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Michael Graham notices the differences in the way we hear about the president “being updated throughout the night.”
What’s the difference between keeping President Obama “updated throughout the night” on a deadly terrorist attack in Benghazi and keeping him “updated throughout the night” on a deadly tornado in Oklahoma?
The president could have actually done something about Benghazi.
Have you been watching the president the past 36 hours or so? Lots of photos of him calling officials in Oklahoma, offering federal help. Speeches in front of the camera expressing his condolences to the tornado victims and pledging to rebuild.
“Our prayers are with the people of Oklahoma today,” Obama said yesterday, “and we’ll back up those prayers with deeds for as long as it takes.”
Now that’s a president.
So where was this guy the night of the pre-planned al-Qaeda attack in Benghazi that lasted seven hours and killed four Americans?
That’s a “largely irrelevant fact,” White House hack Dan Pfeiffer told Chris Wallace on Fox News Sunday. …
Jonah Goldberg thinks the “idiot defense” is a good tactic.
Although there’s still a great deal to be learned about the scandals and controversies swirling around the White House like so many ominous dorsal fins in the surf, the nature of President Obama’s bind is becoming clear. The best defenses of his administration require undermining the rationale for his presidency.
“We’re portrayed by Republicans as either being lying or idiots. It’s actually closer to us being idiots.” So far, this is the administration’s best defense.
It was offered to CBS News’ Sharyl Attkisson by an anonymous aide involved in the White House’s disastrous response to the attacks in Benghazi, Libya.
Well-intentioned human error rarely gets the credit it deserves. …
… Meanwhile, Obama insists that he is outraged. And, if sincere, that’s nice. But so what? What the president seems to have never fully understood is that the Founders were smarter than he is or that the American people aren’t as dumb as he thinks we are. His outrage is beside the point.
A free people will have legitimate differences on questions of policy. A government as vast as ours is — never mind as vast Obama wants it to be — is destined to abuse its power, particularly in a climate where a savior-president is incessantly delegitimizing dissent (and journalistic scrutiny). Government officials will behave like idiots sometimes, not because they are individually dumb but because a government that takes on too much will make an idiot out of anyone who thinks there’s no limit to what it can do. That alone is good reason to fear tyranny. Indeed, it would be idiotic not to.
Andrew Malcolm reminds us of some of the obama sleaze.
The standard rule for handling bad news in politics is to get it all out at once. Take your hits for a news cycle, two or three. And then try to move on.
The conventional wisdom has been that the worst thing to do is allow the bad news to dribble out, poison drop by poison drop, for days, weeks, even months.
Yet that is precisely what Barack Obama has done — and continues to do in his current epidemic of embarrassments — over a decade of controversies and scandals. The amazing thing is, so far, it’s worked like a charm. So, why should he change?
Ignore it. Dismiss it. Dissemble it to death. Didn’t know about it. Point at others. Have others point at others. Have others suggest the criticism is really racial. Stay aloof. Stretch the whole thing out as long as possible. Then call every ensuing question old news, that you’ve discussed it many times. Hope the problem goes away.
And, by golly, usually it has for Obama.
Whether that will work this time in the face of three major, simultaneous scandals and the independent investigations certain to grow from them remains an open question. Will the Chicago Democrat skate again? Or will the events, the lies, the half-truths, the cover-ups forever stain his once-historical presidential legacy?
Barack Obama is no stranger to scandal. Here’s a recap of a few: …
National Journal’s Ron Fournier is having a hard time stomaching the administration lies.
“You and others have said that no one in the White House knew about IRS actions before getting the heads up on the inspector general’s report last month,” George Stephanopoulos told senior White House adviser Dan Pfeiffer on Sunday. “Are you absolutely sure of that?”
“Yes,” Pfeiffer replied.
Do you believe him?
Knowing the consequences that would befall the Obama administration if the White House or Obama’s reelection campaign knew in real time that the IRS was targeting conservatives, I desperately want to believe Pfeiffer. I’ve known him for years. I like him. He’s never lied to me.
But Pfeiffer is part of an institution that has demonstrated an inability and/or unwillingness to tell the full truth about the IRS scandal and a spate of other controversies. The White House can’t be trusted.
That depressing conclusion (not unique to the Obama White House, sadly) was driven home Monday when spokesman Jay Carney used his daily briefing to announce that presidential advisers knew more about the IRS scandal a bit sooner than previously disclosed. …
Alan Dershowitz says Lois Lerner can be held in contempt. NewsMax has the story.
Lois Lerner, the Internal Revenue Service’s embattled director of Exempt Organizations, could be held in contempt of court and jailed for refusing to testify before Congress, civil-rights lawyer Alan Dershowitz says.
“She’s in trouble. She can be held in contempt,” Dershowitz told “the Steve Malzberg Show” on Newsmax TV.
“Congress . . . can actually hold you in contempt and put you in the Congressional jail.”
Lerner, grilled Wednesday on the IRS’ targeting of conservative organizations, invoked her Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination — but not before insisting “I have done nothing wrong.”
Her brief statement of innocence has opened a legal Pandora’s Box, according to Dershowitz. …
Paul Mirengoff at Power Line is not so sure.
… Lerner’s denial of guilt was extremely general. It involved no statements about specific facts. In that sense, it seemed more analogous to a plea of “not guilty” (though there are no pleas at a congressional committee hearing) than to substantive testimony.
Does this mean that she didn’t waive the Fifth Amendment after all? To me, it seems like a close question.
That’s also the conclusion reached by Orin Kerr at the Volokh Conspiracy. Kerr contacted a list of criminal procedure professors that, he says, includes some serious Fifth Amendment experts. The result?
Opinions were somewhat mixed, but I think it’s fair to say that the bulk of responders thought that Lerner had not actually testified because she gave no statements about the facts of what happened. If that view is right, Lerner successfully invoked her Fifth Amendment rights and cannot be called again. But this was not a unanimous view, it was not based on the full transcript, and there are no cases that seem to be directly on point.
Since the question is unsettled and probably close, it seems to me that Lerner was not well-served today by her counsel, however well-connected to the Obama administration it may be.
Breitbart notes this from Jay Leno.
… the White House has admitted that President Obama’s chief of staff had advanced warning the IRS was targeting conservative groups but never told the president. Well, President Obama says the first time he heard about the IRS scandal and the AP phone records scandal, first time he heard about it was from the media. See, that’s why President Obama holds press conferences: not to explain what’s going on, to find out what’s going on. …