Republicans Willing To Break The Law To Win In 2016

(The cartoon image above is by David Fitzsimmons in the Arizona Daily Star.)

It's no secret that the Republicans, especially those in Congress, hate Hillary Clinton. They have been trying to bring her down for over a quarter of a century now. And since she started her campaign for the presidency, their hate has turned into terror. They know they have little chance to beat her this November (particularly since they nominated Trump as their candidate), so they are pulling out all the stops in an effort to make her look bad.

They have had committee after committee investigate her over the Benghazi tragedy. That culminated in an 11 hour grilling of Clinton before a House committee -- a grilling that showed them up a desperate hypocrites, and made Clinton look better than ever.

Then they repeated that with investigations of her use of a private e-mail server while Secretary of State. They failed again, and pinned their hopes on the FBI finding something incriminating when they questioned Clinton. When the FBI publicly admitted that Clinton had broken no laws and not sent any classified material over that server, the Republicans were crushed -- but they didn't give up their quest to smear her.

They demanded access to the FBI's questioning of Clinton, and since the FBI depends on Congress for its funding, they gave those Republican officials access to those documents. Now we hear of cherry-picked parts of that document being leaked to the press -- parts taken out of context to make Clinton look bad.

But it gets even worse. Those FBI documents are classified material, and the FBI did NOT declassify the documents when they let the Republicans see them. That means anyone (i.e., the Republican House members) leaking even a part of those documents is committing a crime, and it's a serious crime -- a felony offense.

In other words, the House Republicans are now guilty of doing exactly what they had accused Clinton of doing (but couldn't prove) -- they have committed a felony criminal offense by releasing classified government documents. They have gone way over the line now, and those guilty of releasing the info to the public should be charged and convicted.

They have taken their hatred and desperation too far by breaking the law to win in November.

Family Of Ambassador Stevens Does NOT Blame Clinton

(This photo by Eric Rosberg / AP shows Dr. Anne Stevens speaking at her brother's memorial.)

The congressional Republicans have been playing politics with the death of Ambassador Chris Stevens for many months now -- hoping that they can hurt the presidential aspirations of Hillary Clinton (who was Secretary of State at the time Stevens died in Benghazi). They finally released their committee report this week, still trying to blame the Obama administration (and Clinton).

But the family of Ambassador Stevens doesn't agree. In an interview with The New Yorker, here's some of what Stevens' sister had to say. Dr. Anne Stevens (pictured above) has been acting as the family's spokesperson since the tragedy.

Whom do you fault for the lack of security that resulted in the death of your brother, in Benghazi?

It is clear, in hindsight, that the facility was not sufficiently protected by the State Department and the Defense Department. But what was the underlying cause? Perhaps if Congress had provided a budget to increase security for all missions around the world, then some of the requests for more security in Libya would have been granted. Certainly the State Department is underbudgeted.

I do not blame Hillary Clinton or Leon Panetta. They were balancing security efforts at embassies and missions around the world. And their staffs were doing their best to provide what they could with the resources they had. The Benghazi Mission was understaffed. We know that now. But, again, Chris knew that. It wasn’t a secret to him. He decided to take the risk to go there. It is not something they did to him. It is something he took on himself.

What did you learn from the two new reports by House Republicans and Democrats?

It doesn’t look like anything new. They concluded that the U.S. compound in Benghazi was not secure. We knew that.

What did you think of Secretary Clinton’s conduct on Benghazi?

She has taken full responsibility, being head of the State Department, for what occurred. She took measures to respond to the review board’s recommendations. She established programs for a better security system. But it is never going to be perfect. Part of being a diplomat is being out in the community. We all recognize that there’s a risk in serving in a dangerous environment. Chris thought that was very important, and he probably would have done it again. I don’t see any usefulness in continuing to criticize her. It is very unjust.

Are there any questions left in your mind about what happened, why the U.S. didn’t respond faster, why Washington didn’t do more?

The only questions that I have are not answerable by anyone investigated or questioned by the committee. My questions are about why the militiamen attacked the compound in the first place. What were their intentions? It’d be interesting to know that—and to hear what their views are and what they were thinking. It has nothing to do with what the State Department or the Defense Department was supposed to do that night. I think everyone did their very best in response to this event.

Do you think it’s fair to make Benghazi an election issue?

With the many issues in the current election, to use that incident—and to use Chris’s death as a political point—is not appropriate.

How would Chris have felt about this election?

I know he had a lot of respect for Secretary Clinton. He admired her ability to intensely read the issues and understand the whole picture.

House Committee Witch-Hunt is A Spectacular Failure

(This cartoon image is by Drew Sheneman from the Tribune Content Agency.)

(This chart ifs Think Progress.)

Most of the news media yesterday was concerned with Hillary Clinton appearing before the House Committee supposedly investigating the Benghazi tragedy. But we know that was not the real purpose of that committee. The real purpose was to try and smear Hillary Clinton, and create a better chance for the Republican nominee (whoever that turns out to be) that has to run against her for the presidency in 2016.

We know that is true because two GOP representatives (Rep. McCarthy and Rep. Hanna) have admitted it was true, and a committee aide has resigned after realizing the committee was not interested in the truth, but only in attacking Hillary Clinton. We also know that because of the ridiculous number of committees formed to "investigate" Benghazi. This is the eighth committee to investigate Benghazi -- four times the number of committees that investigated any other attack on Americans (including the 9/11 attack, which killed far more people).

Seven committees have already investigated the Benghazi tragedy, and found no wrongdoing. But that wasn't good enough for the House Republicans. They still thought they could use this tragedy to hurt Clinton, so they created an eighth committee, and they seem to want to keep this one going through the election campaign (regardless of the fact that they also have found no wrongdoing). The committee has already existed for some 72 months (far longer than any other committee in House history), and there is still no end in sight.

And the American public knows that this committee is strictly for the purpose of trying to embarrass Hillary Clinton. Note the chart below. It shows the results of three recent polls -- the Monmouth University Poll, the ABC News / Washington Post Poll, and the CNN / ORC Poll. In all three, poll respondents were asked whether the committees purpose was to find the truth or to create a political advantage for the Republicans.

Note that majorities in all three polls say the committee's purpose is to gain political advantage, while about a third (or less) thought it was to find the truth (which is about the number of Republicans and GOP-leaners, who cannot be expected to admit the truth about their elected officials).

I watched this committee try to embarrass Clinton. As the day wore on, their attacks became more pointed (and made less sense). They were doing their best to make Clinton look bad -- and they failed miserably. Hillary Clinton came prepared, and she deflected the attacks and explained the truth in a patient and calm manner -- and she fully answered every question, no matter how silly or misinformed it was.

In my opinion, Hillary Clinton came out of that hearing looking very competent, and very "presidential" -- and that was certainly not what those House Republicans wanted.

More GOP Dirty Tricks - This Time On Benghazi Committee

(This photo of Rep. Trey Gowdy was found at Salon.com.)

Republicans got all bent out of shape when Rep. Kevin McCarthy said that the House of Representatives Benghazi Committee had been successful in lowering Hillary Clinton's poll numbers -- inferring that was the purpose of the committee. A couple of days later another Republican, Rep. Richard Hanna (New York) admitted that was the sole purpose of that committee -- to smear Hillary Clinton.

Committee Chairman Trey Gowdy (R-South Carolina) got upset over that, and told Republicans to keep their mouths shut about his committee. He wanted to try and keep up the appearance that they were really investigating possible wrongdoing with the Benghazi tragedy -- even though several other committees in the House had said there was no wrongdoing by any government official.

Now we learn that Gowdy is not just the committee chair -- he is also the ringleader in the effort to besmirch and smear Hillary Clinton. Gowdy has been passing around some heavily redacted documents from the CIA which seemed to infer possible wrongdoing by Clinton. The Democrats on the committee smelled a rat, and that asked the CIA if they could know what was in the redacted sections of the documents.

It turns out that when the CIA turned the documents over to the committee, nothing was redacted -- and they did not ask that anything be redacted from those documents (since they didn't consider anything in them to be secret or classified). And once the full context of the documents was known, it became clear that Clinton had done nothing wrong. It was only the clever (and disingenuous) redactions that had given that impression.

Once this came to light, Gowdy admitted that he had been the one who redacted the documents. The question is why (since there was no classified information in them). The answer is obvious. Rowdy's committee has not been able to come up with any damaging information about Hillary Clinton, even when investigating her supposed e-mail "scandal". He was failing in the designated purpose of his committee -- to find damaging information about Clinton. So he doctored the CIA documents. In other words, he LIED.

I wish I could say this was out of character for the Republicans, but it isn't. They have a fairly long history of lying and performing "dirty tricks" to get elected. This seemed to reach a high point in the Nixon administration, when dirty tricks were just considered to be a part of campaigning. But these new Republicans make Nixon look like an amateur. They are so invested in the lying and dirty tricks that they are willing to use the organs of government to do their dirty work (in this case, a committee of the House of Representatives). They have taken dirty tricks to a new and rather frightening level.

Democrats should be happy about a couple of things though. First, these scurrilous and untrue attacks on Clinton have been exposed. And second, it shows just how terrified the Republicans are about a probable Hillary Clinton nomination.

GOP Rep. Admits Benghazi Comm. Is Just To Smear Hillary

(This caricature of Rep. Kevin McCarthy is by DonkeyHotey.)

The House Committee supposedly investigating the tragedy at Benghazi has droned on for over 72 months now (longer than any other committee hearing in congressional history), even though it was long ago established that there was no wrongdoing by our government. Why does it go on? Well, Rep. Kevin McCarthy (who is likely to be the next Speaker of the House) inadvertently told the truth -- that it is nothing more than a GOP effort to smear the good name of Hillary Clinton. Evidently he forgot the first rule of Republicanism -- never admit any of the lies being told.

Here is how McCarthy's slip of the tongue is reported by Politico:

After months of being dogged by the controversy surrounding her private email account, the 2016 Democratic contender and her supporters are taking the offensive against her congressional nemesis: the House Select Committee on Benghazi.

Story Continued Below

They’re seizing on comments from Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) in which he boasted on national television that the panel’s work has hurt Hillary Clinton in the polls — a statement her supporters say vindicates their view that the panel is a politically motivated effort to damage her campaign.

Already, Republicans are distancing themselves from McCarthy’s remarks, even as he’s leading the race to be the next speaker of the House, and defending the panel they formed to investigate the 2012 attack on the Libya consulate. Democrats, on the other hand, have demanded that the panel be dissolved, with some Clinton allies even calling for McCarthy to abandon his bid to become speaker. . . .

On Tuesday, McCarthy bragged to Fox News’ Sean Hannity that “everybody thought Hillary Clinton was unbeatable, right? But we put together a Benghazi Special Committee, a select committee. What are her numbers today? Her numbers are dropping.”

The comments undermined House Benghazi Chairman Trey Gowdy’s (R-S.C.) efforts to keep his panel’s work focused on the Benghazi attacks and stay above the political fray.

But on Thursday, Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) called for the disbandment of the panel, while David Brock’s Correct the Record group pounded McCarthy, demanding he withdraw his bid for speaker.

“According to the odds-on-favorite, future speaker of the House, the Benghazi special committee was put together to hurt Hillary Clinton politically,” Reid said. “This is evidence of what Democrats have said all along. … Senate Democratic Leadership sent a letter to Speaker Boehner asking that the Benghazi Select Committee be disbanded. It’s the right thing to do.”. . .

At the crux of the debate is whether Republicans created the committee specifically to hurt Clinton or to seriously investigate the deaths of four Americans at the Benghazi diplomatic compound on Sept. 11, 2012.

Democrats, including Benghazi ranking member Elijah Cummings (D-Md.), call the entire committee a waste of taxpayer funds and "the longest and least productive investigation in congressional history." They note that several other committees have already probed the attacks and turned up nothing, and accuse the right of increasingly focusing on Clinton herself. . . .

“[B]y admitting — in fact sir by bragging — that the [committee] is little more than a partisan cudgel intended to damage Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign, you have pulled back the curtain on your own party’s abuse of power and misuse of taxpayer funds to advance a nakedly political goal,” Brock, one of Clinton’s most vocal backers, wrote to McCarthy, asking him to withdraw from the speaker's race. “It’s abundantly clear that you intend to run your office like an annex of the [RNC]. … Frankly, that is evidence enough that you are unfit to lead.”

There's no indication that McCarthy's comments would hurt his leadership campaign. Indeed, Cummings said Thursday he is "not naïve in thinking Republicans will cease their political attacks on Secretary Clinton” and stop their probe altogether.

But that doesn't mean they won't whip out the new ammo McCarthy served them. In an interview with the Rev. Al Sharpton that is set to air on MSNBC this week, Clinton called the quote “deeply distressing.”

“When I hear a statement like that, which demonstrates unequivocally that this was always meant to be a partisan political exercise,” Clinton said, “I feel like it does a grave disservice and dishonors not just the memory of the four that we lost, but of everybody who has served our country.”

House Comm. Admits No Wrongdoing Regarding Benghazi

(This cartoon image is by Pat Bagley in the Salt Lake Tribune.)

This will be no surprise to anyone (except the teabaggers), but the House Intelligence Committee has concluded its investigation into the Benghazi tragedy. That committee, like all House committees, had a majority of Republicans, but after examining all the evidence, they were finally forced to admit there was no wrongdoing on the part of the Obama administration. The report, which they are asking the country's intelligence agencies to approve releasing, "confirms that no one was deliberately misled, no military assets were withheld and no stand-down order (to U.S. Forces) was given".

In a sane Congress, the Republicans would finally admit they were wrong, and drop their silly obsession with Benghazi -- but this is not a sane Congress. This was the Intelligence Committee -- and there is another committee, headed by Rep. Issa, that continues its vain effort to find something, anything, with which to embarrass the president. And they no doubt will string out this silly exercise until the election -- hoping to get some voters to believe them.

But while the House Intelligence Committee finally cleared the administration of any wrongdoing, they did conveniently overlooked the Republican part in the tragic affair -- the huge cuts in security funding for the embassies and consulates they forced. But then, that wasn't a surprise either.

GOP's Benghazi Sideshow Is Not Working Out For Them

(This political caricature is by DonkeyHotey.)

The opposition to Obamacare is dissipating (at least the desire for repealing it), and the GOP still doesn't have a credible plan to create new jobs (but just want more tax cuts for the rich) -- so the Republicans dug up an old issue to try and smear the Democrats in this election year. They decided to hold more hearings on the tragedy at Benghazi (as if that dead horse hadn't been beaten enough).

But just as they get their new sideshow underway, it is derailed by reality. The ringleader of the Benghazi attack is arrested by the Obama administration (killing any accusations that the president won't punish the evil-doers). But it gets even worse for the GOP. They were hoping their hearing would prove the attack was long-planned by terrorists (and ignored by the Obama administration). But it now comes out that the ringleader of the attacks has told numerous people that the Benghazi attack was a retaliation for a right-wing anti-muslim video on the internet (just as the Obama administration had said it was).

They have done their best to turn the Benghazi tragedy into some kind of scandal (ignoring the fact that they were the ones to cut over $300 million from the diplomatic security budget), but their faux scandal is falling apart before their eyes -- just like the other false scandals they have tried to hang on the president.

It probably doesn't matter too much anyway. A new Gallup Poll (done between June 5th and 8th of a random national sample of 1,027 adults, with a margin of error of 4 points) shows that most people weren't paying any attention to the new Benghazi hearing anyway. A significant majority of Independents, Democrats, and the general public were not paying any attention to the hearing. It seems that the Republicans were just preaching to the choir (their own base) -- and 42% of them weren't listening either.

Fox News Switches Lies In Its Propaganda Campaign

(This chart is from the website Daily Kos.)

I thought this was a very interesting chart, showing the Fox News switch in their propaganda campaign to support right-wing Republicans. After failing to garner much support in their effort to turn the Benghazi tragedy into some kind of scandal, they abandoned that effort. They put the full force of their propaganda campaign on trying to help the Republican defeat Obamacare (or at least make it fail).

But that didn't work out to well. As March turned into April, and April turned into May, it became obvious that Obamacare was turning out to be a huge success -- and even worse for the failed propaganda campaign against it, polls started to show that a significant majority of Americans no longer wanted Obamacare repealed. They now wanted it to be embraced by Congress, and improved.

It got to the point that Fox News was beginning to look pretty silly in their anti-Obamacare campaign. What were they to do? They couldn't admit defeat -- because they hated the African-American president too much. They had to keep trying to embarrass the president just to feed their own racist bigotry. But they didn't have a new lie to jump behind, so they brought back an old lie -- and doubled-down on their attacks. They went back to trying to convince Americans that somewhere, somehow, there had to be a scandal regarding Benghazi.

The whole thing is rather pathetic. The American people have already moved on from Benghazi, and they're not likely to want it brought up again. They also know that the Republicans must shoulder at least part (if not most) of the blame for Benghazi, since they were the ones that forced a $300 million cut in embassy/consulate security.

But you won't hear that from Fox News. They're not interested in telling the whole story -- only in trying to manufacture a scandal to help their right-wing Republican friends. It just goes to show they are not truly a news organization at all. They are just the propaganda wing of the Republican Party.

GOP Tries To Divert Voters Away From The Real Issues

(The cartoon above is by Bill Day at cagle.com.)

The Republicans don't want to talk about their plan to lower taxes even further for the rich and the corporations -- because a huge majority of Americans oppose that.

The Republicans don't want to talk about their plan to eliminate the Medicare program (and throw elderly Americans to the mercy of giant private insurance companies) -- because a luge majority of Americans oppose that.

The Republicans don't want to talk about their blocking a raise of the minimum wage (and desire to eliminate it altogether) -- because a huge majority of Americans want it raised.

The Republicans don't want to talk about their plans to cut Social Security benefits and raise the age to qualify for those benefits (or privatize the whole program) -- because a huge majority of Americans oppose that.

The Republicans don't want to talk about their repeated obstruction of job creation programs in Congress -- because a huge majority of Americans want Congress to do more to create jobs.

The Republicans don't want to talk about their efforts to cut EPA funding and block the EPAs' efforts to stop pollution -- because a huge majority of Americans want cleaner air and water.

The Republicans don't want to talk about the huge cuts they have proposed to the SNAP (food stamp) program -- because a huge majority of Americans don't want that.

The Republicans don't want to talk about their efforts to cut education funding (and eliminate the Department of Education) -- because most Americans know that our future rests in providing all young people with an adequate education.

Those are the real issues -- the issues that we should be talking about for the coming election. But the Republicans don't want that debate because they know they are on the wrong side of those issues. If those issues are what the voters are thinking about in November, then the Republicans will suffer a crushing defeat. So, what are the Republicans to do?

They originally thought they could ride a dislike of the Affordable Care Act (Obamacare) to victory in November, but that is turning out to be little more than wishful thinking. Obamacare has been a raging success -- lowering the number of Americans without insurance by millions, lowering premium prices for nearly everyone, and forcing insurance companies to issue better policies that cover more and don't have a cap on payouts. And poll after poll has shown the majority of Americans don't want Obamacare repealed -- they want it improved.

So what does the GOP do? They bring back a false issue -- a "dead horse" they have already beaten far too much -- Benghazi. House Speaker Boehner has given in to the teabagger right-wing of his party, and announced the formation of a House select committee to investigate Benghazi. They know this issue has already been thoroughly investigated. They know they are the ones primarily responsible for the Benghazi disaster (because they cut $300 million from embassy security funds to give their rich friends more tax cuts). And they know that far more embassies and consulates were attacked (and people killed) under the Bush administration than under the Obama administration.

But the congressional Republicans aren't interested in facts and realities. They are trying to create a scandal, or at least fool enough voters into thinking there is a scandal. And they are trying to do that for the most selfish and venal of reasons -- their own re-election. They are hoping if they can whine loudly enough about Benghazi, they will divert voter attention away from the real issues (because they know they can't win with their terrible positions on those issues).

I think the Democrats should refuse to participate in this new select committee, exposing it for the underhanded political maneuver that it is -- and instead put their focus on the real issues.