Oh, it's still on.

There’s been some concern[-trolling] that Republicans might be pushing their luck with the extent to which they are focusing on Scandalmania and especially the ongoing Benghazi debacle, but a CNN poll earlier this week confirmed that a healthy majority of 59 percent of Americans approve of the way Republicans have been handling the investigation, with [...]

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"I'd have to say it probably helped."

He’s not saying this critically, mind you. He’s a member of the Gang of Eight. When Chuck Schumer refers to “our Republicans,” Flake’s one of the guys he means. He wants the bill to pass. Second look at letting O off the hook for IRS-gate before these tools drop an amnesty bomb on us while [...]

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Change.

Interesting, simply because it cuts against so much conventional wisdom. Many, if not quite all, recent polls suggest that O’s approval rating is hanging tough despite the scandal bombardment, probably because economic optimism is acting as anti-gravity on his numbers. Charlie Cook went so far as to publish a concern-trollish piece today nudging the GOP [...]

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Trust.

Monday’s revelation amounts to the fifth iteration of the Obama administration’s account of events, after initially saying that the White House had first learned of the controversy from the press… Carney pushed back at reporters frustrated with the shifting narrative. “I said that I didn’t know (these details) until Friday, but I’m getting this information [...]

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What?

Via the Right Sphere. Am I reading this correctly? President Dronestrike, who’s been known to liquidate people from the air in places like Pakistan with no more evidence than that their movements show the “signature” of a terrorist, now won’t go in and grab five jihadis whom the feds have reason to believe murdered a [...]

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"There's definitely been an intrusion into my computer system."

Via the Chris Stigall Show and WPHT in Philadelphia. Two weeks ago, this wouldn’t have been worth posting; Attkisson herself, I suspect, wouldn’t have mentioned it publicly. Even if she’s right about something fishy going on, there are other plausible culprits besides the U.S. government when it comes to reporters’ computers being infiltrated. Two weeks [...]

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“The overall goal is to restore my honor.”

For the second time today (or third?), the word “Kafkaesque” seems appropriate. Subpoena this man. “I had no involvement to any degree with decisions on security and the funding of security at our diplomatic mission in Benghazi,” [Raymond Maxwell] said… The State Department declined to comment on the reasons that Maxwell and the other officials [...]

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The record

I understand that the posts today have focused a lot on the political talk show circuit, and some of the material being covered has some cross-over elements to it, so I apologize for that. But this one really does deserve a hearing of its own, particularly given the new “gotcha” talking points being foisted on [...]

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Wheels off

One of the repeating themes I kept hearing on the news for the past few days was how the White House was going to be really glad when this week was over because things really hadn’t been going very well. I assume Sunday is still part of the same week, because not only didn’t things [...]

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Scandalmania.

Any hunches as to what’ll be front and center on this morning’s shows? Top Obama crony Dan Pfeiffer will appear on NBC, ABC, CBS, CNN, Fox, and probably the Food Network if they’ll have him to spin the IRS scandal, Benghazi, the DOJ’s Associated Press probe, Sebelius’s shakedown of health-industry execs, and whatever new scandal [...]

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Trust.

We are in the midst of the worst Washington scandal since Watergate. The reputation of the Obama White House has, among conservatives, gone from sketchy to sinister, and, among liberals, from unsatisfying to dangerous. No one likes what they’re seeing. The Justice Department assault on the Associated Press and the ugly politicization of the Internal [...]

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Yep, probably.

This point has been made many, many, many times elsewhere this week, but let me put out a little BOLO of my own just in case attention on our side of the aisle is starting to wander too far from immigration. There are two theories on how Scandalmania might affect O’s second-term agenda. Theory one: [...]

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The fallback defense.

Sharyl Attkisson hinted last night on Twitter that she would have something “interesting” on Benghazi today.  The CBS reporter didn’t disappoint.  Although it’s not exactly a blockbuster revelation, the change in tone in White House trial balloons in its defense of the Benghazi debacle is stunning: Obama administration officials who were in key positions on Sept. [...]

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"Maybe it’s just me, but I’ve kind of enjoyed it.”

No, really, Jay Carney would like to know.  Even though he only showed his face in the briefing room twice this week, and even though the White House press corps used him as a punching bag, Barack Obama’s press secretary wants you to know he’s really enjoyed having to address this avalanche of scandals.  Wait [...]

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"I have to go back 40 years to Watergate when Nixon put out his edited transcripts to the conversations, and he personally went through them and said, 'Oh, let's not tell this, let's not show this.'"

We heard from one half of the Watergate-exposing journalistic duo this week on the AP scandal, and now the other half weighs in on the supposedly waning Benghazi debate.  The White House released 100 pages of e-mails that went around the administration on 9/14 — but oddly not on 9/12 or 9/13 — less than [...]

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Politics.

Republicans must guard against the temptation to count on scandal to deliver election victories in 2014 and 2016. It is a lesson they should have learned in 1998.
 Republicans expected to make large gains in Congress that year but ended up losing five House seats and standing pat in the Senate. The problem was not [...]

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"I think some in the media were not as curious as I think naturally journalists ought to be.”

Via the Brody File, here’s big-media’s most dogged Benghazi reporter confirming, as tactfully as she can, that she too thinks the press is in the tank. Lest you doubt her conclusion about a certain, shall we say, curious incuriosity among her colleagues, look around at the news today and see how many reporters you find [...]

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"FBI says AQ (not AQIM) was involved and they are pursuing that theory.”

The White House finally released the e-mail string that led to the creation of the talking points for the Benghazi terrorist attack that somehow completely missed the fact that it was a terrorist attack.  Did that succeed in having the Obama administration’s argument that it reflected the best intelligence at the time?  Not if you read [...]

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Damage control.

More than 50 major media organizations on Tuesday sent a letter to the Department of Justice protesting the seizure of two months of The Associated Press’ phone records and calling for the department to “mitigate the damage it has caused.” In a letter to Attorney General Eric Holder and Deputy Attorney James M. Cole, the [...]

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Discovery.

Jake Tapper has all of them in PDF form. Click the link and let’s start crowdsourcing. This one’s the standout so far: “FBI says AQ (not AQIM) was involved and they are pursuing that theory.” AQIM is “Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb,” a.k.a. the group’s north African offshoot. The FBI evidently had reason to [...]

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Preach.

During an interview on Fox on Tuesday night, Sen. Rubio some poignant thoughts about the wildly nefarious nature of the several scandalizing stories currently bleeding out of the Obama administration: Watch the latest video at video.foxnews.com I can tell you that what’s become clearly apparent is a culture throughout the federal government — not just [...]

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Triage.

I had the same thought as Matt Lewis when reading through the news this morning. There’s too much smoke now from the IRS, DOJ/AP, and Benghazi scandals to pretend there’s no fire. If you’re sympathetic to O, it’s time to shift messages from “what fire?” to “Obama should have done more to put out these [...]

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How ... meta.

In order to understand just how badly the White House may have fumbled this ball, let’s go back to last week.  Stephen Hayes at the Weekly Standard reported from Congressional sources on a White House-State Department e-mail string that made clear that the administration wanted the talking points on Benghazi massaged to protect sources and [...]

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Triage.

“For fear of stating the obvious,” Kuhnhenn began, “the White House right now is confronting a confluence of issues: Benghazi talking points, IRS reviews of political groups, Justice Department’s review of journalists’ phone records, and in every instance either the president or you have placed the burden of responsibility someplace else… But it is the [...]

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Wha...?

On the Senate floor earlier today, Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-CA) took a moment to try her darndest to throw the still-unfolding Benghazi saga back in the oh-so-hyper-partisan Republicans’ faces: Now, there’s a lot of talk going on about, “How could this happen?” and e-mails and all the rest. Let me focus on something very important: [...]

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