QotD, HAHAHAHAHAHHAHAHHAHA (Breathe) HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA edition.

(H/T Instapundit) This editorial had me …well, shrugging and conceding that there was a possibility… until this point:

And just in case Benghazi does end up costing [Hillary] Clinton the White House, there’s someone else ready and willing to take her place in the 2016 race.

U.S. Sen. Elizabeth Warren.

Yeeeeeeah. Do you know what we do to liberal Democrats from Massachusetts who run for President in this country? Do you, do you? That’s right! We rip their hearts out and then throw the hearts on the ground and then we make them dance on their own hearts!  We do that until they have no dignity left!  And then we smack them in the face, laugh, and elect the other guy. Continue reading QotD, HAHAHAHAHAHHAHAHHAHA (Breathe) HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA edition.

MSNBC (!): Democratic operatives trying to undermine #benghazi whistle-blowers.

Apparently nobody told the n-dimensional geniuses over at the White House that it’s not the crime, it’s the cover-up.

Transcript of remarks, courtesy of the Weekly Standard:

“There is something called Benghazi going on,” said [NBC’s Lisa] Myers. “And I think the Democrats now are starting to worry about it. I started–I got calls from a number of Democrats yesterday trying to undermine Greg Hicks’s testimony, saying he wasn’t demoted, etc. So I think they feel that some damage was done by those three witnesses on Wednesday.””

Continue reading MSNBC (!): Democratic operatives trying to undermine #benghazi whistle-blowers.

So, yeah, the RNC had a #benghazi ad, all ready to go.

So, apparently this ad was ready to go last year, but didn’t run it because of the Mitt Romney campaign.

Free advice to the RNC. Don’t ever make a weapon like that again, only to hide it because the nominee got cold feet. LEAK IT, YOU FOOLS.

Moe Lane

P.S. Aaron Gardner argues on Twitter that  ABC put this up in order to hit the RNC/Romney one last time, and not because of, you know, dead Americans.  I am not quite that cynical on that particular subject, but I can see it from here.

This is probably the point where the Hillary 2016 effort…

…will be judged by future researchers to have started to slide off of the beam:

[Hillary] Clinton — how much she knew, when she knew it, and whether she willingly participated in a cover up — was a central theme of the [Benghazi] hearing. And Wednesday, the story did move a large step closer to Clinton. Star witness Gregory Hicks, who was the Deputy Chief of Mission in Libya the night of the attack, charged that Clinton’s key State Department lieutenant and longtime family retainer, Cheryl Mills, made a concerted effort to block him from meeting with a Congressional delegation and that he had never been interviewed by the FBI in connection to the attack. Hicks said that he had been demoted after asking too many questions of his superiors about their response to Benghazi.

Republicans repeatedly raised the fact that Mills, a former deputy White House counsel and Clinton’s chief of staff at the State Department, personally called Hicks to express that she was upset that he had met with Rep. Jason Chaffetz without a lawyer present. So was the fact that administration lawyers had told Hicks and the Regional Security Officer not to speak with congressional investigators, as well as Hicks’ claim that he briefed Clinton the night of the attack and characterized it as an act of terror.

Continue reading This is probably the point where the Hillary 2016 effort…

What was the most barking-mad insane moment of today’s #benghazi hearing?

For me, it was probably this one. Via Twitchy:

Seriously, what. The. HELL?

Moe Lane

PS: Darrell Issa gets extra points for calling Gerry Connolly a glad-handling suckweasel there, at the end.

Jim Geraghty to House Oversight Committee: be the icemen.

This, this, a thousand times this.

Jim Geraghty of NRO’s Campaign Spot has some very good advice.

Dear Republicans on the House Oversight Committee:

Please do not grandstand. Please do not take the time before the television cameras to tell us how outraged you are, even though what you are investigating is, indeed, outrageous. There will be plenty of time for that after the hearing. All day Wednesday, give us the facts, and then more facts, and then more facts.

Just ask the questions of the witnesses. Let them speak and don’t cut them off. Do not give the Obama administration any cover to claim that this is a partisan witch hunt from unhinged political opponents. Don’t waste time complaining about the media’s lack of interest or coverage so far. Just give them — and us — the facts to tell the story, a story that will leave all of us demanding accountability.

Continue reading Jim Geraghty to House Oversight Committee: be the icemen.

Ed Markey: foolish on Benghazi. Foolish on the Boston Marathon bombing, too?

I’d like everybody to pay close attention to this Tweet:

It’s from back in October of 2012, when – as Legal Insurrection very helpfully notes – Rep. Ed Markey of Massachusetts (D) (now running against Gabriel Gomez in a special election for MA-SEN) was doing his level best to convince the world that there was absolutely no reason at all to believe that the attack in Benghazi that murdered four Americans (including our Ambassador) was due to a preplanned terrorist attack – and that any suggestion that the White House was covering things up was some sort of bizarre theory promulgated by conservatives. That’s October of 2012.  Now let’s go to May of 2013: Continue reading Ed Markey: foolish on Benghazi. Foolish on the Boston Marathon bombing, too?

Why it matters whether Benghazi was terrorism or not.

You’ve no doubt seen this bit about Secretary of State Hillary Clinton losing control and snapping back at Senator Ron Johnson’s reasonable, if pointed, observation that the White House kept pushing out a fake narrative on the terrorist strike on, and murder of, our embassy staff in Libya:

Continue reading Why it matters whether Benghazi was terrorism or not.

This shadow war between State and the CIA over Benghazi is fascinating.

Or, rather, it will be fascinating to read about, once the books come out (probably 2017 or so*).  Right now it’s just mildly bewildering, largely because everybody in the Obama administration that’s involved in this particular knife fight in an alley have only one thing in common: which is, wanting to keep everybody else from figuring out what’s going on.  And ‘everybody else’ includes ‘Congressional Democrats,’ because, well, [expletive deleted] those guys.

If I am seeming to be contemptuous of the political skill being shown here by various past and present members of the Obama administration, that’s because I am: after all, none of this can have an impact on the 2012 Presidential election, which was and is pretty much the sole core competency of these people.  And if you think any of this will help the Democrats in 2016… keep thinking that, neighbor. Keep thinking that.

Moe Lane

*Or, sure, 2021.  I mean, I guess that a really selective asteroid could hit in 2016.