Tag: scandal

Phone cameras saved these fools’ lives.

Continue reading Phone cameras saved these fools’ lives.

Politico: Hey, look at all these GOP arguments against Eric Shinseki! …ARE YOU LOOKING?

There Politico goes, putting words in our mouth again:

GOP leaders and officials have spent the last week talking about the backlogs and misconduct, but what they’re hoping voters hear is: Obama is still an unprepared executive who needs to be stripped of power in the midterms. Once again, they say, he’s presenting himself as an angry bystander, confronted with high-profile management failures on his watch that he says he learned about from news reports.

Unlike in October, when Republicans focused their message on calling for Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius to be fired, they’ve gone broader now, saying this is about more than VA Secretary Eric Shinseki, whom most have avoided calling on to resign or be fired.

This, they say, is much, much bigger — the phrase that House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) and his colleagues have been emphasizing is “systemic failure.”

Continue reading Politico: Hey, look at all these GOP arguments against Eric Shinseki! …ARE YOU LOOKING?

Well, well, well: Lois Lerner to testify to Congress after all. #irs [UPDATE: Or possibly not.]

Gee, I wonder why.

Former Internal Revenue Service official Lois Lerner, a central figure in the IRS scandal, will appear before Congress Wednesday after refusing to testify last year on the matter, Rep. Darrell Issa, R-Calif., said Sunday.

[snip]

Issa said he didn’t know why Lerner’s lawyers changed their mind, but suggested Lerner testifying was “in her best interest,” considering the recent evidence the committee had gathered.

Continue reading Well, well, well: Lois Lerner to testify to Congress after all. #irs [UPDATE: Or possibly not.]

Obama’s scandal atmosphere and 2014 Democratic recruitment efforts.

I’m not sure that Stu Rothenberg is correct, here:

…it isn’t clear how much of an impact, if any, the controversies will have on the 2014 midterms. Even if (when) those controversies fade, however, there could be short-term consequences for both the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee and the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee in the area of recruitment.

Largely because it doesn’t look like either organization was having stellar recruitment before everything in the world fell on the Democrats’ heads.  We’re about eighteen months out from the election, which is close enough to start seeing trends (at this point in the 2010 cycle I was interviewing a bunch of insurgent candidates and seeing the first signs of the 2010 tsunami).  A look at my usual House race handicappers is… instructive: Continue reading Obama’s scandal atmosphere and 2014 Democratic recruitment efforts.

Does the White House WANT us to keep talking about Sestak?Does the White House WANT us to keep talking about Sestak?

Is this a cry for help?

Because they keep bringing it to the forefront.  Let me set the scene for this: it turns out that the job offer that Bill Clinton had supposedly offered Joe Sestak was in fact a job offer that Sestak could not take and still keep his House seat.  This is important, because Sestak being able to keep his House seat is kind of critical for somebody in the White House not being possibly on the hook for a federal felony.  But when Robert Gibbs gets asked about this, well, hi-jinks ensue:

“The Intelligence Advisory Board, which most reports said this offer was for, that would be a position a member of the House could not serve on,” a reporter said.

“That’s how I understand the way the PIAB is written,” Gibbs said.

“But the memo, it said that this would be a position to serve in the House and serve on a presidential advisory board.”

“Correct,” Gibbs said.

“Well, how could he sit on the board?”

“He couldn’t,” Gibbs said.

“So that wasn’t the offer, then?”

“I’d refer you to — ”

“What position, what board, was it then?  Do you know?”

“I’d refer you to the memo.”

“But the memo didn’t specify.”

“Right,” Gibbs said.  “Thank you.”

The tightrope that Gibbs is unsteadily walking on right now is that while the PIAB clearly isn’t the job that was offered, as long as he doesn’t actually say which one was actually offered he doesn’t have to explain away more awkward details.  Like, for example, that the only other Presidential board offering (the President’s Economic Recovery Advisory Board, or PERAB) would have also required Sestak to give up his House seat, and that it would have been less relevant to Sestak’s life experiences than the PIAB.  Or that there’s a definite contradiction between Sestak’s answer on how many times that Clinton met with him, and the White House’s answer.  Little things like that.

Congressional Republicans are continuing to push at this issue: you’d think that the White House would be not doing its best to encourage them.  Unless they just don’t like Joe Sestak?  He is a swarmy little sort, after all – and it’s all his fault that they’re dealing with this issue in the first place.  It would certainly explain why Sestak is going to be on the other side of the state for the President’s Philadelphia visit…

Moe Lane

Crossposted to RedState.