PK'S NOTE: I'm starting with three minutes twenty-five seconds of AWESOME. This is why I love Trey Gowdy and why he needs to be Speaker and then run for President of the US. Watch this and applaud and shout out "Hell. yeah."
PK'S NOTE: A very basic question I have for journalists: You have got (several) bona fide, Watergate-esque scandals with this administration -- what is it that makes you protect and cover up rather than do what you probably dreamed of doing when you decided to become a journalist in the first place? When I was wanting to be a journalist (thank God I didn't given how they are now), Woodward and Bernstein and All the President's Men was my inspiration, like many aspiring news people. What happened.
Chuck Todd: C'mon, Every Benghazi Question Has Already Been Answered
By Guy BensonNBC's Chief White House Correspondent and MSNBC anchor Chuck Todd doesn't see any rationale for the formation of a select committee on Benghazi. The inquiry is pointless, Todd asserts, because "all" questions pertaining to the 2012 terrorist attacks have already been asked and answered:
"I'll hear from Republicans who will say, 'but there are unanswered questions.' Well no, all the questions have been answered. There's just some people who don't like the answers -- that wishes [sic] the answers were somehow more conspiratorial."Yes, there have been a number of investigations into the deadly raid, including revelatory House hearings, a Senate report, and a State Department-mandated review. The House proceedings answered some questions, but raised others. The Senate Intelligence panel's report concluded that the attacks were preventable, and rebuked the Obama administration for "unnecessarily hamper[ing] the committee's review." The State Department's "Accountability Review Board" declined to interview key players, including Secretary Clinton. None of the Benghazi survivors have testified publicly. Furthermore, new information and perspectives have come to light within the last few weeks. A court-ordered document release turned up a relevant, previously-withheld email that further undermines the White House's official version of events regarding their post-attack talking points, and an Air Force General who was on duty at AFRICOM that night said the military never received a request for help from the State Department during the eight-hour ordeal. He went on to suggest that the US government should have attempted a rescue mission, which other military officers have testified wouldn't have been logistically feasible. A majority of the House of Representatives -- including a handful of Democrats -- clearly believes that unanswered questions remain. A large majority of the American public is skeptical of the White House's veracity and supports keeping the investigation open and ongoing. Two former top CIA officials have endorsed the proceedings. Most Beltway Democrats, and apparently Chuck Todd, dissent. Todd is a journalist. It's therefore a bit jarring to hear him declare that "all" questions pertaining to a controversial matter have been answered, thus intimating that the issue is settled -- particularly after previously-unseen evidence has just recently emerged. What follows is a sampling of questions that have yet to be adequately resolved:
(1) Why were multiple requests for additional security assets denied by the State Department in the lead-up to the Benghazi attacks? Indeed, why was a security team removed from Libya, over the objections of our security personnel on the ground?
(2) Why did the State Department renew its inadequately-protected diplomatic mission's lease with special security waivers in the summer of 2012 -- following previous attempted attacks against the compound, and as other Western nations and organizations began to withdraw from the rapidly-deteriorating city?
(3) At what point was it determined that the US could not have deployed a rescue mission in time to save American lives in Benghazi. How could this determination have been made when the duration of the attack was unknown? (Nobody could have forecast in advance that the siege would "only" last eight hours). Was the Commander-in-Chief consulted on this decision? Is Gen. Lovell misguided in his insistence that the military should have launched a mission that night? And even if we accept the premise that a rescue would have been impossible within the established time frame, how was it that our government was so egregiously unprepared to defend its people against a hostile action in an extremely dangerous city, in an unstable country, on the symbolic anniversary of a major terrorist attack?
(4) Where was the president during the hours-long raid? A former administration official recently revealed that Obama was not in the White House situation room. With an ambassador missing, a consulate under attack, and American lives hanging in the balance, why wasn't he actively managing the US response?
(5) During the attack, a rapid-response, investigative "FEST" team was reportedly told to stand down. Is that true, and if so, why? After the attack, why did it take American investigators weeks to access the burned-out compound? How could it be that the media first discovered Amb. Stevens' personal journal -- again, weeks after the event?
(6) When the administration's post-attack talking points were being formulated, who within the State Department's "building leadership" objected to references to Al Qaeda and previous attempted attacks on the facility? Who was "very upset" about initial (accurate) versions of the talking points, and why? Spokeswoman Victoria Nuland fretted in an email that including certain elements might lead to members of Congress criticizing the State Department for "not paying attention to warnings." Is that not an overtly political concern?
(7) Since the CIA never linked the Benghazi bloodshed to an internet video, how and why was that false linkage repeatedly cited by top administration officials days, and even weeks, later? As the attacks were definitively determined to have been a coordinated terrorist operation within hours, why did top officials continue to invoke the video, and hedge on the terrorism angle? Why was the creator of that video arrested and jailed? Does the administration stand by its claim that the White House and State Department only requested a single cosmetic change to the talking points, even after its been proven to be false?
(8) Why was there such a heavy CIA presence in Benghazi (as reported by CNN), and why has the agency taken "unprecedented" action to maintain radio silence about it? Might it have anything to do with the US government quietly trying to clean up this mess?
(9) More than 20 months have elapsed since the fatal event, in response to which the president vowed that justice would be served. Why have zero arrests been made? How is it that news organizations have managed to track down and interview suspected Benghazi terrorists, yet the US government's pursuit has reportedly "stalled"? Is this a result of evidentiary concerns relating to potential civilian trials for the terrorists?
(10) Nobody in the federal bureaucracy lost his or her job over the self-evident failures in Benghazi, which cost American lives. This includes individuals such as State Department official Charlene Lamb, who astonishingly testified that the United States had the "correct" number of security assets in Benghazi. Is that an acceptable level of accountability?
If Chuck Todd has detailed answers to "all" of those questions -- I count more than two dozen within the ten bullet points -- let's hear them. If not, perhaps he ought to be seeking them rather than dismissing them.
Ben Carson Moves Toward Presidential Run
By Fred Barnes
....Here are excerpts from the interview with Carson:
On political correctness: "And if you believe that life begins at conception
and that that is a wonderful progression from that fertilized egg to a
human being who is active and interactive in only nine months time, then
you’re anti-woman. And if you believe in traditional families and the
strength of traditional marriage then you have to be a homophobe. And of
course none of those things are true by any stretch of the imagination,
but by stoking those fires, you shut people up and they’re afraid to
say what they believe because they don’t want to be labeled with those
labels. It’s intimidation, that’s all it is, intimidation. I’ve just
decided that I’m not going to be intimidated, and of course they don’t
like that very much. And they’ve tried to intimidate me into silence but
it’s just not going to work, because the more they do it, the more
vocal I’m going to be."
On his view of Martin Luther King Jr. as a political conservative: "I
think he would’ve been appalled if he were here today, to see all these
people just sitting around, waiting for housing subsidies and for food
stamps and for free health care. What he wanted was equality of
opportunity. The last thing that he would be in favor of is
redistributing all the wealth and allowing people to just sit around and
collect. And when you read a lot of what he says, he’s talking about
the merits of hard work and personal responsibility. That’s what he
wanted. But during a lot of his time people were not given a fair shake.
They were not given fair opportunity. That’s all that he really wanted.
He didn’t want special treatment."
Guess How Obama Celebrated Small Business Week
By Sarah Jean Seman
President Obama has proven—yet again—that every occasion merits a contextualized Obama photograph. Observe: 
With a disapproval rating floating around 55 percent, you would think his public relations team would acknowledge the fact that his face just isn't what America wants to see all the time.
PK'S NOTE: No, you needed to have pro-American, pro-Constitutional foreign and domestic policies. Say buh-bye. The clock is ticking on your administration.
Obama: I Need New Yorkers to Move West and Vote Democrat
By Charlie Spiering
President Obama joked during a New York fundraiser that he needed the attendees to move west to increase his support.
During his speech, Obama told a story about a woman who asked how she could help him, and he joked that she should move to North Dakota.
“If I could just get about a million excess votes in Brooklyn out to Nebraska, Wyoming, we’d be doing okay,” Obama said as the crowd laughed. “I don't need 80 percent of the vote here.”
Obama complained about “structural disadvantages” with the political system, pointing out that although Republican ideas did not have support from the majority of Americans, the political system kept Democratic majorities out of reach.
“We have a congenital disease, which is: during midterms our voters don't show up. That's what it comes down to,” he said. “That and population distribution and gerrymandering.”
Obama said he had been stymied in trying to enact his agenda because "Washington doesn't work."
Obama said:
The challenge we've got is very simple: Washington doesn’t work. It's not as if we've got no good ideas on policy. We've got tons of them. I've got a drawer full of things that we know would create jobs, help our middle class, boost incomes, make us more competitive. But we have a party on the other side that has been captured by an ideology that says no to everything because they cling to a rigid theory that the only way to grow the economy is for government to be dismantled and let the market sort things out, and folks at the top doing very well will somehow automatically trickle down to everybody else.Obama made his remarks during a fundraiser with investment banker Blair Effron and his wife Cheryl on behalf of the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee.
PK'S NOTE: Why does the Dept of Ag need submachine guns?
Dept of Agriculture Orders Submachine Guns with 30 Round Magazines
BY Awr Hawkins
A May 7th solicitation by the U.S. Department of Agriculture seeks
"the commercial acquisition of submachine guns [in] .40 Cal. S&W."According to the solicitation, the Dept. of Agriculture wants the guns to have an "ambidextrous safety, semiautomatic or 2 round [bursts] trigger group, Tritium night sights front and rear, rails for attachment of flashlight (front under fore group) and scope (top rear), stock collapsible or folding," and a "30 rd. capacity" magazine.
They also want the submachine guns to have a "sling," be "lightweight," and have an "oversized trigger guard for gloved operation."
The solicitation directs "all responsible and/or interested sources...[to] submit their company name, point of contact, and telephone." Companies that submit information in a "timely" fashion "shall be considered by the agency for contact to determine weapon suitability."
Reid, Democrats set up midterm election push to limit First Amendment speech rights
By Ed MorrisseyThere are multiple levels of irony here, but let’s start with the basics first. Harry Reid plans to go all out to push a new constitutional amendment that would limit political speech for the first time since the Bill of Rights was added to the Constitution. The bill, SJ-19, has floated around since Mark Udall and Michael Bennet introduced it last June following the Buckley v Valeo ruling at the Supreme Court. Greg Sargent got an advance look at the speech Reid intends to deliver, which makes it sound as though the amendment would be titled The Koch Brothers Are So Un-American That I Have Lost My Mind Act:
“The Kochs’ bid for a hostile takeover of American democracy is calculated to make themselves even richer. Yet the Kochs and their Republican followers in Congress continue to assert that these hundreds of millions of dollars are free speech. For evidence of that, look no further than the Republican Leader, who has flat out said, ‘in our society, spending is speech.’…Gee, I thought the Constitution specifically forbids “bills of attainder,” in Article I, Section 9. The reason I bring that up is because of the people Reid doesn’t mention — people like Tom Steyer, the billionaire who’s funding the Democrats this cycle, or Sheldon Adelson, the billionaire who is funding Republicans but who can kneecap Reid in his home state of Nevada.
“The Supreme Court has equated money with speech, so the more money you have, he more speech you get, and the more influence in our democracy. That is wrong. Every American should have the same ability to influence our political system. One American, one vote. That’s what the constitution guarantees. The Constitution does not give corporations a vote. And the Constitution does not give dollar bills a vote…
“I urge my colleagues to support this constitutional amendment — to rally behind our democracy. I understand what we Senate Democrats are proposing is no small thing — amending our Constitution is not something we take lightly. But the flood of special interest money into our American democracy is one of the greatest threats our system of government has ever faced. Let’s keep our elections from becoming speculative ventures for the wealthy and put a stop to the hostile takeover of our democratic system by a couple of billionaire oil barons.”
This is a scream of impotence, in more ways than one. First, SJ-19 has no more chance of passing out of Congress than does a bill amending the Constitution to forbid abortion. It takes two-thirds of both chambers of Congress (Article V) to send an amendment to state legislatures, and Reid won’t get to 60 in the Senate. The House won’t address it at all. Furthermore, it’s doubtful that even a majority of state legislatures would take it up; more of them are Republican than Democrat, and they’ve seen the malicious prosecution that results when putting this much power in the hands of partisans in the executive branch. Wisconsin just provided an excellent example of that.
So this is just cheap political theater in an attempt to demonize two particular donors who just happen to oppose Reid’s agenda. Democrats are about to climb onto that bandwagon that proclaims that Americans can’t be trusted to discern political arguments and that the governing class should decide who gets to participate in politics. If that’s the only strategy Reid has left for the midterms, well … Democrats are in bigger trouble than we realized.
Update: Giving us a preview of the target practice Reid and his cohort will provide Republicans is Orrin Hatch:
“How ironic that Senate Democrats are using the platform of the ‘world’s greatest deliberative body’ to seek to undermine the First Amendment free speech rights of other Americans with whom they disagree. As I outlined in a speech on the Senate floor last week, the White House and its Democrat allies in Congress have launched a concerted effort to stifle speech and trample on one of the most fundamental rights that Americans possess. Not only is such an effort offensive to the natural and constitutional rights all Americans cherish, it is also a transparent political ploy. Democrats are simply seeking to distract from their failure to address the real issues facing our country, like our sluggish economy and the President’s disastrous health care law. It is truly a shame that Democrats would attack our most important freedoms in seeking to avoid accountability for their poor leadership.”Well, distraction is easier when you can muzzle the people who would otherwise point it out.
New IRS e-mails: Yep, direction came from D.C. and yep, it was political
By Mary Katherine HamA tranche of new Internal Revenue Service e-mails refute the White House’s longtime defense of the agency’s actions in the IRS targeting scandal. The e-mails, uncovered by a Judicial Watch FOIA request, reveal there was direction coming from the Washington headquarters of the IRS and that the targeting of Tea Party groups was indeed political.
The Washington Examiner‘s Mark Tapscott excerpts:
In a July 2012 email, Holly Paz, who was then director of the IRS Rulings and Agreements division, asked IRS lawyer Steven Grodnitzky “to let Cindy and Sharon know how we have been handling Tea Party applications in the last few months.”The Blaze quotes a 2010 e-mail:
Cindy Thomas is the former director of the IRS Exempt Organizations office in Cincinnati, and Sharon Camarillo was a senior manager in its Los Angeles office.
The email conflicts with claims by Obama administration officials that the targeting effort was done exclusively by the government workers in the Cincinnati IRS office.
Grodnitzky worked in the IRS headquarters’ Exempt Organizations Technical Unit. In his response to Paz, he said his colleagues were “working the Tea party applications in coordination with Cincy. We are developing a few applications here in D.C. and providing copies of our development letters with the agent to use as examples in the development of their cases.”
Thomas instructed a colleague to “let ‘Washington’ know about this potentially politically embarrassing case involving a ‘Tea Party’ organization.”The e-mails pertain to scrutiny of Tea Party groups over two election cycles, in 2010 and 2012. Some of them are the same e-mails released to Congress but without redactions. The entire batch is here.
“Recent media attention to this type of organization indicates to me that this is a ‘high profile’ case. In addition to 501(c)(4) typical legislative activities, application indicates possible future political candidate support,” the memo added.
They also include some lovely back-and-forth between Sen. Carl Levin and the IRS about how best to use the IRS’ power to target conservative groups. Because democracy.
As the 2012 presidential election drew nearer, Levin sent a series of letters to the IRS intensifying his campaign against predominantly conservative nonprofit groups:
September 27, 2012: Levin asks for copies of the answers to IRS exemption application question 15 – a question about planned political expenditures – from four specific groups: Crossroads Grassroots Policy Strategies, Priorities USA, Americans for Prosperity, and Patriot Majority USA.
October 17, 2012: Miller informs Levin, “As discussed in our previous responses dated June 4, 2012, and August 24, 2012, the IRS cannot legally disclose whether the organizations on your list have applied for tax exemptions unless and until such application is approved.” Miller, however, then informs Levin that Americans for Prosperity and Patriot Majority have been approved, but the IRS has no records for Crossroads and Priorities USA.
October 23, 2012: Levin writes to again express his dissatisfaction with the IRS handling of “social welfare” (501(c)(4) organizations insisting that IRS guidance “misinterprets the law” by allowing any political activity. He again demands an answer as to whether the four organizations he listed in his previous letter were primarily engaged in the promotion of social welfare. He also seeks copies of tax exempt revocation letters sent due to c4 political activities, as well as statistics on how many c4s have been notified that they may be in violation due to political activities.
In perhaps the most revealing letter from the IRS to Levin, Miller on June 4, 2012, takes 16 pages to explain to the senator what IRS regulations and policies may and may not be used to evaluate political groups and assures him that the agency has considerable leeway in picking and choosing which groups would be subject to additional scrutiny:
There is no standard questionnaire used to obtain information about political activities. Although there is a template development letter that describes the general information on the case development process, the letter does not specify the information to be requested from any particular organization … Consequently, revenue agents prepare individualized questions and requests for documents relevant to the application. . .
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