A fix for HealthCare.gov, access to affordable care

By Michael J.W. Stickings

According to the WaPo, Obama Administration officials will announce tomorrow that they met today's deadline for fixing, more or less, HealthCare.gov, the website where you're supposed to be able to sign up for affordable health insurance under Obamacare, though questions and challenges remain:

Government and outside technical employees worked through the night on the latest upgrade, intended to increase the Web site's capacity for consumers seeking to go through the early stages of registering for an account and then logging in. The upgrade was successfully completed about 4 a.m. Saturday, according to a government official familiar with the project, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe details that the administration was not publicly disclosing.

But it was not immediately apparent, the official said, whether the improvement meant that the site can now meet one of the Obama administration's internal goals — for 80,000 people per hour to be able to register and 320,000 per hour to be able to log in — and added that the overnight tinkering was, at least for now, causing a slight increase in error messages on the site.

The fix can't come soon enough, because I really need to sign up for new insurance -- and to buy into this relatively progressive new system where insurance companies can't completely fuck consumers by denying them access to care for any number of reasons.

Oh... wait.

I live in Canada. And here, of course, we have a universal single-payer system that combines with private insurance to provide Canadians with guaranteed access to care as well as significant choice.

I feel for Americans, I really do. Unless you have a lot of money and/or excellent coverage through work, you're either fucked or in a position to be fucked at some point -- by having care denied or by being financially crushed by the overwhelming cost of care.

Or at least you were. Obamacare isn't perfect, but it's an effort to fix some of the American health system's worst abuses, both in terms of cost and coverage. Tens of millions of Americans stand to benefit from it, and they will once the registration process is fixed, just a technical glitch, though of course many have been able to sign up already.

But still, America, what we have up here is far better. Won't you join us in our more advanced state of civilization?

Why was Abdulrahman al-Awlaki killed?

By Michael J.W. Stickings

I think the Obama Administration, and the president personally, has some explaining to do:

Though everyone already knew that U.S. forces killed American Al Qaeda preacher Anwar al-Awlaki in a 2011 drone strike, the Obama administration only admitted in May that he was among four Americans targeted overseas. The government's justification for killing one of its own citizens without due process is still sketchy, though Attorney General Eric Holder assured us it was, "lawful, it was considered, and it was just." The White House has been even more evasive about why al-Awlaki's 16-year-old son was killed by a drone two weeks later, saying only that he and two other slain American citizens "were not specifically targeted by the United States." In a devastating New York Times op-ed published Thursday, his grandfather, Nasser al-Awlaki demands to know why. "My grandson was killed by his own government," he writes. "The Obama administration must answer for its actions and be held accountable."

In the op-ed, Nasser al-Awlaki describes his grandson Abdulrahman as a typical teen who "watched The Simpsons, listened to Snoop Dogg, read Harry Potter and had a Facebook page with many friends." In September 2011 he left home without permission because he wanted to find his father. He turned up at a cousin's house in southern Yemen and called after learning of his father's death to say he was coming home. Two weeks later, Abdulrahman, his teenage cousin, and five other people were killed in an open-air restaurant.

Actually, I'm not sure an explanation is nearly enough. What we need is some accountability -- yes, from a president who claims he has the right -- and that it is both legal and just -- to kill American citizens, not to mention anyone else, simply by fiat.

Oh, and a 16-year old at that.

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(Not President) McCain goes to Syria (and undermines U.S. policy)

By Michael J.W. Stickings

Obviously, the situation in Syria is awful. According to French newspaper Le Monde, a "merciless war" is being waged on the outskirts of Damascus, with the Assad regime using chemical weapons against the rebels.

And, in general, I'm with the rebels. I'd love to see the Assad regime fall and for the Syrian people to be freed from the shackles of that brutal tyranny.

But the question isn't really which side you're on, because obviously most good and decent people want Assad to go, it's how you most appopriately respond to the current situation with the intent of supporting the rebels' goals.

The first question is easy. The second, not so much.

For warmongering conservatives like John McCain, however, it's always all so simple: Where there's a problem, as in Syria, war is the solution, and when some war isn't enough, more, ever more, is always the answer.

When they're in power, war is what we get. And when they're not, like now, they just won't shut up about it.

Yes, McCain has been leading the charge, directed with vengeful venom against the man who beat him for the presidency in 2008, for the U.S. to step up its support for the Syrian rebels as well as to get more directly involved in the conflict. He even made his way to Syria yesterday, meeting with General Salem Idris, the leader of the Supreme Military Council of the Free Syrian Army, as well as with other rebel leaders.

On the ground yesterday, he was the United States. Or least he and others wanted it to appear that way. "The visit of Senator McCain to Syria is very important and very useful especially at this time," said Idris. "We need American help to have change on the ground; we are now in a very critical situation."

Yes, of course you are, but here's the thing. John McCain is not the president of the United States. And while you may be upset with what you see as lack of support from President Obama, McCain's self-aggrandizing globe-strutting isn't going to help.

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The Benghazi scandal that isn't: How Republicans and the media are distorting a tragedy

By Michael J.W. Stickings

Another day, another breathless report of something supposedly "new" in the whole Benghazi saga, which really just amounts to a media-enabled Republican assault on the the Obama Administration -- first the president himself as the target, now, with Republicans looking ahead to 2016, Hillary Clinton.

Today it's from Jonathan Karl of ABC News, who "reports" the following:

When it became clear last fall that the CIA’s now discredited Benghazi talking points were flawed, the White House said repeatedly the documents were put together almost entirely by the intelligence community, but White House documents reviewed by Congress suggest a different story.

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.

White House emails reviewed by ABC News suggest the edits were made with extensive input from the State Department.  The edits included requests from the State Department that references to the Al Qaeda-affiliated group Ansar al-Sharia be deleted as well references to CIA warnings about terrorist threats in Benghazi in the months preceding the attack.

Okay... and? 

As ThinkProgress notes:

[T]he ABC report suggests the State Department "scrubbed" the talking points of terror references as some sort of nefarious cover-up of what really happened in Benghazi for political reasons. This, of course, playing into the GOP's conspiracy theory that President Obama was trying to preserve his campaign theme that his policies has significantly crippled the terror network. 

And I would note that Karl's piece seems to be written from the perspective of those conspiracy theories. At the very least, Karl is playing right along with the right's obsessions. ThinkProgress continues:

The story soon set reporters and Twitter alight. "Scrubbing the truth from Benghazi," a National Journal headline read. Even the BBC speculated that "heads will roll."

But absent in ABC's report is the key point that Obama and various members of his administration referred to the Benghazi assault as a terror attack on numerous occasions shortly after the incident (thereby negating the need to "scrub" any references in the talking points) and that then-CIA Director David Petraeus said the terrorist references were taken out to, as the New York Times reported, "avoid tipping off the groups" that may have been involved.

Basically, the State Department -- specifically former Cheney advisor Victoria Nuland -- was more involved in the development of the talking points than previously reported.

Republicans and their various enablers in the media -- who may think they're digging for the truth but are really just doing the Republicans' bidding -- seem to think this rises to the level of, well, something possibly worse than Watergate.

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Obama Administration joins fight for marriage equality at Supreme Court

By Michael J.W. Stickings

Not to be lost in Woodward-gate, Sequester-gate, and whatever other shiny objects are occupying the media's attention, this is pretty significant:

The Obama administration threw its support behind a broad claim for marriage equality on Thursday, and urged the Supreme Court to rule that voters in California were not entitled to ban same-sex marriage there.

In a forceful argument, the administration claimed that denying gay couples the right to marry violates the Constitution's equal protection clause. It said that Proposition 8, the state's ban on same-sex marriage, should be subjected to "heightened scrutiny" — a tough test for any law — and stated flatly that "Proposition 8 fails heightened scrutiny."

Yes, it's the Obama Administration, but it's also the federal government declaring marriage equality to be a constitutional right.

And even if the federal government fell short of calling on the Supreme Court to rule all bans on same-sex marriage unconstitutional, focusing instead on the case at hand in California (perhaps to avoid coming across as pushy and heavy-handed), it still took a major step forward in the fight for marriage equality.

It is now up to the Supreme Court to decide if it stands on the side of justice, history, and public opinion or whether it's still stuck in the divisive bigotry of the past. 

Dr. Jekyll and President Hyde

By Frank Moraes

My friend Andrea gets mad at me when I rag on the president too much. To her, Obama is so much better than Bush that we should just be grateful that we don't have a complete fucking idiot in the White House. But here's the thing: I am grateful. I usually defend myself by saying, "I think Obama is the best president we could ever expect to have!" But this is more a statement of my terrifying level of cynicism than it is of my opinion of Obama.

Let me pull back for a moment. If I were in the Senate and I got to question John Brennan today, I would have only one question for him, "Do you want to be head of the CIA?" I assume his answer would be, "Yes." And that would tell me everything I needed to know. "Then I'm afraid, Mr. Brennan, that you are not qualified to run the CIA. I'm very sorry. I hope you will spend the rest of your life volunteering at a local homeless shelter. The second to last place we can afford to put a power hungry asshole in charge is at the CIA."

The very last place we can afford to put a power-hungry asshole in charge is the presidency of the United States. I suspect that when Obama was a community organizer, he was a great guy. He was the kind of guy who should be the President of the United States. But once he started to be noticed as a member of the Illinois State Senate? And certainly, by the time he became a United States Senator? He'd been corrupted.

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America, your new secretary of state

By Michael J.W. Stickings

Not sure if this is better than winning the Cup, but it's close.

Congratulations, Senator (soon to be Secretary) Kerry:

The Senate Tuesday confirmed President Obama's nomination of Senator John F. Kerry to be secretary of state, handing the Massachusetts Democrat a redemptive career victory that ensconces him in an elite echelon of national leadership nine years after his failed bid for the presidency.

The 94 to 3 vote was the final hurdle for Kerry, whose nomination soared through the Senate...

Kerry met virtually no resistance, as his colleagues on both sides of the aisle lauded his 28 years of service in the Senate and his deep experience in international affairs, most recently as chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. He is expected to give a farewell speech in the Senate on Wednesday and will be sworn in as Hillary Clinton's replacement in a Department of State ceremony later this week.

It was a sure thing. (The three loser Republicans are Inhofe, Cornyn, and Cruz, by the way.)

It's still shameful what happened to Susan Rice, a well-qualified candidate who was viciously assaulted by McCain and his vindictive pals, but I've long admired Kerry, and he's a fantastic choice to guide U.S. foreign policy.

Who's against Chuck?

By Mustang Bobby 

The New York Times looked into the groups that are mounting ad campaigns against the nomination of former Sen. Chuck Hagel to be Secretary of Defense: 

A brand new conservative group calling itself Americans for a Strong Defense and financed by anonymous donors is running advertisements urging Democratic senators in five states to vote against Chuck Hagel, President Obama's nominee to be secretary of defense, saying he would make the United States "a weaker country."

The blitz against Mr. Hagel is of a sort that has generally been reserved for elections and some Supreme Court nominations.

Another freshly minted and anonymously backed organization, Use Your Mandate, which presents itself as a liberal gay rights group but purchases its television time through a prominent Republican firm, is attacking Mr. Hagel as "anti-Gay," "anti-woman" and "anti-Israel" in ads and mailers.

Those groups are joining at least five others that are organizing to stop Mr. Hagel's confirmation, a goal even they acknowledge appears to be increasingly challenging. But the effort comes with a built-in consolation prize should it fail: depleting some of Mr. Obama's political capital as he embarks on a new term with fresh momentum.

I get the first group; they sound like the kind that would crop up when a RINO runs for any kind of office, and they're probably financed by the Koch brothers, who have nothing better to do.

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Hooray for Hagel?

By Frank Moraes 

I think it is time again to discuss Chuck Hagel. I've been reasonably positive about Obama's nomination of Hagel for Secretary of Defense. My main problem is just that I don't like the optics of it: Republican presidents always have Republicans at this post, but this will be Obama's second of three who are Republicans. As Michael has asked, "Is no Democrat good enough?"

Unfortunately, I'm afraid that is the wrong question. The Secretary of Defense is nominated by the president you have, not the president you wish you had. This is who Obama is: a man dedicated to seeming more reasonable than anyone else. It is actually, one of his least admirable qualities. It speaks of a man who cares more about appearances than accomplishments. But I don't doubt that this is who he is. From the start I thought he was a man with very centrist beliefs. If it were 40 years ago, he would certainly be a Republican.

By far, the best argument that I've heard in favor of Hagel comes from committed discontent Eric Alterman in "Hooray for Hagel." I am in agreement with him. There is nothing that makes me want Hagel confirmed as much as the neoconservative push against him. The idea that Hagel will not be a lackey of Israel and won't push for war with Iran makes him perhaps more compelling than most Democrats.

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Scary Jack Lew

By Frank Moraes 

Let us give a little thought to Jack Lew. Obama has nominated him to replace Tim Geithner as Treasury Secretary. The Republicans are afraid -- very afraid. How can Obama choose Jack Lew?! 

And he is a scary guy, I can tell you that. Last year, Eric Cantor told Politico, "No one was more prepared and more in tune with the numbers than Jack Lew." This was in an article titled, "Jack Lew: A Liberal GOP Says It Trusts." So you know: this is Freddy Krueger scary. No. Wait. Not Freddy Krueger scary; Kermit the Frog scary. When it comes to Obama nominees, it doesn't take much to scare the Republicans. 

Jonathan Bernstein over at The Plum Line tells us that Jeff Sessions (fucktard from Alabama) is against Lew becoming Treasury Secretary. But not because Lew is a drunk or a philanderer. No, Sessions thinks he doesn't have the "gavitas" for the job. What this means is just that he's against him because that's what you do to all the nominations of a Democratic president -- especialla un oo's a colored. Bernstein is nicer: "Or, as Kevin Drum figures, it's just that Lew insists on using real math during budget negotiations." That's even worse: a edacated colored's nominee.

Bernstein argues that the real problem is that congressional Republicans have abandoned norms. Until Obama was elected, it was accepted that the president should be allowed to have the cabinet that he chose. But no longer. 

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Mike Huckabee is an idiot extraordinaire

By Michael J.W. Stickings

Seriously:

Former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee slammed the president and Democrats for their "war on women" campaign rhetoric — observing that Obama's second term Cabinet is likely to include few women.

"Now a lot of those females who supported Barack Obama are scratching their heads, and they're saying, 'Whoa! How come there is so much testosterone in the Obama Cabinet and so little estrogen?'" the Arkansas Republican said on his radio program Wednesday. "Because if you look around, all of these high-powered appointments that he is making are all white guys."

Since when is a right-wing theocrat like Huckabee, or really any Republican concerned about diversity, whether it's race or sex or anything else? And really, what women bring to the table is... estrogen?

Perhaps someone ought to remind him of the vicious Republican assault on Susan Rice.

The problem with John Brennan

By Michael J.W. Stickings

The focus yesterday was on Chuck Hagel, whom President Obama tapped for defense secretary, but the president's nominee for post-Petraeus CIA director, White House insider and key Obama advisor John Brennan, deserves some attention as well, because it says a lot -- a lot that isn't good -- about Obama's national security values and priorities.

While I continue to object to Hagel's nomination, I don't object to Hagel himself. He's a conservative Republican, but his record on U.S. militarism over the past decade has been extremely good, turning on the Iraq War when it was rather unpopular to do so, particularly for a Republican, and proving to be an admirable realist in his approach to the military. (As something of a liberal interventionist, I find his realism admirable but hardly sufficient. But I'll take his realism over the right-wing militarism you find among the neocons. That's an easy call.)

Indeed, my problem with the nomination is not so much that it's going to Hagel but that it's going to a Republican when there are strong Democratic alternatives, including especially Michèle Flournoy, who would be just as good, if not better. As Jon Chait pointed out yesterday, the only thing that really sets Hagel apart is the fact that he's been the target of a vicious smear campaign led by neocon Bill Kristol. Although, to be fair, he does have other things going for him as well, including the fact that he's a vet and that he has a strong relationship with both Obama and Vice President Biden. 

Anyway, my point is that whatever my concerns I can accept Hagel at the Pentagon. He'll be fine. Far more troubling is Brennan's appointment, which suggests once more that the president's objective is not just to continue the Bush-Cheney national security state but to extend and expand it (even if on at least one key issue, torture, he has pulled back).

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Obama can have Hagel, but...

By Frank Moraes

My colleague Michael J.W. Stickings makes what I think is the strongest case against Obama's pick of Chuck Hagel as secretary of defense, "Obama Misses Opportunity With Hagel Nomination." Basically, the optics are all wrong on this. Why is our Democratic president yet again picking a Republican as defense secretary? I think I know: Obama cares more about his legacy than he does the legacy of his party.

Despite decades of shrill and incompetent military policy from Republicans, the American people still consider them strong on national security. Of course, one could use this to argue that it doesn't matter who Obama nominates. If 9/11, Iraq, and Afghanistan weren't enough to change perceptions, what difference would a Republican defense secretary nomination make? But I think it does matter. The ineptitude of the Bush Jr years have made the Republican footing on national security much less firm.

Glenn Greenwald has been boosting for Hagel for a long time. In his most recent writing on the subject he deals with liberal displeasure with the (then) upcoming nomination, "Chuck Hagel and Liberals: What Are the Priorities?" He argues that there are two liberal complaints and that neither is very strong. First, there is the claim that Hagel is anti-gay. Greenwald rightly points out that this is long in the past and that he has apologized for it. The second is the optics concern of Michael's and mine. To this Greenwald points out that the current defense secretary, Leon Panetta, is a strong Democrat.

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Obama misses opportunity with Hagel nomination

By Michael J.W. Stickings

So former Republican Sen. Chuck Hagel of Nebraska, still a Republican, is President Obama's pick to be the next secretary of defense (though his confirmation by the Senate is hardly a sure thing).

I must say, I'm disappointed. I wrote about the rumors a while back, objecting to Hagel, but I was hoping that it was just a trial balloon and that the president would instead nominate Michèle Flournoy, under secretary of defense for policy (the Pentagon's #3 position) from 2009-12 and one of Obama's chief campaign advisors and spokespeople last year.

It's not that I dislike Hagel. Though a fairly conservative Republican, he's a realist who broke with his party's warmongering militarism during Bush's misadventure in Iraq. And it's not that I think Flournoy is that much better. She's much more progressive, to be sure, but she's also a pragmatic policy wonk who is very much a part of the national security establishment. (What is needed, I think, is a reformer with progressive views and a pragmatic touch. Flournoy comes fairly close, which is why I like her.)

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Worst Democrat of the Day: Heidi Heitkamp, pro-NRA gun nut

By Michael J.W. Stickings

When it comes to elections to legislative bodies, partisans often just count the numbers: Do we have more they they do? In a way, that's all that matters.

And so it was for Democrats back in November. We wanted to keep the Senate, and perhaps even to pick up a seat or two, and that meant supporting Democrats who weren't exactly progressive. It was the party affiliation that mattered, just like it is for sports fans rooting for the jersey.

Heidi Heitkamp, running to keep retiring Byron Dorgan's North Dakota seat on our side of the ledger, was one of those Democrats. She won, and we cheered her victory if only because it meant another Democratic seat, and even if she wasn't all that great, at least the Republicans didn't take it.

Now, to be sure, you have to put up with less progressive Democrats, or even anti-progressive ones, if you want to win in solidly red states like North Dakota. And furthermore, Heitkamp was preferable by far to her Republican opponent, the far-right Rick Berg -- I suppose even a generally conservative Democrat like Heitkamp is (usually) better than a Republican.

But that really doesn't make it all okay, and her comments about, and against, gun control this morning only serve to prove the point that there are some awful Democrats out there.

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WaPo hit piece on Hagel

By Frank Moraes

(Ed. note: Hagel is also being targeted by Billy Kristol and the neocons, of course, basically because he doesn't gleefully fellate Israel. I'm still not sold on Hagel, and I doubt I ever will be, but this just makes me like him all the more. -- MJWS)

I've had my problems with the idea of Chuck Hagel as the new Defense Secretary. Why is it not possible to have a liberal? Why does Obama continue to try to court the right by having Republicans in his cabinet? But The Washington Post has a different take on this in an editorial, "Chuck Hagel is not the right choice for defense secretary." According to them, Hagel is to the left of Obama, and that's a bad thing.

So what are Hagel's sins? First, they claim that nominating a Republican is only done in the name of bipartisanship. Somehow they don't even consider that maybe Republicans of only a few years ago are now to the left of our current president. That can't be. Obama's choice of Hagel would only be to make nice with the right and so he apparently has to pick someone like Allen West.

The biggest problem for The Washington Post is that Hagel thinks going to war with Iran is a bad idea. "Mr. Obama may be forced to contemplate military action if Iran refuses to negotiate..." But the Post does not know how Hagel would act in that situation. Regardless, he would be pursuing Obama's agenda, not his own.
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Kerry gets State

By Michael J.W. Stickings

With Susan Rice having pulled out of contention, thereby avoiding a contentious confirmation process, it looks like John Kerry will get the Obama administration gig he's always wanted, secretary of state.

Basically, instead of getting Rice at State and Kerry at Defense, we're going to get Kerry at State and Chuck Hagel at Defense.

Which combination is preferable? I preferred Kerry over Rice at State all along, because I have such enormous respect for him and think he's much more progressive and independent-minded than Rice (even if I backed Rice fully when Republicans went after her over Benghazi), but I'm generally mixed about Hagel at the Pentagon. He's fine, as far as Republicans go, but why appoint a Republican at all? You wouldn't find a Republican president appointing a Democrat to such a senior position, and surely there's a Democrat Obama could appoint instead.

I get that these positions usually go to establishment insiders who won't threaten the whole military-industrial status quo, or whatever we want to call it these days, and I suppose Hagel is enough of a cautious realist not to get pulled in dangerously militaristic ways, but still. This is Obama's chance to remake key government departments along more liberal-progressive lines. Unsurprisingly, given that he's awfully establishmentarian himself, it looks like he doesn't care to do anything of the kind.

So what's preferable? How about Kerry at State and a (liberal) Democrat at Defense? There's still hope.

Hagel to the Pentagon, Kerry to Foggy Bottom?

By Michael J.W. Stickings

Bloomberg reports:

Former Republican Senator Chuck Hagel has emerged as the leading candidate to become President Barack Obama's next secretary of defense and may be nominated as soon as this month, according to two people familiar with the matter.

Hagel, who served as an enlisted Army infantryman in Vietnam, has passed the vetting process at the White House Counsel's office, said one of the people. The former Nebraska senator has told associates that he is awaiting final word from the president, said the other person. Both requested anonymity to discuss personnel matters. 

***** 

Obama invited Hagel, 66, to the White House on Dec. 4 to discuss the position with him, according to an administration official. The president hasn't made a final decision, said another official. Both asked for anonymity to discuss internal deliberations.

There's a lot of anonymous sourcing going on here, but I suppose it's a credible report. And I suppose that as far as establishment figures go Hagel wouldn't be a bad choice, particularly if John Kerry ends up getting State now that Susan Rice has pulled out of contention. (And I much prefer Kerry at State than Rice. He's also an establishment figure, of course, but I think he's more of an independent thinker than she is.)

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Bradley Manning's crime

By Frank Moraes

There are things that make me so angry that I tend not even to write about them. I suspect that some readers will find this amusing, because I seem to be angry much of the time. And that's true, so what I just said should be given the proper amount of weight. One of those things is the pretend Benghazi scandal. I have to give the Republicans high marks for tenacity, but this is simply an outrage. There is no scandal in this matter and people like McCain are losing much of their unearned credibility.

An issue that makes me even more angry is almost everything about the Bradley Manning case. The worst that any reasonable person can say about this young man is that he should have done a better job of being a whistleblower. And I agree. But he's a kid. And he is a classic whistle blower: a disillusioned true believer. Perhaps he should be punished, but surely he has already been punished enough.

The more we know about the military justice system's treatment of this kid, the more disgusting it is. There is no doubt that the military are trying to send a strong message to any other potential whistle blower: we will torture you long before we prove that you've done anything wrong. For that is what has been going on: the military has been torturing Bradley Manning. Of course, it isn't just to send a message; they have also been hoping that he would roll over on Julian Assange.

Glenn Greenwald published an article in The Guardian Friday, "Bradley Manning: a Tale of Liberty Lost in America." In it, he gives a really good overview of the case in a very short article. But he makes a really stark contrast between how the current administration has chosen to dispense justice:

Compare this aggressive prosecution of Manning to the Obama administration's vigorous efforts to shield Bush-era war crimes and massive Wall Street fraud from all forms of legal accountability. Not a single perpetrator of those genuine crimes has faced court under Obama, a comparison that reflects the priorities and values of US justice.

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Rice and Benghazi: Why is this so fucking hard for Republicans to understand?

By Michael J.W. Stickings

And so the Republican obsession with the tragic Benghazi attack and its aftermath -- and specfically with comments Ambassador Susan Rice made on the Sunday talk shows about how the attack wasn't pre-meditated (and so not a planned act of terrorism) -- continues. Rice met with key Republicans on Capitol Hill the past couple of days, but apparently the meetings didn't go well. Or, at least, these key Republicans didn't emerge from the meetings content with what they heard:

The Wednesday meeting in a secure briefing room in the Capitol basement came a day after a similar sit-down Rice had with three key voices on foreign policy and defense issues went terribly wrong. GOP Sens. John McCain, Lindsey Graham and Kelly Ayotte, all members of the Armed Services Committee, said they were more "troubled" about the Benghazi affair than they had been before their meeting with Rice.

And Graham and Ayotte went so far as to say they would place a hold on her possible nomination.

And this gang of three was joined by one of the Beltway's overhyped "moderates":

Even Sen. Susan Collins of Maine, just the type of moderate Republican who might help break a filibuster on a nomination, said there were still too many questions about why Rice incorrectly characterized the Sept. 11 assault in five Sunday talk show interviews as the result of spontaneous protests at the same time the Libyan president was calling it a terrorist attack.

"I don't understand why she would not at least qualify her response to that question," Collins told reporters after emerging from a 75-minute, closed-door meeting with Rice.

Troubled... don't understand...

Seriously, are they fucking stupid?

I've said this before, but I'll say it again: "On Benghazi, it's desperately partisan Republicans vs. Obama, the CIA, and the facts."


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