Benghazi attack

Pundit: Obama Has Avoided ‘Second-Term Curse’; GOP Has Helped Him By ‘Transparently Politicizing’ Their Investigations
By Tom Johnson | December 26, 2015 | 12:12 AM EST

Bill Scher runs a website called Liberal Oasis, which makes it unsurprising that his Monday RealClearPolitics column celebrated President Obama’s avoidance (so far) of the “second-term curse” that supposedly afflicted George W. Bush, Bill Clinton, and some of their predecessors in the White House.

Scher exults that Obama “has not been knocked off course by scandal” and lauds him for “master[ing] the art of scandal management, while his Republican opponents lost credibility by transparently politicizing every investigation…Instead of following the facts before drawing conclusions, [Republicans] proclaim the worst—and then fail to prove their allegations. That’s why the pursuits of wrongdoing in Fast and Furious, Solyndra, the IRS audits and Benghazi have all fizzled.”

ABC Censors Latest Hillary Clinton E-Mail Dump; CBS, NBC Barely Cover
By Curtis Houck | December 1, 2015 | 11:53 PM EST

For viewers of the “big three” networks on Monday and Tuesday, coverage of the latest Hillary Clinton e-mail dump was all but non-existent as ABC has censored it from both their morning and evening newscasts while CBS and NBC have only given abbreviated nods in their morning shows. All told, the three news cycles combined for a measly one-minute-and-45-seconds of airtime with one minute and 24 seconds coming from a segment on the Clinton campaign on Tuesday’s Today.

Ted Danson Swoons: ‘I Love’ the Clintons ‘with Every Fiber of My Being’; Hillary’s ‘Incredibly Bright’
By Curtis Houck | November 20, 2015 | 10:59 AM EST

Liberal actor Ted Danson used his appearance on the early Friday morning edition of Tavis Smiley’s PBS program to profess his love for Bill and Hillary Clinton “with every fiber of my being” and praised Hillary Clinton’s performance at the Benghazi Committee hearing as a showcase of someone who would be a “thoughtful, big hearted, incredibly bright president.”

Blogger Kevin Drum: Krauthammer’s Too Smart to Believe All That Right-Wing Nonsense About Obama Scandals
By Tom Johnson | October 31, 2015 | 6:34 PM EDT

Even though Mother Jones blogger Kevin Drum describes Charles Krauthammer as a “hardcore conservative,” he suggested in a Friday post that Krauthammer is too enlightened to be on the same page as most right-wingers regarding Obama White House scandals.

When Krauthammer argued recently against the effort to impeach IRS commissioner John Koskinen, he commented that on matters including the IRS/Tea Party flap and the Benghazi attack, Republicans, despite not persuading the majority of the public of Obama-administration “malfeasance,” had had “the facts and the argument” on their side. Drum wrote, “Does [Krauthammer] really believe this? Or does he know it's baloney but figures he needs some kind of acceptable cover to get Republicans off their Ahab-like zeal for investigating nothingburgers?” According to Drum, Dr. K does indeed understand that it’s baloney.

Bloggers On Hillary Benghazi Hearing: Republicans ‘Stuck in Their Own Bubble’ Produce ‘Soft Porn For Conservative Activists’
By Tom Johnson | October 23, 2015 | 2:50 PM EDT

Since even some conservatives thought that Hillary Clinton won Thursday’s Benghazi hearing, it stands to reason that lefty bloggers would be happy with the way things turned out.

In fact, not all of them waited until the hearing was over. Early in the afternoon, when Clinton still had several hours of testimony before her, Talking Points Memo editor and publisher Josh Marshall observed that “Hillary…looks poised; [Republicans are] radiating spittle.” As the hearings rounded third and headed for home, Esquire’s Charles Pierce sniped, “This was a performance piece for the people residing within the conservative media bubble…who already are too smart to be fooled by the Hildebeast and her alleged facts because Mark Levin has told them that they are too smart to be so fooled."

Jeffrey Toobin Trashes Jim Jordan as ‘the Worst,’ ‘Most Unprofessional,’ ‘Most Misleading’ in Benghazi Hearing
By Curtis Houck | October 23, 2015 | 1:01 PM EDT

CNN legal analyst Jeffrey Toobin trashed Republican Congressman Jim Jordan (Ohio) during Thursday’s Anderson Cooper 360 for being “the worst” in his questioning of Hillary Clinton and acting “unprofessional,” “misleading,” and “demeaning.” Reacting to Jordan speaking with CNN’s Dana Bash moments beforehand, Toobin began his diatribe by whining that the conservative member of Congress “was clearly the worst, the most unprofessional, the most misleading, the most really demeaning to the Congress in terms of his questioning.”

Carl Bernstein Accuses Benghazi Committee of McCarthyism; ‘Reckless’ ‘Group of Demagogues’
By Curtis Houck | October 23, 2015 | 1:40 AM EDT

Roughly a minute after the 11-hour Benghazi Committee hearing with Hillary Clinton concluded on Thursday night, CNN’s Anderson Cooper 360 turned to political commentator Carl Bernstein, who drooled over Clinton’s performance while comparing Republicans to Joseph McCarthy and his House Un-American Committee for concocting an “abusive” hearing.In the next hour on CNN Tonight, Bernstein trotted out the same comparison against “a group of demagogues” while Hillary “did great” in using “the facts at her command.”

ABC Bemoans Money Spent on Benghazi Committee; GOP Unable ‘to Draw Blood’ from Hillary
By Curtis Houck | October 22, 2015 | 11:13 PM EDT

Suddenly worried about government spending, the Thursday edition of ABC’s World News Tonight featured anchor David Muir complaining on three separate occasions about the cost of the House Select Committee on Benghazi while chief White House correspondent Jonathan Karl observed that Republicans “really didn’t succeed” in “draw[ing] blood” from Hillary Clinton.

CBS’s Dickerson Chides Benghazi Committee for ‘Fighting Like Cats and Dogs’
By Curtis Houck | October 22, 2015 | 9:31 PM EDT

Analyzing Hillary Clinton’s performance before the House Benghazi Committee, CBS News political director John Dickerson stated on Thursday’s CBS Evening News that Clinton “avoid[ed]” falling into any “pitfalls” as those questioning her fought “like cats and dogs.”

NBC Spins: Hillary ‘Stood Her Ground’ by Using ‘Put Downs’ as Hearing ‘Dissolved into Bickering’
By Curtis Houck | October 22, 2015 | 8:47 PM EDT

Offering no surprises, Thursday’s NBC Nightly News aired glowing remarks for Hillary Clinton’s performance during the House Select Committee on Benghazi hearing with conclusions that she “stood her ground” as it “dissolved into bickering” while she “stayed above the fray” and removing Benghazi from being an issue in the 2016 campaign. 

CNN Goes Bananas for Hillary ‘Keeping Her Cool’; Blumenthal Questions Are ‘a Waste’ and ‘Baffling’
By Curtis Houck | October 22, 2015 | 5:54 PM EDT

Reacting to the first round of questioning in Thursday’s Benghazi hearing, CNN hosts and panelists couldn’t help but trip over themselves in gushing over how Hillary Clinton was “very confidence” in “keeping her cool” while answering “utterly baffling” questions about confidante Sidney Blumenthal that the American people supposedly do not “really care about” and see as “a waste.”

O’Donnell Unloads on ‘Oblivious and Uninhibited’ Benghazi Committee; Hillary’s ‘the Best Debater’
By Curtis Houck | October 22, 2015 | 3:03 AM EDT

Using clips from the 1973 Watergate hearings, MSNBC’s Last Word host Lawrence O’Donnell went off on Wednesday at the House Select Committee on Benghazi for failing to exhibit the Watergate committee’s professionalism and instead being “oblivious and uninhibited” in creating a hearing that he promises will “waste enormous amounts of time on irrelevant questions.”