Obama Aide: ‘Irrelevant Fact’ Where President Was During Benghazi Attacks

Warning!! Duct Tape Area!

 

http://www.weeklystandard.com

9:48 AM, MAY 19, 2013 • BY DANIEL HALPER

Obama aide Dan Pfeiffer said it’s an “irrelevant fact” where the president physically was during the Benghazi terror attack on September 11, 2012:

Please Pay attention at 1:13 mark

“every hearing has found it’s been a tragedy”

Oh Really now!

Host Chris Wallace reminds Pfeiffer that Obama didn’t really talk with Secretary Clinton, Secretary Panetta, or Martin Dempsey, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, that night. “He was talking to his national security staff,” Pfeiffer insists.

Asked about whether the president entered the Situation Room, Pfeiffer says, “I don’t remember what room the president was in on that night, and that’s a largely irrelevant fact.”

Pfeiffer then argues that Wallace’s questions about the president’s handling of the Benghazi terror attack are “offensive.”

And now a word from our resident lunatic. “offensive…Offensive” No you little twit, this is offensive.

look at it..look at it you perverted PIECE of excrement. while your boss was getting his nails done and god knows what else at the down low club. this man and 3 others died. that is offensive to me and about 80% of the nation. More important. it’s OFFENSIVE to god.

 

House committee investigates IRS witch-hunt: Live streaming

Russell George (l); Steve Miller (r)

This morning, the GOP-majority House Ways and Means Committee holds the first Congressional hearing on the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) targeting conservatives and Christians for higher levels of scrutiny.

Outgoing Acting IRS Commissioner Steve Miller, Obama’s first scapegoat in his IRS-gate, told a House committee that “foolish mistakes” were  made by the tax agency, but that partisanship wasn’t the reason. [Hey, Miller, if "partisanship wasn't the reason," then why did you "resign" from the IRS? ~Eowyn]

Treasury Department’s Inspector General for Tax Administration Russell George testified at the same hearing and said he did not find evidence that IRS’ decisions were motivated by politics. [HaHaHaHaHa! That Russell George is a real stand-up comedian! ~Eowyn]

To watch the hearing live, click here.

Meanwhile, NBC’s Lisa Myers reported this morning that the IRS  deliberately chose not to reveal that it had wrongly targeted conservative groups until after the 2012 presidential election.

But remember we’ve been told: “partisanship wasn’t the reason” and there’s no “evidence that IRS’ decisions were motivated by politics”!

~Eowyn

Left wing men are wimps compared to right wing males?

Men who are physically strong are more likely to have right wing political views

DailyMail: Men who are physically strong are more likely to take a right wing political stance, while weaker men are inclined to support  the welfare state, according to a new study.

Researchers discovered political motivations may have evolutionary links to physical strength. Men’s upper-body strength predicts their political opinions on economic redistribution, according to the  research.

The principal investigators – psychological  scientists Michael Bang Petersen, of Aarhus University in Denmark, and Daniel Sznycer, of the University of California in the U.S., believe that the link may reflect psychological traits that evolved in response to our early ancestral environments and continue to influence behaviour today.

Professor Petersen said: ‘While many think of  politics as a modern phenomenon, it has – in a sense – always been with our  species.’ In the days of our early ancestors, decisions about the distribution of resources were not made in courthouses or legislative offices, but through shows of strength.

With this in mind, Professor Petersen and Professor Sznycer hypothesised that upper-body strength – a proxy for the ability to physically defend or acquire resources – would predict men’s opinions about the redistribution of wealth.

The researchers collected data on bicep size, socio-economic status, and support for economic redistribution from hundreds of people in the United States, Argentina and Denmark.

In line with their hypotheses, the data revealed that wealthy men with high upper-body strength were less likely to support redistribution, while less wealthy men of the same strength were more likely to support it.

Professor Petersen said: ‘Despite the fact that the United States, Denmark and Argentina have very different welfare  systems, we still see that – at the psychological level – individuals reason about welfare redistribution in the same way.

‘In all three countries, physically strong males consistently pursue the self-interested position on redistribution.’ Men with low upper-body strength, on the other hand, were less likely to support their own self-interest. Wealthy men of this group showed less resistance to redistribution, while poor men showed less support.

Professor Petersen said: ‘Our results demonstrate that physically weak males are more reluctant than physically strong males to assert their self-interest – just as if disputes over national policies  were a matter of direct physical confrontation among small numbers of  individuals, rather than abstract electoral dynamics among  millions.’

However, the researchers found no link  between upper-body strength and redistribution opinions among women.  Professor Petersen argued that this is likely  due to the fact that, over the course of evolutionary history, women had less to  gain, and also more to lose, from engaging in direct physical aggression.

He said, together, the results indicate that an evolutionary perspective may help to illuminate political motivations, at least those of men. Professor Petersen added: ‘Many previous  studies have shown that people’s political views cannot be predicted by standard economic models.

‘This is among the first studies to show that political views may be rational in another sense, in that they’re designed by natural selection to function in the conditions recurrent over human evolutionary history.’

The findings were published in the journal  Psychological Science.

I don’t know if this is generally true yet found this article kind of interesting. Who knew, left wing liberal men support the welfare state? Exactly what Obama is turning America into.

DCG

Calif professor smashes student’s cell phone over gay marriage

American River (community) College, Sacramento, CA

More intolerance, hate and rage from the illiberal Left.

A professor at a California community college, American River College (ARC), got so enraged at a student over same-sex marriage that he smashed the student’s cell phone.

ARC is a community college of 35,000 students in Sacramento, California.

Timothy Dionisopoulos reports for Campus Reform, May 10, 2013, that the student Vladimir Musorivschi is a volunteer on the campus campaign for student government of fellow student Luke Otterstad. Otterstad is an outspoken opponent of same-sex marriage (see below).

According to Musorivschi’s version of events, he and ARC Anthropology Professor Frank Araujo got into a verbal altercation over whether or not same-sex marriage should be legal. Araujo screamed at the student, then smashed his cell phone to the ground.

Musorivschi told Campus Reform: “I said no you are not even arguing the right way, you are just screaming at me about something. When I said I was going to call the police he just smashed my phone, basically assaulted me and the phone went like fifteen feet and smashed into pieces.”

In an email to Campus Reform, Araujo would not confirm or deny whether the alleged altercation or assault had taken place. He wrote incoherently: “Not being a student and being unfamiliar with both the slates [sic] and their issues, I’m unable to make any cogent remarks.”

Frank Araujo, Adjunct Professor, American River College

The college’s administrators are investigating the incident. Carlos Reyes, interim dean for the behavioral and social sciences at ARC, told Campus Reform: “I am currently investigating the situation. With that being said the college has a process and that process is being followed. I do not comment on ongoing investigations so there is not a lot of details I can give you.  Obviously we take the environment on campus seriously so that is something that is being looked at.”

Although ARC election rules forbid professors from engaging in negative campaigns and bans the use of school resources in student elections, ARC professors changed their public Facebook profile pictures late last month to anti-Otterstad slogans while the campus LGBT club held a rally and leaflet drive against his campaign.

Otterstad, who lost the student government election, told Campus Reform he has filed an official election complaint with the chancellor of the school which challenges the validity of the election due to a discrepancy in the vote count: “I am challenging the election results because the numbers released don’t add up, professors violated election rules by actively campaigning against me, and the District has a history of violating student voting rights.”

Here’s contact info for American River College:

Address: 4700 College Oak Drive, Sacramento, Calif. 95841
Phone: (916) 484-8011

Frank Araujo‘s title at ARC is a part-time “Adjunct Faculty” in the Dept. of Anthropology. His LinkedIn page says he’s been an Adjunct Professor at ARC for 21 years, since 1991. His email address is AraujoF@arc.losrios.edu.

David Viar is the President of ARC. His email address is ViarD@arc.losrios.edu.

~Eowyn

Let’s See who Else The I.R.S. Picked On.

let’s just pile on shall we.  :D    ~Steve~

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From the http://washingtonexaminer.com

May 15, 2013 | 2:40 pm | Modified: May 16, 2013 at 9:35 am

Report: IRS denied tax-exempt status to pro-lifers on behalf of Planned Parenthood

IRS officials refused to grant tax exempt status to two pro-life organizations because of their position on the abortion issue, according to a non-profit law firm, which said that one group was pressured not to protest a pro-choice organization that endorsed President Obama during the last election.

“In one case, the IRS withheld approval of an application for tax exempt status for Coalition for Life of Iowa. In a phone call to Coalition for Life of Iowa leaders on June 6, 2009, the IRS agent ‘Ms. Richards’ told the group to send a letter to the IRS with the entire board’s signatures stating that, under perjury of the law, they do not picket/protest or organize groups to picket or protest outside of Planned Parenthood,” the Thomas More Society announced today. “Once the IRS received this letter, their application would be approved.”

Planned Parenthood endorsed Obama in 2008 and 2012.

The IRS also pressured another pro-life group about its religious activities. “The IRS withheld approval of an application for charitable tax-exempt recognition of Christian Voices for Life, questioning the group’s involvement with ’40 Days for Life’ and ‘Life Chain’ events,” according to the law firm. “The Fort Bend County, Texas, organization was subjected to repeated and lengthy unconstitutional requests for information about the viewpoint and content of its educational communications, volunteer prayer vigils, and other protected activities.”

The IRS admitted last week to that some members of the agency targeted Tea Party groups for discriminatory reviews of their applications for tax-exempt status. The Justice Department has initiated a criminal investigation into the matter.

just thinking out loud, but that DOESN’T seem fair.

http://washingtonexaminer.com/report-irs-denied-tax-exempt-status-to-pro-lifers-on-behalf-of-planned-parenthood/article/2529750

Liberal Jon Stewart goes postal on Obama

I can’t do better than FOTM’s WildBillAlaska, who alerted us to this video:

When the sycophant late night comedians go this far, the steaming POS is in trouble. Oh Joy!!

H/t The Daily Sheeple

On a more serious note, see “Groups & individuals targeted by Obama’s IRS witchhunt.”

~Eowyn

Benghazi, I.R.S. And Now For Your Viewing Pleasure, Scandal # 3: The A.P.

well it seems our justice dept. run by none other THAN that rock star eric holder had decided to hijack about 20 phone lines belonging to ap. in April and may of 2012.      kind of funny now that ap has been the target the media is up in arms. For years while justice and the admin have abused the american public it seemed they could care less, Well anyway if this is what it takes to shine the light on the vermin so be it. Benghazi, i.r.s., a.p.               seems like 3 strikes YOU’RE out in the ole ball game.

Politicians versus press: Attorney General Eric Holder held a press conference on Tuesday to address the story that the Justice Department secretly obtained two months worth of journalists phone records

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Eric Holder points finger at his DEPUTY who secretly obtained journalist’s phone records as Obama is forced to say he has ‘confidence’ in the Attorney General

• Justice Department obtained records listing incoming and outgoing calls and duration of calls for more than 20 telephone lines used by journalists
• Lines included the main number used by reporters in the House of Reps press gallery and general AP numbers in Washington and New York
• Stems from AP article talking reporting a thwarted terror attack
• Attorney General Eric Holder said he had recused himself from the investigation into the leak to avoid the appearance of a conflict of interest
• Said that his deputy made the decision to obtain the records

By ASSOCIATED PRESS and DAILY MAIL REPORTER

PUBLISHED: 13:40 EST, 14 May 2013 | UPDATED: 17:55 EST, 14 May 2013

Attorney General Eric Holder went on the defensive on Tuesday explaining why the Justice Department secretly obtained two months worth of reporters’ telephone records in an ‘unprecedented’ search for a confidential source.

‘This was a very serious leak and a very, very serious leak,’ Holder said at a press conference explaining the department’s actions which have been criticized for going against the constitutional right to a free press.

Holder said that he recused himself from the making the controversial decision to subpoena the phone records of Associated Press journalists, saying that it was made by Deputy Attorney General James Cole.

He said that he was ‘confident that the people involved in this … followed all applicable Department of Justice regulations’ even though he claimed not to actually know the details of the decision-making process as a result of his recusal.

President Obama was forced to follow Holder’s press conference with the release of a statement saying that the incident does not shake his faith in his close friend and the country’s top legal adviser.    (Whoopsie)

‘The president has confidence in the attorney general,’ press secretary Jay Carney said.

The controversy came when the Associated Press reported that two months worth of reporters’ telephone records without their knowledge, obtaining a wide breadth of records that had nothing to do with the leak of information that they were concerned about. 

The Justice Department has spoken in the past about how they were upset over the leak of information about a foiled al Qaeda plot where the terrorist group planned to detonate a bomb on a plane bound for the United States.

‘I’ve been a prosecutor since 1976 and I have to say that this is among, if not the most serious, it is within the top two or three most serious leaks I’ve ever seen,’ Holder said.

It put the American people at risk. That’s not hyperbole. It put the American people at risk.’

That isn’t enough to satisfy critics, as top Republicans are already calling for Holder’s resignation over the incident.

‘Because Attorney General Holder has so egregiously violated the public trust, the president should ask for his immediate resignation,’ Republican National Committee chairman Reince Priebus said. 

‘If President Obama does not, the message will be unmistakable: The President of the United States believes his administration is above the Constitution and does not respect the role of a free press.’

The records listed journalists’ incoming and outgoing calls, as well as the duration of each call, for the work and personal phone numbers of individual reporters, general AP office numbers in New York, Washington and Hartford, Connecticut, and the main number for AP reporters in the House of Representatives press gallery, according to attorneys for the AP.

In all, the government seized records for more than 20 separate telephone lines assigned to AP and its journalists in April and May of 2012.

News of the probe into one of the largest news organizations in the world immediately sparked outrage among Republicans on Capitol Hill.

‘The First Amendment is first for a reason,’ Michael Steel, spokesman for House Speaker John Boehner, told MailOnline. 

‘If the Obama Administration is going after reporters’ phone records, they better have a damned good explanation.’

A spokesman for Republican House Majority Leader Eric Cantor said the move is representative of a broader ‘pattern of intimidation.’

‘Whether it is secretly targeting patriotic Americans participating in the electoral progress or reporters exercising their First Amendment rights, these new revelations suggest a pattern of intimidation by the Obama Administration,’ Doug Heye said.

The American Civil Liberties Union was equally critical. 

( You Know you screwed up if even the ACLU is on your butt.)

‘Obtaining a broad range of telephone records in order to ferret out a government leaker is an unacceptable abuse of power,’ said Ben Wizner, director of the ACLU Speech, Privacy, and Technology Project. ‘Freedom of the press is a pillar of our democracy, and that freedom often depends on confidential communications between reporters and their sources.’

AP President and Chief Executive Officer Gary Pruitt said the government obtained information far beyond anything that could be justified by any specific investigation.

He demanded the return of the phone records and destruction of all copies.

‘There can be no possible justification for such an overbroad collection of the telephone communications of The Associated Press and its reporters,’ Pruitt wrote in a letter of protest to  Holder. 

‘These records potentially reveal communications with confidential sources across all of the newsgathering activities undertaken by the AP during a two-month period, provide a road map to AP’s news gathering operations, and disclose information about AP’s activities and operations that the government has no conceivable right to know.’

The exact number of journalists who used the phone lines during that period is unknown but more than 100 journalists work in the offices whose phone records were targeted on a wide array of stories about government and other matters.

U.S. officials have previously said in public testimony that the U.S. attorney in Washington is conducting a criminal investigation into who may have leaked information contained in a May 7, 2012, AP story about a foiled terror plot.

The story disclosed details of a CIA operation in Yemen that stopped an al Qaeda plot in the spring of 2012 to detonate a bomb on an airplane bound for the United States.

In testimony in February, CIA Director John Brennan noted that the FBI had questioned him about whether he was AP’s source, which he denied. 

He called the release of the information to the media about the terror plot an ‘unauthorized and dangerous disclosure of classified information.’

Prosecutors have sought phone records from reporters before, but the seizure of records from such a wide array of AP offices, including general AP switchboards numbers and an office-wide shared fax line, is unusual and largely unprecedented.

In the letter notifying the AP received Friday, the Justice Department offered no explanation for the seizure, according to Pruitt’s letter and attorneys for the AP.

The records were presumably obtained from phone companies earlier this year although the government letter did not explain that. None of the information provided by the government to the AP suggested the actual phone conversations were monitored.

~Steve~

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2324501/Attorney-General-Eric-Holder-defends-deputys-decision-secretly-obtain-journalists-phone-records-saying-searching-leak.html#ixzz2TMlgvGVJ

Groups & individuals targeted by Obama’s IRS witchhunt

The mission of the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) is to collect taxes from individuals and groups, but to do so fairly by applying the the tax law with integrity and without prejudice. According to IRS Policy Statement 1-1, IRS employees accomplish this mission by being impartial and handling tax matters in a manner that will promote public confidence.

It is not the mission of the IRS to use political criteria to target certain individuals and groups for special scrutiny or audit.

On May 10, 2013, Americans learned that, instead of being apolitical, the Obama regime’s IRS had singled out for special scrutiny the tax documents of some 75 groups who, for the lack of a better term, are not fans of President Lucifer.

That day, the IRS issued an apology to conservative political groups — groups with names that had words like “tea party” and “patriot” — for having been subjected to extra scrutiny. But the IRS insisted that “Mistakes were made initially, but they were in no way due to any political or partisan rationale.”

Since last Friday, each new day brings more information of the IRS’s misdeeds. They include the following:

• The IRS witch hunt began in April 2010, with the formation of a team of specialists within the IRS called the Determination Unit. (Source: ZeroHedge)

• High-level Obama regime officials were involved. (Source: ZeroHedge)

• By June 2011, the IRS expanded its criteria for extra scrutiny beyond “Tea Party,” “patriot,” and “9/12 Project” (referring to a group started by Glenn Beck) groups to include also organizations critical of government spending, government debt, taxes, and “how the country is run,” as well as groups seeking to “make America a better place to live” and to educate Americans about the Constitution and the Bill of Rights. (Source: FoxNews)

• The IRS also targeted a pro-life group, Cherish Life Ministries, that provides help to a coalition of churches that supports mothers struggling with unexpected pregnancies, promotes abstinence and advocates for an end to abortion. (Source: WND) H/t FOTM’s joworth

• The IRS was targeting the Jews, too! An IRS agent told the pro-Israel Jewish organization Z Street that the applications of Israel-related organizations were assigned to “a special unit in the D.C. office to determine whether the organization’s activities contradict the Obama’s Administration’s public policies.” (Source: Atlas Shrugs)

• Former Defense Secretary Don Rumsfeld reveals in his new book, Rumsfeld’s Rules, Leadership lessons in Business, Politics, War and Life, that outspoken businesses critical of the federal government are also singled out by the IRS and Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). (Source: The Examiner)

• Even worse, the IRS went beyond using political criteria to single out certain groups for extra scrutiny. The IRS violated confidentiality by giving the confidential applications for tax-exempt status of nine conservative groups to a George Soros-funded journalism group, ProPublica. (Source: Breitbart)

• The IRS also leaked the 2008 confidential financial documents of the National Organization for Marriage, a pro-traditional marriage organization, to the leftwing Human Rights Campaign (HRC). Those documents were published on the Huffington Post on March 30, 2012. Joe Solmonese, HRC’s president and a co-chairman of Obama’s 2012 reelection campaign, then used the leaked document to attack GOP presidential nominee Mitt Romney. (Source: Breitbart) H/t FOTM reader Kathleen Myers.

Joe Solmonese with Pres. Lucifer

• Wayne Allyn Root — the Libertarian Party’s 2008 VP candidate who attended Columbia University in the same years as Pres. Lucifer but has publicly stated he’d never met his supposed fellow-student nor does he know any Columbia alumnus who had — was also a target of the IRS’s unusual audits, beginning in January 2011, despite a “spotless” 30-year tax record. Root believes the order to audit him came from Obama himself: “I believe this is not rogue agents, who would be risking their pension and careers.” (Source: WND)

• Televangelist Billy Graham endorsed Mitt Romney in the 2012 presidential election. Now his son, Franklin Graham, has come forth with the revelation that in the midst of the heated presidential campaign in September 2012, the IRS notified the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association and the family’s international humanitarian organization Samaritan’s Purse, that it was conducting a “review” of their activities for tax year 2010. (Source: Politico)

• In 2010, the IRS targeted for auditing Dr. Anne Hendershott, a devout Catholic professor and author whose writings are critical of Obama and Soros-funded “liberal” Catholic groups. The IRS demanded to know who was paying her and “what their politics were.” Although Hendershott and her husband (who brings in the vast majority of the family’s income) file joint tax returns, only she was audited. The audit was so emotionally and financially expensive that she was frightened into silence. (Source: The Blaze)

• Dr. James Dobson says his Christian FamilyTalk group was also targeted. The IRS threatened the group’s non-profit status because it didn’t represent “all views.” (Source: WND)

• The Catholic League was notified, just weeks after Obama was elected president in 2008, by the IRS that it was under investigation for violating the IRS Code on political activities as it relates to 501(c)(3) organizations. It was the George Soros-funded leftwing United that contacted the IRS to launch its investigation of the Catholic League. (Source: America Conservative 2 Conservative)

• A 180-year-old Baptist newspaper, The Biblical Recorder, was targeted by the IRS for extra scrutiny. In summer 2012, the paper gained national attention after it published an interview with Chick-fil-A President Dan Cathy who said he supports traditional family values. The paper also published ads from the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association — which also was targeted by the IRS. (Source: Fox News)

~Eowyn

Another partisan professor misuses classroom to bash Christians and Republicans

The faculty of most colleges and universities in the United States, especially the top-tier Ivy league ones, are registered Democrats. Some are outright Marxist socialists or communists.

The University of Southern California (USC) is no different.

A month ago, I wrote about an aging loser of a political science professor at USC, Adjunct Assistant Professor Darry Sragow, who used classroom time to bash white people, Republicans, and conservatives, although he himself is white.

How is Sragow an academic loser?

“Assistant Professor” is the title of the lowest rung of professorship — typically of  young fresh-out-of-grad-schools Ph.D.s.  “Adjunct” means Sragow is hired only on a year-by-year basis. All of which means that Sragow was hired as a junior Assistant Professor in another college or university many years ago but was denied tenure there. So now he makes his living drifting from one university to another as an Adjunct.

In other words, Darry Sragow is a loser — a failure in academe. How can I say this so confidently? Because I know academe, having gone through the ranks, from young assistant professor, to tenured associate professor, to full professor, to full professor emeritus. I had never ever misused my authority as a professor to use the classroom to advance my partisanship or to hurl insults at political figures.

Now comes news that another USC political science prof, Richard Dekmejian, has also been caught on video using his class as a platform for bashing conservatives.

Oliver Darcy and Josiah Ryan report for Campus Reform, May 7, 2013, that student Tyler Talgo secretly recorded Dekmejian’s 20-minute rant in a political science class in Fall 2012.

In the video, Dekmejian claims former President George W. Bush suffered from mental instability and stupidity during his time in office. He said Bush was bound by “serious intellectual and mental problems” and must have been “stupid or lying” to initiate Operation Iraqi Freedom for the reason of promoting democracy.

Dekmejian also leveled a number of derogatory comments against members of the Bush administration, alleging both Colin Powell and Condoleezza Rice “lied” to the American people during their service. The professor instructed his students that “You have to use that term [lying] people. Don’t use that term mislead.”

Dekmejian also accused Christians of salivating over violence in the Middle East: “The right wing evangelical community… these are the people who get happy on television every time there is a conflict in the Middle East. They think that the book of revelation tells them that the messiah…the Christian messiah, Jesus is going to come…all we need is a war in the Middle East involving Israel and the Arabs.”

Dekmejian did, however, praise former President Jimmy Carter (D) for his service during and after his presidency: “He’s still going around doing good things by the way, Carter. That Carter, very respectable.”

Elizabeth Garrett, provost and senior vice president for Academic Affairs at USC, told Campus Reform in a written statement that “faculty members are entitled to freedom in the classroom in discussing their subjects. The freedom to take unpopular positions and the freedom to express those positions publicly are at the foundation of what it means to be a faculty member of a university. One of the most important principles of an academic community has been that academic inquiry and discussion be free from censorship or undue outside control.”

Blah, blah, blah.

But for Garrett, “academic freedom” seems only to apply to faculty but not to students. She noted that USC’s student code of conduct “expressly prohibits” students from videotaping their professors in the classroom, but declined to say whether Talgo would be disciplined for releasing his video of Professor Dekmejian to the public.

Here’s the video of Dekmejian:

Richard Dekmejian is a full professor of political science. Surprisingly for a full professor, Dekmejian’s faculty profile lists only his “conference and other presentations” and his university service, but no book or even a refereed journal article. On Rate My Professors, on a scale of 1 to 5 (with 5 signifying “excellent”), he scored an overall rating of a decidedly mediocre 3.4.

Here’s Dekmejian’s contact info:

E-mail: dekmejia@usc.edu
Phone: (213) 821-3943
Office: VKC 327

I searched for the Chair of the USC Political Science Department, but cannot find who he/she is. To contact the department:

email: posc@college.usc.edu
Phone: 213-740-6998

To contact USC’s President:

C. L. Max Nikias, President
Office of the President
University of Southern California
Los Angeles, CA 90089-4019
Phone: (213) 740-2111; (213) 821-1342
email: president@usc.edu

~Eowyn

MSM Start To Turn On Benghazi . Could Get Interesting Real Quick.

This is encouraging. This will be the only way to take him down. Kinda wish the media would have done their jobs say…about 5 yrs ago.

~Steve~

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MAY 10, 2013  POSTED BY ALEX KOPPELMAN

http://www.newyorker.com

SPINNING BENGHAZI

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                          Poor wittle Jay Carney. Busted lying thru his teeth.    :D

                        I definitely have a case of Schadenfreude on this.  LOL

It’s a cliché, of course, but it really is true: in Washington, every scandal has a crime and a coverup. The ongoing debate about the attack on the United States facility in Benghazi where four Americans were killed, and the Obama Administration’s response to it, is no exception. For a long time, it seemed like the idea of a coverup was just a Republican obsession. But now there is something to it.

On Friday, ABC News’s Jonathan Karl revealed the details of the editing process for the C.I.A.’s talking points about the attack, including the edits themselves and some of the reasons a State Department spokeswoman gave for requesting those edits. It’s striking to see the twelve different iterations that the talking points went through before they were released to Congress and to United Nations Ambassador Susan Rice, who used them in Sunday show appearances that became a central focus of Republicans’ criticism of the Administration’s public response to the attacks. Over the course of about twenty-four hours, the remarks evolved from something specific and fairly detailed into a bland, vague mush.

From the very beginning of the editing process, the talking points contained the erroneous assertion that the attack was “spontaneously inspired by the protests at the U.S. Embassy in Cairo and evolved.” That’s an important fact, because the right has always criticized the Administration based on the suggestion that the C.I.A. and the State Department, contrary to what they said, knew that the attack was not spontaneous and not an outgrowth of a demonstration. But everything else about the changes that were made is problematic. The initial draft revealed by Karl mentions “at least five other attacks against foreign interests in Benghazi” before the one in which four Americans were killed. That’s not in the final version. Nor is this: “[W]e do know that Islamic extremists with ties to al-Qa’ida participated in the attack.” That was replaced by the more tepid “There are indications that extremists participated in the violent demonstrations.” (Even if we accept the argument that State wanted to be sure that extremists were involved, and that they could be linked to Al Qaeda, before saying so with any level of certainty—which is reasonable and supported by evidence from Karl’s reporting—that doesn’t fully explain these changes away.)

Democrats will argue that the editing process wasn’t motivated by a desire to protect Obama’s record on fighting Al Qaeda in the run-up to the 2012 election. They have a point; based on what we’ve seen from Karl’s report, the process that went into creating and then changing the talking points seems to have been driven in large measure by two parts of the government—C.I.A. and State—trying to make sure the blame for the attacks and the failure to protect American personnel in Benghazi fell on the other guy.

But the mere existence of the edits—whatever the motivation for them—seriously undermines the White House’s credibility on this issue. This past November (after Election Day), White House Press Secretary Jay Carney told reporters that “The White House and the State Department have made clear that the single adjustment that was made to those talking points by either of those two institutions were changing the word ‘consulate’ to ‘diplomatic facility’ because ‘consulate’ was inaccurate.”

Remarkably, Carney is sticking with that line even now. In his regular press briefing on Friday afternoon (a briefing that was delayed several times, presumably in part so the White House could get its spin in order, but also so that it could hold a <href=”#.uy1gksebagw.twitter”>secretive pre-briefing briefing with select members of the White House press corps), he said:

The only edit made by the White House or the State Department to those talking points generated by the C.I.A. was a change from referring to the facility that was attacked in Benghazi from “consulate,” because it was not a consulate, to “diplomatic post”… it was a matter of non-substantive factual correction. But there was a process leading up to that that involved inputs from a lot of agencies, as is always the case in a situation like this and is always appropriate.

This is an incredible thing for Carney to be saying. He’s playing semantic games, telling a roomful of journalists that the definition of editing we’ve all been using is wrong, that the only thing that matters is who’s actually working the keyboard. It’s not quite re-defining the word “is,” or the phrase “sexual relations,” but it’s not all that far off, either.