We’re continuing our countdown of the top 50 most-viewed posts in 2013 at Hot Air today, and once again we get to revisit the year’s top stories. Today’s set of ten posts includes the first look at the Boston Marathon bombing, Benghazi, Zimmerman, and ObamaCare, along with a hilarious demand into a scandal that really was “phony.” Enjoy!

• #40: Priceless. MSNBC boss wants “investigation” into how Megyn Kelly pwned Maddow – Fox News finally woke up and moved Megyn Kelly to prime time, and put a big dent into Rachel Maddow’s share in the first week. MSNBC boss Phil Griffin demanded an investigation by TVNewser into the results.  A lengthy probe discovered that … MSNBC and Maddow aren’t very popular. Film at 11.
• #39: Open thread: Moment of truth in the Old Dominion; McAuliffe wins – Only two states held gubernatorial elections this year, and they returned a split decision. McAuliffe barely beat Ken Cuccinelli, and the Attorney General race went to a recount — but Democrats ended up sweeping in Virginia. In New Jersey, Chris Christie cruised to victory, as expected.
• #38: The ignorant omniscience of President Obama – It’s not every day when the best political option for a President of the United States is to emulate Sergeant Schultz from Hogan’s Heroes. And yet, with the ObamaCare rollout disaster, it’s come to this, to quote my esteemed fellow senior editor.
• #37: Scapegoated insurers fire back at Obama over “administrative fix”: You’re not pinning this ObamaCare mess on us – The return fire from insurers over the clumsy attempt to blame them for ObamaCare’s woes took place on the same day as Obama’s Sergeant Schultz act above. The news only got worse for insurers later, as Obama and the White House issued change after change in enrollment target dates and payment structures. Why, it’s almost as if they were incompetent, instead of the insurers!
• #36: Chicago Tribune drops the hammer on Obamacare – This wasn’t the first time in 2013 that Obama’s hometown newspaper took a swipe at Illinois’ favorite son, but it was the first time it acknowledged what a disaster Obama created for health insurance. By mid-October, the Chicago Tribune wanted a delay on enforcement of ObamaCare. By December, at least Joe Manchin was listening.
• #35: Saletan: Almost everything I thought I knew about Zimmerman was wrong – It’s amazing what one can learn when bypassing the mainstream media’s tropes. Or anyone else’s, for that matter. The media is still getting the Zimmerman case wrong, but at least William Saletan had the honesty to admit it.
• #34: Video: Piers Morgan discovers Ben Shapiro isn’t Alex Jones – Morgan, like some other talk-show hosts, like to stack the deck sometimes to make themselves the smartest person in the room. If that’s what Morgan thought would happen with Ben Shapiro, he got an education in a hurry. Shapiro humiliated Morgan, who then got criticized by his legendary predecessor for his tactics.
• #33: McAfee Antivirus founder: “What idiot put this system out there?” – John McAfee has his issues, but ignorance about Internet security isn’t one of them. As early as October 3rd, McAfee was blowing the whistle on the risks to consumers in the ObamaCare exchanges — which now have come under Congressional scrutiny, and may make Kathleen Sebelius’ life uncomfortable in 2014.
• #32: P.M. thread: The hunt for Dzhokhar Tsarnaev; Update: Older brother spent six months overseas last year; Update: Twitter account? Update: Tsarnaev was nervous Tuesday, says mechanic; Update: Classmate saw Tsarnaev yesterday? – The first appearance of the Boston Marathon terrorist-attack story, but not the last. That week saw a number of open threads on the subject as everyone at Hot Air attempted to keep up with the latest reports. Interestingly, much of this thread holds up, except (possibly) for the Tsarnaevs being part of a larger group.
• #31: CNN bombshell: Dozens of CIA operatives were on the ground during the Benghazi attack, agency in panic over revelations – We’ll finish with another red-letter headline, this time on a big surprise nearly 11 months after an al-Qaeda attack on our consulate in Benghazi left four Americans dead, including the first ambassador killed in the line of duty in 33 years. Read it all, and then think about the fact that we still don’t have the answer to Allahpundit’s exit question: “What was the CIA doing in Benghazi?”

Tomorrow we’ll be back with more top stories, including more on the Tsarnaevs, the game of fiscal chicken, a filibuster, and even more ObamaCare. Stay tuned!