patrick kennedy – Moe Lane

Joe Biden(?) surrogates continue quiet internal war against Hillary Clinton surrogates.

The decision to keep U.S. personnel in Benghazi with substandard security was made at the highest levels of the State Department by officials who have so far escaped blame over the Sept. 11 attack, according to a review of recent congressional testimony and internal State Department memos by Fox News.

Nine months before the assault that killed Ambassador Chris Stevens and three others, State Department Under Secretary Patrick Kennedy signed off on an internal memo that green-lighted the Benghazi operation.

The December 2011 memo from Jeffrey Feltman — then-Assistant Secretary of State for Near Eastern Affairs (NEA) — pledged “to rapidly implement a series of corrective security measures.” However, no substantial improvements were made, according to congressional testimony to the House oversight committee from Regional Security Officer Eric Nordstrom.

Make no mistake about this. Fox News is not being leaked this information because the State Department is a hotbed of Republican moles; Fox News is being leaked this information because that network is the only one that can be relied upon to publish damaging information about the State Department under Hillary Clinton. You can see this by the way that they’re going after Patrick Kennedy, who was SecState Clinton’s assistant (and possibly cutout); and possibly by the way that they’re bringing in the paper-trail CYA warnings by Jeffrey Feltman, who in retrospect may have been forced out of his State Department gig last year for not being a good fit with Clinton’s New Order. Either way, the implication is that things were not going well for Team Clinton over at State, after all… and while most of the Democratic party might not care for that particular message getting out there’s at least one sub-group who would be; anybody who wouldn’t get a nice job during the Hillary Clinton administration. Continue reading Joe Biden(?) surrogates continue quiet internal war against Hillary Clinton surrogates.

Obama administration going with the idiot narrative on #Benghazi.

No, seriously, this is the angle that they’re going to run with:

“We’re portrayed by Republicans as either being lying or idiots,” said one Obama administration official who was part of the Benghazi response. “It’s actually closer to us being idiots.”

Personally, I take the position that the administration needs to embrace the healing power of ‘and,’ here. But as the philosopher once put it: men must paddle before they can swim. Continue reading Obama administration going with the idiot narrative on #Benghazi.

‘So, Moe, how’s your election cycle going?’

Let me put it this way: below (in no particular order) is my Top Ten List of Democratic Members of the 111th Congress Whose Presence There Personally Offends My Sense of Civics.

David Obey
Jack Murtha
Alan Mollohan
Eric Massa
Charlie Rangel
Russ Carnahan
Carol Shea-Porter
Alan Grayson
Jim Moran
Patrick Kennedy

It’s going great. Thanks for asking!

Moe Lane

Patrick Kennedy (D, RI) cutting and running.

Was it something we said?

[UPDATE]: Welcome, Instapundit readers.

That’s the word that’s going down on the street:

A Democratic official says Rep. Patrick Kennedy has decided not to seek re-election for his seat representing Rhode Island in the U.S. Congress.

The official spoke to The Associated Press only on the condition that his name not be used because he was not authorized to speak ahead of the official announcement.

[snip]

Patrick Kennedy has been in and out of treatment for substance abuse since crashing his car outside the U.S Capitol in 2006.

Interesting that the Kennedy name is no longer sufficient to protect its holders from premature leaks like this. Also interesting that this is happening; then again, his numbers were abysmal. They were so abysmal that GOP challenger John Loughlin might even be disappointed about this, although… no, I doubt it.

More here: apparently, Kennedy felt the need to take his life in a ‘different direction.’ I would be cruel about my suggestions of where that different direction might end up going – but I just noticed something about this video I did a while back:

The Democrats are starting to run out of sitting Congressmen featured in it who’ll still be sitting Congressmen, starting next January.

Moe Lane

Crossposted to RedState.

Meet John Loughlin (R CAND, RI-01).

I have to call this ‘taking a shot from Patrick Kennedy.’ If I took one at him he’d probably just drink it.

(H/T: Hot Air & JammieWearingFool) A lot of the focus of this article is on the abysmal performance of Rep. Patrick Kennedy (D, RI) in it – when asked if he deserved re-election, only 35% of his constituents said ‘yes’; 28% said ‘no,’ and 31% asked ‘what are our options?’ – and we’ll get back to it (and John Loughlin, who’s running for the job) in a moment. But I would like to highlight these two paragraphs about Sheldon Whitehouse:

Just 33 percent approved of Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse’s job performance, down 11 points from a mid-December Brown University poll.

Fleming said a factor may have been the senator’s controversial December statement that floor opponents of health-care reform were fueled by fanatics, “right-wing militia” and Aryan support groups that hate President Obama.

The NRSC would be well-advised to start atoning for its error in 2006 by finding an acceptable candidate to oppose this fellow in 2012. And by ‘acceptable’ I don’t mean ‘acceptable to the NRSC.’

Continue reading Meet John Loughlin (R CAND, RI-01).

Marcia, Marcia, Marcia…

(Via @CalebHowe) What did you do in a previous lifetime to deserve this, AG Coakley? Drive a bus full of kittens and baby harp seals off a cliff?

…then you know we have a lot of digging to do, but some work needs to be done and this president’s in the process of doing it and we need to get Marcia Coakley to help him to do that.”

(Curiously, [Rep Patrick] Kennedy [D, RI] mentioned Coakley repeatedly during his remarks to reporters, each time referring to her as “Marcia,” not “Martha.”)

‘Curiously?’ I can think of at least three reasons why it wouldn’t be, and one of them doesn’t even imply a substance abuse problem on Kennedy’s part.

Moe Lane

Crossposted to RedState.

Rep. Patrick Kennedy (D, RI) denied Communion.

At least, he’s claiming that he’s been forbidden it by Bishop Thomas Tobin of the Providence Diocese, and Bishop Tobin hasn’t denied it – and Tobin has denied that he’s ordered priest under his authority to actually deny Kennedy the Sacrament. Bishop Tobin’s office has also released a letter indicating that the bishop has chastised the Congressman on the subject of abortion since at least 2007; which will call into question the accuracy of Kennedy’s accusation that this is all about the Church’s firm line on abortion funding. It’s probably a factor, and it’s certainly true that Rep. Kennedy has been obdurate in his heresy* for some time, so this is merely the latest salvo.

Still, it’d be nice if we didn’t have to deal with this particular legacy Congressman. There’s actually a serious candidate this go-round: John Loughlin. State legislator, business owner, former military; not to be unkind, but Kennedy really hasn’t worked a day in his [expletive deleted] life, and it shows. Like, for example, in Kennedy’s ability to get himself sufficiently in trouble with the Church on this issue so as to actually be denied the Sacrament.

That takes skill.

Moe Lane

*The fact that the Church has neither the ability nor the particular desire to punish Rep. Kennedy (or other avowedly pro-abortion Catholics) for their shared heresy does not make it any less of one.

Crossposted to RedState.