At Mother Jones, Kevin Drum writes
Here's Why Benghazi May Finally Have Legs:
If Benghazi continues to have legs, it won't be because Fox is hyping it. They've been hyping it for eight months now. It won't be because the initial talking points were wrong. We've known that since the end of last September. It won't be because there were military assets on the night of the attacks that could have been used but weren't. This is the "stand down" conspiracy theory, which keeps morphing into something new whenever the old version is debunked, and it's long since been thoroughly hashed out. It won't be because references to al-Qaeda were removed from the final draft of the talking points. David Petraeus explained that last November. And it won't be because we learned that the editing of the talking points involved some squabbling between State and CIA. Nobody over the age of five is surprised or scandalized by that.
No, it will be because the small group of reporters who are credentialed to the James S. Brady Press Briefing Room feels aggrieved that the press secretary told them something to their faces that concealed bit of unseemly bureaucratic squabbling. It doesn't matter if the subject matter itself was important. In this case, it wasn't: the nickel version is that the State Department objected to the CIA adding a sentence making sure everyone knew they had warned about possible attacks beforehand, a statement that was both gratuitous and off subject. But trivial or not, Carney misled the reporters in the James S. Brady Press Briefing Room about this, and that makes it personal.
Never underestimate the power of a press corps that suddenly decides the story is personal. It may be a while before they let go of this.
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Blast from the Past. At Daily Kos on this date in 2011—Barney Frank: Recess appointment likely for CFPB job:
Republicans have made killing the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau a primary goal in their efforts to undo everything President Obama and Democrats managed to accomplish in the first two years of his term. To that end, Senate Republicans have vowed to filibuster any candidate for the CFPB unless the agency is gutted and made essentially powerless.
In the wake of that threat, Rep. Barney Frank, co-author of the Dodd-Frank Wall Street reform bill that became law last year, says it's likely President Obama will make a recess appointment to the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. |
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