Taxing Our Patience

As Francis Wilkinson over at Bloomberg notes, the IRS "scandal" over "targeting conservative groups" quietly died earlier this month with the on-schedule resignation of IRS Commissioner John Koskinen, and the suddenly "tax-reform" minded GOP has let it die because suddenly under Trump, the IRS is working for "We The People" again.

Shortly before Koskinen left office, the Treasury Department Inspector General for Tax Administration released the (presumably) final report on the scandal. Like a previous Inspector General report, it tried to soothe Republican feelings – the IRS really, really should’ve handled things differently -- while utterly refuting Republican charges about what had transpired.

The story told by Republicans is so well known that it substitutes for fact. In the first years of the Obama administration, Tea Party groups and other conservative organizations rose up to defy the government. When the groups sought IRS approval for their designations as “social welfare” organizations under the tax code, the IRS targeted them with burdensome queries, harassing the groups while slow-walking reviews of their applications. In this telling, it was a political vendetta – carried out against conservatives by a government agency that many anti-government, anti-tax conservatives especially despised.

Republicans claimed the IRS served as an attack dog for the Obama White House. But inquiries by the House Ways and Means Committee, the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, the Senate Finance Committee, the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations and the Justice Department all failed to produce evidence of political interference.

Perhaps it was because the premise of the scandal -- that Obama’s political team would want to destroy local Tea Party groups -- was absurd. For Democrats, local Tea Party groups were a political Giving Tree, bearing glorious, loopy fruit such as Christine O’Donnell and Todd Akin, Tea Party candidates who managed to lose crucial Senate campaigns that a competent Republican – perhaps anycompetent Republican -- would’ve won.

What’s more, none of the groups actually needed IRS approval to operate. “These organizations didn’t have to wait for the IRS to tell them anything to go into business,” Koskinen said in a telephone interview last week.

Yet the IRS clearly applied extra scrutiny to groups that it thought might be engaged in too much politics to warrant the preferential tax designation. One way IRS personnel did that was to look for key words, such as “Tea Party.” Other words that triggered IRS scrutiny included: “Occupy,” “green energy,” “medical marijuana” and “progressive.”

Contrary to the Republican story, the IRS never targeted conservatives. The IRS targeted politics, which was pretty much what it was supposed to do.

And frankly, they got away with it.  Now, the IRS is okay again because Trump has "drained the swamp" and your taxes will be "so easy you can do them on a postcard".  None of that is true of course, but the IRS is no longer a convenient target for the Party of Trump now that they're in charge of it.

Trump has appointed an interim IRS Commissioner, who for some weird reason is still holding his current post as Assistant Treasury Secretary because somebody told him it would be a good idea.  It's not. David Kautter is Treasury's point man on the Trump tax plan, and trying to both write tax reform and run the IRS at the same time is basically impossible.

But it's interesting to note that like Benghazi, this died as soon as attacking the government as incompetent and cruel meant attacking Trump.

The Beaver Goes Home, Con't

Last month we found out GOP Rep. Jason Chaffetz wasn't too happy being chair of the House Oversight Committee when he didn't have Hillary Clinton as President to harass on a daily basis, so unhappy in fact he that he was not going to run in 2018.  But now that Chaffetz's job involves actually having to deal with Donald Trump's Russia connections, money laundering, obstruction of justice and you know, possible treason it seems that Chaffetz is now bailing completely and hanging it up at the end of next month.

The chairman of the House oversight and government reform committee, Jason Chaffetz, is leaving Congress on June 30, the Utah Republican announced Thursday. 

"As you know, after careful consideration and long discussion with my wife, Julie, we agree the time has come for us to move on from this part of our life," Chaffetz wrote in a letter posted on his social media. "This week I sent a letter to Governor (Gary) Herbert indicating my intention to resign from Congress effective June 30, 2017." 

Chaffetz said last month he was not running for reelection, and then later said he might not finish out his term. He's reportedly eying a position at Fox News after leaving the House.

Chaffetz is head of a committee that is the House's investigatory arm into the Executive Branch. He has started digging into President Donald Trump's firing of FBI Director James Comey and the former director's memo saying Trump asked him to drop the investigation into former national security adviser Michael Flynn. 

This week, Chaffetz sent a letter from FBI Director Andrew McCabe seeking all FBI notes and information on Comey's communications with Trump, and he announced a hearing next week where he's invited Comey to testify. 

There's no indication yet, however, that the former FBI director plans to attend -- and Chaffetz had trouble reaching Comey. 

Rep. Elijah Cummings, the top Democrat on the panel, has repeatedly clashed with Chaffetz during several investigations, but told CNN that he was "going to miss him" and that he brought a "breath of fresh air" to the committee after it went through some tumultuous times under prior Republican leadership.

Funny how after subpoenaing Comey's memos earlier this week, Chaffetz is now heading home back to Utah and getting as far away from DC as he can.  A nice cushy job as a FOX News pundit seems like the perfect position for him.

My guess is that Chaffetz knows quite a bit about what's coming and doesn't have the guts to handle the coming storm.  He doesn't want to deal with Trump, and definitely doesn't want to deal with Trump voters either.  After all, Utah Gov. Gary Herbert might now want to run in 2018, and Chaffetz might want a career after 2017.  Who knows?

Either way, for Chaffetz to bail now is 100% suspicious...and 100% cowardly.  Never forget that when real government oversight was needed, Jason Chaffetz turned into a chickenshit and ran home.

Most Republicans are cowards though, so no surprise there.

The problem with that is this means our old friend Trey "Benghazi" Gowdy would be chair of the Oversight Committee again.

Rep. Trey Gowdy (R-S.C.) could be the next chairman of the House Oversight Committee — if he wants the job. 

The popular South Carolina Republican and former Select Committee on Benghazi chairman has emerged as the front-runner to replace Oversight and Government Reform Chairman Jason Chaffetz (R-Utah), who made it official Thursday that he would resign from Congress on June 30.

Gowdy, a prominent leadership ally, has been racking up endorsements from colleagues on the Oversight panel and the influential Steering Committee, which will choose the next chairman. The 52-year-old former prosecutor is one of a handful of senior Oversight members who has been calling and texting Steering members about the gavel.

“If Trey runs, he’ll get it,” one Steering Committee member told The Hill.

But Gowdy’s office said the congressman has made no final decision about whether he’ll run. 

“Rep. Gowdy is talking to members in the conference about the qualities they believe are most important for the next Chairman to possess,” said Gowdy spokeswoman Amanda Gonzalez. 

At least two other Oversight members — Reps. Dennis Ross (R-Fla.) and Steve Russell (R-Okla.) — have been reaching out to the 32-member Steering panel. 

The Oversight Committee is stacked with members of the far-right House Freedom Caucus, and several of them said they favored former Freedom Caucus Chairman Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) to be the next chairman.

But even Jordan conceded Thursday that it’d be an uphill battle for him to win the gavel given that the Steering group is largely comprised of loyalists to Speaker Paul Ryan (R-Wis.). Jordan had been one of the Freedom ringleaders who pressured then-Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) to resign in 2015, making Jordan persona non grata to some GOP colleagues.

So Gowdy is the frontrunner, but he actually may not get the job.  We'll see.  Hell, who knows where this will all be when June 30 rolls around.

Trump's Warren Terrah

From all reports it looks like Trump's first significant military action as President was ordering a raid in Yemen to get AQAP bad guys, and the raid went south in a New York minute.

Nawar Anwar Al-Awlaki, the 8-year-old daughter of former al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula leader Anwar al-Awlaki, was killed in a joint American-UAE raid against the terror group Sunday, according to the girl's family. 

Anwar Al-Awlaki, a US-born cleric who directed attacks against the US, was killed in a targeted drone strike in 2011. 

Multiple US officials told CNN that an assessment of civilian casualties is still ongoing and that there was no hard intelligence yet to suggest that al-Awlaki's daughter was killed. 

The raid also resulted in the death of US Navy SEAL Chief Petty Officer William "Ryan" Owens who was fatally wounded in a firefight that saw three other US service members wounded and 14 al Qaeda fighters killed. 

Initial reports conducted by the elite special operations force that carried out the mission found no evidence of civilian casualties, but a US official told CNN that subsequent intelligence led the military to believe that there was a high likelihood that some civilians were killed. 

The official added that during the gun battle, al Qaeda fighters took up firing positions on the roof of a nearby building and that the US troops came under fire, calling in an airstrike against the building which likely led to the civilian casualties. 

The raid encountered more problems when an MV-22 Osprey tilt-rotor aircraft was forced to undergo a "hard landing" which resulted in three additional service members being injured. The military opted to destroy the aircraft in an airstrike to prevent it falling into enemy hands. 

It was the first counterterrorism operation approved by President Donald Trump though US officials note that given the complexity of the raid, planning for the mission began during the administration of Barack Obama. 

An 8-year-old dead, a SEAL killed in combat, and a lost Osprey.  Had this happened as Hillary Clinton's first military order, we'd have House Republicans screaming about a second Benghazi investigation and vowing impeachment proceedings.

Instead, this story has effectively vanished.  Ask yourself why that is.

All-Day Impeachment Buffet

As Alex Seitz-Wald and Benjy Sarlin remind us, the move by House Republicans to begin the impeachment process of a President Hillary Clinton will officially begin on November 9th.

In the last few weeks alone, dozens of House Republicans have demanded that a special prosecutor investigate the Clinton Foundation for possible conflicts of interest. Sen. Ted Cruz has called for a "serious criminal investigation" into a Democratic operative featured in a sting video by conservative activist James O'Keefe. And Speaker Paul Ryan promised "aggressive oversight work in the House" of an alleged "quid pro quo" deal between the FBI and the State Department over reclassifying an email on Clinton's private server. 

Utah Rep. Jason Chaffetz, who would likely serve as the chief antagonist of a second Clinton White House as chair the House Oversight Committee, told Fox News last week the "quid pro quo" claim alone was worth at least "four new hearings," claiming it was a "flashing red light of potential criminality." 

Both the FBI and State Department say no quid pro quo took place, and that the incident was a misunderstanding. But the episode is one of many that conservative commentators, watchdog groups and lawmakers will almost certainly return to well after election day. 

"You're going to still have a clamor for a serious criminal investigation of Mrs. Clinton's conduct with respect to her emails and the [Clinton] Foundation," Tom Fitton, president of Judicial Watch, which has spearheaded legal efforts against Bill and Hillary Clinton for years, told NBC News. "There's been no systematic investigation of various issues." 

You know, except for the systematic investigation of various issues by multiple House Republican committees, the FBI, the State Department, and several inspectors general, just to name a few.

After Trump spent months telling the party's base the election is rigged, Republicans in oversight roles will face tremendous pressure to expose Clinton's perceived corruption. 

"I know this generation of Republican leaders is loathe to exercise these tolls, but impeachment is something that's relevant," said Fitton, who criticizes Republican lawmakers for failing to pre-emptively impeach Clinton. "They see [the oversight process] as an opportunity in some measure to keep their opponents off-kilter, but they don't want to do the substantive and principled work to truly hold corrupt politicians, or the administration, or anyone accountable."

So yes, for all you folks going "Thank god the election will be over in two weeks" please remember that impeachment proceedings will be getting underway almost immediately.  And when they do happen, if you thought Benghazi and emailgate and Operation Fast and Furious GOP witch hunts were fun, expect the entire GOP House under a Clinton administration to be one long multi-year investigation that goes nowhere.

Jason Chaffetz, the Utah congressman wrapping up his first term atop the powerful House Oversight Committee, unendorsed Donald Trump weeks ago. That freed him up to prepare for something else: spending years, come January, probing the record of a President Hillary Clinton. 

“It’s a target-rich environment,” the Republican said in an interview in Salt Lake City’s suburbs. “Even before we get to Day One, we’ve got two years’ worth of material already lined up. She has four years of history at the State Department, and it ain’t good.”

Unless of course the Democrats manage to win the House back, in which case impeachment proceedings in a lame duck session will begin immediately while GOP House members still have gavels to bang.  And should the GOP control the Senate too, well, expect the unfilled seat of the late Justice Scalia to remain empty along with all other federal bench appointments if Sen. Ted Cruz has anything to say about it.

Speaking to reporters after a campaign rally for a Republican U.S. Senate candidate here, Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Tex.) said that there was “precedent” for a Supreme Court with fewer than nine justices — appearing to suggest that the blockade on nominee Merrick Garland could last past the election.

“You know, I think there will be plenty of time for debate on that issue,” said Cruz, when he was asked whether a Republican-controlled Senate should hold votes on a President Hillary Clinton’s nominees. “There is certainly long historical precedent for a Supreme Court with fewer justices. I would note, just recently, that Justice Breyer observed that the vacancy is not impacting the ability of the court to do its job. That’s a debate that we are going to have.”

A debate I'm sure that will last four years at the minimum.  Of course, voters can do something about that now.  Let's hope they do. Enjoy!

The New Benghazi

After completely losing his tantrum fight on shutting down the Department of Homeland Security, House Speaker John Boehner needs to get the Tea Party back on his side by going after somebody they hate more then himself, namely Hillary Clinton.

House Speaker John Boehner is expected to announce this week a new investigation into Hillary Clinton's email practices as Secretary of State, including her admission that more than 31,000 emails were destroyed because she determined them to be personal, top House Republicans told ABC News today.

During a news conference last week, Clinton did not go into the details of how the review of her email was conducted, but said it was “thorough” and that she went “above and beyond” what she was required to do in turning over many of her emails to the State Department.

"We went through a thorough process to identify all of my work-related emails and deliver them to the State Department," she said, adding that all other emails were personal and pertained to matters such as "yoga routines," "family vacations," and "planning Chelsea's wedding."

So for the next year and a half, expect this to be on FOX News daily.  Except the part where House Republicans admit they were unable to find any evidence of wrongdoing after wasting tens of millions of taxpayer dollars.  You'll never see that on Roger Ailes' network.

Sadly, Orange Julius is going to find out that this won't be enough red meat for the 2016 campaign.  Voters will start to tune this out long before November of next year.  But it sure gets him off the hook for caving on immigration, huh?

The Next Benghazi

And it begins: House Republicans are already warming up subpoenas for Hillary Clinton's emails from her time as Secretary of State.  America's New Congress(tm).  Same old idiocy.

A House investigative committee issued subpoenas late Wednesday afternoon to the State Department, seeking a deeper look into former secretary of state Hillary Rodham Clinton’s nearly exclusive use of personal e-mails to do her official business during her tenure, the committee confirmed Wednesday.

The House Select Committee on Benghazi, which first discovered Clinton’s use of a personal e-mail based on a home server in its inquiry into a fatal 2012 terrorist attack on a U.S. diplomatic compound in Benghazi, Libya, is asking for all e-mails related to the attack from all Clintonemail.com accounts and any other staff members’ personal accounts.

“The Select Committee on Benghazi today issued subpoenas for all communications of former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton related to Libya and to the State Department for other individuals who have information pertinent to the investigation,” according to a statement by committee spokesman Jamal Ware. “The Committee also has issued preservation letters to internet firms informing them of their legal obligation to protect all relevant documents.”

The move escalates the panel’s conflict with Clinton and could complicate her expected run for president.

Which, of course, is the point.  But millions in taxpayer dollars will be spent and thousands of man hours wasted on nothing, just like that last two years.  We all knew there was going to be two more of this stuff.

But hey America, you voted for this in 2014.  Or didn't give a damn enough to vote for it to stop, didn't you?

Do The Huckleberry Split

So that House GOP Benghazi report issued Friday evening that found no wrongdoing by the White House and in fact proved that the last two years was a massive waste of taxpayer dollars in a witch hunt against President Obama and Hillary Clinton?

Of course it was a Democratic party conspiracy!  Huckleberry Graham says so!

Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) on Sunday blasted a House GOP-led investigation that recently debunked myths about the 2012 Benghazi attack.  

“I think the report is full of crap,” Graham said on CNN’s “State of the Union.”  

The House Intelligence Committee released a report on Friday evening, which took two years to compile, that found there was no outright intelligence failure during the attack, there was no delay in the rescue of U.S. personnel and there was no political cover-up by Obama administration officials. 

After Graham was asked whether the report exonerates the administration, he initially ignored the question, and then eventually said “no.”  

The House Intelligence panel, Graham said, is “doing a lousy job policing their own.”  

The CIA and State Department lied about everything, so of course the report is full of lies by lying liars who only exist to protect Democrats, or something.  And only Huckleberry Graham knows the truth, which is...umm...well, he doesn't know for sure and he can't prove it but obviously it's a massive coverup.  BENGHAZI FOREVER.

Sure, that's reasonable.  Republicans are reasonable, you know.  As Steve M says, this will never go away.  It'll be Bill Clinton's Whitewater and Vince Foster murder rolled into one that will be "conventional wisdom" about Obama forever.

And it will remain so because nobody will ever punish the GOP for acting like conspiracy nutcases, or BEING conspiracy nutcases.

Ben-Gone-Zi

Seems that after two years of trying to find some way to tie the deaths of a US ambassador and three other State Department employees in Benghazi, Libya to direct negligence by either the President or Hillary Clinton, the GOP House Intel Committee investigation has found...

...Nothing.  No wrongdoing by anyone in the administration.

A two-year investigation by the Republican-controlled House Intelligence Committee has found that the CIA and the military acted properly in responding to the 2012 attack on a U.S. diplomatic compound in Benghazi, Libya, and asserted no wrongdoing by Obama administration appointees.

Debunking a series of persistent allegations hinting at dark conspiracies, the investigation of the politically charged incident determined that there was no intelligence failure, no delay in sending a CIA rescue team, no missed opportunity for a military rescue, and no evidence the CIA was covertly shipping arms from Libya to Syria.

In the immediate aftermath of the attack, intelligence about who carried it out and why was contradictory, the report found. That led Susan Rice, then U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, to inaccurately assert that the attack had evolved from a protest, when in fact there had been no protest. But it was intelligence analysts, not political appointees, who made the wrong call, the committee found. The report did not conclude that Rice or any other government official acted in bad faith or intentionally misled the American people.

The House Intelligence Committee report was released with little fanfare on the Friday before Thanksgiving week. Many of its findings echo those of six previous investigations by various congressional committees and a State Department panel. The eighth Benghazi investigation is being carried out by a House Select Committee appointed in May.

So the House GOP buried it in a Friday night news dump last night, because it's a massive embarrassment to them, and the last thing they want to do is have to explain to taxpayers why they wasted millions of dollars on over a half-a-dozen witch hunts against a President they despise, and found absolutely nothing.

But remember, it's Obama that chose "confrontation over cooperation" with Republicans, Republicans who never had any intention of working with him.

Last Call For Benghazi, For Good

So lost in all the chatter of House Republicans now being the party of maximum deportations is the fact the House Intelligence Committee's report on Benghazi has been declassified, and the main finding after 23 exhaustive months of Republican screaming is the fact that Republicans found zero wrongdoing by the Obama administration in the deaths of four Americans.

The House Intelligence Committee, led by Republicans, has concluded that there was no deliberate wrongdoing by the Obama administration in the 2012 attack on the U.S. Consulate in Benghazi, Libya, that killed Ambassador Chris Stevens and three other Americans, said Rep. Mike Thompson of St. Helena, the second-ranking Democrat on the committee. […] 

Thompson said the report “confirms that no one was deliberately misled, no military assets were withheld and no stand-down order (to U.S. forces) was given.”

So Republicans themselves were not able to find anything wrong.  After nearly two years of ridiculous accusations, endless moronic preening by Darrell Issa, and fake outrage driven by the FOX noise machine, the game is now over.

Of course until the next manufactured outrage arises, and we play the game all over again.

Last Call For The Same Song And Dance

Republicans are getting sloppy.  It's taken then weeks to come up with this latest poutrage, that captured alleged Benghazi attack mastermind Ahmed Abu Khatallah can't possibly be tried in criminal court because, umm, superpowers or something.

“I have serious concerns that conducting a rushed interrogation onboard a ship and then turning Abu Khatallah over to our civilian courts risks losing critical intelligence that could lead us to other terrorists or prevent future attacks,” Sen. Kelly Ayotte, R-New Hampshire, said in a statement Saturday. "I've asked the Defense and Justice Departments for an update on his status-including whether he has been told he has the right to remain silent." 

Shortly after the White House announced Abu Khatallah’s capture on July 17, Republicans like Florida Sen. Marco Rubio began to criticize President Barack Obama’s administration because they believed the alleged terrorist should go through a military tribunal at Guantanamo Bay instead of being tried in a federal court. 

“If they bring him to the United States, they're going to Mirandize this guy and it would be a mistake for the ages to read this guy his Miranda rights,” said South Carolina Sen. Lindsey Graham. 

But the White House has defended its decision, saying that they have successfully tried a number of terrorists domestically and that no new captives have gone to the Guantanamo Bay detention facility in years. 

“We have not added a single person to the GITMO population since President Obama took office, and we have had substantial success delivering swift justice to terrorists through our federal court system,” National Security Council Spokeswoman Caitlin Hayden said in a statement the day the capture was announced.

In other words, Republicans are going to call President Obama weak and a traitor for not torturing "intelligence" out of Abu Khatallah, if you can believe that nonsense.  But, that's where we're going to be after the Sunday shows tomorrow, because our idiot media will somehow take this seriously.

Last Call For Meanwhile In Benghazi...

The only even remotely legitimate complaint Republicans had about BENGHAZI!!!11!!one! was put to rest today when the White House announced that the suspect behind the embassy attack was captured over the weekend and will face criminal charges in US federal court.

U.S. forces working with the FBI captured a key suspect in the deadly 2012 attack on the American diplomatic compound in Benghazi, Libya, U.S. officials said Tuesday. 

Libyan militia leader Ahmed abu Khattalah was captured over the weekend, officials said. It is the first arrest and detention by the United States in connection with the Benghazi attack. 

Abu Khattalah will be brought to the United States to face charges "in the coming days," said Edward Price, a spokesman for the National Security Council. 

Abu Khattalah, who faces three federal criminal charges, will be tried in U.S. courts, said Attorney General Eric Holder.

Imagine that.  We didn't have to invade Libya or effect regime change or bomb the bejeezus out of anyone to get the guy, we nailed him with special forces and the FBI.  Detective work and human intelligence.  You know, actual police work.  Conservatives of course are absolutely horrified.

Speaking on Fox News’ Outnumbered just moments after news broke that the United States had captured Ahmed Abu Khattala, Kennedy mused, “you have a former Secretary of State who is in the middle of a high profile book tour, I think this is convenient for her to shift the talking points to some of the things she has been discussing.”

The sentiment — that Obama timed Khattala’s capture for political benefit — was quickly echoed by other conservatives. Rory Cooper, an aide to House Majority Leader Eric Cantor, tweeted, “While it’s great to see they caught the Benghazi suspect, it’s important to remember, he wasn’t really hiding."

How far Kennedy has fallen since her days with Kurt Loder at MTV News, on and Eric, shut it, you got fired.  But seriously, we captured the guy to help Hillary in 2016?  Conducting military operations to help your party's political prospects is something a Republican would do, sure.  Pretty sure President Obama wanted to get the bad guy.  Like he did with Bin Laden.  You know, after Bush failed to do so for seven years.

And speaking of Republicans who have no idea how the universe actually works, Huckleberry Graham walked right into the jet intake again today.

Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) raised questions about how the administration plans to deal with Khatallah, arguing he should be held as a prisoner of war in the U.S. military prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, rather than brought into the federal criminal justice system. 

“He should be going to Gitmo and be held as an enemy combatant,” Graham said. “And it would be the biggest mistake for the ages to read this guy his Miranda rights.” 

Graham said he’s concerned Khatallah is being held on a ship, but said that “at the end of the day, I’m glad we captured somebody.” 

“I hope that person can provide us good intelligence,” he said. “We should have some quality time with this guy — weeks and months. Don’t torture him, but have some quality time with him.”

Yeah, let's just illegally detain him without due process for the rest of his natural life.  That's a great idea, which is why Barack Obama is president and Lindsey Graham is a meatball with legs.

They're just mad that Obama beat them again, like they've been for the last six years.

The Only Winning Move Is Not To Play

Spoilers for a 30-year old Matthew Broderick/Ally Sheedy movie:  In the end, the AI running the Pentagon's nuclear missile program realizes that 80's era nuclear war is bad with the above title quote.  Fast forward to Washington DC today and Democrats have again hit upon this same quote as the correct response to the GOP's ludicrous Benghazi idiocy.

Although the GOP bill creating the select committee passed the House on Thursday, the offices of Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) and Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) are in talks to define rules that will govern the panel in the face of Democratic allegations that Republicans simply want to embarrass the White House ahead of this year's elections.

With that in mind, Republicans proposed several overtures on Friday, which were soundly rejected by the Democrats.

"I consider it a slap in the face," Rep. Elijah Cummings (D-Md.), the ranking member of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, said after a closed-door meeting with Democratic leaders in Pelosi's office in the Capitol. "It is actually worse than the current situation that we have in Oversight and Government Reform [Committee]. It's a step backwards."

In a Friday letter to Boehner, Pelosi echoed that message.

"Regrettably, the proposal does not prevent the unacceptable and repeated abuses committed by [Oversight Chairman Darrell Issa (R-Calif.)] in any meaningful way, and we find it fundamentally unfair," Pelosi wrote.

Pelosi spokesman Drew Hammill said, "The ball is in their court."

Hopefully Democrats will continue to remember this lesson.  For the GOP to get any traction on this mess, they require willing participation from the Democrats to give the circus any sort of legitimacy.  All the Democrats have to do is refuse to oblige them.

Dear America:

"Benghazi is THE END of Obama, do you hear me?  THE END of Obama and THE END of the Democrat Party and THE END of liberalism and it will all come crashing down around and THEN WHAT, LIBTARDS?  THEN WHAT?!?!

Facts?  Umm...BENGHAZI! I WIN!"

--Ron Christie, Daily Beast

Bonus Verbatim Stupid:

The Obama administration has misled, dissembled, and otherwise given the finger to the families of those who lost their lives that night in service to their country. I’m willing to believe that the personnel on the ground in Benghazi were terrified, confused, and hoping the cavalry was on its way to save them from terrorists seeking to kill them. We need a Special Select Committee on Benghazi to ascertain these facts and ensure that such a disaster never occurs again. We need truth, not bullsh*t, from the president and his administration, but so far, that’s all they’ve been shoveling.

I'm willing to believe that hundreds of thousands of Iraqis and Afghans were terrified, confused, and hoping the cavalry was on its way too during the Bush administration, but we were too busy murdering them for being brown..  But it sure is fun to pretend that there's some grand cover-up that resulted in four dead bodies when Bush's incompetence cost us a couple thousand times that.

I'm sure this will somehow cause real problems for President Obama's re-election campaign.

Benghazi Forever And Ever, Amen

GOP Rep. Trey Gowdy of South Carolina, the newly installed Park Ranger at Orange Julius's Benghazi Land Fun-Time World, gives away that the game is to keep Benghazi-ing all the way through November 2016.

Rep. Trey Gowdy (R-S.C.) said the special committee he'll lead on Benghazi could continue into the 2016 campaign, when Hillary Clinton might be running for the White House. 

Asked about that possibility Wednesday on MSNBC's "Morning Joe," Gowdy said the length of his work would depend on the administration’s level of cooperation.

“It would be shame on us if we intentionally dragged this out for political expediency,” said Gowdy, the special committee's chairman. “On the other hand, if an administration is slow-walking document production, I can’t end a trial simply because the defense won’t cooperate.” 

Clinton is a core figure in the Benghazi story, since she was the secretary of State when terrorists attacked the U.S. diplomatic annex in Benghazi, Libya. The attack left four Americans dead, including Ambassador to Libya Christopher Stevens.

Some Democrats suspect Republicans want to keep Benghazi in the news to try to hurt Clinton if she runs for the White House in 2016, as expected.

Gowdy said a memo that came to light last week, in which deputy national security adviser Ben Rhodes set out “goals” for the administration’s response, but which was not turned over by the administration earlier, was evidence of a cover-up.

Demand concrete evidence of cover-up from the Obama administration, and when it magically fails to appear because there's no cover-up, state that the lack of evidence is in fact proof the cover-up exists and demand concrete evidence of the cover-up. Repeat infinitely!  Sell tickets.

This is the GOP plan for the next 30 months, so get used to it.  Don't want to get used to it?  Vote the assholes out.  Real simple.

Oh, and this is the cover-up Congress should be investigating: Okahoma GOP Gov. Mary Fallin's role in last week's botched, bungled, cruel, unusual, immoral and unconstitutional execution of Clayton Lockett.

Last Call For MAXIMUM BENGHAZI

With the House GOP report on Obamacare an embarrassing dud directly contradicted by insurance companies who say the White House's figure of 85-90% of first premiums have been paid up is correct and the April unemployment rate seeing the best numbers since September 2008 the Republicans are now in pure panic mode.  No surprise then that just hours after that monster jobs report and the unemployment rate down to 6.3%, Orange Julius gave the Tea Party what they wanted: a select committee to investigate Benghazi and Darrell Issa's clown show calling up John Kerry to testify.

The creation of the panel, which Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) announced on Friday, comes the same day that House Oversight and Government Reform Committee Chairman Darrell Issa (R-Calif.) issued a subpoena to force Secretary of State John Kerry to testify about the attacks.

Together, the steps signal a bold escalation of the Republican strategy to find the Obama administration at fault for its handling of the Benghazi attacks, which left U.S. Ambassador Chris Stevens and three other Americans dead. They come after internal White House emails were released this week that Republicans say prove the administration lied about its role in drafting talking points about the attack.

“These revelations compel the House to take every possible action to ensure the American people have the truth about the terrorist attack on our consulate that killed four of our countrymen,” Boehner said in a statement announcing his intent to create the select committee.

It’s unclear who will chair the panel, but leadership aides said Rep. Trey Gowdy (R-S.C.) is being seriously considered for the post.

By convening a select committee and demanding that Kerry testify, House Republicans are assuring that scrutiny of the White House over Benghazi — a topic that energizes the GOP base — will remain strong in the months ahead of the midterm elections.

 Because Benghazi was such a successful issue for the GOP during the 2012 elections.

Look, the GOP is clearly terrified that they've got nothing for 2014, and need something to keep the rubes busy while they keep pillaging the country.  Benghazi fits the bill pretty well.  If they're reduced to this nonsense, then they're screwed and they know it.

Bring it on, clowns.  New Tag:  Benghazi Is The New Hodor