Arrogance, Cover-Ups and Blame-Shifting

From Harry Stein, at City Journal, "Not a Crook — Yet":

The comparisons of the Obama and Nixon White Houses are suddenly coming—pardon the expression—fast and furious, and why not? The IRS investigations; the administration’s fixation on leaks and leakers and its obsession with enemies; the cover-ups, the blame-shifting to subordinates, the defiant chief executive, even the sweating, pathetically dissembling press secretary; it all has the odor of that earlier time. Again, it’s all happening early in the second term, following a triumphant reelection. Again, the operative terms are arrogance, contempt for law, and thuggery.

The growing awareness of administration malfeasance is evident in the numbers on Google: more than 59 million hits for “Obama and Nixon” and 24 million–plus for “Obama and Watergate.” For those interested, the 44th president’s face can already be found morphing into the 37th’s. Then there’s the rising tide of commentary. “Obama knee-deep in Nixon-esque scandal” runs the headline of columnist Joe Battenfield’s piece in the Boston Herald, which notes that Obama’s campaign slogan would have been more appropriate if it were not “Forward” but “Backward”—“All the way to, say, 1972.” “Benghazi, IRS—Son of Watergate?” asks Cal Thomas. “In IRS Scandal, Echoes of Watergate,” observes the Washington Post’s George Will.

Such talk is mostly confined to the Right so far, but a handful of principled liberals have also weighed in. “There’s no way in the world I’m going to defend that,” said U.S. Representative Michael Capuano of Massachusetts of the IRS’s going after the Tea Party. “Hell, I spent my youth vilifying the Nixon administration for doing the same thing.” Former Michigan Democratic congresswoman Lynn Rivers echoed him: “For anyone over 50, this news couldn’t help but stir memories of Richard Nixon’s Political Enemies Project. . . . To use Dan Rather’s ‘duck test,’ the IRS probe of ‘hostile’ ideological groups looks like, swims like, and quacks like government dirty tricks.” One of the heroes of Watergate weighed in, too. “This is outrageous, and it is totally inexcusable,” Carl Bernstein raged about the revelation that the Department of Justice had secretly seized the phone records of Associated Press journalists. “There is no reason that a presidency that is interested in a truly free press and its functioning should permit this to happen.” Thus it is that questions that once seemed unfathomable take on unexpected plausibility. Where and how far will it all go?

Continue reading.

Well, it's not going to impeachment anytime soon. There's still way too many questions, rival cover-ups, and a still mostly-compliant media. It's going to take some undeniably huge smoking gun to keep this flurry of bad news alive. As Sean Hannity predicted on air last night, things are likely to blow over in the lapdog press in no time. And to that, Michelle Malkin added that conservatives will never "stand down." Amen.

IMAGE CREDIT: Brad Marston.

Michelle Fields Talks Obama Scandals on Cavuto

Ms. Field is in D.C. for some live appearances on Fox News:

Obama Announces Resignation of Acting IRS Commissioner

At Instapundit, "BOY, I TAKE A FEW HOURS OFF AND LOOK WHAT HAPPENS: IRS ACTING COMMISSIONER RESIGNS.

Lots of links at that link.

And at the video, President Hussein is lying through his teeth:

Michelle Malkin on Lapdog Media Doing Their Jobs: 'I Give Them a Golf Clap...'

An awesome Hannity segment from just a little while ago:

Leftist Meme: Tea Party Had It Coming on IRS Targeting

My jaw almost hit the floor reading today's letters to the editor at the Los Angeles Times, "Re "Report raises more IRS questions," May 12":

There is no question that the IRS violated a code of conduct when targeting conservative groups. I just wish that Republicans would be so outraged by their own partisan conduct.

Republicans have conspired since the moment of President Obama's first inauguration to block his agenda at every turn. Indeed, the Senate minority leader's stated goal was to make Obama a one-term president.

Those who truly suffer from this behavior are the people of this great nation.

Rodney K. Boswell
Thousand Oaks

Right.

Like blaming rape on the victim. The mind boggles.

More at Twitchy, "‘Media Matters just stopped mattering for the media’: Lefty group sides with DOJ against AP," and "Targeted by IRS? Bill Maher, Elayne Boosler suggest conservative groups were asking for it."

Syrian Rebel Cuts Out Soldier's Heart and Eats It

This is one of the more bizarrely grotesque things I've seen in awhile.

At Elder of Ziyon, "Video of Syrian rebel cutting out, eating soldier's heart (graphic videos)."

More at NYT:

Syrian Rebel Reportedly Defends Sinking His Teeth Into Dead Soldier’s Flesh on Camera nyti.ms/16y2uL9

— NYTimes Lede Blog (@thelede) May 14, 2013

Obama's Lawless Presidency

IBD is hammering this criminal clusterf-k administration.

See, "Obama's Scandals Stem from His Lawless Presidency," and "Eight Months Too Late, The Media See the Real Obama."

Angelina Jolie's Double Mastectomy

An amazing story, at London's Daily Mail, "How heroic Angelina Jolie kept her family life as normal as possible for the sake of her children as she underwent a double mastectomy."

Plus, "Brad says Angelina ‘is absolutely heroic’ and hails ‘happy day for our family’ after she undergoes double mastectomy to prevent breast cancer," and "Angelina Jolie's father Jon Voight only learned about daughter's double mastectomy online... despite seeing her just TWO days ago."

Lurking Tyranny

From A.F. Branco:

Obama insists there is no 'there there...'

At the Looking Spoon, "The Only Part of the Obama Administration Where There Really Is 'No There There'."

Tyranny is Always Lurking Just Around the Corner

At Bearing Drift, "Is Tyranny Around the Corner?"

Yes, tyranny is always just around the corner. That’s why, as Thomas Jefferson reminds us, eternal vigilance is the price of liberty.

IMAGE CREDIT: Rare.

'This may be one of the most heartbreaking stories I have ever read...'

At I'm41, "Pair of Berkeley Lesbian Lunatics Putting 11-Year-Old Son on Hormone Blocking Treatment to Make Him Their Daughter."

Also at Victory Girls, "Lesbian Parents Put Their Eight-Year-Old Boy Through a Sex Change":

Regardless of whether or not a sex change actually changes your gender (here’s a hint: it doesn’t), if an adult wants to choose to mutilate their genitals and live their life as a member of the opposite sex, then whatever. Go for it. You’re an adult, it’s your decision, I may not agree or understand, but it’s your life and your body. The difference here, however, is that this is a child. A child cannot understand the potential long-term consequences of their actions. A child cannot consent to hormone therapy and understand the health risks they could be taking. A child cannot understand that they are choosing to give up any chance of a normal childhood and adolescence. A child cannot think long-term, they cannot understand consequences of their actions, and therefore cannot make such a huge, life-changing decision as getting a sex change.

This isn’t just an example of poor parenting — it’s parents with an agenda to push, acting it out on their defenseless child who ends up being nothing more than a social experiment to their delusional parents.

Remember, for the leftards, if it feels good do it! (No matter whom you destroy in the process.)

Rapidly Shrinking Market Poses Big Challenges for TV Networks

An interesting piece, from Brian Stelter, at the New York Times, "As TV Ratings and Profits Fall, Networks Face a Cliffhanger":

As the major television networks prepare to unveil their new fall lineups in New York this week, they face threats from seemingly every corner.

Prime-time ratings for the Big Four broadcasters — ABC, CBS, NBC and Fox — together are dropping more precipitously than ever. Even their biggest hits, like “American Idol” and “Dancing With the Stars,” are fading fast. Advertisers are moving more cash to cable, cutting into the networks’ quarterly profits. New technologies are making it easier to skip those ads, anyway.

That’s not all: there are more outlets for programming cropping up all the time, with Netflix and Amazon and dozens of cable channels competing for actors, producers and, most important, viewers. Government regulators want to take back some of the spectrum allotted to local television stations. And start-ups like Aereo are threatening to deprive the stations of subscription revenue, causing some broadcasters to talk of options that were unthinkable a few short years ago. Some have warned they might go off the air entirely.

The many pressures bearing down on the industry are casting a shadow over this week’s upfronts, an annual tradition in New York in which the new sitcoms, dramas and reality shows are previewed at splashy, open-bar events and the networks try to capture their portion of an estimated $9 billion in advertising commitments.

“The networks are getting picked at from every direction,” said Jessica Reif Cohen, the senior media analyst at Bank of America Merrill Lynch. “This year was the tipping point,” she said, “when the television ratings really fell apart.”

The broadcast networks have managed declining viewership for years, but executives by and large said they believed that they had escaped the punishing losses that digital media exacted on the music industry and newspapers.

Now, though, they say they are not sure; even the industry’s biggest boosters concede that the business is under assault, though they express confidence that the networks will adapt. While the challenges before them are numerous, said Gary Carr, who oversees ad-buying at TargetCast, “the networks are far from dead.”

More at the link.

'For a long time, it seemed like the idea of a coverup was just a Republican obsession. But now there is something to it...'

Yes, when events start going so badly for this administration that even the most hardened shills in the JournoList protectorate can no longer dismiss the avalanche of scandal...

See Robert Stacy McCain, "A Short Lesson in Liberal Media Bias: Has Alex Koppelman Forgotten Fitzmas?"

Heidi Klum 'Best Mother's Day Ever'

Well, she's definitely enjoying herself:

Via Twitter.

Associated Press Phone Records Siezed by Department of Justice

It comes it threes.

From Erika Johnsen, at Hot Air, "Breaking: DOJ secretly seized two months of Associated Press phone records?"

More at the Hill, "Justice Department secretly seized AP reporters’ phone records" (via Memeorandum).

Astronaut Chris Hadfield Sings David Bowie's 'Space Oddity' in Space

A wonderful video:

Background at the Next Web, "Commander Chris Hadfield signs off from space with epic cover of David Bowie’s ‘Space Oddity’."

Obama Scandals Invoke Comparisons to Watergate

At Instapundit, "THE BOSTON HERALD GOES ALL IN ON THE OBAMA SCANDALS."

Lots of links at the post.

And I love this: " Barack Milhous Obamixon."

Sick: Salon's Irin Carmon Dismisses #Gosnell Conviction as 'Local Story'

At Twitchy, "Salon’s Irin Carmon: Lone outlaw Kermit Gosnell really was just a local crime story."

.@irincarmon It's a national story in virtually all respects. Amazing that you would even pen such a despicable piece. @davidspjm #ProLife
— Donald Douglas (@AmPowerBlog) May 14, 2013

And following the links takes us to David Steinberg's essay at Pajamas, "Gosnell and ‘Pro-Choice’: Fleeing From Reason?":

Take the emotion out of it. After Gosnell, is it possible for an impartial observer to offer a logical argument proving abortion is not murder?

Kermit #Gosnell Convicted on Three Counts of First-Degree Murder

At the Philadelphia Inquirer, "Abortion doctor Gosnell found guilty on 3 counts of 1st-degree murder":

Kermit Barron Gosnell - the West Philadelphia doctor whose career in urban medicine began during the "war on poverty" and ended 40 years later as a hated symbol of the antiabortion movement - was found guilty of three counts of first-degree murder Monday by a Philadelphia jury.

The jury acquitted Gosnell of one count of first-degree murder involving an infant prosecutors said was born alive and killed during an abortion.

In Pennsylvania, first-degree murder - the premeditated, malicious killing of a person - is punishable by death by lethal injection or life in prison without chance of parole.

Continue reading.

More the Other McCain, "#Gosnell Convicted: Quick Reactions" (via Memeorandum).

Expect updates...

Glenn Greenwald Gets His Blowback On

This was getting some attention on Twitter yesterday, at RCP, "Bill Maher vs. Glenn Greenwald on Islam's History of Violence & U.S. Aggression":

And in a hilarious surprise development, David Atkins, at Hullabaloo, took both Greenwald and Maher to task, "Greenwald and Maher are both wrong." (It's all about "fundamentalism," I guess.) And that elicited a blowback against the blowback from Digby, "No sorry David, Glenn Greenwald is not wrong."

Actually, they're both wrong themselves, and as I always say, as much as I dislike Glenn Greenwald, at least he's consistent. See, "Debating Bill Maher on Muslims, Islam and US foreign policy."

More from Barry Eisler, "Don't Worry, US Imperialism is Cost-Free."

I Picked Up Some Moose Drool

After beer tasting last week, I decided to quit procrastinating on diversifying my repertoire.

Here's the Moose Drool six-pack below. I haven't tried it yet. I also picked up a pack of the Rasputin Stout. Had some with dinner last night. Oh boy, is that good beer!

I'll update when I sample these puppies. The alcohol content much higher than domestic light beers (the Rasputin's at 9% ABV), so it might be next weekend until I have some more. Otherwise, I'll fall asleep too early in the evening.

Republicans Push for More Information on #Benghazi

At the New York Times, "G.O.P. Pushes for More Details of Benghazi Attack":

WASHINGTON — A House committee chairman vowed Sunday to seek additional testimony on the Obama administration’s handling of last year’s deadly attack on the American diplomatic post in Libya as another prominent Republican lawmaker called for a special committee to investigate.

The dispute over the assault in Benghazi, Libya, in September that killed four Americans dominated the network talk shows on Sunday. Leaders of both parties debated whether the administration had paid enough attention to security before the attack, did enough to respond once the violence began and tried to deceive the public afterward in the midst of an election campaign.

“I’d call it a cover-up,” Senator John McCain, Republican of Arizona, said on the ABC News program “This Week.”. “I would call it a cover-up in the extent that there was willful removal of information, which was obvious.”

Mr. McCain called for a select committee to investigate, saying that “there are so many questions that are unanswered.” Last week, several House Republicans called for a special investigation in that chamber as well.

Representative Darrell Issa, Republican of California and chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, also referred to a cover-up as he charged that the administration scrubbed talking points to falsely blame an incendiary anti-Muslim video rather than specific terrorist groups.

“The American people were effectively lied to for a period of about a month,” he said on the NBC News program “Meet the Press.” “They were in fact covering up an easy attack that succeeded, that was from the get-go really about a terrorist attack. It was never about a video.”

Mr. Issa said he would deliver requests for testimony on Monday to former Ambassador Thomas R. Pickering and Adm. Mike Mullen, the retired chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, who led a State Department review of the episode that critics considered inadequate. Mr. Issa, whose committee has been leading the latest investigation in the House, said he did not believe a special investigation would be necessary.

Continue reading.

EARLIER: "George Will Hammers White House on #Benghazi."

Don't Miss This Don't-Miss Essay From Michelle Malkin on Harvard-Trained Immigration Expert Jason Richwine

See, "The crucifixion of Jason Richwine; Update: Richwine resigns."

I guess John McCain's former Hispanic National co-chair Ana Navarro fanned the flames. She dissed Michelle on Twitter, although I've yet to hear back from her:

.@ananavarro 'Talk to the hand, little girl?' Seriously? You should be getting the back of the hand. Disgrace. #Amnesty @michellemalkin
— Donald Douglas (@AmPowerBlog) May 13, 2013

I must say, though. I'm not sure how Richwine thought that "IQ and Immigration Policy" would make for an enduring (non-controversial) dissertation topic. If folks recall the "Bell Curve" wars, clearly there's precedent for avoiding this kind of thing. Anyway, Professor Daniel Drezner has some additional comments, "Regarding Richwine..."

In the end it doesn't matter. Richwine clearly pushed some buttons with his Heritage immigration study. The left will settle for nothing less that blood.

George Will Hammers White House on #Benghazi

At ABC News, "George Will: Nation ‘Systematically Misled’ on Benghazi."

And from Daniel Foster at NRO, "George Will: White House Painted Benghazi As 'a Movie Review Conducted with Rocket Propelled Grenades'."

More at IBD, "Benghazi Talking Points: A Lie Hillary Agreed Upon."

And from Mandy Nagy, at Legal Insurrection, "Weekend Wrap-up of Benghazi Coverage – Notable Quotes."

Plus, an excellent post from Ed Driscoll, "Jay Carney’s Corruption Occurred a Long Time Ago."

Sunday Cartoons

At Flopping Aces, "Sunday Funnies."

More at Legal Insurrection, "Branco Cartoon – Grab A Mop," and Reaganite Republican, "Reaganite's SUNDAY FUNNIES."

Still more at Randy's Roundtable, "Friday Nite Funnies," and Theo Spark, "Cartoon Round Up..."

CARTOON CREDIT: William Warren, "Cinco de Blameo."

Paulina Porizkova's Still Got It! '80s Supermodel Rocks Skimpy String Bikini at Iceland Spa

She's got two kids, so let's give it up for Ms. Porizkova on Mother's Day!

At London's Daily Mail, "Paulina Porizkova, 48, proves she STILL has a supermodel body in bikini shot at Iceland spa."

Will Obama Suffer the 'Second-Term Curse'?

Well, jeez, let's hope so.

At the Washington Post:

Recent events suggest that the 44th president may not be immune to the phenomenon that historians call the “second-term curse.”

Not four months after his ambitious inaugural address, President Obama finds himself struggling to move his legislative agenda through an unbudging Congress.

And over the past week, two flaring controversies — one over his administration’s handling of the killing of the U.S. ambassador and three other Americans in Libya, the other over Internal Revenue Service employees targeting tea party groups for special scrutiny — have dominated the discussion in Washington.

It is far from clear how big a political liability either will turn out to be.

At a minimum, they represent diversions working against a president who is keenly aware of how little time he has left to achieve big things. And they are a test of the insular Obama team’s skill at keeping its footing in an environment of hyperpartisan politics and hair-trigger media.

On Friday, for instance, news of the IRS admission and developments surrounding the Benghazi attack turned White House press secretary Jay Carney’s daily briefing into a feeding frenzy and drowned out coverage of a speech that Obama was giving that day on the implementation of the health-care law that stands as his biggest achievement.

“After the election, the president said he was familiar with the literature on second-term difficulties,” said presidential historian Michael Beschloss. “We scholars may be about to see whether knowledge of that history can help a president when they begin to strike.”

“What we’ve seen in the past week reignites the question scholars ask about problematic second terms,” Beschloss added. “Is it mainly a coincidence that every president of the past 80 years has had a hard time after getting reelected? Or is it somehow baked into the structure of a second-term presidency that some combination of serious troubles is going to happen?”

White House officials acknowledge that the history of modern second-term presidencies is a sobering one, replete with scandal and failure.

But they insist that they have seen nothing to suggest that Obama will fall into the traps that have ensnared so many of his predecessors: nothing that rivals the Watergate investigation that drove Richard M. Nixon out of office in 1974, the Iran-contra scandal that nearly derailed Ronald Reagan’s presidency in 1986,or the impeachment of Bill Clinton in 1998.

Well, at least the media itself is beginning, ever so slightly, to shed it's protective attack dog role and actually report on this clusterf-k administration's endless corruption, scandal, and incompetence. 2016 can't come too soon.

More at that top link.

Russia Withheld Tamerlan Tsarnaev Text Messages, U.S. Officials Say

At the Wall Street Journal, "U.S.: Russia Withheld Intel on Boston Bomb Suspect":

Russia withheld a crucial piece of information from the U.S. before the Boston bombings, U.S. officials say, bolstering a concern that distrust between the two governments erased an opportunity to avert the disaster.

In 2011, Russia sent an alert to the Federal Bureau of Investigation about alleged bomber Tamerlan Tsarnaev, prompted in part by text messages between his mother and a Russian relative. The texts suggested Mr. Tsarnaev was interested in joining militant groups that Russia blames for attacks in the Caucasus region, according to U.S. officials briefed on the investigations.

U.S. officials call these text messages the most important in a series of missed signals between the two countries. One U.S. official characterized at least one of the text messages as generally discussing jihad, but without any specific mention of terrorism plans.

The U.S. officials say they learned about them roughly a week after the April 15 bombings. Several officials say such precise information would have led to a deeper examination of Mr. Tsarnaev, who died a few days after the bombing in a police confrontation. His brother and alleged accomplice remains in custody.

The information Russia withheld "would have allowed the bureau to open an investigation where you could track [Mr. Tsarnaev's] communications," said House Intelligence Committee chairman Mike Rogers (R., Mich.). "To me, that's where the ball really got dropped."

Previous terror plots in the U.S. exposed lapses in data-sharing among U.S. agencies, and the official Boston review could still uncover such instances. But so far in the Boston bombing, U.S. officials say, it appears that intelligence-sharing went most awry between the U.S. and Russia. After the Russian government made its 2011 query on Mr. Tsarnaev, the FBI three times requested more information and received none, U.S. officials say. Mr. Tsarnaev was a legal resident of the U.S. and a citizen of Kyrgyzstan.

The Kremlin said Russian security services gathered little information on Mr. Tsarnaev, but officials in the province of Dagestan said they tracked him during a six-month trip there in 2012. Russia never reported such details to the U.S. While in Dagestan, Mr. Tsarnaev met with a known militant, officials in Dagestan said.

U.S. officials say they don't know why the text messages weren't provided earlier. They surmised Russia didn't provide other information because they wanted to protect their sources or because they didn't give the information much credibility themselves.

Continue reading.

Cleveland Suspect Ariel Castro Is Registered Democrat

A great post a couple of days back, at the Other McCain, "Hope and Chains: #WarOnWomen Kidnapper Is Cuyahoga County Democrat."

IMAGE CREDIT: The People's Cube, "Ariel Castro, Cleveland Kidnapper, is a Registered Democrat."

Former Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif Claims Victory in Pakistan Election

At the Wall Street Journal, "Former PM Declares Victory in Pakistan: Voters Stream to Polls, but Twin Bombings Underscore the Dangers":

LAHORE, Pakistan—A conservative former Pakistani prime minister ousted in a 1999 military coup, Nawaz Sharif, appeared headed to victory Saturday in a closely fought election that also turned populist cricket legend Imran Khan into a major political force, according to early results.

Mr. Sharif's Pakistan Muslim League-N was leading in 125 constituencies out of 272, according to partial and initial results. Mr. Khan's Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf, which boycotted the previous election in 2008, was leading in 35 races, while the Pakistan Peoples Party that controlled the previous government was projected to win 32 seats. With independents and small parties leading in many remaining races, these results, if they hold, could allow Mr. Sharif to form the next government of the world's fifth largest democracy.

The election would mark the first time in Pakistan's coup-ridden history that a civilian government served a full five-year term and transferred power to another elected administration. Turnout was close to 60 percent, according the country's election commission, much higher than the 44% in the previous vote, despite Taliban threats and scattered violence that killed at least 19 people.

"Pakistan needs a strong government that can take strong decisions," Mr. Sharif said as he watched the results stream in on TV in his Lahore headquarters, with cheers by supporters outside growing louder with every new projection. As his lead solidified, he came out to make a victory speech, urging supporters to pray for an outright PML-N majority by the end of the count, so that a future government could be established "without crutches."

Mr. Sharif, in an interview with The Wall Street Journal after the vote, said he foresaw no new problems with the country's powerful military establishment, saying that the 1999 coup against him was the personal initiative of then-army chief Gen. Pervez Musharraf, and not the military as a whole.

He also said he would work for improved relations with the U.S., India and Afghanistan....

The Pakistani Taliban have focused their campaign of violence and intimidation that killed more than 100 people in the run-up to Saturday's vote on the PPP and its two secular allies, the Awami National Party and the Muttahida Qaumi Movement.

In the biggest attack on election day, 11 people were killed Saturday morning in twin bombings targeting an ANP office in the southern city of Karachi, a police official said. ANP, according to initial results, would have no seats in the new federal parliament, in part because Taliban violence made it nearly impossible for its candidates to campaign.

Continue reading.

Car Bombings Near Syrian Border Kill at Least Forty in Turkey

At the New York Times, "Car Bombings Kill Dozens in Center of Turkish Town Near the Syrian Border":

REYHANLI, Turkey — Two powerful car bombs killed at least 43 people in this town near Turkey’s border with Syria on Saturday, transforming downtown office blocks into smoldering husks in one of the deadliest attacks on Turkish soil in at least a decade.

There were no immediate claims of responsibility for the attacks, which came 15 minutes and barely a mile apart. Hours later, officials with Turkey’s government, which has backed the rebels fighting President Bashar al-Assad of Syria, said they had identified the suspects in the bombing. The attackers, officials said, belonged to an organization linked to Mr. Assad’s intelligence services, though they did not name the organization or the suspects, or provide a detailed explanation of how they reached that conclusion.

Turkey’s swift accusation raised the possibility of an escalating conflict with Syria and the broadening of the war. A senior Turkish Foreign Ministry official said the government had not reached the point where it was considering a military retaliation, but added, “No crime will be left without a response.”

In blaming Mr. Assad’s government, Turkish officials seemed anxious to stave off any possible backlash against thousands of Syrian refugees in Reyhanli or its allies in the Syrian opposition for the bombing. The town is in a region of southern Turkey where some Turks have bristled at their government’s willingness to make Turkey a party to the war, putting it at risk.

After the bombings on Saturday, angry residents smashed the windows of cars from Syria, and a Turkish newspaper reported that protests against Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan later erupted in Reyhanli’s streets.

If connected to the Syrian war, the attack on Saturday would be the deadliest spillover since the beginning of the uprising against Mr. Assad in March 2011. In October, shells fired from Syria killed five people in Turkey, and the Turkish government blamed Mr. Assad’s forces. At least 14 people died in a separate episode when a car bomb exploded at a border crossing.

Continue reading.

Obama Officials 'Redacted the Truth' From Benghazi

Via Blazing Cat Fur, "Heads should roll!":

No Legal Concerns Here...

Not with this Newcastle:

Enjoying a Newcastle. twitter.com/AmPowerBlog/st…
— Donald Douglas (@AmPowerBlog) May 11, 2013

But see Blazing Cat Fur, "Iron Maiden beer stopped over skull label concerns."

IRS Targets Tea Party Groups — Top Officials in the Know

At the Hill, "Report: Top IRS officials knew of Tea Party targeting two years ago." (At Memeorandum.)

Plus, Katie Pavlich on Twitter:

Every Obama admin scandal "low level" employees blamed yet it is ALWAYS senior officials who r actually responsible bigstory.ap.org/article/irs-wa…”
— Katie Pavlich (@KatiePavlich) May 11, 2013

And a great editorial at the Wall Street Journal, "The IRS Targets Conservatives":

Just because you're paranoid doesn't mean the IRS isn't out to get you. We only wish that were a joke. On Friday, an Internal Revenue Service official disclosed for the first time, and by way of apologizing, that the agency that wields the taxing power of the federal government had targeted conservative groups for special scrutiny during the 2012 election season. Apology or not, that can't be the end of the matter.

The stunning admission didn't emerge in an official statement by a senior official at the Treasury Department, which supervises the IRS. Instead, IRS Director of Exempt Organizations Lois Lerner disclosed it on Friday in response to a question from the audience at a meeting of American Bar Association tax lawyers in Washington, D.C.

Ms. Lerner acknowledged that the agency had flagged groups with the words "tea party" or "patriot" to have their tax returns inspected, presumably with an eye on the legality of their tax exemption. Ms. Lerner called this "inappropriate," which it certainly was, and she said it wasn't done "out of any political bias," which is hard to believe. If there was no political bias, why were only conservative groups targeted? White House spokesman Jay Carney also called the IRS actions "inappropriate" on Friday, which makes that the word of the day.

Ms. Lerner added the tax inspections were carried out entirely by low-level workers in Cincinnati without any direction from Washington. Forgive us if we also don't take that claim as gospel.

RTWT.

Simply Nixonian. We've got a lot of scandals boiling up and it's not partisan politics to seek answers. Real answers. It's about preserving the democracy. And about restoring basic decency in government, which went out with the election of the African Interloper in 2008.

'There goes another Obama supporter' — Syrian Rebel Picked Off, Head Explodes

A wicked video, and the comments are hilarious.

At Pat Dollard's, "WATCH, HEADSHOT: Syria Army Sniper Vs. Jihadi With RPG."

MSNBC D-Bags Talk Impeachment on #Benghazi Scandal

Here's Noah Rothman, at Mediaite, "MSNBC Guests: Benghazi Scandal Makes White House ‘Look Terrible,’ Possibly An ‘Impeachment Issue’."

These are way radical leftists admitting that impeachment proceedings could be here in no time: At the clip: Ben Smith, Michael Tomasky, and Nia-Malika Henderson (via Memeorandum).

Who Owns Trademark to 'Keep Calm and Carry On'? — Second World War Propaganda Poster

A great piece, at the Los Angeles Times, "WWII poster calls for calm; now it stokes frenzy, feud."

Has a piece of advice ever seemed so apt, or so frightfully ironic?

Thirteen years ago, Stuart Manley stumbled upon a slightly faded red poster tucked at the bottom of a box of books he had bought at auction. Unfolding it, he found himself staring at a relic of World War II, a long-forgotten piece of government propaganda bearing the logo of the British crown and this pithy message:

Keep calm and carry on.

Charmed by its classic design and no-fuss stoicism, Manley and his wife, Mary, framed the vintage poster and hung it up by the cash register in their secondhand bookshop in a disused Victorian train station in the far north of England. After many admiring comments and inquiries from customers, Manley started selling copies — behind Mary's back, because she didn't want to commercialize it.

Ahem. Enter perhaps the most commercialized British product since David Beckham.

Manley's little side venture spawned a marketing and cultural phenomenon, inspiring a million imitations around the world ("Keep calm and kill zombies," anyone?) and also, alas, one very acrimonious feud.

The Manleys and other traders are caught in a spat with an enterprising Englishman who, after launching his own line of "Keep calm and carry on" products, trademarked the phrase with European authorities two years ago. A slogan originally intended as a public exhortation to a nation at war is now the intellectual property of one person, who has forced some other vendors to stop using it.

The businessman, a former TV producer named Mark Coop, insists he's simply protecting the interests and brand of the company he has worked hard to build since 2007. His foes accuse him of trying to monopolize a piece of history.

"He's a smart chap," says Stuart Manley. "No ethics, but smart."

The Manleys and their allies are hoping that their legal appeal to overturn the trademark, which gives Coop exclusive rights to "Keep calm and carry on" in all 27 countries of the European Union, will succeed. A decision is expected soon.

Continue reading.

Teen Cave 'Kid Zones'

I love it!

At WSJ, "The New Luxury Kids' Rooms":

A DJ mixing station in the sleepover room. Secret passageways inspired by "Harry Potter." A fully tricked-out videogame arcade. You've entered the teen wing of the house.

As parents look for creative ways to keep older kids hanging out at home, some are turning to an unexpected source: architects and designers. The result is a new category of spaces now showing up in family homes: teen lounges, hangout areas, sleepover spaces and "offices" for doing homework.

Chris Pollack recently finished renovating a Manhattan townhouse that includes a 1,000-square-foot teen suite with ping-pong and billiards tables, a recording studio, kitchen and a theater for movies and videogames. The estimated cost: roughly $750,000. "Our clients with kids going into the teenage years are thinking about this more and more," he says. Mr. Pollack, of New York-based design-and-construction adviser Pollack + Partners, says he has also accommodated several requests for homework rooms equipped with security cameras, so parents can keep an eye on computer usage.

Twelve-year-old Jake Robinson lives in a recently remodeled Cape Cod-style house in Santa Monica, Calif., with a dedicated kids' room off the kitchen. "It's kind of fun if you have a long day of school to sit down on the couch and play videogames or watch TV," he says. The space has charcoal-and-white wallpaper, a magnetic wall, a custom sectional and a long desk with computers for Jake and his 8-year-old sister. The space includes large computer screens, so the parents can monitor the kids' screen time from afar.

Christine Markatos Lowe, who designed Jake's room as part of the home's gut remodel, says a growing number of her clients are looking for spaces where they can casually keep an eye on their kids' computer activities. "With all the screen time kids have these days...I'm finding this is something more and more people are requesting," she says.

I'm definitely down with spying on kids' computer use. We've been really monitoring my youngest son's web surfing, since he was busted with naked nasty stuff some time back. He's still learning about all that and it's right there at your fingertips online. You gotta stay ahead of your kids!

I'll say though, all those teen zones sound pretty expensive. My oldest kid has his room to himself, with a bunk bed, desk, MP3 sound system, television, and Apple laptop, and who knows what else?. I'd say he's pretty well set up, if not at the "luxe" level of some of those mentioned at WSJ.

Women Who Have Abortions Are Just Lazy, Irresponsible Sluts Ghouls Who Have No Regard for Human Life

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Soros-Backed Propaganda Machine Think Progress Pathetically Smears Benghazi Whistleblower Gregory Hicks Less That 48 Hours After Touting His Testimony as Debunking 'Right-Wing Conspiracy Theories'

Gawd, these idiots are pathetic.

Washington Free Beacon reports, "Think Progress Reverses on Benghazi Whistleblower."

Read it all at the link.

I saw the Soros monkeys fast out of the gate this week, spewing disinformation and smears against the whistleblowers and conservatives. It's a losing battle at this point. Derps.

American Crossroads: Benghazi

Via Astute Bloggers, "VIDEO: HILLARY'S 2AM CALL AND THE BENGHAZI COVER-UP."

Beer Tasting!

I joined some of my colleagues yesterday for a "Faculty Guided Beer Tasting & Reading" event, one in the "Know Your College, Know Your Colleagues" series sponsored by my department and the faculty union.

Presenting was Professor Matthew Lawrence, the author of Philosophy on Tap: Pint-Sized Puzzles for the Pub Philosopher. He's got a book page with his biographical information. And he's got an interview at the Huffington Post, "Interview with a Philosopher: On Beer and Thought."

We tasted five beers. Here's Matt's slide for Weihenstephaner Hefe Weissbier, a German hefeweizen.

Here's the beer list on the host's refrigerator:

In addition to Weihenstephaner, we tasted Boulevard Brewing Tank 7 Farmhouse Ale (Kansas City); Fuller's ESB (London): Alesmith Horny Devil Belgian Strong Ale (San Diego); and Left Coast Brewing Old Rasputin Russian Imperial Stout (Fort Bragg).

Here's the Rasputin Stout:

Matt recommended Hi-Time Wine Cellars in Costa Mesa for its wide selection of beers. I asked about picking up some of that Rasputin Stout for myself. Excellent beer. Shoot, they were all good.

Check the links for the beer pages and enjoy.

I'll see you at the pub!

Democrats v. Humanity

Via the Looking Spoon, "Here's a Hard Truth About Liberals Apologizing for Evil."

White House Press Secretary Jay Carney Gets Hammered With New Questions on #Benghazi

At Business Insider, "Jay Carney Gets Blasted Over Benghazi."

And at Twitchy, "Paging Candy Crowley: Jay Carney repeats debunked Benghazi lie from presidential debates."

#Benghazi Blows Wide Open — Scrubbed White House Talking Points Are Scandal's Smoking Gun

There's a tremendous amount of news, and still the scrubbed talking points are getting traction. The Benghazi scandal is getting to big to ignore.

Here's ABC's lead story trending at Memeornadum, "Exclusive: Benghazi Talking Points Underwent 12 Revisions, Scrubbed of Terror Reference."

And from Ron Fournier, at National Journal, "Scrubbing the Truth from Benghazi":

The White House has long maintained that the talking points were drafted almost exclusively by the CIA, a claim that gave cover to both President Obama and his potential successor, Clinton. “Those talking points originated from the intelligence community,” White House spokesman Jay Carney said in November, adding that the only editing by the White House or the State Department was to change the word "consulate" to "diplomatic facility." Nuland’s emails prove him wrong. As I wrote yesterday (“Why Benghazi is a Blow to Obama and Clinton"), Obama has earned the trust of most Americans but credibility is a fragile thing.

More at the link.

And see Stephen Hayes' long report, at the Weekly Standard, "The Benghazi Scandal Grows."

Kate Upton 'Hottest Supermodel on Earth'

Well, she's at least continuing her reign as the "it girl" of the moment.

At London's Daily Mail, "Bombshell Kate Upton defends her 'natural' breasts and voluptuous body as she lands first US Vogue cover."

The Inconvenient Truth About Benghazi

From Peggy Noonan, at the Wall Street Journal, "Did the Obama administration's politically expedient story cost American lives?":

The Benghazi story until now has been a jumble of factoids that didn't quite cohere, didn't produce a story that people could absorb and hold in their minds. This week that changed. Three State Department officials testifying under oath to a House committee changed it, by adding information that gave form to a growing picture. Gregory Hicks, Mark Thompson and Eric Nordstrom were authoritative and credible. You knew you were hearing the truth as they saw and experienced it. Not one of them seemed political. You had no sense of how they voted. They were professionals. They'd seen a bad thing. They came forward to tell the story. They put the lie to the idea that all questioning of Obama administration actions in Benghazi are partisan and low.

What happened in Benghazi last Sept. 11 and 12 was terrible in every way. The genesis of the scandal? It looks to me like this:

The Obama White House sees every event as a political event. Really, every event, even an attack on a consulate and the killing of an ambassador.

Because of that, it could not tolerate the idea that the armed assault on the Benghazi consulate was a premeditated act of Islamist terrorism. That would carry a whole world of unhappy political implications, and demand certain actions. And the American presidential election was only eight weeks away. They wanted this problem to go away, or at least to bleed the meaning from it.

Because the White House could not tolerate the idea of Benghazi as a planned and deliberate terrorist assault, it had to be made into something else. So they said it was a spontaneous street demonstration over an anti-Muhammed YouTube video made by a nutty California con man. After all, that had happened earlier in the day, in Cairo. It sounded plausible. And maybe they believed it at first. Maybe they wanted to believe it. But the message was out: Provocative video plus primitive street Arabs equals sparky explosion. Not our fault. Blame the producer! Who was promptly jailed.

If what happened in Benghazi was not a planned and prolonged terrorist assault, if it was merely a street demonstration gone bad, the administration could not take military action to protect Americans there. You take military action in response to a planned and coordinated attack by armed combatants. You don't if it's an essentially meaningless street demonstration that came and went.

Why couldn't the administration tolerate the idea that Benghazi was a planned terrorist event? Because they didn't want this attack dominating the headline with an election coming. It would open the administration to criticism of its intervention in Libya. President Obama had supported overthrowing Muammar Gadhafi and put U.S. force behind the Libyan rebels. Now Libyans were killing our diplomats. Was our policy wrong? More importantly, the administration's efforts against al Qaeda would suddenly come under scrutiny and questioning. The president, after the killing of Osama bin Laden, had taken to suggesting al Qaeda was over. Al Qaeda was done. But if an al Qaeda offshoot in Libya was killing our diplomats, the age of terrorism was not over.

So clearly stated. And so ridiculously devastating. This is not going away.

Continue reading.

Is Leftist School Indoctrination Unstoppable?

From Bruce Thornton, at FrontPage Magazine:

Rush Limbaugh weighed in recently on the Republicans’ on-going debate about what went wrong in November. Elaborating on his earlier comment that he was “ashamed of America,” Limbaugh said, “The Left has beaten us. They have created far more low-information, unaware, uneducated people than we’ve been able to keep up with . . . I’ve always had a Civics 101 view of the country: People get what they want, they vote what they want, and they get the way they vote.” He added that the Democrats “control the education system . . . pop culture, movies, TV and books” and use that control to create “dependency” among voters.

Some may think this is a dog-bites-man observation, but it’s worth looking more closely at the most important item in Limbaugh’s list––the educational system. Everything else Limbaugh mentions is made possible because of the deep corruption in public education from kindergarten to university.

We often focus on the ideological biases of the university, where the more lunatic examples of political correctness get the most attention. But in education as in economics, there is a trickle-down effect. The grandees at the elite universities train the PhD’s who go on to second and third tier institutions, where they in turn train the students who get high school and grade school teaching credentials. They also write most of the textbooks that end up in K-12 classrooms. Thus the progressive ideology metastasizes throughout the educational system, determining the curriculum, the textbooks, and the point of view of the teachers. At that level the ideas may be garbled, half-baked, incoherent, and a collection of clichés and slogans. But they are still toxic and effective at transmitting a world-view to impressionable minds.

When my kids were in public school I witnessed this process over and over. Questionable leftist ideas I had to sit through in graduate seminars turned up regularly in my kids’ English and history courses and textbooks. In the Marxiste interpretation of history, for example, traditional historical narratives reflect the “false consciousness” of capitalism’s academic publicists justifying and “mystifying” a history marked by oppression and atrocities in service to a dehumanizing capitalist ideology.

The founding of the United States, then, was not about things like freedom and inalienable rights, but instead reflected the economic interests and power of wealthy white property-owners. The civil war wasn’t about freeing the slaves or preserving the union, but about economic competition between the industrial north and the plantation south. The settling of the West was not an epic saga of hardships endured to create a civilization in a wilderness, but genocide of the Indians whose lands and resources were stolen to serve capitalist exploitation. Inherent in this sort of history were the assumptions of Marxist economic determinism and the primacy of material causes over the camouflage of ideals and principles.

In the 60’s this narrative was married to identity politics: the defining of ethnic minorities and Third World peoples on the basis of their status as victims of this capitalist hegemony and it imperialist and colonialist mechanisms, which justified the plundering, oppression, and exploitation of the non-white “others” with racist notions of their natural inferiority. Various strains of postmodernism added a cultural relativism that put out of bounds any judgments of a culture’s values, since all such standards reflect the economic needs of the dominant power. Soon feminism added women to the list of victims sacrificed to the white-male power structure. Edward Said’s historically ignorant and tendentious Orientalism rationalized the failure of the Muslim Arab Middle East in the same way. Soon Said’s book expanded beyond Middle East studies to condition the way generations of English and history professors approach their traditional subjects––as narratives justifying an unjust, racist, exploitative Western power of which all right-thinking people should be ashamed.

The politicizing of the universities has led to two ill effects...

Continue reading.

Yeah, it's pretty awful out there. You have to deprogram your kids at home.

Cleveland Man Charged With Kidnapping and Rape

At the Wall Street Journal, "Charges Filed in Abduction: Police Report Describes Nightmare Scenario of Three Women Chained in Cleveland Home."

I'll have more on this later. I'm still trying to comprehend the enormity of evil. And I'm not sure why the brothers weren't also charged.

Robert Oscar Lopez Attends 'Schools for Subversion' at Luxe Hotel in Los Angeles

I mentioned that the event Monday night featured a rousing question and answer session. One animated participant was Professor Robert Oscar Lopez of California State University, Northridge. He mentioned that he'd been granted tenure, despite the stifling leftist political correctness on campus. He's apparently unable to get conference and grant funding on campus because of his conservative political views, however.

Professor Lopez is a regular contributor at American Thinker. His most recent piece is "Four Tiers of Failure: How the LGBT Lobby Dominates."

I blogged one of his essays in January, "Yes, Homosexuality's a Lifestyle Choice."

He seemed like a nice guy. But I never got a chance to introduce myself. He ended up leaving before the Q&A wrapped up.

PREVIOUSLY: Schools for Subversion: How Public Education Lays the Foundation for University Radicalism," and "Back From 'Schools for Subversion'."

Anne Hathaway Sports See-Through Dress and Platinum Hair Style 2013 Met Gala

I like that do!

At London's Daily Mail, "Braless Anne Hathaway leaves little to the imagination in racy see-through dress as she storms Met Ball with new platinum cropped hair do."

Many Americans Say They Can't Retire Until Their 70s or 80s

Well, I'll keep working until I'm at least 65.

I'm going to need the money!

At the Los Angeles Times:

It’s the new retirement: More than four in 10 Americans think they’ll have to work into their 70s or 80s because they can’t afford to retire, according to a new survey.

One in 10 people expects to toil into their 80s, while 32% expect to be on the job into their 70s, according to the report by insurer Northwestern Mutual.

On average, those surveyed expect to leave work at age 68. However, the report points out, that doesn’t jibe with reality.

The mean age of those already retired is 59, the study said.

An increasing number of people figure they’ll simply work longer to make up for inadequate nest-egg savings these days, not realizing how layoffs, poor health or other forces pushed their forebears out of the workforce far sooner than they wanted...

Continue reading.

Men Fake Orgasm? 'A quickened pace, a few moans, dramatic thrusts and a hasty retreat and most women, apparently, are none the wiser...'

Well, this is interesting.

At London's Daily Mail, "Could you tell if your man faked an orgasm? Shockingly, it's not as easy as you might think..."

Faking it just ain't happening in my experience.

Never heard of it. Must be a left-wing metro-sexual thing?

Or a crossover homosexual thing, the freaks. Yeah, those YMCA boys probably fake it all the time to keep their homo lovers from going all psycho. Wouldn't want to be strangled with some hardcore bondage gear or anything, that's for sure. Better to do the quick thrust thing and fake being all hot and bothered.

#Boston Bomber Relative of Tamerlan Tsarnaev is Prominent Jihadi

At Atlas Shrugs:

But but but Philip Mudd, former Deputy Director of National Security, FBI and the former Deputy Director of Counterterrorist Center for the CIA, said the bomber[s] "doesn’t have much of an ideological background."

"Exclusive: Dagestani Relative of Tamerlan Tsarnaev Is a Prominent Islamist" TIME Magazine via Yahoo, May 8, 2013

Last year, when Tamerlan Tsarnaev spent six months in the Russian region of Dagestan, he had a guide with an unusually deep knowledge of the local Islamist community: a distant cousin named Magomed Kartashov. Six years older than Tsarnaev, Kartashov is a former police officer and freestyle wrestler—and one of the region’s most prominent Islamists.

In 2011 Kartashov founded and became the leader of an organization called the Union of the Just, whose members campaign for sharia law and pan-Islamic unity in Dagestan, often speaking out against U.S. policies across the Muslim world. The group publicly renounces violence. But some of its members have close links to militants; others have served time in prison for weapons possession and abetting terrorism—charges they say were based on fabricated evidence. For Tsarnaev, these men formed a community of pious young Muslims with whom he could discuss his ideas of jihad. Tsarnaev’s mother, Zubeidat, confirmed that her son is Kartashov’s third cousin. The two met for the first time in Dagestan, she said, and “became very close.”

Since April 19, when Tsarnaev and his younger brother Dzhokhar were publicly identified as being the key suspects in the bombing of the Boston Marathon, investigators have been trying to work out how they were radicalized to the point of wanting to kill and main people in the United States, the country the brothers had called home for much of their lives. (Tsarnaev was killed during a manhunt for the two men in Boston; his younger brother was shot but survived and has been charged with acts of terrorism including using a weapon of mass desctruction resulting in death. If convicted he could face the death penalty.) Much of the investigators’ attention has focused on Tsarnaev’s visit to Dagestan in 2012. It appears that investigators have only recently begun exploring Tsarnaev’s links to his cousin.

On May 5, three agents from Russia’s Federal Security Service, the agency known as the FSB, interrogated Kartashov for the first time about the Boston bombings, according to his lawyer, Patimat Abdullaeva. The FSB agents were interested in whether Kartashov and Tsarnaev had ever discussed Islamic radicalism, Abdullaeva says.

Kartashov told them that they had, but claimed that Tsarnaev was the one trying to “pull him in to extremism,” says the lawyer, who spoke to Kartashov soon after the interrogation. (It was impossible to ask Kartashov about this directly; he has been in jail since April 27 after a brawl with police in northern Dagestan, and prison officials denied TIME’s requests to visit him or have him answer questions in writing. His lawyer agreed to pass a reporter’s questions to him in jail.) In recounting her client’s replies, the lawyer said: “Kartashov tried to talk [Tsarnaev] out of his interest in extremism.”

Kartashov told the FSB roughly the same story, Abdullaeva says, and it matches the accounts of five other men in Dagestan who know Kartashov and spent time with Tsarnaev. All of them dismiss the notion that Tsarnaev was radicalized in Dagestan. Instead, the picture that emerges from their accounts is of a young man who already carried a deep interest in Islamic radicalism when he came to Russia from his home in Massachusetts. But that curiosity evolved during his visit. The members of Kartashov’s circle say they tried to disabuse Tsarnaev of his sympathies for local militants. By the end of his time in Dagestan, Tsarnaev’s interests seem to have shifted from the local insurgency to a more global notion of Islamic struggle–closer to the one espoused by Kartashov’s organization.

Continue reading.

Michelle Malkin Slams Juan Williams' #Benghazi Ignorance: 'Only Somebody Who Did Not Honestly Watch That Comprehensive Hearing Today ... Could Remain in This Bubble of Unreality...'

Juan Williams were utterly pathetic. He had no business even going on the air:

Hillary Clinton's Chief of Staff Told Greg Hicks Not to Talk to Congress

At the Wall Street Journal, "The Benghazi Awakening":

Miracles happen, and even the sleepy Washington press corps seems to have paid some attention to Wednesday's House hearing on the attack on the U.S. diplomatic mission last September in Benghazi. What they and the public heard is the beginning of a real accounting for a security failure that killed four Americans.

We say "beginning" because the entire story still isn't clear, in particular the roles played by then Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and President Obama before and after the attack. But the hearing led by House Republicans, amid months of media sneering, gave the civil servants who were on duty that September night a chance to give their side of the story.

Gregory Hicks, the former deputy chief of mission at the embassy in Tripoli, recalled his last conversation with Ambassador Christopher Stevens, who told him, "Greg, we're under attack." Mr. Hicks said he knew then that Islamists were behind the assault. In other words, U.N. Ambassador Susan Rice's public claim at the time that an anti-Islam YouTube video spurred the assault was known inside the government to be false when she and White House spokesman Jay Carney said it.

Mr. Hicks said he briefed Mrs. Clinton that night, yet the father of victim Tyrone Woods says she later told him that the YouTube video maker would be "prosecuted and arrested" as if he were responsible for Benghazi. Stranger still, Mrs. Hicks says Mrs. Clinton's then chief of staff, Cheryl Mills, ordered him not to give solo interviews about the attack to a visiting Congressional delegation. Aficionados of the Clinton Presidency will recall Ms. Mills as one of Bill Clinton's impeachment lawyers.

After Stevens and an aide were killed at the mission, the militias turned on the CIA annex nearby. On the advice of the military attaché in Tripoli, Mr. Hicks said he asked for U.S. fighter planes to fly over the complex in an attempt to scare the attackers away. Libyans had seen U.S. air power during the NATO military intervention in 2011 and might have fled. But Mr. Hicks was told no planes were available. Early the next morning, two Americans died in a mortar attack on the CIA compound.

The Pentagon says no F-16s were on call that night, but why not? Why weren't contingency plans in place? The State Department's supposedly independent review panel said in December that "there simply was not enough time for armed U.S. military assets to have made a difference." The review blamed lower level officials for the security failure and didn't even bother to interview Mrs. Clinton. Mr. Hicks says he was "effectively demoted" after Benghazi from "deputy chief of mission to desk officer."

Mr. Hicks also revealed that four special forces soldiers at the U.S. Embassy in Tripoli were ordered by U.S. African command not to join a State team headed to Benghazi. The soldiers were the remaining parts of a 16-member security team that had been pulled from Tripoli the previous month. Chairman of the Joint Chiefs Martin Dempsey recently told another House panel that the African command stopped no one from aiding those besieged in Benghazi. That contradicts Mr. Hicks's account....

The immediate press spin on Wednesday's hearing is that there was no "smoking gun" proof of a cover-up, as if that is the only reason to find out what happened. It's clear enough already that senior Administration officials knew in September they had a politically potent debacle on their hands and did their best to delay and obfuscate any accounting. All of this warrants further investigation, and such oversight is part of Congress's job.

And watch the video from Hannity's opening segment earlier tonight. Reps. Jason Chaffetz and Trey Gowdy are interviewed.

And see Hot Air, "Hicks: Higher-ups at State told me not to talk to GOP congressman about Benghazi; Update: “Effectively demoted”." (At Memeorandum.)

Devastating New Testimony on Obama Administration's Benghazi Cover-Up

You can't come away from watching these hearings and not just shake your head at the immense bankruptcy and corruption of our top Democrat administrative officials, including President Obama, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and other leftist hack bureaucrats who politicized the response to the attack on the Benghazi consulate. But as devastating as this is, it's already clear that the left-wing partisans in most mainstream media outlets are determined to pooh-pooh today's hearings, and especially the explosive testimony of Gregory Hicks, former deputy Chief of Mission in Libya. Here's Michael Hirsh at National Journal, for example, "Benghazi: Incompetence, But No Cover-up." And also Joe Klein, at Times, "Benghazi Again." (Via Memeorandum.)

I'm going to have more on this throughout the night.

Meanwhile, Fox News Special Report had riveting coverage this afternoon:

And the opening segment with Bret Baier is here, "Benghazi Hearing - Obama Admin Lied & People Died - Wake Up America Our Country In Danger."

Also, from Bryan Preston at Pajamas Media, "7 Things We Learned from the Benghazi Whistleblower Hearing."

Plus, from the editors at the San Diego Union-Tribune, "Benghazi cover-up clear beyond a doubt":

As the events surrounding the Benghazi tragedy become increasingly clear, the Obama administration should no longer even try to deny it has covered up the truth in scandalous fashion.

We now learn that as a U.S. diplomatic outpost in the eastern Libyan city was being attacked by terrorists on Sept. 11, 2012 — an assault that killed Ambassador Chris Stevens and State Department official Sean Smith, a San Diego native — embassy officials in Libya’s capital tried to get the Pentagon to scramble fighter jets over Benghazi in the hopes of deterring further attacks.

When the Pentagon refused, according to testimony slated for Wednesday from deputy embassy head Gregory Hicks, American officials tried to get four U.S. Special Operations troops dispatched to Benghazi early the next morning. They were told to stand down, Hicks said, according to a partial transcript of his testimony.

That morning, a second attack — on a CIA complex near the diplomatic outpost — led to the deaths of CIA contractors Glen Doherty of Encinitas and Tyrone Woods of Imperial Beach.

All of this is bad enough. But even more perplexing is the Obama administration’s continued refusal to come clean about exactly what transpired that horrific night — details that are finally emerging and casting the administration in a shameful and dishonorable light.

The Obama administration’s lengthy trail of deception and denial goes back to the very beginning, when the attacks were mischaracterized as a spontaneous protest over an anti-Islam YouTube video. U.N. Ambassador Susan Rice made the claim repeatedly, and when it became glaringly obvious the video had nothing to do with the attack, Rice was offered up as the sacrificial lamb and yanked from consideration as Hillary Clinton’s successor as secretary of state.

Two other witnesses said Clinton and an aide tried to cut the State Department’s own counterterrorism bureau out of the loop as they and other Obama administration officials contemplated how best to respond to, and characterize, the attacks. One witness, counterterrorism official Mark I. Thompson, said his account was suppressed by the official investigative panel convened by Clinton. He, too, is scheduled to testify Wednesday.

With the latest revelations, it’s looking more and more like a government that’s either incompetent, dishonest or both. The Pentagon says it’s going to “review” Hicks’ testimony, while a State Department spokesman continues to insist the inquiry is “politicized.”

If anything’s politicized, it’s the Watergate-like cover-up, which began in the midst of what then appeared to be a very close presidential election. And that’s only fueling speculation that Democrats in the administration and Congress are more interested in saving face than in coming clean — because now that Obama has been re-elected, they don’t want Benghazi to hurt Clinton’s future political aspirations.

Shameful, just shameful.

Stay tuned.

Obama's Commencement Speech at Ohio State Would Have Perplexed the Founders

From Roger Pilon, at WSJ, "Graduates, Your Ambition Is the Problem":

Civic education in America took a hit on Sunday when President Obama, giving the commencement address at The Ohio State University, chose citizenship as his theme. The country's Founders trusted citizens with "awesome authority," he told the assembled graduates. Really?

Actually, the Founders distrusted us, at least in our collective capacity. That's why they wrote a Constitution that set clear limits on what we, as citizens, could do through government.

Mr. Obama seems never to appreciate that essential point about the American political order. As with his countless speeches that lead ultimately to an expression of the president's belief in the unbounded power of government to do good, he began in Columbus with an insight that we can all pretty much embrace, at least in the abstract. Citizenship, Mr. Obama said, is "the idea at the heart of our founding—that as Americans, we are blessed with God-given and inalienable rights, but with those rights come responsibilities—to ourselves, to one another, and to Well enough. But then he took that insight to lengths the Founders would never have imagined. Reading "citizenship" as standing for the many ways we can selflessly "serve our country," the president said that "sometimes, we see it as a virtue from another time—one that's slipping from a society that celebrates individual ambition." And "we sometimes forget the larger bonds we share, as one American family."

Not for nothing did he invoke the family, that elemental social unit in which we truly are responsible to one another and to future generations—by law, by custom, and, ideally, in our hearts. But only metaphorically is America a family, its members bound by tendrils of intimacy and affection. Realistically, the country is a community of individuals and private institutions, including the family, with their own interests, bound not by mutual love but by the political principles that are set forth in the Constitution, a document that secures and celebrates the freedom to pursue those interests, varied as they might be.

Alas, that is not Mr. Obama's vision. "The Founders left us the keys to a system of self-government," he went on, "the tool to do big and important things together that we could not possibly do alone." And what "big and important things" cannot be done except through government? On the president's list are railroads, the electrical grid, highways, education, health care, charity and more. One imagines a historical vision reaching as far back as the New Deal. Americans "chose to do these things together," he added, "because we know this country cannot accomplish great things if we pursue nothing greater than our own individual ambition."

Notice that twice now Mr. Obama has invoked "individual ambition," and not as a virtue. For other targets, he next counseled the graduates against the "voices that incessantly warn of government as nothing more than some separate, sinister entity that's the root of all our problems, even as they do their best to gum up the works."

The irony here should not go unnoticed: The opponents that the president disparages are the same folks who tried to save the country from one of the biggest pieces of gum now in the works: Mr. Obama's own health-care insurance program, which today is filling many of its backers with dread as it moves toward full implementation in a matter of months.

None of that darkens Mr. Obama's sunny view of collective effort. What does upset him, still, is the run-up to the 2008 financial crisis: "Too many on Wall Street," he said, "forgot that their obligations don't end with their shareholders." No mention of the Federal Reserve, or Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, the Community Reinvestment Act, or the many other "big and important things" government undertook before the crisis hit, things that explain the disaster far better than any Wall Street greed. None of that fits in Mr. Obama's morality play. For that matter, neither do the Constitution's checks and balances. When the president laments that "democracy isn't working as well as we know it can," he is not talking about those big, misbegotten public projects but about the Washington gridlock that has frustrated his grander plans.future generations."

Well, Obama's a tyrant with tyrannical rhetoric disguised as "community."

Fascist asshole.

More at the link.

Obama's Benghazi Lies Begin Unraveling Today

The hearings are now live on Capitol Hill.

I'll have lots on them tonight.

Meanwhile, from the Washington Examiner, "Obama's Benghazi Lies Begin Unraveling Today."

And Katie Pavlich from this morning's Fox & Friends: