forcing them to either tie their future to Obama, a sinking ship, or declare themselves on the side of truth and the American People. Sooner or later, some Democrats will break with the president and try to save their own skins b y supporting the inquiries. Somewhere along the line, Hillary and Obama will start behaving like two scorpions in a bottle, desperate to escape blame for the Benghazi slaughter and lies. Then we start to see the Democratic Party split. The Clintons have a lot of tools at their disposal. Perhaps we will even learn where Obama was the night of 9/11/12.

If impeachment is to be raised, and I don’t rule it out in the long run, it will have to be a bipartisan affair. Otherwise, Obama will become a martyr to crazed Republicans, out to lynch-by-impeachment the first black president, and race relations will be further shattered. If no Democrats jump ship, then bypassing the opportunity to put Biden in the White House will be the order of the day. Does anyone think he would do a better job? Obama is terrible president, to be sure, but we have to not just get rid of him but undo the damage he and the progressives have wrought during his presidency and before.

We already see the excuses being made for Obama: he is President Passerby, so detached from his job that things just got out of hand. David Axelrod’s remark that the government is just too big to control is precisely the point we need to drive home.

Above all, Republicans should avoid being seen as out to get Obama. As we saw in the case of the Clinton impeachment, a good talker like Clinton or Obama can turn the tables on those who appear to be zealous enemies operating out of animus.

http://www.americanthinker.com/2013/05/never_mind_impeachment_keep_your_eyes_on_the_prize.html

The organization’s IRS filings list another Virginia address that is actually a drug rehab center where the foundation does not appear ever to have been based.

The Barack H. Obama Foundation is run by Abon’go “Roy” Malik Obama, the half-brother of Barack Obama.

As first reported by The Daily Caller, the foundation was speedily approved for IRS exemption by Lois Lerner, the IRS senior official at the center of the targeting of conservative organizations that have waited over two years to receive tax exempt status.

The charity was even given retroactive tax-exempt status despite never having bothered to apply for it. And its history of soliciting donations before receiving tax-exempt status was apparently overlooked.

The address listed on the site barackhobamafoundation.org is 107 S. West St. #401, Alexandria, Va., which houses a UPS store on a street that includes a tailor, a Catholic Charities thrift shop and a Gold Works jewelry store.

“They probably just rent a mailbox here or receive mail here,” said a UPS employee when asked if the store was the address for the Barack H. Obama Foundation. She did not know if Malik Obama, who his website says divides his time between Kenya and Virginia, had been in to the store.

A visit to the UPS store revealed that there is a mailbox numbered 401.

The address listed in the group’s IRS filings — 4201 Wilson Blvd. Ste 110-152, Arlington, Va. 22030 — is even more suspicious, as it is a marketing center for A Better Today Recovery Services — a drug-and-alcohol treatment organization.

A receptionist who answered the phone at A Better Today said neither she nor anybody in the office had heard of the Barack H. Obama Foundation. She said A Better Today had been located at the Arlington address for “a couple years.” The IRS filings that list the Arlington address as the foundation’s headquarters were dated May 2011.

“I don’t know if it’s listed wrong or what’s going on, but we have never heard of that,” the receptionist said, adding that A Better Today had never received calls or correspondence related to the Barack H. Foundation.

Although the future president’s 1995 book “Dreams From My Father” depicted the foundation’s namesake, Barack H. Obama, Sr., as a heavy drinker who lost both legs in a car accident, the foundation does not appear to take any interest in addiction treatment.

The foundation’s mission statement is “to provide people everywhere with resources to uplift their welfare and living standards in memory of Barack H. Obama: in the region of his birth, Kenya, and beyond.”

Its guiding principle is “the inherent belief that no one can truly enjoy the riches he has reaped if his neighbor suffers. … We seek to elevate the human condition so that everyone can live in dignity and truly enjoy having one another as neighbors.”

Despite raising more than $250,000, the alleged charity doesn’t seem to have done much. Its website claims the organization has built a madrassa and was building an imam’s house as well as some “proposed latrines,” but there is no other evidence that the nonprofit was working to “mitigate social-shortcomings in areas of education and literacy, health and well-being, poverty, and lack of community infrastructure in such basic needs such as water, electricity, shelter and sustenance,” as the site says.

Alton Ray Baysden, a former Department of State employee and registered Republican who helped to start the foundation, declined to comment before seeing copies of this reporter’s passport and government ID, along with a description of the article’s “motivation” and “slant.”

Repeated phone calls to the Barack H. Foundation went to the organization’s voicemail and were not returned.

Read more: http://dailycaller.com/2013/05/20/tax-exempt-obama-foundation-doesnt-exist-at-listed-addresses/#ixzz2Ts3368Ms

The White House press corps posed several angry questions to Obama administration spokesperson Jay Carney about the James Rosen case in his daily briefing Monday. The Washington Post revealed Sunday that Rosen, who works for the Fox News Channel, had been the target of unusual surveillance by the Department of Justice, which treated his reports on North Korea as potential crimes against national security.

Showing unusual fight, reporters such as Jonathan Karl of ABC News and Major Garrett of CBS News were visibly angry as they challenged Carney’s evasive responses. Carney refused to condemn or comment on the way in which the Department of Justice had treated Rosen, other than to emphasize President Barack Obama’s general support for the First Amendment and to stress that the case was an ongoing criminal investigation.

A stunned Garrett asked Carney whether he considered the ordinary activity of journalism–which relies on administration sources–to be a crime. Carney ducked, emphasizing the importance of preventing national security leaks. Carney also provoked frustration among reporters after revealing that senior White House staffers knew about a probe into the IRS scandal. Last week, he only said the White House counsel had known.

Journalists were surprised at Carney’s insistence that senior staff had known several weeks prior to the release of the Inspector General’s report, but that they had not told President Obama–and that withholding such information was entirely “appropriate.” When Carney insisted that the president had shown “outrage,” he was reminded that the president’s outrage only came after the IRS scandal was made public–not when it was known internally.

Update: Another journalist challenged Carney to explain what he would have done had he, as a former journalist, faced the sort of crackdown at Time for reporting on the Valeria Plame scandal that Rosen faced at Fox News for writing about North Korea. Carney declined to answer the question, calling it a “hypothetical,” and referred further questions to the Department of Justice due to the ongoing criminal investigation into Rosen.

see video >>> http://www.breitbart.com/Big-Journalism/2013/05/20/WH-Press-Corps-Shows-Rare-Anger-over-Rosen-Case

On the 40th anniversary of the cold-blooded murder of a New Jersey state trooper, the fugitive convicted of the killing, Joanne Chesimard, has been named a Most Wanted Terrorist by the FBI—the first woman ever to make the list.

Officials from the FBI and the New Jersey State Police made the announcement this morning during a press conference, noting that the FBI is offering a reward of up to $1 million for information leading to the apprehension of Chesimard, who is believed to be living in Cuba under political asylum. Additionally, the state of New Jersey is offering an independent reward of up to $1 million, bringing the total maximum reward to $2 million.

“Joanne Chesimard is a domestic terrorist who murdered a law enforcement officer execution-style,” said Aaron Ford, special agent in charge of our Newark Division. “Today, on the anniversary of Trooper Werner Foerster’s death, we want the public to know that we will not rest until this fugitive is brought to justice.”

“This case is just as important today as it was when it happened 40 years ago,” added Mike Rinaldi, a lieutenant in the New Jersey State Police and member of our Joint Terrorism Task Force (JTTF) in Newark. “Bringing Joanne Chesimard back here to face justice is still a top priority,” he said.

On May 2, 1973, Chesimard and a pair of accomplices were stopped by two troopers for a motor vehicle violation on the New Jersey Turnpike. At the time, Chesimard—a member of the violent revolutionary activist organization known as the Black Liberation Army—was wanted for her involvement in several felonies, including bank robbery.

Chesimard and her accomplices opened fire on the troopers. One officer was wounded, and his partner—Trooper Foerster—was shot and killed at point-blank range. One of Chesimard’s accomplices was killed in the shoot-out and the other was arrested and remains in jail.

Chesimard fled but was apprehended. In 1977, she was found guilty of first-degree murder, armed robbery, and other crimes and was sentenced to life in prison. Less than two years later, she escaped from prison and lived underground before surfacing in Cuba in 1984.

In addition to being the first woman named as a Most Wanted Terrorist, Chesimard is only the second domestic terrorist to be added to the list.

“This crime was always considered an act of domestic terrorism,” said Rinaldi, who has been working the case for six years with other members of the JTTF. In the late 1960s and early 1970s, he explained, the Black Liberation Army was a “radical left wing terror group that felt justified killing law enforcement officers. Throughout the ‘70s,” Rinaldi added, “this group conducted assaults on police stations and murdered police officers.”

Chesimard’s 1979 escape from prison was well planned, Rinaldi explained. “Armed domestic terrorists gained entry into the facility, neutralized the guards, broke her free, and turned her over to a nearby getaway team.”

Although Chesimard has been granted asylum in Cuba, Rinaldi stressed,“This is an active investigation and will continue as such until Chesimard is apprehended.”

THE-TRUTH-IS-OUT-THERE (Obama Files)

WSJ.com – Opinion: Strassel: The IRS Scandal Started at the Top

Obama Aide: ‘Irrelevant Fact’ Where President Was During Benghazi Attacks

Obama aide Dan Pfeiffer said it’s an “irrelevant fact” where the president physically was during the Benghazi terror attack on September 11, 2012:

VIDEO HERE >> http://www.weeklystandard.com/blogs/obama-aide-irrelevant-fact-where-president-was-during-benghazi-attacks_724882.html

Host Chris Wallace reminds Pfeiffer that Obama didn’t really talk with Secretary Clinton, Secretary Panetta, or Martin Dempsey, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, that night. “He was talking to his national security staff,” Pfeiffer insists.

Asked about whether the president entered the Situation Room, Pfeiffer says, “I don’t remember what room the president was in on that night, and that’s a largely irrelevant fact.”

Pfeiffer then argues that Wallace’s questions about the president’s handling of the Benghazi terror attack are “offensive.”

UPDATE: Here’s a full rush transcript of the exchange:

WALLACE: let’s turn to benghazi. he had a meeting with panetta in the afternoon, heard about this on an unrelated subject, wanted them to deploy forces as soon as possible. the next time he shows up, hillary clinton says she spoke to him at around 10:00 that night after the attack at the consulate, not the annex, but the attack at the consulate had ended. question, what did the president do the rest of that night to pursue benghazi?

PFEIFFER: the president was kept up to do throughout the entire night, from the moment it started till the end. this is a horrible tragedy, people that he sent abroad whose lives are in risk, people who work for him. i recognize that there’s a series of conspiracy theories the republicans are spinning about this since the night it happened, but there’s been an independent review of this, congress has held hearings, we provided 250,000 pages of — 250,000 pages of documents up there. there’s been 11 hearings, 20 staff briefings. everyone has found the same thing. this is a tragedy. the question is not what happened that night. the question is what are we going to do to move forward and ensure it doesn’t happen again? congress should act on what the president called for earlier this week, to pass legislation to actually allow us to implement the recommendations of the accountability review board. when we send diplomats off into far-flung places, there’s inherent risk. we need to mitigate that risk.

WALLACE: with all due respect, you didn’t answer my question. what did the president do that night?

PFEIFFER: kept up to date with the events as they were happening.

WALLACE: he didn’t talk to the secretary of state except for the one time when the first attack was over. he didn’t talk to the secretary of defense, he didn’t talk to chiefs. the chairman of the joint who was he talking to?

PFEIFFER: his national security staff, his national security council.

WALLACE: was he in the situation room?

PFEIFFER: he was kept up to date throughout the day.

WALLACE: do you know know whether he was in the situation room?

PFEIFFER: i don’t know what room he was in that night. that’s a largely irrelevant fact.

WALLACE: well —

PFEIFFER: the premise of your question, somehow there was something that could have been done differently, okay, that would have changed the outcome here. the accountability roof board has looked at this, people have looked at this. it’s a horrible tragedy, and we have to make sure it doesn’t happen again.

WALLCE: here’s the point, though, the ambassador goes missing, the first ambassador in more than 30 years is killed. four americans, including the ambassador, are killed. dozens of americans are in jeopardy. the president at 4:00 in the afternoon says to the chairman of the joint chiefs to deploy forces. no forces are deployed. where is he while all this is going on?

PFEIFFER: this has been tested to by —

WALLACE: well, no. no one knows where he is, who was involved, the —

PFEIFFER: the suggestion of your question that somehow the president —

WALLACE: i just want to know the answer.

PFEIFFER: the assertions from republicans that the president didn’t take action is offensive. there’s no evidence to support it.

WALLACE: i’m simply asking a question. where was he? what did he do? how did he respond in who told him you can’t deploy forces and what was his president?

PFEIFFER: the president was in the white house that day, kept up to date by his national security team, spoke to the joint chiefs of staff earlier, secretary of state, and as events unfolded he was kept up to date.

Center City Job Fair For Ex-Offenders Is Canceled After 3,000 Show Up

PHILADELPHIA (CBS) — The City of Philadelphia shut down a career fair for ex-offenders today after an unexpected crowd of thousands showed up, résumés in hand.

There were lots of disppointed job seekers and potential employers this morning.

The city was expecting about 1,000 people to show up, but about three times that number were standing in a line that wrapped around the Municipal Services Building, across from City Hall.

And when someone jumped the line, order collapsed.

There was no yelling, no shoving — just 3,000 people all trying to get into the job fair at once.

Everett Gillison, the deputy mayor for public safety, says the space designated for the event could not handle the crowd, so they closed it down shortly after it began.

“We took as many résumés as we could,” he told KYW Newsradioafterward, “but those that did not have résumés, we told them we were going to reschedule. And we are going to reschedule it for the Convention Center.”

Of course there was frustration.

“People want jobs,” said one man. “In the city right now, with jobs it’s just ridiculous trying to find one. It’s almost impossible.”

“It’s really hard out here,” another man said. How long had he been trying to get work?

“At least two years now.”

Now we know the answer! In its most fiendish strategem yet, Team Obama has launched a series of not-quite-devastating but press-obsessing scandals against itself! The confluence of the Internal Revenue Service, Benghazi and AP stories means that dreadful details of the Schumer-Rubio bill will get pushed off the front pages. Reporters who might otherwise cover it will be temporarily sent to Cincinatti to interview IRS whistleblowers. Meanhwile, the scandals give Sen. Rubio and other Republicans a chance to bash Obama about something new, giving them the anti-Obama cred that might allow them to quietly sell out on amnesty and hand Obama his greatest second-term triumph! Similarly, the scandals give conservative activists an alternative, substitute target for their outrage, all the more so because the anger is legitimate. As Greg Sargent put it, the scandals could “distract right wing base for long enough for Graham and Rubio to slip immigration reform past them.” (Dem strategist Joe Trippi tweeted in response: “Shhhhh …”)

I still find it hard to believe the amnesty conspirators will actually be able to bring a final bill to a final vote in the House and Senate without the anti-amnesty conservative wing of the Republicans waking up to the threat. (Rush Limbaugh? Ted Cruz? You there?) But they’re doing better at neutralizing the “cynosure problem” than I’d thought.

P.S.: The scandals might also prevent Team Obama from launching a campaign of presidential speeches and press events designed to mobilize public support for amnesty — something that didn’t work on Obamacare, or gun control, or on any issue, for that matter, and that in this case would probably only succeed in rousing the opposition. Cunning, I tell you. …

Read more: http://dailycaller.com/2013/05/16/obamas-most-fiendish-plot-yet/#ixzz2TiA9BISc

(Reuters) – More than 8,000 French households’ tax bills topped 100 percent of their income last year, thebusiness newspaper Les Echos reported on Saturday, citing Finance Ministry data.

The newspaper said that the exceptionally high level of taxation was due to a one-off levy last year on 2011 incomes for households with assets of more than 1.3 million euros ($1.67 million).

President Francois Hollande’s Socialist government imposed the tax surcharge last year, shortly after taking office, to offset the impact of a rebate scheme created by its conservative predecessor to cap an individual’s overall taxation at 50 percent of income.

The government has been forced to redraft a proposed bill to levy a temporary 75 percent tax on earnings over 1 million euros, which had been one of Hollande’s campaign pledges.

The Constitutional Council has judged such a high rate of taxation to be unfair, leaving the government to rehash it to hit companies rather than individuals.

Since then, a top administrative court has determined that a marginal tax rate higher than 66.66 percent on a single household risked being considered as confiscatory by the council.

Les Echos reported that nearly 12,000 households paid taxes last year worth more than 75 percent of their 2011 revenues due to the exceptional levy. ($1 = 0.7798 euros)

Gun ranges are being forced to implement rationing policies in order to keep enough ammunition to meet some customer demand due to a prolonged ammunition shortage the likes of which many industry employees say they have never seen.

Blue Ridge Arsenal Inc. in Chantilly, Va. is one such range. For the last few months, they have limited customers to one ammunition box per shooting lane, no matter the number of people shooting on one lane. Up to four people are permitted to shoot per lane.

“I never thought I would see the day in America when stores could not keep .22 ammo on the shelves,” an employee of Blue Ridge Arsenal, who wished not to be named, told The Daily Caller. “I have never seen anything like this.”

Efforts to enact more restrictive gun-control legislation and reports of the government purchasing mass quantities of ammunition have compounded to spark a mass increase in demand for guns and ammunition.

The shortage and ensuing policy at Blue Ridge Arsenal has resulted in a decline in customers, particularly during the week.

“During the daytime Monday through Thursday, I’ll be lucky to see a handful of people shooting,” the employee detailed. “The weekends pick up significantly, but there are a lot of law enforcement officers shooting.”

When this reporter visited the range, there was only one other customer target shooting besides, and he was on his way out because he had reached his one ammunition box limit.

When asked if the range would allow customers to purchase additional shooting lanes as a possible method to circumvent the policy, the employee admitted it could be done, but doubling the cost of a targeting shooting is not an option people are opting for.

“That’s a tank of gas. That’s a father choosing to take his kids out to lunch on a Saturday afternoon.”

The employee specifically cited the Department of Homeland Security’s massive purchase of ammunition as a major contributing factor to the ammunition shortage. He believes it has increased “panic” and has spurred more and more to stockpile, particularly because DHS has not answered questions with regards to the purpose of the large orders.

The Government Accountability Office is now investigating the large purchases made by the government. In effort to restrict government agencies purchasing power, Republican Sen. Jim Inhofe and Republican Rep. Frank Lucas have each introduced the Ammunition Management for More Obtainability (AMMO) Act of 2013. The bill would specifically limit “non-defense, armed federal agencies to pre-Obama levels of ammunition.”

Many other gun ranges across Virginia are implementing similar rationing policies, including Bob’s Indoor Range, Sharpshooters Small Arms Range and Superior Pawn & Gun. The Range, in Stafford, Va., warns directly on their homepage that they are “extremely low on ammo” and will “only sell one box of a caliber per lane.”

An employee with Clark’s Gun Shop, Inc. — where most ammunition is limited to one box per customer, depending on the caliber — is recommending customers arrive early in the day to purchase ammunition because it sells out that evening.

Sporting goods stores have also had to ration. Dick’s Sporting Goods and Wal-Mart, the nation’s largest retailer, have had to restrict customers to three boxes per day. Cabela’s imposes a ten box-restriction.

Handgun ammunition, such as 9mm, and rifles of particular calibers, such as .22-caliber, are the hardest to find.

The surge in gun and ammunition sales show no sign of loosening up. In testimony before a Senate appropriations subcommittee on Thursday, FBI Director Robert S. Mueller III revealed that the first six full weeks of 2013 ranked among the top 10 busiest in National Instant Criminal Background Check System history. According to FBI data, there have been 72,005,482 background checks for gun purchases since President Barack Obama took office in 2008. And with more than 2 million background checks every month since January, the U.S. is on track to reach a record 28 million-plus by the end of the year.

http://dailycaller.com/2013/05/17/gun-ranges-forced-to-ration-due-to-extreme-ammo-shortages/

The event will be held in the East Room of the White House and honor singer and songwriter Carole King, who will be awarded the 2013 Library of Congress Gershwin Prize for Popular Song. King will be the first woman to receive the award, the White House noted in their announcement.

The program — to be streamed on the White House website and broadcast on PBS stations the evening of May 28 — will also feature performances by Gloria Estefan, Billy Joel, Jesse McCartney, Emeli Sandé, James Taylor, Trisha Yearwood and King herself.

Read more: http://dailycaller.com/2013/05/17/amid-scandals-white-house-announces-star-studded-concert-at-white-house/#ixzz2Tb8zfYyM

http://www.americanthinker.com/2013/05/obamas_demeaning_commencement_address.html#.UZBbOFPjwLk.email

Read more: http://dailycaller.com/2013/05/16/update-irs-director-will-no-longer-speak-at-commencement/#ixzz2TSOJycJ9

Fallen warriors honored 38 years after deaths

WASHINGTON — It took nearly four decades, but 13 fallen service members involved in one of the last engagements in Southeast Asia following the Vietnam War have finally been laid to rest.

The burial service today at Arlington National Cemetery came 38 years, to the day, after the service members’ helicopter was shot down off the coast of the Cambodian island of Koh Tang.

U.S. forces attacked the island in response to the capture of the American merchant ship Mayaguez by Cambodian Khmer Rouge forces.

During the offensive, a CH-53 Sea Stallion helicopter crashed after coming under heavy fire on May 15, 1975. Thirteen aboard were rescued at sea and 13 others were declared missing.

Remains of 12 of those missing had been accounted for following a series of searches off the coast of Cambodia. Then, this year, the Pentagon said it accounted for the final missing serviceman using “circumstantial evidence and DNA process of elimination.”

Wednesday’s ceremonies at Arlington began with a flyover by an EC-130J. The remains of the 13 service members were placed in a single casket, which was taken near the grave site on a horse-drawn caisson.

After the firing of three rifle volleys and the playing of “Taps,” 13 flags were presented to family members of the fallen service members, who were from the Marines, Navy, and Air Force.

The Mayaguez incident is considered the last U.S. military engagement in Southeast Asia after the long war in Vietnam.

It turned out that all 40 crew members had already been released safely by Cambodia. About 40 U.S. servicemen were killed in the operation.

http://wtop.com/139/3323372/Fallen-warriors-honored-38-years-after-deaths

After dismissing the growing Benghazi scandal as a Republican and right wing partisan attack, Stewart, using the show’s iconic amalgam of news clips, attempts to do the same with the growing IRS scandal. But, OMG!, he can’t! The IRS is really guilty! The IRS’s Lois Lerner, the math challenged director of Exempt Organizations, even “apologized.” The IRS can’t just apologize! What about poor Wesley Snipes?

Newsflash…the Justice Department asked for AP reporters’ telephone records; they needed to know who in the CIA presumably leaked information about Benghazi to a reporter. Doom! Government is overreaching. OMG!, the government does want our guns. And more. Stewart’s belief foundations crumpled before our eyes. What to believe in now? “Mother******!”

Throughout this nearly seven minute sketch, Stewart’s young, low info, mostly liberal audience laughed and applauded as Stewart mocked the easily mockable IRS. And where Stewart goes, his fans follow. After all, they get their news from him and his counterpart Stephen Colbert.

While Cao did not specifically trace social activism elicited by Stewart’s show, we know that Americans, according to Pew Research Center surveys, consider Stewart among their most trusted newsmen. The Project for Excellence in Journalism added that Stewart is “getting people to think critically about the public square.” And according to a Rasmussen Reports survey: “Thirty percent of those ages 18-29 say programs like the two Comedy Central shows that feature news reports with a comic twist are replacing traditional news outlets.”

On at least two specific issues since 2008, Stewart and Colbert have appealed to their young audiences with some real results.

In December 2010, Stewart lambasted Republicans for filibustering legislation providing health benefits to Sept. 11 first responders. Shortly thereafter, the bill passed. And in this election cycle, Colbert’s super PAC has highlighted the out-of-control money in politics, where a billionaire can rig the entire system. When politics is the talk of the college commons, it is Stewart and Colbert who frequently dominate the conversation. Clips of their shows flood the feeds of young people’s Facebook and Twitter accounts.

(snip)

Unfettered from conventions that drive “real” political reporting, Stewart’s satire often rings truer because he can say what conventional political reporters can’t. Cutting through hypocritical paradoxes — and often blatant nonsense — helps him to connect with younger viewers to whom comedy is valuable. According to a Nielsen Entertainment Television survey, young men said that they would rather be stuck in elevator with Jon Stewart than Super Bowl MVP and New York Giants quarterback Eli Manning.
So here’s the sequence that Obama is hoping for: Comedy engages younger Americans in the issues, engaged people vote, and young voters skew heavily toward Obama. Which is why it isn’t surprising to see the president of the United States appearing on comedy shows. Stay tuned.

Of course, this is a group that is easily distracted. They won’t sacrifice their moral certainties easily–they’re too young, too uninformed. And soon Stewart and Colbert will transform another conservative into a clown. But the IRS, the AP story and even Benghazi aren’t going away. And Stewart and Colbert will be forced to admit that these clowns are maybe, just maybe, occasionally correct–and some of their own beliefs are well…wrong.

And when that happens will a desperate Obama or Carney appear with Stewart to redeem the president?

Stay tuned.

Read more: http://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2013/05/can_president_obama_survive_losing_jon_stewart.html#ixzz2TPNHRv00

In Part One of this series, published on Monday, I used the word “Watergate” seven times, openly comparing the scandalous Obama administration to the scandalous Nixon administration.

I didn’t know the half of it.
Just hours after Part One ran, we all learned the disturbing news of the rogue Justice Department wiretaps on the Associated Press. Now, even the liberals in the MSM are in an uproar, and the chief target is Attorney General Eric Holder. Former MSNBC anchor David Shuster tweeted, “I want him fired,” and even a veteran liberal such as Esquire’s Charles Pierce agreed: “Holder must go.”
Speaking for the prognosticating pundits, Laura Rozen tweeted, “Hard to see how this ends without Holder leaving one way or other.”
Let’s hope, and the sooner the better. Those of us who can’t help thinking about Watergate redux will, of course, be forever comparing Holder to Nixon’s surveillance-crazed attorney general, the notorious and criminal John Mitchell.
Holder has his own long pedigree as a cover-upper, too. Back in the 90s, as deputy attorney general in the Clinton administration, Holder was in charge of shutting down the investigation of Clinton campaign finance violations. Who can forget all those Chinese agents, Indonesian bankers, and even Buddhist monks who were financing the Clinton re-election campaign with money that came from who-knows-where?
Holder squelched the suggestion of Charles G. LaBella, the leader of the Justice Department anti-corruption task force, to establish an independent counsel to further pursue those cases. LaBella resigned soon thereafter. And for the last four years, Holder has been a similar kind of praetorian guard for this President.
Yet once again, those who seek to know the full truth about what has happened to America during the Obama years need to keep their eye on the key figure. And that key figure is not Eric Holder, any more than it is Hillary Clinton. Instead, the key figure is Barack Obama.
As I put it in the sub-headline of Part One, “The Focus Must Be Obama, Not Clinton.” And so now, in Part Two, I will similarly declare, “The Focus Must Be Barack Obama, Not Eric Holder.” Holder may indeed be another John Mitchell; both Holder and Mitchell were older than the presidents they served–and indeed, Holder and Mitchell had been mentors, respectively, to Obama and Nixon in earlier days. By all accounts, Holder has a close relationship with the President; along with Valerie Jarrett he is in the first circle. And so Obama will miss Holder when he is gone. Of course, in his day, Nixon missed Mitchell, too, but that didn’t stop them from parting, as Mitchell went off to jail.
Yet even if Holder leaves, the problem will stay–because the problem is Obama. As I wrote in Part One, “the ultimate question” is “what did the President know?” And, we might add, when did he know it, and what did he do?
Those were the key questions of Watergate, and they are now the key question in the many facets of what must be called “Obamagate.”
So who is Obama? My answer is that his presence in the White House represents the triumph of Chicago politics. The real Obama found his true calling on the streets of Chicago; he might have said the politically correct words from time to time, but for the most part, his career has been characterized by one thing–ambition. And ambition of a hard-edged and ruthless kind; everyone but himself is expendable.
So the real Obama, is, indeed, a lot like Nixon, hiding his scandals behind the facade of his underlings. Each underling, of course, is a chess piece to be sacrificed as the game might require. Obama, like Nixon before him, has a lot of underlings. Others are starting to see the Nixon-Obama parallelism, too: Yesterday, Buzzfeed’s Ben Smith, a journalist who leans left, published a GIF–a tiny animation–showing Obama morphing into Nixon.
So what is Obamagate? What are its facets? Let’s look at the three main areas in turn:
First, the Associated Press story. Yes, the AP has been identified as the first victim of the Mitchell-ized Holder Justice Department, but it’s a safe bet that more journalistic victims will be identified. As The New York Times makes clear in its report, the fact that the Justice Department won’t answer queries as to whether or not other media outlets were tapped as well speaks volumes. After all, the Times was digging on the very same story, concerning the identification of a Yemeni plot in Spring 2012, aimed at blowing up US passenger jets.
Obviously it’s vital that the US Government maintain its counter-terror effectiveness, but it’s equally obvious that the executive branch must work closely with the coequal legislative branch. And that doesn’t seem to have happened at all; that’s why even Sen. Harry Reid, Obama’s leader in the Senate, would not defend the DOJ actions.
Even more important than Congress, of course, is the law itself. It’s devastatingly obvious that the administration has followed the law… only when it suits them.
Last spring, myriad leaks sprang from the administration; reporters in several publications were suddenly privileged to learn of the marvelous things the Obama administration had been doing to combat terror through drone strikes, to kill Bin Laden, and to stop Iran’s nuclear program. I believe, and have publicly asserted, that Tom Donilon, the national security adviser at the White House, was responsible for these leaks–the leak campaign totally fits his political modus operandi. And I was not alone in that belief.
Still, the leak-campaign seemed to going well for the Obama’s re-election campaign–every day the voters were being reminded that we had strong, effective, and resolute commander-in-chief. But then Sen. Dianne Feinstein, Democrat of California, and others pointed out that all these leaks of classified information were endangering American lives and, in fact, undermining the effectiveness of the programs being trumpeted.
Confronted with a backlash against the leak-campaign, Obama called upon–you guessed it–Eric Holder to lead an “investigation” of the leaks. Predictably, nothing much happened with that investigation–at least not before the election.
Now we are learning, of course, that the Justice Department was investigating. But Justice wasn’t investigating, say, Donilon; it was instead investigating the AP. How ‘bout that? Don’t investigate the people dispensing the classified information; instead, investigate those who were receiving it. And the focus of the investigation, it appears, is not Stuxnet or the drones, but rather, the attempted plane-bombing from Yemen.
Indeed, as Fox News pointed out on Tuesday night, John Brennan–then the White House homeland security adviser, now Director of the CIA–was busily briefing reporters on the Yemen success.
In other words, the Obama administration was investigating reporters for digging on the Yemen matter, even as the Obama administration was busy taking credit for the Yemen matter. And they said Nixon was tricky.
Now that’s Nixonian.
Second, the IRS story. The revelation that the IRS has been malevolently targeting conservative groups violates the basic social contract of the country–that we are all treated equally, before the law, and before the tax collectors. Meanwhile The Washington Post reports that the investigation of conservative groups was spread across the agency. It wasn’t just a few bad apples in Cincinnati; Cincinnati is the hub of all these tax-status adjudications, and the work was shared with other offices in two locations in California and the headquarters in D.C. That’s, at least, what we know so far. (Even Jon Stewart can’t defend the Obama administration on this one.)
No doubt more is coming; on Tuesday, the left-leaning investigative group Pro Publica reported that it had been offered confidential tax documents for 31 different conservative groups.
Its seems likely that the IRS knew exactly what it was doing in aiming at the right; it was carrying out the clear wishes from the top of the executive branch. And the proof is in the disparate impact of the IRS investigations. It was groups with “Tea Party” and “Constitution” that were being investigated, not groups with “Green” or “Progressive.”
And while some might stubbornly insist that somehow this disparate impact was just a coincidence, the Obama administration itself argues that disparate impact, which is a legal term of art, is proof of discrimination. According to Eric Holder’s Department of Justice, the numbers themselves prove the case; that is, if the numbers on, say, jobs or contracts show that one group or another is getting less, well, then, case closed.
Yes, Holder & Co. have been pursuing a radical doctrine of numerically presumed guilt on discrimination cases, but who has time to worry about that now, amidst all these other scandals. We can simply say that the disparate impact of the IRS actions clearly shows a discriminatory effect on right-of-center groups.
Yet even as the Obamans pursue their doctrinaire numbers game, we can still think back to instances where they seem to have gone out of their way to hurt enemies and favor friends. For example, remember Frank VanderSloot? He’s the big Romney donor who was audited three times, and he says that he is not the only one.
By contrast, we can compare the VanderSloot case to that of Malik Obama, the President’s half brother. His application for a tax-exemption was approved–by the same Lois Lerner, the senior IRS official at the Cincinnati office in charge of tax-exempt groups–within a month; one observer called it “an unprecedented timeline that stands in stark contrast to conservative organizations who have been waiting for more than three years, in some cases, for approval.”
Now that, too, is Nixonian.
To be sure, not everyone sees the IRS story as a big deal. Carl Bernstein was once the lesser half of the Woodward-Bernstein reporting team during Watergate, although he long ago sank into mere hackery. That hackery was on full display Monday, when he told–who else?–MSNBC that he “can’t imagine” that anyone in the White House was involved in the IRS scandal . That’s not exactly the reportorial instinct at work, is it? The old joke for reporters is, “If your mother tells you she’s your mother, double-check her.” Fortunately, Bernstein had the courage to hold the Nixon administration accountable; unfortunately, that courage has now been replaced by sloven sycophancy of Obama.
Third, the Benghazi story. On Monday, Obama declared the Benghazi investigation to be “a political circus” and, indeed, “a sideshow.” Piling on the derisive dismissiveness, he then added, “There’s no there, there.” Listening to Obama, and also to Jay Carney, I am reminded of Nixon press secretary Ron Ziegler’s dismissal of Watergate as a “third-rate burglary.”
Benghazi is still the heart of Obamagate, because it reveals so much about the real Barack Obama. So let’s stop looking around at molehills and start staring straight ahead, to the mountains in front of us.
First mountain: Where did the idea that the Mohammed video on YouTube was the cause of Benghazi come from? Whose idea was that? The video is not mentioned in those dozen-times-rewritten talking points–so who put that idea into the mix? We know it didn’t fall from the sky–so who did it?
Second mountain: What was the president doing the night that Americans were dying? As I mentioned in Part One, the absence of any sort of documentation of the President’s whereabouts that night is truly chilling.
In the case of both mountains, we can see that the administration’s true goal seems to be political preservation–make things up if need be and drop them into the narrative; meanwhile, keep the President out of the narrative.
The President and his team clearly believe that they can defend themselves by simply recalling that they did, in fact, mention the “T” word, “terror,” here and there in the wake of Benghazi. But that’s like saying that if a defendant in a case said one true thing, then everything he said was true. A single grain of truth in a vast field of mistruths does not make the field honest.
Everyone knows that the message of Susan Rice, et al. was that Benghazi was the unfortunate consequence of something bad, most likely the Mohammed video. As Hillary Clinton said on January 23 in her famous rant, “Was it because of a protest or was it because of guys out for a walk one night decided to go kill some Americans? What difference at this point does it make?”
What difference does it make? Why does it matter? Why it matters is simple: The truth makes a difference. The truth matters.
So for Carney to keep harping on uses of the word “terror,” is, well, as we Irish say, blarney.
Yet also because I am Irish, I am haunted by tragedy and injustice. A few months ago, I sat in the green room at Fox with Charles Woods, the father of Tyrone Woods, one of the four slain Americans at Benghazi. The elder Mr. Woods recounted for me how at the September 14 service for the four dead at Dover Air Force Base, the President, the Vice President, and Secretary Clinton had all told him, “It’s terrible what happened, and how that terrible video caused it, and we’re gong to get that person who did it!” And now we know it was all invented. A fabricated cover story to get the President over his re-election hump.
Yet the President, Carney, and all their stooges continue to call the Benghazi investigation a “sideshow.”
Okay, so that’s the Obama story, and they’re sticking to it.
Yet others, normally supportive, begged to differ. On Tuesday, The Washington Post awarded the President the high dishonor of “Four Pinocchios” for his Benghazi statements on Monday.
And again, that is Nixonian.
Moreover, the cover-up of Benghazi–and that’s the right word for it–began on September 11, 2012. It was not until September 19, eight long days after Benghazi, that Matt Olsen, director of the National Counterterrorism Center testified that Benghazi had, in fact, been a terrorist attack.
In the meantime, in those days after the 11th, the administration was feverishly writing and rewriting those talking points and doing everything else it could to cover up the truth about the death of Ambassador Stevens and his three heroic defenders.
Clearly, the Obamans were hoping that the furor over Benghazi would cool down. And that was their miscalculation. Even Tom Brokaw, no friend to conservatives, has been moved to observe:

You cannot explain away Susan Rice’s performance on those five Sunday talk shows on September 16, in which she said it was not a terrorist attack and grew out of a domestic demonstration of some kind. She completely underplayed it and rewrote the script.

And that, of course, was the administration line: Benghazi was a murky incident, quite possibly caused by that evil Mohammed video on YouTube.
Indeed, everywhere the President went, even after Olsen’s September 19 admission, the President was still pushing the Mohammed video line. Before the whole wide world on September 25, 2012, the President spoke to the United Nations General Assembly and declared, “The future must not belong to those who slander the prophet of Islam.” In effect, the President was saying that whatever happened at Benghazi was not his fault, or the fault of his administration, but rather the fault of some guy with a camera in California.
Thus we come to a sordid sub-chapter of Benghazi, which is the most dishonorable and most dishonest in which we see that the Obamans were opportunistically eager to scapegoat the maker of that stupid video, one Nakoula Basseley Nakoula, an Egyptian-American Coptic Christian. The Copts, of course, having been oppressed by Islam for more than a thousand years, have plenty of reason to loathe Islam. And whether or not we agree with Nakoula’s views, he has a right to hold them. As Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr. wrote in 1929, “If there is any principle of the Constitution that more imperatively calls for attachment than any other, it is the principle of free thought–not free thought for those who agree with us but freedom for the thought that we hate.”
Yet of course, to those of a Nixonian cast of mind, First Amendment protections can easily be steamrollered. So the investigative furies descended on Nakoula; he was arrested on September 27, supposedly for violating the terms of his probation (the violation, we might note, was being on the Internet), although it’s fair to say that nobody worried about Nakoula’s digital violations before the video. Nakoula was ultimately sentenced to a year in jail; to this day, he sits in a federal correctional facility in Texas.
Indeed, Nakoula has been the only one punished for what happened in Benghazi that night. More than eight months later, none of the killers have been “brought to justice,” as the President promised.
At the time, many people thought that the Obama administration was simply trying to do everything it could to tamp down anti-American fervor in the Muslim world. Some might have shrugged and thought to themselves, “Well, something had to be done to keep more Americans from being killed. And if this fellow Nakoula is the sacrificial lamb for reasons of national security, so be it.”
Yet of course, no American should be treated that way, for any reason. And so it’s just one more obscene hypocrisy for Carney to prattle on about how the President loves the First Amendment and values an “unfettered media” when, in fact, Nakoula is in fetters for exercising his First Amendment rights.
National Review’s Rich Lowry recently summed up part of the situation in a piece entitled, “The Benghazi Patsy”: “Nakoula deserves a place in American history. He is the first person in this country jailed for violating Islamic anti-blasphemy laws.”
So yes, Nakoula was railroaded into jail for making a video. Yet now we can see that the “blasphemy” charge was a false flag. The assertion that Nakoula needed to be jailed to mollify Muslims was a ruthless diversion from the real mission; the false narrative had to be protected.
The real objective had nothing to do with the safety of Americans or the national security needs of the US, but, rather with the re-election needs of Barack Obama. It wasn’t the Mohammed video had led to the deaths of any Americans in Libya. Now we know that the attack was plotted by Al Qaeda, pure and simple, which had aimed all along to hit the US on the anniversary of 9-11.
As the pollster and strategist for George McGovern’s 1972 presidential campaign which challenged Nixon, I suppose I have a special bias against morally corrupt incumbents who use their power to manipulate and bamboozle the voters. It was during this time last fall that it became clear that I was seeing a replay of the Nixon administration and what I lived through in 1972. Indeed, my own past brushes with the Nixon henchmen were more personal than just the McGovern campaign: It is with pride I can claim to be the youngest person to be named on Nixon’s fabled “enemies list.”That experience taught me to react strongly against anything like that, regardless of party or president.
Back on September 28, for example, I argued:

The administration is hoping that if it can put enough time between the actual events of 9/11/12 and the ultimate public understanding of those events, the impact of the realization–that the US was unprepared for terrorism on an obvious terrorism anniversary–will be thereby softened.

And writing about Mitt Romney’s presidential campaign, I continued:

Romney could turn this election around if he could go on the offensive on multiple fronts, against Obama supporters in the media, and–even more crucially–against Barack Obama on the Middle East.

I further wrote on October 15:

We now know that within minutes of the Benghazi attacks, the Obama administration knew that the attacks were, in fact, acts of terrorism, and not at all mere mob violence. And that’s when the cover-up began; the goal was to kick the can of culpability past Election Day. Unfortunately for the Obamans, they needed a two-month cover-up to get them past November 6, and they got only a one-month cover-up.

Despite a steady string of scoops, many of them from Fox News, in October, Romney pulled back in the third debate, letting Obama skate away from his culpability. Romney’s staffers had told him that he was going to win anyway, so why risk looking mean? And with Romney’s dismissal of the Benghazi issue, the mainstream media felt further justified to dismiss Benghazi, too.
Yes, Romney was regrettably craven, and for that, he not only lost an election he could have won, but earned himself permanent ignominy as someone who put political calculation–incorrect political calculation, at that–ahead of his patriotic duty to raise important concerns.
So yes, Obama won his re-election bid. Indeed, he won by a comfortable margin, as the myriad weaknesses of the Republican consultant class–which I detailed at CPAC in March–became glaringly evident. Yet as we can now see, it wasn’t just the incompetence of the Romneyites that was on display; it was also the malevolence of the Obamans–although that was mostly hidden. The administration had managed to keep a lid on three big scandals–wiretapping, IRS, and Benghazi–through Election Day. And so he won re-election, just as Nixon had won, four decades earlier.
Yet as Richard Nixon learned in the wake of his triumphant 1972 re-election–he carried 49 of 50 states that year–victory does not immunize an incumbent from ultimate accountability. Indeed, victory can addle the minds of the victors with hubris and arrogance, making them less able to defend themselves.
We are now seeing an encouraging reality about American politics: No matter how hard you try, no matter how ruthless you might be, you can’t keep a secret. The cover-up might work in the short term, but not for the long term. And that means, as Nixon learned, that even the greatest political victory can turn into ashes–and it can also prove lethal.
by Patrick Caddell
###
Next: Watergate and Obamagate.
http://www.breitbart.com/Big-Government/2013/05/15/Obamagate-the-Focus-is-Barack-Obama

THE SCENERY NEVER CHANGES 😦

Obama’s Far Left Hand
He claims not to know what it is doing.
http://spectator.org/archives/2013/05/15/obamas-far-left-hand

THE-TRUTH-IS-OUT-THERE (Obama Files)

They are disillusioned and angry liberals who are starting to grasp that they have been lied to, who realize that a skeptical stance is necessary when examining a narrative offered by team Obama on Benghazi or the IRS scandal.

Even worse, the media have discovered that they are themselves targets of government abuse, just like those Tea Partiers the IRS was picking on. The Associated Press, whose newsroom and reporters’ personal phone line records were secretly subpoenaed, is collectively owned by members of the mainstream media. As the largest newsgathering organization in the country, it stands for media freedom itself in their minds. An attack on it is an attack on them.

Right now, there’s a lot of cognitive dissonance going on in the punditocracy: how could a constitutional law professor turn on the free press? Obama’s just not behaving like the good guy they thought him to be. Awkward questions of character are being raised in their minds.

The love they offered Obama all those years has not been reciprocated. John Yoo observed, “[T]his is how you get treated when you are in a politician’s pocket.” As with many scorned lovers, they are ripe to reframe their understanding of their ex-amour in a more negative light. The illusion of Obama the godlike light-bringer, the man who could bring us together, has dissolved into an uncomfortable, soon to be angry, memory.

And therein lies serious peril for President Obama. Once it becomes accepted that his narratives are false, a Pandora’s Box opens. To a remarkable degree, the biographical narrative he offered to the media when he suddenly appeared on the national scene, and which they accepted and aggressively defended, was built on illusion. Serious questions about Frank Marshall Davis, Bill Ayers, his authorship of Dreams from my Father, and his academic transcripts once were rudely brushed aside as racism and paranoia.

Two polar opposite ways of seeing Barack Obama emerged in his first presidential campaign. The mainstream view saw an inspiring, brilliant high achiever who could bring us together, while among conservatives, as exemplified over the years at American Thinker, a decidedly more negative interpretation of the biographical facts emerged. Just a few of many possible examples include:

The problem is that not only is Obama a liar; he is a phony. And bit by bit, the evidence is becoming clearer to more ansd more of the people who were taken in.

This drawing, the so-called Young Lady/Old Lady illusion, illustrates the way reframing can change the way a person perceives something. It is possible to see either a young lady or an old lady in the picture below:

Generations of introductory psychology students have seen, but if you have not and want to see both, this video explains both:

So it is with Obama. Depending what is put in the foreground and what in the background, Barack Obama appears beautiful and stylish, or mean and scary.

The big worry now for Obama has to be what Professor Glenn Reynolds of Instapundit calls a “preference cascade.” He explains:

In his book, Private Truths, Public Lies, economist Timur Kuran looked at the way “preference falsification” can distort societies, and then collapse suddenly.

The classic example is in a totalitarian society, where everyone has to pretend to love the Great Leader on pain of death. If the authorities manage it right, 99% of the populace can be ready to revolt — but won’t, because each individual thinks he or she is the only one who feels that way. This works until some event suddenly shocks the system, and people realize that they’re not alone. When that happens, things can go south in a hurry. That’s a “preference cascade.”

The United States isn’t a totalitarian society, but media bias has the same sort of effect: By privileging some views and suppressing others, the media give Americans, and itself, a distorted idea of reality. Then, when things crack, it’s a big surprise.

Some on the right are already talking impeachment, which is a big mistake. Others counsel speed. Instead, Obama’s opponents would be wise to focus on discovery of facts, taking all the time necessary to staff up a highly capable select committee or two, issuing subpoenas and using congressional hearings to ferret out the truth of Benghazi and the suppression of conservative groups taking advantage of the Citizens United decision and setting up nonprofit counterparts to Media Matters and other progressive groups.

The preference cascade is our friend. Let the Committee Democrats decide which side they want to be on. Already, the signs are that House Democrats are not about to defend the IRS or obstruct the inquiry in any way. Having thrown the CIA under the bus on the Benghazi talking points, the Obama administration has delivered a message to potential witnesses and fall guys: you’re expendable.

Once upon a time, Barack Obama rode as high as a politician can get, at least as the big media portrayed him. It’s a long way down.

http://www.americanthinker.com/printpage/?url=http://www.americanthinker.com/articles/../2013/05/the_end_of_the_obama_illusion.html

Carney: W.H. ‘People Were Aware’ of IRS Targeting Conservatives, But Didn’t Do Anything About It

Spokesman Jay Carney said some at the White House “were aware” of reports that IRS was targeting conservatives, but that nobody bothered to do anything about it:

“I still don’t quite understand the timeline,” said MSNBC’s Chuck Todd, about the IRS scandal. “We had members of Congress complaining about this for two years. Did it just never reach you guys here at the White House that there was these complaints that conservative groups felt they were being singled out and targeted?”

“I’m sure people were aware of and knew some of the stories that had been reported about the complaints, but we were not aware of any activity or of any review conducted by the inspector general until several weeks ago,” Carney responded.

Todd replied, “Should you have been made aware sooner? I don’t understand.”

“Let’s just say that — well, first of all for all the reasons why distance between — you know, why the IRS should not be politicized, you know, there has to be that distance. But on the specific question that you had, I want to wait and see what the report says and wait and see what we actually know happened and what the facts are before we comment beyond what the president said yesterday on this matter and before we make any decisions or pronouncements about what actions should be taken. I mean, you heard the president say what he believed and what he feels what is reported about specific targeting turned out to be true. But we need to see if that’s actually the case,” Carney said.

http://www.weeklystandard.com/blogs/carney-wh-people-were-aware-irs-targeting-conservatives-didnt-do-anything-about-it_724455.html

Lois Lerner, the IRS official now at the center of a scandal involving tax agents who selectively targeted conservative groups, is scheduled to receive an award and give the commencement address at Western New England University School of Law.
A spokesperson for the school said the university was aware of the controversy, but would still honor Lerner, who directs the agency’s exempt organizations division.

“Our plans have not changed at this time,” said David Stawasz, a spokesperson for the university, in an interview with The Daily Caller News Foundation. “Ms. Werner has apologized for the actions of certain IRS employees. We are aware of the circumstances, but our plans have not changed.”

Read more: http://dailycaller.com/2013/05/15/irs-official-will-give-speech-receive-award-at-college-commencement/#ixzz2TKy488zU

The National Organization for Marriage, a conservative organization whose confidential records were leaked by the IRS to its left-wing critics, announced on Tuesday it will sue the tax agency for damages. NOM’s 2008 tax return was, according to a press release the group sent out on Tuesday, taken by the IRS and subsequently leaked to its primary political opponent the Human Rights Campaign.

“Not only has the IRS retaliated against conservative, small-government and tea party groups as they apply for recognition of tax exemption AND lied about it, but it has criminally released our confidential tax return including the identity of dozens of major donors to a political enemy,” NOM president Brian Brown said in the statement. “In addition to being our principal combatant in the war on traditional marriage, the HRC’s president at the time was serving as a Co-Chair of President Obama’s reelection campaign. This is a chilling set of circumstances that should ring alarm bells across the nation.”

NOM has retained the firm ActRight Legal Foundation as counsel to file a lawsuit in federal court in the District of Columbia.

NOM chairman Dr. John C. Eastman said that the “very core of our ordered society has been shaken by this political roughing-up of nonprofits by the IRS.”

“As a constitutional law scholar I can tell you that no nonprofit should ever have to experience this kind of retaliation,” Eastman said. “I am pleased to announce that the excellent attorneys at ActRight Legal Foundation have identified a strong legal strategy that should ultimately hold the IRS accountable and result in lasting change inside of the IRS.”

http://www.breitbart.com/Big-Government/2013/05/14/Targeted-conservative-group-to-sue-the-IRS

“He has, acting personally and through his subordinates and agents, endeavored to . . . cause, in violation of the constitutional rights of citizens, income tax audits or other income tax investigations to be initiated or conducted in a discriminatory manner.”

— Article II, Section 1, Articles of Impeachment against Richard M. Nixon, adopted by the House Judiciary Committee, July 29, 1974

The progressive-leaning investigative journalism group ProPublica says the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) office that targeted and harassed conservative tax-exempt groups during the 2012 election cycle gave the progressive group nine confidential applications of conservative groups whose tax-exempt status was pending.

The commendable admission lends further evidence to the lengths the IRS went during an election cycle to silence tea party and limited government voices.

ProPublica says the documents the IRS gave them were “not supposed to be made public”:

The same IRS office that deliberately targeted conservative groups applying for tax-exempt status in the run-up to the 2012 election released nine pending confidential applications of conservative groups to ProPublica late last year… In response to a request for the applications for 67 different nonprofits last November, the Cincinnati office of the IRS sent ProPublica applications or documentation for 31 groups. Nine of those applications had not yet been approved—meaning they were not supposed to be made public. (We made six of those public, after redacting their financial information, deeming that they were newsworthy.)

The group says that “no unapproved applications from liberal groups were sent to ProPublica.”
According to Media Research Center Vice President for Business and Culture Dan Gainor, ProPublica’s financial backers include top progressive donors:

ProPublica, which recently won its second Pulitzer Prize, initially was given millions of dollars from the Sandler Foundation to “strengthen the progressive infrastructure”–“progressive” being the code word for very liberal. In 2010, it also received a two-year contribution of $125,000 each year from the Open Society Foundations. In case you wonder where that money comes from, the OSF website is http://www.soros.org. It is a network of more than 30 international foundations, mostly funded by Soros, who has contributed more than $8 billion to those efforts.

On Friday, the House Ways and Means Committee is scheduled to hold a formal hearing on the IRS conservative targeting scandal. IRS Commissioner Steve Miller and Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration J. Russell George are slated to testify.

http://www.breitbart.com/Big-Government/2013/05/14/Progressive-Group-Says-IRS-Gave-Them-Confidential-Docs-On-Conservative-Groups

“They claimed it was because of a demonstration video so they wouldn’t have to admit it was all about their incompetence — that the State Department, the White House, the NSC ignored repeated warnings from the CIA about the threat,” he continued. “They ignored messages from their own people on the ground that they needed more security. Indeed, they reduced what was already there. And the administration either had no forces ready to respond to an attack, which should have been anticipated on the anniversary of 9/11, or they refused to deploy them when our people asked for help.”
Cheney said President Barack Obama was certainly involved this alleged cover-up.
“They tried to cover it up constructing a false story, claiming there was confusion about what had happened at the Benghazi consulate,” he said. “There was no confusion. It was obvious as soon as we got the Ambassador [Christopher] Stevens on the phone that night and he said, quote, ‘We are under attack.’ The cover-up included several officials, up to and including President Obama, and the cover-up is still on-going.”
The former vice president pointed to deficiencies in the military as a possible cause for the inability to respond in a timely manner.
“I think there’s a whole set of questions that need to asked, Sean, about the military chain of command,” Cheney said. “In my past experience after we got into these situations, especially after 9/11, we were always on the stand — locked and loaded, ready to go on 9/11. We have specially-trained units that practice this sort of thing all the time. They are very good at it and they are chomping at the bit to go.”

VIDEO LINK HERE >>> http://dailycaller.com/2013/05/14/cheney-on-white-house-reaction-to-benghazi-they-lied-video/#ixzz2THEs4dN1

On Monday, House Majority Whip Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) responded to reports that the Department of Justice had secretly obtained two full months of phone records from the Associated Press, prompting the AP’s President and Chief Executive Officer Gary Pruitt to call it a “massive and unprecedented intrusion.” He also commented on the administration’s ever-changing story with regard to the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2012 in Benghazi, Libya, and the IRS’ admissions that it politically targeted conservative organizations for scrutiny.

McCarthy told Breitbart News:

I am deeply concerned by the numerous reports of misconduct by the Administration, from whistler blower testimony regarding Benghazi to the Internal Revenue Service targeting groups based on political ideology and now the Department of Justice monitoring journalists with Associated Press. The House has both the authority and the prerogative to conduct oversight of the executive branch and agencies. We will investigate these matters fully. There is nothing I take more seriously than our constitutional freedoms and liberties.

http://www.breitbart.com/Big-Government/2013/05/13/McCarthy-House-Majority-IRS-Benghazi-AP

Forget the Volt.

GM “is counting on muscled up, more refined versions of its lucrative Chevrolet Silverado and GMC Sierra full-size pickup trucks to show investors and car buyers the No. 1 U.S. automaker is back on the right track,” says an in-depth Reuters article by its Detroit star reporter Ben Klayman.
Full-size trucks and related SUVs generate profits of $12,000 or more per vehicle and account for about 60 percent of GM’s global profit, analysts tell Reuters. The new models could bring more than $1 billion in additional operating earnings in 2013 and 2014.

GM needs to invigorate its trucks badly. Their last major redesign was in 2006. The 2009 bankruptcy made GM fall behind on development.

GM is estimated to have invested between $3 and $4 billion in developing the new trucks and revamping the plants where they are built. The market share of the Silverado/Sierra has been dropping for year, while the competition by Ford and Chrysler are gaining.
|“Obama’s bet on GM hangs on pickups boosting shares,” says Bloomberg.According to the wire, “the U.S. may sell its remaining 32 percent stake in GM, a holdover from the 2009 rescue of the automaker, if the shares rise. The Treasury wants to sell for at least the $33 a share price it got in the IPO. It needs to sell for more than $50 for the U.S. to break even.”

Currently, GM trades at $25.63, but a pick-up in earnings from the pick-ups is still a while away. Trucks are shown today, but will not hit dealers before the second quarter of next year.

Listening to these strong, solemn men, I heard the sound of old America: a place of hardworking people who love their country and believe in something bigger than their own power.

The America of Gregory Hicks, Mark Thompson, and Eric Nordstrom won World War II, walked on the moon, and defeated Communism. But today, their America is forced to serve a different god: a cold, smiling man with a hollow heart and hands that get bloodier by the day.

Obama stands center stage in this tragic opera of America’s downfall, cheapening, endangering, and destroying the lives of the best among us. The pile of corpses grows ever higher, and the lies more noxious.

Let’s pay tribute to some of his many victims, and vow to honor their memory by holding him to account.

BENGHAZI: Ambassador Chris Stevens, Glen Doherty, Sean Smith, and Tyrone Woods.

Obama failed to attend a single intelligence briefing in the week before September 11, 2012. As the Libyan consulate in Benghazi came under attack that day, he disappeared for the evening, then jetted off the next day for a Las Vegas fundraiser. Meanwhile, Ambassador Stevens was raped, murdered, and dragged through the streets by al-Qaeda-linked terrorists, while three brave Americans died trying to defend him.

Having ignored Ambassador Stevens’s previous reports of a “security vacuum” in Libya, Obama allowed the abortion of two rescue missions ready to fly to Benghazi. Regional security officer Eric Nordstrom testified that “… whether or not you’re sitting off at a post, requesting resources, preparing for testimony before this committee, or standing on a building surrounding by an armed mob attacking you, the message is the same: ‘You’re on your own.‘”

BOSTON MARATHON BOMBING: Martin Richard (age 8), Krystle Campbell, Lu Lingzi, and Sean Collier.

The Russians and the Saudis both say they warned Obama’s security team about Tamerlan Tsarnaev, one of two jihad-crazed brothers who set off fatal bombs at the Boston Marathon finish line and then killed police officer Sean Collier. The FBI interviewed Tamerlan, found nothing, and failed to inform the Boston police of Russia’s multiple warnings. The Tsarnaev brothers were free to pursue their murderous plot, while living the high life on taxpayer welfare.

After the city of Boston was put on lockdown, surviving brother Dzhokhar Tsarnaev was captured and began to talk about his schemes. But this potential life-saving information (reportedly, the brothers planned to attack New York) was squelched when Obama’s Department of Justice rushed to charge him with a crime and read him his Miranda rights. Dzhokhar immediately shut up.

The feds refuse to let the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth release Dzhokhar’s college records, claiming it would violate federal privacy law. Meanwhile, two illegal aliens have been arrested as accomplices; Obama’s Department of Homeland Security allowed one of them to re-enter the U.S. in January without a valid student visa.

OPERATION FAST AND FURIOUS: Brian Terry, Jaime Zapata, and hundreds of unnamed Mexicans.

Obama’s attorney general, Eric Holder, conducted a secret gun-running operation that supplied thousands of assault weapons to drug cartels in Mexico. Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry and ICE Agent Jaime Zapata were both murdered with Fast and Furious guns. Their families have filed wrongful death lawsuits against the federal government.

The Terry lawsuit claims that the federal officials “created, organized, implemented and/or participated in a plan – code named ‘Operation Fast and Furious’ – to facilitate the distribution of dangerous firearms to violent criminals” and that they “knew or should have known that their actions would cause substantial injuries, significant harm, and even death to Mexican and American civilians and law enforcement, but were recklessly indifferent to the consequence of their actions.” Eric Holder has been found in contempt of Congress for refusing to release requested documented to congressional investigators, and he appears to have committed perjury in his testimony.

FORT HOOD: Juanita Warman, Libardo Caraveo, John P. Gaffaney, Russell Seager, Justin Decrow, Amy Krueger, Jason Hunt, Frederick Greene, Aaron Nemelka, Michael Pearson, Kham Xiong, Francheska Velez (and unborn child, and Michael G. Cahill.

On November 5, 2009, Army Major Nidal Hasan opened fire on a group of soldiers preparing to deploy to Iraq, killing 13 and wounding 32. Associates raised repeated questions about his strange behavior but were squashed by what they call the Pentagon’s “political correctness.” A devout Muslim, Hasan was in extensive communication with al-Qaeda leader Anwar al-Awlaki, printed up business cards that read “Soldier of Allah,” dressed in Islamic martyrdom garb, and handed out korans the morning of the attack. He screamed “Allahu Akbar” as he opened fire.

Nevertheless, Obama refuses to deem the largest attack on a U.S. military installation in history a terrorist assault, insisting that it be classified “workplace violence.” Hasan’s victims have been denied Purple Hearts. Fort Hood hero Kimberly Munley told ABC News that Obama “betrayed” her and the other victims. “Not to the least little bit have the victims been taken care of,” she said. “In fact, they’ve been neglected.”

NAVY SEAL TEAM VI HELICOPTER CRASH IN AFGHANISTAN, AUGUST 2011: Jonas B. Kelsall, Louis J. Langlais, Thomas A. Ratzlaff, Kraig M. Vickers, Brian R. Bill, John W. Faas, Kevin A. Houston, Matthew D. Mason, Stephen M. Mills, Nicholas H. Null, Robert J. Reeves, Heath M. Robinson, Darrik C. Benson, Christopher G. Campbell, Jared W. Day, John Douangdara, Michael J. Strange, Jon T. Tumilson, Aaron C. Vaughn, Jason R. Workman, Jesse D. Pittman, Nicholas P. Spehar, David R. Carter, Bryan J. Nichols, Patrick D. Hamburger, Alexander J. Bennett, Spencer C. Duncan, John W. Brown, Andrew W. Harvell, and Daniel L. Zerbe.

On May 2, 2011, members of SEAL Team VI invaded Osama bin Laden’s Pakistani compound and killed him. Three months later, 30 American troops, most of them members of SEAL Team VI, were shot down by the Taliban over Afghanistan.

On May 9, 2013, families of the fallen held a press conference to accuse Barack Obama of complicity in their deaths. They charged Obama with endangering SEAL Team VI by breaking protocol and revealing its identity as bin Laden’s killers. They also revealed that their sons were sent to battle with inadequate equipment and air support and denied requested pre-assault fire.

The families played a video of their sons’ military funeral. No mention of the Judeo-Christian God was allowed, but the Pentagon invited a Muslim cleric to speak, who cursed their sons in Arabic as infidels condemned to hell.

Karen Vaughn, mother of fallen SEAL Aaron Vaughn, said, “Why was there no pre-assault fire? We were told as families because pre-assault fire damages our efforts to win the hearts and mind of our enemy. In other words, the hearts and mind of our enemy are more valuable to this government than my son’s blood.”

Alas, I have no room to name all the troops killed by Obama’s crippling Rules of Engagement. “American troops are needlessly exposed to increased enemy attack, suffer unnecessary casualties, cannot secure or control the indigenous population and are not allowed to deny freedom of movement or maneuver to the Taliban,”according to a tactical commander in Afghanistan. As a result, more than twice as many American soldiers have died in Afghanistan under four years of Obama than in eight years under Bush.

Nor do I have room to list all the Americans murdered and maimed by the illegal aliens to whom Obama shows such special devotion. This week, Chris Crane, president of the Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers union, said Obama has “attempted to shut down” border enforcement and “absolutely” tied law enforcement’s hands. Recently, Obama released 5,000 criminal aliens from jail, blaming sequestration cuts, and created special protections against deportation for illegal aliens with “serious mental disorders.”

In the White House lives the man with the blood-red hands. The screams and sobs of his victims grow louder by the day.

By Stella Paul

http://www.americanthinker.com/2013/05/the_bloody_hands_of_barack_obama.html

The New York Times referred to three murdered children as “fetuses” in an article about the conviction of Kermit Gosnell Monday.

Gosnell, a former Philadelphia abortion doctor, was found guilty of first-degree murder Monday afternoon for severing the necks of three born-alive infants.

The New York Times referred to those infants as “fetuses” six times in the paper’s write-up:

The verdict came after a five-week trial in which the prosecution and the defense battled over whether the fetuses Dr. Gosnell was charged with killing were alive when they were removed from their mothers.

[…]

Dr. Gosnell was acquitted of one first-degree murder charge involving an aborted fetus.

[…]

Clinic workers who appeared as witnesses for the prosecution said some of the fetuses appeared to move or make noises.

[…]

…Dr. Gosnell kept the severed feet of aborted fetuses in dozens of jars around his clinic…

[…]

…Mr. McMahon argued that there was no evidence that any of the fetuses were born alive…

[…]

Mr. McMahon also dismissed prosecutors’ arguments that one of the fetuses, Baby C, was alive after being aborted.

Read more: http://dailycaller.com/2013/05/13/nyt-calls-murdered-babies-fetuses-in-article-about-gosnell-conviction/#ixzz2TDo5pjw

Many people travel to our shores
To escape their world of strife
and leave their troubled lands behind
To enjoy our way of life

But our way of life in America
Didn’t come easy, so don’t forget
If you love what we enjoy today
Be sure and thank a Vet

They shed there blood on foreign shores
to help keep others free
and many never came back home
to their wives and family

Many Fathers, Sons and daughters
Still battle in distant sand
May they never be forgotten
Nor the fight they have at hand

The bells will toll in their honor
As long as we never forget
America is what it is today
Thank God, and thank a Vet

by William A Predeau

Monday morning, Congressmen Steve Scalise and John Fleming—both Republicans representing districts in Louisiana—sent a letter signed by 59 Members of the U.S. House of Representatives to Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel at the Pentagon, demanding answers regarding Pentagon officials meeting with an anti-Christian extremist.

This story began two weeks ago when Breitbart News reported on at least one such meeting. Since that time it has become a growing controversy, as Breitbart News reported additional disturbing details. Now Congress is weighing in.
The Scalise-Fleming letter begins:

It has come to our attention that as recently as April 23, 2013, Pentagon officials met with Mr. Michael “Mikey” Weinstein, Founder and President of the Military Religious Freedom Foundation (MRFF), to discuss religious freedom in the military. As we have great concern regarding numerous inflammatory statements from Mr. Weinstein in recent weeks, we are seeking further clarification on the meeting that took place late last month.

The letter continues, detailing the numerous troubling statements attributed to Weinstein:

In a recent posting in his own words, Mr. Weinstein characterized men and women of the Christian faith as, “monsters who terrorize their fellow Americans” and offered consent to labeling individual faith based family groups as “hate groups.” Mr. Weinstein also [referenced such individuals and groups] as “die-hard enemies of the United States Constitution.”

The letter then notes that Weinstein has compared Christians in the military with “the Taliban and Al Qaeda,” as well as comparing Christians in general with “Hitler and Stalin.” The congressmen also criticize Weinstein’s comments “equating spiritual expression to ‘spiritual rape’ and sedition and treason within the military.”
Not surprisingly, the letter reads, “We question the Pentagon’s judgment and reasoning in accepting a meeting from someone with a history of such statements and sentiments.” The members of Congress demand that Hagel answer the following queries:

1. Confirmation of a meeting between pentagon officials and representatives from MRFF, as well as a list of meeting attendees, both military and civilians;
2. The purpose of the meeting specifically whether the meeting was organized to inform deliberative policy for the Armed Forces, as well as a summary of the meeting’s discussion;
3. Prior to arranging this meeting, where Pentagon officials aware of Mr. Weinstein’s previous statements, including those referenced above?
4. In addition to any meetings already held, are there additional meetings scheduled?

And so Congress has launched yet another investigation into serious concerns regarding the Obama administration, this one the latest in an ongoing series of acts of hostility between President Obama’s administration and Americans of religious faith.

http://www.breitbart.com/Big-Government/2013/05/13/56-Congressmen-Demand-Hagel-Explain-Meeting-with-Anti-Christian-Extremist

The lawyer of Gregory Hicks, the former U.S. deputy chief of mission in Libya who testified before the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee Wednesday, confirmed the information to The Daily Caller on Saturday.

According to the lawyer, Victoria Toensing, Hicks voted for Clinton during the 2008 primary, and for then-Illinois Sen. Obama in the 2008 general election. He again voted for Obama in 2012.

“The fact is he is a registered Democrat in Virginia. The fact is he voted for Hilary in the primary and Obama and then again for Obama,” Toensing said.

Toensing added that she did not know he was a Democrat until the day before the hearing.

“I’m not interested in that,” she said. “I’m interested in government not abusing its powers.”

Hicks testified before the House Oversight Committee this week regarding the events that took place on Sept. 11, 2012 in Benghazi and recalled how the State Department told him not to cooperate with the congressional investigation into the events, which led to the deaths of four Americans.

Hicks further testified that he has been demoted since Benghazi.

“The job now is a significant … it’s a demotion,” Hicks said before the committee. “Foreign-affairs officer is a designation that is given to our civil service colleagues who are desk officers. So I’ve been effectively demoted from deputy chief of mission to desk officer.”

The State Department has denied the demotion, saying that Hicks decided to end his assignment in Libya early.

“The Department has not and will not retaliate against Mr. Hicks,” Acting Deputy State Department spokesperson Patrick Ventrell said during a Thursday press briefing. “As he testified yesterday, he decided to shorten his assignment in Libya following the attacks, in part due to understandable family reasons, and that he has followed standard employment processes.”

According to Toensing, however, the administration is simply lying.

“The State Department is lying — saying he was not demoted. It is almost impossible under law for them to take away anybody’s salary. But they demoted him to a job where he has no meaningful work,” she said. “He had a choice between no job whatsoever and a job that didn’t have any meaningful work. And I say this is like telling a starving man he can have no food or he can have the rotten beef. And if he chooses the rotten beef, is that a choice?”

Read more: http://dailycaller.com/2013/05/11/benghazi-whistle-blower-a-democrat-voted-for-hillary-and-obama-twice/#ixzz2T9EoAaXK

THE-TRUTH-IS-OUT-THERE (Obama Files)

http://www.americanthinker.com/2012/10/they_fought_for_their_lives.html#.UZBdc1yHXn4.email

From the very beginning of the editing process, the talking points contained the erroneous assertion that the attack was “spontaneously inspired by the protests at the U.S. Embassy in Cairo and evolved.” That’s an important fact, because the right has always criticized the Administration based on the suggestion that the C.I.A. and the State Department, contrary to what they said, knew that the attack was not spontaneous and not an outgrowth of a demonstration. But everything else about the changes that were made is problematic. The initial draft revealed by Karl mentions “at least five other attacks against foreign interests in Benghazi” before the one in which four Americans were killed. That’s not in the final version. Nor is this: “[W]e do know that Islamic extremists with ties to al-Qa’ida participated in the attack.” That was replaced by the more tepid “There are indications that extremists participated in the violent demonstrations.” (Even if we accept the argument that State wanted to be sure that extremists were involved, and that they could be linked to Al Qaeda, before saying so with any level of certainty—which is reasonable and supported by evidence from Karl’s reporting—that doesn’t fully explain these changes away.)

Democrats will argue that the editing process wasn’t motivated by a desire to protect Obama’s record on fighting Al Qaeda in the run-up to the 2012 election. They have a point; based on what we’ve seen from Karl’s report, the process that went into creating and then changing the talking points seems to have been driven in large measure by two parts of the government—C.I.A. and State—trying to make sure the blame for the attacks and the failure to protect American personnel in Benghazi fell on the other guy.

But the mere existence of the edits—whatever the motivation for them—seriously undermines the White House’s credibility on this issue. This past November (after Election Day), White House Press Secretary Jay Carney told reporters that “The White House and the State Department have made clear that the single adjustment that was made to those talking points by either of those two institutions were changing the word ‘consulate’ to ‘diplomatic facility’ because ‘consulate’ was inaccurate.”

Remarkably, Carney is sticking with that line even now. In his regular press briefing on Friday afternoon (a briefing that was delayed several times, presumably in part so the White House could get its spin in order, but also so that it could hold a secretive pre-briefing briefing with select members of the White House press corps), he said:=”#.uy1gksebagw.twitter”>

The only edit made by the White House or the State Department to those talking points generated by the C.I.A. was a change from referring to the facility that was attacked in Benghazi from “consulate,” because it was not a consulate, to “diplomatic post”… it was a matter of non-substantive factual correction. But there was a process leading up to that that involved inputs from a lot of agencies, as is always the case in a situation like this and is always appropriate.

This is an incredible thing for Carney to be saying. He’s playing semantic games, telling a roomful of journalists that the definition of editing we’ve all been using is wrong, that the only thing that matters is who’s actually working the keyboard. It’s not quite re-defining the word “is,” or the phrase “sexual relations,” but it’s not all that far off, either.

http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/newsdesk/2013/05/benghazi-cia-talking-point-edits-white-house.html?mobify=0

In a sign of how the Benghazi cover-up story is gaining traction in the mainstream media, Politico, the same outlet that only four days ago buried all of its Benghazi stories, is now conceding that the Obama administration ran with a “false narrative” in the days immediately following the September 11, 2012 terrorist attacks in Libya.

On Friday, in a story about Rush Limbaugh’s response to ABC’s report that the Obama administration scrubbed its initial talking points to remove references to terrorism, Politico conceded:

Earlier Friday, reports surfaced that the false narrative the Obama administration pushed in the immediate aftermath of the attack, in which ambassador Christopher Stevens and three others were killed, was based on talking points that were edited 12 times. The final version of the talking points — trumpeted by many, including Susan Rice — blamed the incident as a spontaneous response to an anti-Islamic YouTube video and not on terrorism.

After conservative outlets like Breitbart News relentlessly pushed the mainstream media and the Obama administration about Benghazi, the narrative the Obama administration pushed to reporters immediately after the Benghazi attacks about a spontaneous demonstration resulting from an obscure YouTube video is beginning to unravel.

THE-TRUTH-IS-OUT-THERE (Obama Files)

http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2013/feb/14/white-house-no-phone-calls-benghazi/#.UY-aYAQ1jew.email

Speaking at the Iowa GOP’s annual Lincoln Dinner, Paul questioned the initial response to the attacks and asked, “First question to Hillary Clinton: Where in the hell were the Marines?”

“It was inexcusable, it was a dereliction of duty, and it should preclude her from holding higher office,” the Kentucky Republican added to loud applause.

http://nbcpolitics.nbcnews.com/_news/2013/05/11/18183010-rand-paul-challenges-hillary-clinton-in-key-iowa-speech?lite

The House resolution to form a special committee now has at least 139 co-sponsors who are putting Boehner in the difficult position of leading efforts to get the White House to release emails on Benghazi-gate but not agreeing to the demands of many rank-and-file Republicans.

The resolution is sponsored by Virginia Rep. Frank Wolf who suggested to Boehner in a forceful, four-page letter Thursday that the Obama administration perhaps failed to adequately prevent the deaths of the Americans killed and injured in the Sept. 11, 2012, attacks on the U.S. outpost in Benghazi, Libya, and that not appointing the committee could make the Republican-led House “complicit in that failure.”

An ABC News story said the CIA’s explanation of the Benghazi events changed 12 different times before being made public.

Susan Rice, the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, said five days after the attacks, while making the rounds on the Sunday talk shows, that the strikes appeared to be “spontaneous” and sparked by protests elsewhere in the Middle East about an anti-Islamic video.

However, references to “Islamic militants” and terror attacks in the original CIA reports were scrubbed from Rice’s final talk points.

Wolf said that after the ABC News report the number of co-sponsors increased to 144, about 60 percent of the House Republican Caucus.

The pressure to form such a committee also increased after three career State Department employees and self-proclaimed “whistle blowers” testified Wednesday about Benghazi before the House Committee on Oversight and Government Affairs.

Wolf argues a select committee is needed to strengthen subpoena powers and so one chairman or director can bring together the expertise of the different standing committees.

“If you don’t use the subpoena power, people will not come in and testify, because if you’re 50 years old and you’re a federal employee, you have two kids, maybe two college tuitions, you have a mortgage on your house in Arlington County, you’re not going to risk your career,” Wolf told conservative talk radio host Hugh Hewitt on Friday.

He also said somebody from the Armed Services Committee should be included on the panel because the Defense Department is involved in the Benghazi matter. And the Intelligence Committee should be included because the CIA and the office of the Director of National Intelligence are also involved.

Boehner on Thursday again declined to commit to appointing a committee, saying he has “confidence” in the committees already holding investigations.

Such committees have been appointed to investigate Watergate and the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks.

Beyond the issue of whether State Department officials and White House deputies changed the CIA memo for political reasons, in the height of Obama’s re-election effort, are issues of whether the U.S. provided adequate security at the compound and made full attempts to repel the attacks and rescue Americans.

Republican Sens. John McCain, Arizona, and Lindsey Graham, South Carolina, renewed their call after the Wednesday hearing for a select committee.

Graham, who with McCain had led Senate Republican efforts to get to the bottom of the Benghazi issue, told The Hill that he has urged Boehner to create the committee.

“I’ve raised it to him, I’ve talked to him,” he told the newspaper. “It’s his decision to make, but we’re making a big mistake by not doing a select committee.”

Read more: http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2013/05/11/pressure-mounts-on-boehner-to-appoint-select-committee-on-benghazi/#ixzz2T2H9y0BM

White House emails reviewed by ABC News suggest the edits were made with extensive input from the State Department. The edits included requests from the State Department that references to the Al Qaeda-affiliated group Ansar al-Sharia be deleted as well references to CIA warnings about terrorist threats in Benghazi in the months preceding the attack.

That would appear to directly contradict what White House Press Secretary Jay Carney said about the talking points in November.

People died, Jay Carney lied.

http://twitchy.com/2013/05/10/terror-truth-scrubbed-during-12-edits-of-libya-talking-points-lapdogs-spin-mmfa-tool-deletes-tweet/

http://www.breitbart.com/Breitbart-TV/2013/05/11/Rodman-Obama-Can-Do-Sht-On-North-Korea

It’s not front page news, apparently……

Not front page material in the Grey Lady’s news judgment. But good enough for page A-11. With the third paragraph reassuring readers that an agency spokesperson had insisted

… that the move was not driven by politics, but she added, “We made some mistakes; some people didn’t use good judgment.”

But of course. One does wonder, though, how the Times would have played the news if, a few years back, it had come to light that the IRS had been auditing Valerie Plame.

But … then, perhaps in the Times‘s lofty judgment, the IRS was merely doing what it should do. This, anyway, was how the Times editorial page saw it last year:

Taxpayers should be encouraged by complaints from Tea Party chapters applying for nonprofit tax status at being asked by the Internal Revenue Service to prove they are “social welfare” organizations and not the political activists they so obviously are.

One big, ham-fisted organization admiring the work of another.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

HILLARY CLINTON: The fact is we had four dead Americans.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I understand.

CLINTON: Was it because of a protest or was it because of guys out for a walk one night who decided they would go kill some Americans? What difference at this point does it make?

(END VIDEO CLIP)

O’REILLY: Mrs. Clinton went on to say the important thing is that the killers be brought to justice and that kind of terror attack never happen again. But there is no question that the hearings yesterday were embarrassing for the Obama administration and for Hillary Clinton.

But immediately, the left-wing spin found its way into the media.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

JON STEWART, HOST, “THE DAILY SHOW WITH JON STEWART”: And why Benghazi is generally emerged as a rallying cry for the President’s opponents. When during the Bush administration, there were 54 attacks on diplomatic targets that killed 13 Americans. Yet, garnered only three hearings on embassy security total. And zero outrage on Fox.

So why is this attack so different for Republicans?

(END VIDEO CLIP)

O’REILLY: Well, here is the answer. Mr. Stewart referring to a study by the University of Maryland that pinpointed terror attacks from January of 2001 to December of 2008. But when you study the study, you find that many of the cited attacks occurred in Iraq during the war. And none of the attacks were at the level of Benghazi. Not even close.

It should also be noted that Jon Stewart apparently got his information from the far left web site Media Matters and “The Daily Kos.”

But let’s get back to the matter at hand. The most riveting testimony yesterday was delivered by Gregory Hicks second in command in Libya under the slain ambassador Christopher Stevens. Mr. Hicks described in vivid detail how he tried to get help for the Americans under siege in Benghazi but was not able to secure cooperation in Washington.

After showing his displeasure with that, Gregory Hicks was demoted by Hillary Clinton. And that is unacceptable. Honest government is the corner stone of our democracy. There is no question, no question the State Department screwed up in Libya and Mr. Hicks, by all indications, told the truth. And he was punished for doing that? Disgraceful.

Today Speaker of the House John Boehner said Congress would continue its investigation and Hillary Clinton certainly needs to come back to testify. Mrs. Clinton is up to her eyeballs in this.

Of course, that has political implications for the Democratic Party because she may very well run for president in 2016. The bottom line, Americans need to know the truth about what happened in Benghazi, why our government misled the world, and why they did not respond with more urgency on the day of the attack. We all need to know that.

And that’s “The Memo.”

– You can catch Bill O’Reilly’s “Talking Points Memo” weeknights at 8 and oreilly.