By John Solomon
How the government's punishing of the exposure of official wrongdoing can linger for years
The Obama administration is trying to move beyond Benghazi, saying Monday that it has tightened security at diplomatic posts and created an official position to ensure "high-threat" missions are properly protected — but House Republicans are pressing on with investigations into the Sept. 11 attack.
Like a bad restaurant, the Obama administration attracts scathing reviews from Republicans and conservative critics who are tired of what's on the policy menu, and repelled by the signature "culture" of White House operations. The trio of scandals centered on Benghazi, the IRS and the Justice Department has ramped up the tirade, and until facts and conclusions emerge, the talk of the moment is culture-centric.
Spoiler alert: The IRS scandal, the AP phone records scandal — they go nowhere. In September, we'll all be looking back thinking, "Huh, that was a big waste of time." It will be — in fact, it already is.
With White House scandals dominating each news cycle, President Obama's newly minted media critics may prefer to ignore their own culpability in creating this unfolding debacle.
Barack Obama's second term may be remembered more for his scandals than for anything else he's done thus far in his troubled presidency.
When I filibustered over domestic drone use, critics said that I was being ridiculous. They said that no American had been killed by a drone on American soil and that no one was likely to be anytime soon. President Obama responded that he hadn't killed anyone yet and didn't intend to — but he might.
The tragedy of Benghazi, where a U.S. ambassador and three other Americans were killed, seemed a cut-and-dried story in the days after a mob attacked the State Department's mission in eastern Libya. Today, the public knows that those early administration pronouncements were false.
Not since the days of the Nixon administration has this country seen such government malfeasance as under President Obama.
President Obama was asked about the metastasizing Benghazi scandal in a joint news conference with British Prime Minister David Cameron on Monday. Referring to the Americans who died in Benghazi, the president said, "We dishonor them when we turn things like this into a political circus."
The accountability report by former Ambassador Thomas Pickering and retired chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Adm. Mike Mullen was grossly inadequate ("McCain senses Benghazi 'cover-up,' wants more Clinton testimony," Web, May 12). The two men concluded those responsible for the Benghazi murders were low-level State Department staff; they totally ignored the basic problem of why the Benghazi facilities remained open.
"These are the tactics of the Third World." — Sen. Marco Rubio, Florida Republican,on the combined effects of the Benghazi matter, the Justice Department seizure of Associated Press phone records and the IRS probe of conservative groups, before the Senate.
We've seen then-Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton ask, with what seemed like feigned exasperation "What difference, at this point, does it make?" when asked about the State Department's talking points mischaracterizing the Benghazi, Libya, attack of last September. Apparently, it makes a lot of difference, since the CIA's talking points were revised 12 times before Ambassador Susan E. Rice delivered them. Had the attack indeed resulted from a spontaneous, unpredictable demonstration, then the administration's doing nothing in preparation for such violence would be excusable. And such a demonstration run amok may well not have justified mounting a potentially messy military counterforce response.
Suddenly, it seems we have broken through the most effective executive branch cover-up and complicit media blackout in memory.
You just knew press coverage of the congressional hearing on the Benghazi cover-ups last Wednesday would be nonexistent or squirrely, right?
You just knew press coverage of the congressional hearing on the Benghazi cover-ups last Wednesday would be nonexistent or squirrely, right?
Recently, she has spoken in favor of high taxes in Brazil, and last year she urged Pakistanis to pay more.
In Ecuador on June 8, she urged Latin American nations to overhaul their tax systems in order to impose heavier levies on the wealthy and reduce tax evasion.
