Bengazi!!!

[guido911]

Um, the Benghazi "scandal" is all about transparency...

[RecycleMichael]

Keep posting about Bengazi. You just make my point over and over again.

Oh, and throw in some discussions about Monica Lewinski while you are at it.

[AquaMan]

Carter is always good.

[Townsend]

Can the GOP keep the Benghazi hearings from becoming a 'circus'?

http://news.yahoo.com/can-the-gop-keep-the-benghazi-hearings-from-becoming-a--circus--222958402.html

In 1994, Indiana Republican Rep. Dan Burton fired bullets at what he would later describe as a "head-like object" in his backyard—whether it was a melon or a pumpkin has been lost to history—in an attempt to prove that White House aide Vincent Foster had not committed suicide, but was murdered. At the time, Burton believed President Bill Clinton was responsible for his death.

Burton went on become the Chairman of the House Oversight Committee and would be remembered for aggressively—and sometimes unethically—probing the tiniest details of Clinton's presidency. The committee sent out more than 1,000 subpoenas to Democratic officials for various investigations on Burton's watch, including one that delved into the White House Christmas-card list. The strong-armed tactics and stunts defined Burton's tenure as a top cop in Congress, but Republicans were regularly accused of overreaching.

Today, Republicans organizing the new select committee to investigate the 2012 terrorist attacks in Benghazi, Libya, are looking to their own party's colorful history of presidential investigative hearings for guidance. This includes, most importantly, what not to do. House Speaker John Boehner this week tapped Rep. Trey Gowdy, a veteran prosecutor and Republican from South Carolina, to lead the select committee, and insists it won't become "a circus."

But with Democrats charging that new Beghazi hearings will amount to little more than political theater —Democratic Party Chairwoman Debbie Wasserman Shultz said Wednesday it was "nothing more than a political ploy"—Republicans are mindful about trying to avoid the kind of theatrics Congress witnessed in the late 1990s.

"If you're shooting a watermelon, you're probably going too far," South Carolina Sen. Lindsey Graham, who cut his teeth in Congress as a Clinton-era investigator, told Yahoo News. "I don't think [Trey Gowdy's] going to have a demonstration in his backyard about how Benghazi happened."

Controversy over White House messaging in the wake of the Benghazi attack re-erupted at the end of April after Judicial Watch succeeded in obtaining a previously undisclosed e-mail from September 14, 2012, written by National Security Council communications adviser Ben Rhodes. The existence of the letter — made public under the Freedom of Information Act and offering guidance to administration officials about how they should characterize the attacks — has raised the possibility that additional documents may yet be forthcoming, if Congress presses for them.

When reached for comment about the new select committee, Burton, who retired from Congress last year, declined to offer guidance for Gowdy.

"He'll do a good job without my advice," Burton told Yahoo News. Burton added that he wasn't interested in discussing his own historic tactics and strategies. "I really don't think I ought to go back and re-hash all of that," he said. "I don't think it will be beneficial for me to go into all that again."

Graham, however, was glad to offer wisdom.

"If you're going to take on White Houses you better have a thick skin," Graham, a dogged critic of Obama's handling of Benghazi and a member of the Judiciary Committee team that brought the case for impeachment of Clinton in 1998, said. "What I would do is get a good press shop. Somebody who can carry the message, that's trained in how to handle crisis management in terms of media."

He added: "I would pick professional investigators that are seen by people in the legal community as really competent and capable. ... I would make sure they have some Democratic connections as well as Republican connections. "

Gowdy himself said he intends to take great pains to lend credibility to the committee.

"I care very much about the process," Gowdy told Yahoo News Wednesday after a House Republican conference meeting on Capitol Hill. "I want people to respect the process. You are welcome to draw different conclusions, but I don't want there to be any ambiguity about whether the process was fair and complete. It's my responsibility to convince you that the process was fair."

Democrats are worried that the proceedings won't be carried out fairly, and some have even called on party leadership to boycott the hearings altogether.

Critics of the Republican's move to create a select committee point to the fact that four bipartisan congressional committees have already launched their own Benghazi investigations and that the House Oversight Committee still has an inquiry open on the subject. In January, the Senate Committee on Intelligence released a report on the attacks—signed off by both Republicans and Democrats on the panel—that concluded that the attacks were "preventable."

On Tuesday, House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi and Whip Steny Hoyer sent a letter to Boehner requesting there be an equal number of Democrats on the panel as Republicans. The letter called for rules mandating that there be bipartisan agreement to approve subpoenas and protocols for the release of documents related to the investigation.

Republicans are all but ignoring the Democrats' request, with plans to appoint seven of their own to the panel and just five Democrats. As justification for the move, they point to Pelosi's decision, when she was Speaker in 2007, not to appoint an equal number of Republicans and Democrats to a Select Committee on climate change. They also note that with the exception of the Ethics Committee, seats on congressional panels are doled out based on the partisan makeup of the chamber.

"That's a red herring. I don't think it's important at all" to have an equal number from each party, Gowdy said. "I just want it to be fair."

Hillary Clinton, who was Secretary of State at the time of the Benghazi attack, was asked about the issue during an appearance at the Ford Foundation Tuesday. She said she was "absolutely" satisfied with the information she had about Benghazi and greeted the new Republican push with the verbal equivalent of a shrug.

"Of course, there are a lot of reasons why, despite all of the hearings, all of the information that's been provided, some choose not to be satisfied and choose to continue to move forward," Clinton said. "That's their choice, and I do not believe there is any reason for it to continue in this way. But they get to call the shots in the Congress."

House Republicans plan to vote on creating the joint committee later this week.

Meanwhile, it's already proving hard for Republicans to keep the party on message. The National Republican Congressional Committee has begun fundraising around the Benghazi investigation, fueling Democratic criticism that the committee is being established for political purposes. Gowdy denounced the NRCC's move and is urging Republicans not to raise money off the investigations.

"This is all about getting to the truth. It's not going to be a sideshow," Boehner insisted Wednesday morning. "It's not going to be a circus. This is a serious investigation."

[Hoss]

Can the GOP keep the Benghazi hearings from becoming a 'circus'?

http://news.yahoo.com/can-the-gop-keep-the-benghazi-hearings-from-becoming-a--circus--222958402.html

OMG.  Those last two sentences about made me incontinent....

"It's not going to be a circus. This is a serious investigation."

[heironymouspasparagus]

Um, the Benghazi "scandal" is all about transparency...

Where was your concern about the 1983 Beirut embassy bombing where 63 people were killed??  Wonder why Reagan wasn't held to task for that - he had been in office for two years and surely someone would have mentioned to him something about security issues?  Oh, wait...Alzheimer's...he had it.

[heironymouspasparagus]

I can't stop smiling. Listening to Hannity on the radio is like watching car racing for the wrecks.

It is only for the national republicans. I don't see Mayor Bartlett ranting about such. I read a nice post by GT Bynum about working to find more city funding for arts program. I see Ron Peters asking questions about transparency in government. I see Blake Ewing fighting for neighborhoods.

Why is it that when you want to be a republican on a national scale you have to lose all sense about what is important to the public and not just your party? Tell me it didn't always be like this.

It wasn't.  Page Belcher... excellent example of how it should be on a national scale.

He even played football for the Sooners!  But I don't hold that against him at all!

[guido911]

Trey Gowdy reportedly has gotten death threats. Oh well, what difference does it make?

As for the Beirut bombing, I will look back and see if Reagan blamed the attack repeatedly on a video, and then withheld documents confirming that BS story but was forced to produce them after a FOIA action. Maybe you can remind me if Reagan looked into the eyes of a surviving family member and told them he was going to arrest and prosecute the maker of the video. That would really help me understand your strawman, er, whatever point you were making. 

[guido911]

Keep posting about Bengazi. You just make my point over and over again.

Oh, and throw in some discussions about Monica Lewinski while you are at it.

I'm more interested in global alarming or whatever than this story. That's what people REALLY want to talk about, I mean, people that make a living off of environmentalism. I keed.

[Townsend]

Trey Gowdy reportedly has gotten death threats. 

From whom and about what?

[AquaMan]

How quickly we forget...or choose to forget...

http://www.phillyburbs.com/entertainment/in-debacle-reagan-escaped-the-blame-game/article_0174fce9-b60c-5b6b-8934-915bd3c2bcf7.html

"Those Marines had been ordered into Lebanon by President Ronald Reagan as a part of an international peacekeeping force following the June 1982 Israeli invasion of that country and the Palestine Liberation Organization's withdrawal."

"Making an already-dangerous situation even more hazardous, the Marines were under strict presidential orders not to load their weapons — this, so that they would appear as peacekeepers and not as armed belligerents in the conflict and despite the fact that they were moving into a war zone."

"According to Col. Timothy J. Geraghty, the commander of the Marines in Beirut: "It didn't take a military expert to realize that our troops had been placed in an indefensible situation. Anyone following the situation in Lebanon in ordinary news reports could realize a tragedy was in the making."

"From the outset, the American embassy in Beirut had sent numerous cables warning Washington that the invasion would provoke terrorism and undermine America's standing in the Mideast. But there was no response."

Sound familiar? The result of White House decisions led to the greatest loss of life in Marine history. But wait! There's more!

"Against the vigorous opposition of Secretary of Defense Caspar Weinberger, Reagan then ordered Marine commanders to call in air strikes and other attacks against the Muslims and initiated a two-week-long bombardment by American warships, including the battleship USS New Jersey.
In his autobiography, then Maj. Gen. Colin Powell observed: "Since (the Muslims) could not reach the battleship, they found a more vulnerable target — the exposed Marines at the airport."

The Reagan administration immediately attempted to deflect blame for the attack with a deluge of false statements and misrepresentations. In a televised speech four days after the bombing, the president insisted the attack was unstoppable, erroneously declaring that the truck crashed through a series of barriers, including a chain-link fence and barbed-wire entanglements, and argued that the U.S. mission was succeeding.
Despite the fact that Reagan had dispatched the Marines into an impossible situation and then had issued orders that led to their inability to defend themselves, he suffered relatively little criticism from the press or partisan opponents, and after months of vigorous campaigning was overwhelmingly re-elected the following year"

Still sound different?

[rebound]

How quickly we forget...or choose to forget...

Excellent post.   I actually had forgotten about the details.

[cannon_fodder]

This whole thing is a witch hunt.  The Republicans are happy to trample on the constitution if it gets them some political points.  The witness invoked her 5th Amendment privilege and now they are attempting to punish her from doing so.

A blanket statement of innocents or disclaimer of involvement is NOT enough to waive the privilege.  If she spoke of specific facts, she has waived in regards to those specific facts.  But the general statement does not qualify as a waiver -

"Did you kill him!?!"

"Man, I didn't do it, you got the wrong guy!"

POOF!  - 5th Amendment out the window in every prosecution ever.  It isnt that simple.

[swake]

I think the Republicans should ask for the long form birth certificates of everyone involved.

[heironymouspasparagus]

Trey Gowdy reportedly has gotten death threats. Oh well, what difference does it make?

As for the Beirut bombing, I will look back and see if Reagan blamed the attack repeatedly on a video, and then withheld documents confirming that BS story but was forced to produce them after a FOIA action. Maybe you can remind me if Reagan looked into the eyes of a surviving family member and told them he was going to arrest and prosecute the maker of the video. That would really help me understand your strawman, er, whatever point you were making. 

Only in "FauxWorld".... like Disney World without the reality....