Benghazi

State Media for Sure, Treated Bush Much Differently

Published by Papa Giorgio

Spying, controlling the media, phone records of media and citezins, war cover-ups… this is all the stuff the left complained about during Bush. But are mum on Obama.

Via Breitbart:

Well, if it is Thursday there must be a new Obama scandal. But one thing is for damn sure, whatever that scandal is, you can bet the American mainstream media will be playing catch up and not carrying the glory of breaking a story about a major White House scandal.

Fact: Over the past few weeks, four major scandals have broken over the Obama administration, and it is a very sad (and frightening) truth that our pathetic, American, lapdog mainstream media is not responsible for breaking even a single one.

  • Verizon? Nope, not our guys. That was the Brits over at The Guardian.  
  • IRS? Nope, not our guys. The IRS broke their own scandal with a planted question.
  • The Justice Department’s seizure of Associated Press phone records? Nope, not our guys. Believe it or not, the Associated Press didn’t even break that story. Like the IRS, we only found out because the Justice Department outted itself in a letter notifying the AP of what it had done.
  • Benghazi? Are you kidding. With a couple of rare exceptions (Jake Tapper, Sharyl Attkisson) the media has spent the last 8 months attacking those seeking the truth (Congress, Fox News) not seeking the truth. It was the GOP congress that demanded the email exchanges around the shaping of the talking points, not the media.

Left up to the media, we wouldn’t know anything about Libya. All of the media’s energy was collectively poured into ensuring the truth was never discovered.

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Let’s not forget Gosnell:

The Obama Admin. Makes Nixon Look Like an Amateur (Updated)

Published by Papa Giorgio

The above UPDATE is with thanks to GayPatriot and Bruce’s Twitter page. Are people exaggerating the similarities? The only difference is the responsibility level… Nixon showed he was a man. Obama? Not so much.

The above audio is Hugh reading from the following article in the New Yorker Magazine:

The Justice Department and Fox News’s Phone Records

The Obama Justice Department has seized the phone records of numbers that are associated with White House staffers and, apparently, with Fox News reporters, according to a document filed in the case of Stephen Jin-Woo Kim, on October 13, 2011. Kim is a former State Department contractor accused of violating the Espionage Act for allegedly leaking classified information to James Rosen, a Fox News reporter. Ronald C. Machen, Jr., the U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia, who is prosecuting the case, has seized records associated with two phone numbers at the White House, at least five numbers associated with Fox News, and one that has the same area code and exchange as Rosen’s personal-cell-phone number (the last four numbers are redacted).

In all, Machen has seized records associated with over thirty different phone numbers. In the filing that included the new information, the last four digits of each telephone line targeted by the Obama Administration are redacted. Two of the numbers begin with area code 202 and the exchange 456, which, according to current and former Administration officials, are used exclusively by the White House. (The phone number for the White House switchboard is (202) 456-1414.)

At least five other numbers targeted by the government include the area code 202 and the exchange 824. The phone number for the Fox News Washington bureau, which is publicly available, is (202) 824-0001. Rosen’s work phone number at Fox News begins with the same area code and exchange.

William Miller, a spokesman for the U.S. Attorney, told The New Yorker this afternoon, “Because that information is sealed, I can’t confirm the owner or subscriber for any of those records.” Asked if the phone numbers of any reporters had been targeted in the Kim investigation, Miller said he could not comment.

Yesterday, the Washington Post reported that, as part of the investigation of the Kim leak, Obama’s Department of Justice seized e-mails from Rosen’s personal Gmail account. In the search warrant for that request, the government described Rosen as “an aider, and abettor, and / or co-conspirator” in violating the Espionage Act, noting that the crime can be punished by ten years in prison. Rosen was not indicted in the case, but the suggestion in a government document that a reporter could be guilty of espionage for engaging in routine reporting is unprecedented and has alarmed many journalists and civil libertarians….

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Washington Blog does a bang-up job in showing how many liberals are saying that Obama’s “buck stops here” makes his admin waaayy worse than Nixon’s:

In the wake of the twin scandals of the IRS targeting conservative groups and the Department of Justice spying on AP reporters, the comparisons between Obama and Nixon are everywhere.

But what do experts say?

Former New York Times general counsel James Goodale – who represented the paper during its Pentagon Papers fight with the Nixon administration – said in an interview yesterday that Obama is worse than Nixon when it comes to press freedoms. And see this.

Former constitutional lawyer Glenn Greenwald noted last year:

We supposedly learned important lessons from the abuses of power of the Nixon administration, and then of the Bush administration: namely, that we don’t trust government officials to exercise power in the dark, with no judicial oversight, with no obligation to prove their accusations. Yet now we hear exactly this same mentality issuing from Obama, his officials and defenders to justify a  far more extreme power than either Nixon or Bush dreamed of asserting: he’s only killing The Bad Citizens, so there’s no reason to object!

Jonathan Turley – perhaps the top constitutional law expert in the United States (and a liberal) – writes:

The painful fact is that Barack Obama is the president that Nixon always wanted to be.

Four decades ago, Nixon was halted in his determined effort to create an “imperial presidency” with unilateral powers and privileges. In 2013, Obama wields those very same powers openly and without serious opposition. The success of Obama in acquiring the long-denied powers of Nixon is one of his most remarkable, if ignoble, accomplishments. Consider a few examples:

I will bullet point Jonathan Turley’s points that you can read his expanded thoughts on for yourself:

  • Warrantless surveillance
  • Unilateral military action
  • Kill lists
  • Attacking whistle-blowers

…More…

Nixon’s “Enemies List” is famous, and the former head of the National Security Agency’s global digital data gathering program says that Obama also has an enemies list … which has been used to take down a wide variety of people, including the head of the CIA. The Washington Post’s Ed Rogers notes:

Obama doesn’t need a traditional Nixonian enemies list. In the digital age, with the Obama machine’s much-celebrated technological capabilities, the president can sort his enemies by keywords.

You’ve heard about the AP spying scandal, and the head of the Department of Justice implies that the government has spied on many other reporters.

Reporters who criticize those in power are being smeared by the government and targeted for arrest (and see this).

Indeed, the Obama administration is treating real reporters as potential terrorists.

…read more…

Four Pinocchio`s from WaPo: `I Called It Terror` (Kirsten Powers: They Are Lies!)

Published by Papa Giorgio

The Pinocchio Test

During the campaign, the president could just get away with claiming he said “act of terror,” since he did use those words — though not in the way he often claimed. It seemed like a bit of after-the-fact spin, but those were his actual words — to the surprise of Mitt Romney in the debate.

But the president’s claim that he said “act of terrorism” is taking revisionist history too far, given that he repeatedly refused to commit to that phrase when asked directly by reporters in the weeks after the attack. He appears to have gone out of his way to avoid saying it was a terrorist attack, so he has little standing to make that claim now.

Indeed, the initial unedited talking points did not call it an act of terrorism. Instead of pretending the right words were uttered, it would be far better to acknowledge that he was echoing what the intelligence community believed at the time–and that the administration’s phrasing could have been clearer and more forthright from the start.

Michael Medved Comments on, and Plays ABC`s Jonathan Karl`s Devastating Benghazi Report (CNN: Untrue; BBC Editor: Changed Mind)

Published by Papa Giorgio

Via Jonathan Karl, of ABC:

…Summaries of White House and State Department emails — some of which were first published by Stephen Hayes of the Weekly Standard — show that the State Department had extensive input into the editing of the talking points.

State Department spokesman Victoria Nuland raised specific objections to this paragraph drafted by the CIA in its earlier versions of the talking points:

“The Agency has produced numerous pieces on the threat of extremists linked to al-Qa’ida in Benghazi and eastern Libya.  These noted that, since April, there have been at least five other attacks against foreign interests in Benghazi by unidentified assailants, including the June attack against the British Ambassador’s convoy. We cannot rule out the individuals has previously surveilled the U.S. facilities, also contributing to the efficacy of the attacks.”

In an email to officials at the White House and the intelligence agencies, State Department spokesman Victoria Nuland took issue with including that information because it “could be abused by members [of Congress] to beat up the State Department for not paying attention to warnings, so why would we want to feed that either?  Concerned …”

The paragraph was entirely deleted…

(ABC)

Formerly Skeptical BBC Editor Changes Tune (The Blaze):

BBC Editor Mark Mardell on Friday admitted that he had all but dismissed allegations of a Benghazi cover-up before ABC’s bombshell report on the Benghazi talking points, which were deliberately edited to remove references to terror.

“This is now very serious, and I suspect heads will roll,” Mardell writes. “The White House will be on the defensive for a while.”

The BBC editor said ABC’s report on the talking points provide the “first hard evidence that the State Department did ask for changes to the CIA’s original assessment.” He predicted that former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton will inevitably have to explain why her department made the significant edits.

“In the interests of full disclosure I have to say I have not in the past been persuaded that allegations of a cover-up were a big deal. It seemed to me a partisan attack based on very little,” Mardell admitted, later adding that the “evidence is there in black and white.”

He goes on: “Mr Obama’s critics are often not very clear what is behind their allegations. I presume they think that the White House wanted to avoid claims the murders were the result of terrorism because this would undermine his claim that al-Qaeda was seriously ‘degraded.’ There’s also a vague sense he’s ‘soft on terror.’”…

Kirsten Powers calls Obama`s defense of Susan Rice `silly, sexist` and `paternalistic`

Published by Papa Giorgio

From Hot Air:

….[Kirsten Powers] makes a good point in her op-ed today too: Why are liberals ignoring how badly Obama has treated Rice here? She had nothing to do with Benghazi, yet he plucked her from her post as ambassador to the UN, briefed her with defective intel, and then sent her out to do damage control as the face of the administration. Like I said yesterday, he could have sent Carney or Robert Gibbs or some other full-time flack but he chose Rice, I assume, because he wanted to leverage the extra gravitas of her position. She’s worked in diplomacy for years, yet now she’s famous chiefly for being the White House’s designated stooge in its biggest counterterrorism failure. Way to do right by a loyal deputy, champ. You’re a real feminist hero. Click the image to watch.