Archive for the ‘Media’ Category
This past week, lots of pundits from across the political spectrum have warned Republicans not to overreach on the AP story. They’re warning that this is a national security issue. That isn’t exactly accurate. It’s time to unravel the DOJ’s disgusting behavior.
At the heart of the scandal is this statement from Attorney General Holder:
Here’s what Attorney General Holder said that isn’t accurate:
HOLDER: This was a serious leak, a very, very serious leak. I’ve been a prosecutor since 1976 and I have to say that this is among, if it isn’t the most serious leak, it is among the top 2 or 3 leaks I’ve ever seen. It put the American people at risk. And that is not hyperbole. It put the American people at risk and trying to determine who was responsible for that required very agressive action.
First, this wasn’t a leak. Here’s the real story:
Although the Justice Department has not explained why it sought phone records from the AP, Pruitt pointed to a May 7, 2012, story that disclosed details of a successful CIA operation in Yemen to stop an airliner bomb plot around the one-year anniversary of the May 2, 2011, killing of Usama bin Laden.
The AP delayed publication of that story at the request of government officials who said it would jeopardize national security.
“We respected that, we acted responsibly, we held the story,” Pruitt said.
Pruitt said the AP published the story only after officials from two government entities said the threat had passed. He said the administration still asked that the story be held until an official announcement the next day, a request the AP rejected.
This wasn’t a leak. The AP apparently got word that the CIA asset wasn’t in danger. The CIA said they wanted another day to issue a press release on spoiling this terrorist plot. At that point, the AP decided that they didn’t need to hold their story any longer.
It’s believable that the CIA was upset that they didn’t get to issue their press release first. Based on the fact that the DOJ hasn’t disputed the AP’s statements, it’s fair to assume that the AP acted appropriately in terms of taking the national security and intelligence gathering needs of the nation into serious, sober consideration.
That’s the front end of this scandal. The next part is what makes this one of the most disturbing scandals in recent history. Based on what we know from the first part of the scandal, we know that there wasn’t a need for urgency in stopping a leak that might’ve compromised a CIA asset in the Middle East. That means the DOJ wasn’t entitled to grab the records it did without telling the AP about this massive grab of AP phone records. That means the DOJ was obligated to going to court to apply for a search warrant and for the AP to contest the scope of DOJ’s phone records grab.
The federal government’s need to protect intelligence-gathering assets in harms way isn’t disputed. In fact, the AP apparently acted responsibly in this respect.
Now that we’ve determined these basic, undisputed facts, it’s time to question DOJ’s actions. Did the DOJ need to sieze 2 months of the AP’s phone records? Did DOJ need 2 months of phone records of over 100 AP reporters and editors? If it didn’t, why did DOJ sieze these sensitive records, especially without giving the AP the chance to contest the DOJ’s actions?
Unless new facts emerge that support DOJ’s actions, Americans of all political stripes should question DOJ’s ham-handed behavior in this matter.
UPDATE: Follow this link to read more on the DOJ-AP scandal.
Tags: Department of Justice, Eric Holder, National Security, CIA, Terrorist Plot, First Amendment, Fourth Amendment, Investigation, Scandal
Last week, Benghazi erupted when Gregory Hicks testified that a) Hillary Clinton called him during the terrorist attack and b) he told her that they were in the midst of a terrorist attack. Later that week, the IRS admitted that they had targeted TEA Party organizations in an investigation. This afternoon, this headline will rock the White House to its core:
WASHINGTON (AP) — The Justice Department secretly obtained two months of telephone records of reporters and editors for The Associated Press in what the news cooperative’s top executive called a “massive and unprecedented intrusion” into how news organizations gather the news.
The records obtained by the Justice Department listed incoming and outgoing calls, and the duration of each call, for the work and personal phone numbers of individual reporters, general AP office numbers in New York, Washington and Hartford, CT, and the main number for AP reporters in the House of Representatives press gallery, according to attorneys for the AP.
In all, the government seized those records for more than 20 separate telephone lines assigned to AP and its journalists in April and May of 2012. The exact number of journalists who used the phone lines during that period is unknown but more than 100 journalists work in the offices whose phone records were targeted on a wide array of stories about government and other matters.
Benghazi is about this administration’s decision not to protect its diplomats. The IRS scandal is about this administration’s use of the IRS’ investigative authority to target political opponents. This AP scandal is about having a chilling effect on the gathering of news.
If a government knows who the AP or any other media organization is talking to, that’s certain to have a chilling effect on people who might otherwise become whistleblowers. This is a good summarization:
In a letter of protest sent to Attorney General Eric Holder on Monday, AP President and Chief Executive Officer Gary Pruitt said the government sought and obtained information far beyond anything that could be justified by any specific investigation. He demanded the return of the phone records and destruction of all copies.
“There can be no possible justification for such an overbroad collection of the telephone communications of The Associated Press and its reporters. These records potentially reveal communications with confidential sources across all of the newsgathering activities undertaken by the AP during a two-month period, provide a road map to AP’s newsgathering operations, and disclose information about AP’s activities and operations that the government has no conceivable right to know,” Pruitt said.
That’s chilling. This is worse:
The government would not say why it sought the records. U.S. officials have previously said in public testimony that the U.S. attorney in Washington is conducting a criminal investigation into who may have leaked information contained in a May 7, 2012, AP story about a foiled terror plot. The story disclosed details of a CIA operation in Yemen that stopped an al-Qa’ida plot in the spring of 2012 to detonate a bomb on an airplane bound for the United States.
This isn’t a conspiracy theory. An integral part of a conspiracy theory is a theory. It stops being a conspiracy when facts and proof are added into the equation.
Apparently, when it comes to Obama administration scandals, when it rains, it pours.
From the start, the Obama administration insisted that the Benghazi talking points that UN Ambassador Susan Rice relied on were written almost exclusively by the CIA. According to this article, that story was pure fiction. What’s more is that the White House and the State Department knew it was fiction:
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 …”
In other words, Victoria Nuland knew that the initial talking points from the “IC” included references to al-Qa’ida and the “five other attacks against foreign interests in Benghazi.” Ms. Nuland knew that those references were damaging to the State Department and this administration. That’s why she insisted that that information be deleted from the talking points.
Ms. Nuland was right. Members of Congress likely would’ve used the information to expose President Obama and Hillary Clinton for being inattentive about terrorism in general and Benghazi in specific.
It’s difficult to say that President Obama and Hillary Clinton paid attention to terrorism when they’re defending their decision to cut security forces in the aftermath of the previous terrorist attacks in Benghazi. It’s especially difficult to defend their decisions in light of the multiple frantic requests for more security troops.
These paragraphs are particularly disturbing:
In an email dated 9/14/12 at 9:34 p.m. — three days after the attack and two days before Ambassador Rice appeared on the Sunday shows, Deputy National Security Advisor Ben Rhodes wrote an email saying the State Department’s concerns needed to be addressed.
“We must make sure that the talking points reflect all agency equities, including those of the State Department, and we don’t want to undermine the FBI investigation. We thus will work through the talking points tomorrow morning at the Deputies Committee meeting.”
“The State Department’s concerns need to be addressed” is just a fancy way of saying the talking points must be rewritten to eliminate the information that makes this administration look bad.
Finally, this speaks for itself:
ABC News has obtained 12 different versions of the talking points that show they were extensively edited as they evolved from the drafts first written entirely by the CIA to the final version distributed to Congress and to U.S. Ambassador to the U.N. Susan Rice before she appeared on five talk shows the Sunday after that attack.
It isn’t accurate to say that the talking points weren’t “the best analysis of the IC” as Jay Carney and Hillary Clinton insisted. The talking points were the product of a massive State Department rewrite.
Most of the pundits on local TV shouldn’t be on TV. Former state senator Don Betzold is one of those pundits. While criticizing Michele Bachmann for not supporting expansion of the North Star Corridor to St. Cloud, he insisted that extending the corridor would solve I-94′s congestion problems. He hinted that expanding I-94 wasn’t a priority.
That last part parrots a line from MnDOT Spokesman Kevin Gutknecht:
But Minnesota Department of Transportation spokesman Kevin Gutknecht said the I-94 widening doesn’t rank high on the agency’s long-term list of priority projects. “There are projects like this all across the state — really good projects, really important projects, projects that have tremendous support like this,” he said. “It all really boils down to the funding piece.”
Anyone that thinks fixing I-94′s congestion problems isn’t an important problem worthy of solution isn’t qualified for a MnDOT job. Either that or he’s a political hack attempting to undercut a sitting US congressperson.
But I digress.
Betzold’s commentary suggested that expanding North Star was a solution. It isn’t. In fact, it’s a death trap that should be avoided at all costs. In addition to the construction costs, the taxpayers’ subsidies that help bring the cost to riders down total tens of millions of dollars over the next decade. Without those subsidies, the cost per rider would be wildly expensive.
Then there’s the consideration that people don’t like transit that much. The DFL frequently insists that transit is the wave of the future. It isn’t. Americans love the freedom of driving. We love being in control of our lives. That includes the ability to go where we want to go when we want to go there. Transit doesn’t give us that option.
What transit lacks in mobility, it makes up for in subsidies. We shouldn’t be in the business of subsidizing private industries. If they can’t make it without subsidies, that’s proof they aren’t viable. A key economic principle is that if something isn’t sustainable, it can’t be sustained indefinitely. I’d take that a step further. If something can’t be sustained, it’s likely heading for a quick collapse.
The only thing as painful as listening to Betzold was hearing Tom Hauser call the I-94 project an earmark. Earmarks typically are dropped into a conference committee report in the dead of night. They don’t go through the scrutiny of a committee mark-up. The I-94 project Michele Bachmann proposed went through the committee process. It was done in the light of day. Most importantly, the I-94 project isn’t pork designed mostly to prove she’s ‘bringing home the bacon.’ The I-94 project Michele proposed is actually a solution to a major problem.
Contrary to what Mssrs. Gutknecht and Betzold said, anyone who’s been trapped at the bottlenecks where I-94, 694 and 494 connect knows that that’s been a major problem for a generation. Anyone who’s tried getting on I-94 near Bass Lake Road or Highway 101 knows that those have been problem areas for a decade.
If that isn’t worthy of prioritizing, then nothing is. Mr. Hauser is usually a pretty good reporter. This time, though, he slipped.
Tags: Transportation, North Star Corridor, Subsidies, MnDOT, Kevin Gutknecht, DFL, Michele Bachmann, I-94 Expansion, Bottlenecks, Public Safety, Transparency, GOP
Watching this interview was painful:
The interviewer tried repeatedly to get Rep. Dennis Lien to answer whethere “there was any circumstance” where he might vote for Gov. Dayton’s business-to-business sales tax increase. Rep. Lien repeatedly said that he didn’t think it was wise to make a pledge on how he would vote.
Several times, Rep. Lien talked about the need to look at the budget in its totality (that’s quite the dodge, isn’t it?) rather get hung up on the details.
It’s worth noting that this interview was conducted on March 7, at least 6 weeks after Gov. Dayton first submitted his Mulligan Budget. Rep. Lien certainly had time to study the proposal. He repeatedly said that he’d listened to businesses in his district. He acknowledged they had concerns about Gov. Dayton’s sales tax proposal.
Despite that information, Rep. Lien wouldn’t tell his voters whether their concerns would determine his vote. That’s a stunning thing. If he’s had the time to study the proposal and he’s listened to businesses who’ve expressed reservations about the business-to-business sales tax, what’s left to do before making a decision?
It isn’t like the interviewer was asking him to sign a pledge to never, under any circumstance, raise taxes. The interviewer simply wanted Rep. Lien to make up his mind on this specific policy. That isn’t too much for Lien’s constituents to ask. Instead, Rep. Lien chose to not tell his constituents what he’d do on a matter of import to them. (That’s the polite way of saying Rep. Lien acted like a weasel.)
If there’s anything that this administration is good at, it’s threatening people. This time, they threatened Watergate investigative reporter Bob Woodward, saying that he’ll regret his statements criticizing President Obama for suggesting sequestration.
Ed Morrissey notes that Woodward isn’t the only person that this administration has threatened:
Lanny Davis, formerly a special counsel to President Bill Clinton, told WMAL’s Brian Wilson and Larry O’Connor that a White House official once threatened to have The Washington Times’ White House credentials revoked over columns Davis had written.
Davis says his editor “received a phone call from a senior Obama White House official who didn’t like some of my columns, even though I’m a supporter of Obama. I couldn’t imagine why this call was made.”
Here’s the story on the Woodward threat:
Bob Woodward said this evening on CNN that a “very senior person” at the White House warned him in an email that he would “regret doing this,” the same day he has continued to slam President Barack Obama over the looming forced cuts known as the sequester.
CNN host Wolf Blitzer said that the network invited a White House official to debate Woodward on-air, but the White House declined.
“It makes me very uncomfortable to have the White House telling reporters, ‘You’re going to regret doing something that you believe in,’” Woodward said. “I think they’re confused,” Woodward said of the White House’s pushback on his reporting.
The White House aide who Woodward said threatened him was Gene Sperling, the director of the White House Economic Council, BuzzFeed’s Ben Smith reported.
Any administration that’s repeatedly used the term “you’ll regret this” isn’t just pushing back. They’re attempting to intimidate those people. In this instance, that’s stupid because the public won’t buy the thought that Bob Woodward and Lanny Davis have suddenly become right wing shills.
This administration is known for its Chicago thug tactics towards the media. Anita Dunn famously attacked Fox News. Here’s part of that attack from October, 2009:
Calling Fox News “a wing of the Republican Party,” the Obama administration on Sunday escalated its war of words against the channel, even as observers questioned the wisdom of a White House war on a news organization.
“What I think is fair to say about Fox, and certainly it’s the way we view it, is that it really is more a wing of the Republican Party,” said Anita Dunn, White House communications director, on CNN. “They take their talking points, put them on the air; take their opposition research, put them on the air. And that’s fine. But let’s not pretend they’re a news network the way CNN is.”
Fox News senior vice president Michael Clemente, who likens the channel to a newspaper with separate sections on straight news and commentary, suggested White House officials were intentionally conflating opinion show hosts like Glenn Beck with news reporters like Major Garrett.
“It’s astounding the White House cannot distinguish between news and opinion programming,” Clemente said. “It seems self-serving on their part.
This wasn’t a one-time thing. Anita Dunn, Robert Gibbs and David Axelrod all criticized Fox News. Axelrod, Dunn and Gibbs each said that Fox News didn’t do real reporting. Now they’re telling Bob Woodward that he’ll regret his statements on sequestrion. Now they’re threatening to pull the Washington Times’ White House press credentials because Lanny Davis, the special counsel to Bill Clinton, wrote something that upset the administration.
That’s what Chicago thug tactics look like. In fact, that’s taking a page out of Saul Alinsky’s Rules for Radicals.
Tags: Saul Alinsky, Rules for Radicals, Gene Sperling, Anita Dunn, Robert Gibbs, David Axelrod, Freedom of the Press, First Amendment, Bob Woodward, Lanny Davis, White House Press Credentials, Chicago Thug Tactics, Nixonian Tactics
For over 2 years, SCSU President Potter has talked about the need to supply employers with the high tech employees they need. It’s impossible to believe that thoughtful people wouldn’t question SCSU’s commitment after reading this article:
St. Cloud State University said Thursday it plans to spend $4.8 million in broadcasting upgrades.
The upgrades will improve journalism, production and strategic communications offerings, expand student learning and improve brand promotion.
The investment will include a complete overhaul of TV cable and broadcast delivery systems to allow high definition broadcast from many areas on campus.
St. Cloud State’s student-run TV station will expand its production and distribution of high-quality digital signals. The station, UTVS, also broadcasts St. Cloud State hockey games on Charter cable channel 87.
The Department of Mass Communications will revise its curriculum to reflect current journalism practices that include more digital journalism.
The last I looked, tons of private, for-profit colleges offered offered these types of programs. SCSU shouldn’t be offering this type of program. They should offer STEM-related programs that they currently aren’t offering.
Another troubling part of this article is the cost. Does President Potter think this type of money is a wise investment? If he does, then he needs to rethink that decision.
Finally, it’s misguided thinking to believe these upgrades will help with SCSU’s “brand promotion.” With all of the controversies swirtling on campus, SCSU should worry about cleaning up those messes before spending $4,800,000 on brand promotion. A trademark of the Potter administration has been to pretend that SCSU’s problems don’t exist. Until that’s changed, no amount of rebranding will help.
Tags: Earl Potter, STEM, Jobs of the Future, Rebranding, Mass Communications, Cable TV, High Definition TV, SCSU Huskies Hockey
This editorial by the Pioneer Press’s editorial board took the DFL spinmeisters to the woodshed. Their editorial wasn’t filled with platitudes. It was filled with thoughtful arguments and verified statistics. Here’s one example of the Pi-Press’s logic:
Opponents of the Voter ID amendment raise any number of objections, none more frequent than this sound bite: “It’s a solution in search of a problem.” Clever, but perhaps too clever. Because of the nature of the process, it’s very difficult to assess the current size of the problem, much less how large it might become.
Remember, in Minnesota anybody can simply show up at the polls and vote, whether they have previously registered or not. They “register” on the spot with as little documentation as an old ID and an invoice with an address on it. In 2008, roughly 500,000 people (!) showed up and voted after registering on the spot. That number of same-day registrants represents nearly 20 percent of the votes cast. No one knows how many of these votes may have been ineligible. A recent video from the state of Virginia records the son of a politician explaining how to cast votes by using fake documents such as water bills.
This isn’t advocating for the elimination of EDR (Election Day Registration). I’m just advocating for tightening up the process so that it’s verifiably reliable throughout Minnesota. It’s apparent that a problem exists, which the Pi-Press gets into here:
Without an ID, there is no way to verify even the most elementary things such as citizenship. Post-election, more than 6,000 of the addresses given by these same-day-registrant voters came back as undeliverable in a routine postal check. Even if the legwork was done to determine which if any of those votes were ineligible, the votes themselves could not be un-counted.
There’s no way this can be attributed to sloppiness on the person using EDR or to data entry mistakes. That’s 12 ‘mistakes’ per 1,000 new EDR registrations. I’m betting the error rate on new registrations done before the deadline isn’t anything close to this rate.
After all, why would people registering on Election Day make more mistakes? Certainly, the people should learn their address before voting. Why would data entry operators be more prone to making mistakes on Election Day registrations? Keyboards didn’t suddenly get changed right before entering the EDRs.
This argument is especially effective in a fight against DFL activists:
The other objections to the amendment are less central. Opponents say it will be expensive. To which the supporters note that the opponents are always eager to spend unless and until it comes time to tighten up the voting process. Not to mention that if the state is so backward that it cannot efficiently administer something as ordinary and universal as Photo ID verification, it’s high time it upped its game.
I wrote here that Gov. Dayton complained about this program costing “maybe $100 million.” That figure isn’t anything that people testified to under oath during a hearing. It’s fiction. It’s being used to frighten seniors and college students into voting against the bill.
How many college students don’t drink alcoholic beverages? How many college students don’t drive? How many college students don’t buy Sudafed? How many students stay in the midwest rather than fly to Florida for spring break? There can’t be many that fit into all of those categories. The point is that each of those situations require showing a photo ID.
That isn’t the final clincher on the subject. Let’s assume there’s a major population of people that don’t drink, don’t smoke, don’t use Sudafed, don’t fly to spring break and don’t drive. Are we then supposed to assume that this population of people can’t get a photo ID? Simply put, this argument is flimsy at best.
Finally, there’s this red herring argument:
It may be worth remembering, in the fog of the debate, that generally speaking those who oppose the amendment would still oppose it even if it cost the state nothing and exempted absentee ballots. The arguments brought to bear by the opponents are simply tools, incidentals, used to defeat an amendment that they fundamentally oppose in all its forms. Plain and simple, they are against using Photo ID in the election process. Opponents are not saying that they are for it as implemented by some other state, just not as it has been drawn up in this particular amendment. They are against the very concept, regardless of the particulars.
This is fact. Democrats have opposed Photo ID in every state where it’s been implemented.
The tactics don’t vary. The statistics are routinely rejected by judges that require proof of wrongdoing. To this day, no political party has found a person who could testify that they couldn’t get photographic identification.
In Minnesota, the DFL has tried everything in their deception bag of tricks to derail the Photo ID constitutional amendment. Tuesday, the people will pass the photo ID constitutional amendment. After that, the DFL and their allies will file lawsuits to thwart the will of the people.
When the DFL and their allies file those lawsuits, I’ll be waiting to write about how the DFL isn’t interested in doing the will of the people. Then I’ll remind people that the DFL is perfectly willing to ignore the will of the people before the next election.
Tags: Constitutional Amendments, Election Day Registration, Seniors, Students, Minorities, Fearmongering, Mark Dayton, Lawsuits, ACLU-MN, Common Cause MN, League of Women Voters-MN, DFL, Voter Fraud, Election 2012
There’s no doubt that Rick Nolan’s Mining Institute helped him win the DFL primary. Similarly, there’s no question that Nolan’s Mining Institute is hurting him in the general election:
“While he gives a wink and a nod to Twin Cities-based environmentalists, former congressman Nolan is silent on solutions. Currently, the EPA threatens the vitality of Minnesota, the Eighth district, its workers, and their families. Instead, Nolan thinks research is the answer. Without doubt, Nolan’s staunch support for imminent job-killing regulations could not be further out of step with this district, and presents an unmistakable danger to Minnesota’s taconite jobs and future well-paying jobs like PolyMet,” said Cravaack.
Simply put, Nolan’s attempt to pacify miners isn’t flying with miners. The Mining Institute appeared virtually overnight after Jeff Anderson, rightly, said his opponents were too wedded to environmental activists.
I wrote here about the fight between Nolan and Anderson. Here’s what Jeff Anderson told the Pioneer Press:
“While I support the idea of doing more research into evolving mining technologies, the people seeking jobs in this district cannot feed their families with studies,” Anderson said. “They need jobs. They need good, livable-wages jobs.”
Anderson is right. Range families can’t “feed their families with studies.” They “need good, liveable-wages jobs.” Here’s something else Anderson said in the Pi-Press article:
In a hastily called news conference to counter Nolan’s, Anderson said he would support the Republican-sponsored House legislation and that he supports incumbent Republican Rep. Chip Cravaack’s amendment that would extend the new rules to projects already in the works, such as the proposed PolyMet copper mine near Hoyt Lakes.
Chip Cravaack’s efforts to improve the lives of miners is cited in the Mesabi Daily News’ endorsement, which I wrote about here:
No longer do 8th District residents have to get patted on their heads and hear “things are being done behind the scenes” on these issues, which was Oberstar’s style. We are all now a party to the debate and discussion, and that is most welcome indeed. And it also helps keep pressure, in a very supportive way, for nonferrous projects, which have been stymied by too much political indifference to government regulatory intransigence that has harbored preservationist groups and individuals at the cost of jobs on the Iron Range, revenues for the state and the mining of strategic metals for the nation.
Chip’s efforts didn’t just catch the attention of the MDN. Chip’s efforts caught the Duluth News Tribune’s attention, too. it’s important to note what the DNT said about Nolan in their endorsement editorial:
During the primary election, Nolan’s DFL opponent, Jeff Anderson, rightly blasted the proposal as wasteful government spending that would create no immediate mining jobs. Nolan defended it, calling its quarter-billion-dollar price tag “chump change” in Washington, the sort of money that “falls off the table during meetings” there. He may be right, but isn’t that sort of thinking a big part of the problem in Washington?
Apparently, the Eighth District’s newspapers are tired of the DFL’s gamesmanship.
Tags: Rick Nolan, Mining Institute, Pork, DFL, Chip Cravaack, Duluth News Tribune, Mesabi Daily News, Mining, Endorsements, GOP, Election 2012
This San Diego Union-Tribune editorial just might breath new life into the investigation surrounding this administration’s cover-up of the Benghazi scandal:
Until last week, the White House had taken a moderate hit over the fact that for two weeks after it happened, officials had fostered the impression that the four Americans were killed Sept. 11 in a spontaneous protest triggered by a blasphemous anti-Islam video posted on YouTube, not by a coordinated terrorist attack on the 11th anniversary of 9/11. But administration officials pushed back by saying the “fog of war” had left them uncertain about events, and that when White House press secretary Jay Carney and U.N. Ambassador Susan Rice had cited the video, they were only repeating the best available information they had. The president’s repeated comments conveyed the impression that he wasn’t aware of the attacks as they were unfolding, saying only that the next day, he ordered increased security for embassies in the area.
Just by writing this paragraph into their editorial, the San Diego Union-Tribune became the first major city newspaper to call this administration out for their shifting stories about the terrorists’ attack. This paragraph will help get Californians’ attention:
What did President Barack Obama know and when did he know it? Why has the Obama administration kept changing its story about how Ambassador Chris Stevens, security officials Tyrone Woods of Imperial Beach and Glen Doherty of Encinitas, and information officer Sean Smith, who grew up in San Diego, died on Sept. 11 in Benghazi, Libya? Why won’t the mainstream media treat the incontrovertible evidence of the White House’s dishonesty and incompetence like the ugly scandal it obviously is?
Without great reporting by CBS’s Sharyl Attkisson and Lara Logan and FNC’s Catherine Herridge and Jennifer Griffin, this would’ve been a nonstory. These ladies’ thirst for the truth is giving this administration plenty of heartburn. Now that the San Diego Union-Tribune has joined in highlighting this scandal, President Obama better hope another shoe doesn’t drop.
Tags: President Obama, Cover-Up, Benghazi, Terrorist Attacks, Sharyl Attkisson, Lara Logan, CBS, Catherine Herridge, Jennifer Griffin, Fox News Channel, San Diego Union Tribune, National Security, Election 2012