You cannot take the Republicans at their word in a witch hunt

by digby

On MSNBC today, Huffington Post’s Sam Stein, who is a great reporter and not a Villager in any way, defended the idea that the email controversy has produced some valuable new information about how Clinton reacted in the aftermath of the attacks (i.e. lied for PR purposes or some such.) He said that the “revelation” yesterday that Clinton’s emails show she told something different to the Prime Minister of Egypt than she told others does add to our understanding of events. Journalist Kurt Eichenwald begged to differ in a big way and for very good reason:

I’m going to interrupt here, because that was not uncovered in the emails. That was from notes that were produced to the House Intelligence Committee that are in the House Intelligence Committee Report. And what was also clear from the House Intelligence Committee Report was that the intelligence went back and forth three times in the course of 24 hours. And so when Hillary Clinton was talking to the president of Egypt, at that time, she was reciting what the intelligence was .At that time. 12 hours later it was different. 12 hours later after that it was different again. But that was not from Hillary Clinton’s emails.

Eichenwald has studied all the intelligence reports and the committee hearing transcripts and knows the information backwards and forwards. This is what’s required if you want to truly understand the way these sorts of scandals are constructed.

I don’t know if those Republicans yesterday believed they had unearthed new information or if they were lying (I suspect the latter) but it’s up to reporters to b very skeptical whenever Republicans are dribbling out these “revelations.” They lie, they distort and they misdirect.

I realize that the last thing any reporter wants to be is a Clinton simp. You might end up like Sidney Blumenthal. But still, if you want to be able to call yourself a journalist with integrity you have to go the extra mile and make very, very sure that what sounds like something nefarious is what it seems. And I mean a very, very thorough extra mile. These people have been doing this stuff for decades and they’re very good.

Eichenwald has written an important piece on this for Newsweek and I hope that reporters who give a damn will take it seriously. This is for real:

But, as they have time and again, the Republicans on the Benghazi committee released deceitful information for what was undoubtedly part of a campaign–as Kevin McCarthy of the House Republican leadership has admitted–to drive down Clinton’s poll numbers.

[…]

The historical significance of this moment can hardly be overstated, and it seems many Republicans, Democrats and members of the media don’t fully understand the magnitude of what is taking place. The awesome power of government–one that allows officials to pore through almost anything they demand and compel anyone to talk or suffer the shame of taking the Fifth Amendment–has been unleashed for purely political purposes. It is impossible to review what the Benghazi committee has done as anything other than taxpayer-funded political research of the opposing party’s leading candidate for president. Comparisons from America’s past are rare. Richard Nixon’s attempts to use the IRS to investigate his perceived enemies come to mind. So does Senator Joseph McCarthy’s red-baiting during the 1950s, with reckless accusations of treason leveled at members of the State Department, military generals and even the secretary of the Army. But the modern McCarthys of the Benghazi committee cannot perform this political theater on their own–they depend on reporters to aid in the attempts to use government for the purpose of destroying others with bogus “scoops” ladled out by members of Congress and their staffs. These journalists will almost certainly join the legions of shamed reporters of the McCarthy era as it becomes increasingly clear they are enablers of an obscene attempt to undermine the electoral process.

[…]

Unlike almost every congressional committee investigation in history, the [Committee Chairman Trey Gowdy] has insisted that much of the relevant questioning be conducted behind closed doors.

[…]

The other reason to keep the testimony secret has rapidly become clear: so that they can selectively–and often incorrectly–portray to reporters what was said in the statements.

[…]

Other false stories repeatedly found their way into the press. There was the “criminal investigation of Hillary Clinton” article that appeared in The New York Times; once the story was knocked down, the Times sheepishly acknowledged its sources included officials from Congress. (The “Clinton is under criminal investigation” story has continued; she’s not.) The Daily Beast falsely reported that Blumenthal testified he was in Libya on the day of the Benghazi attack.

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Only half the population

by digby

Get ready for the next circus

by digby

John Boehner has convened a Benghazi for Planned Parenthood:

Speaker Boehner names members to the newly-created House Select Cmte investigating Planned Parenthood: pic.twitter.com/XA9mxkexds

— Frank Thorp V (@frankthorpNBC) October 23, 2015

This one should be really awesome.  I’m looking forward to hearing  a lot of dishonest “testimony” from religious zealots lying for the Lord.  And pictures of bloody body parts. Many, many pictures of bloody body parts.  They love that.

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Hurricane Patricia: Strongest Storm Ever Measured to Hit Mexico

by Gaius Publius

This can’t be good:

Hurricane Patricia became the strongest storm ever measured on the planet early Friday, with experts warning it could trigger 40-foot waves along Mexico’s coast and “life-threatening” flash flooding.

More than 7 million residents were told to prepare for the “worst-case scenario” as Patricia was expected to race ashore on Mexico’s Pacific coast between 6 p.m. and 10 p.m. ET Friday. The tourist magnets of Puerto Vallarta and Manzanillo were directly in the Category 5 storm’s projected path.

Packing 200 mph winds, the U.S. National Hurricane Center described Patricia as the “strongest hurricane on record” in the Atlantic and eastern North Pacific Basins. …

NBC News meteorologist Bill Karins warned that Patricia would be “the most devastating storm to ever hit Mexico” with “catastrophic damage” likely between the posh resort of Puerto Vallarta and the bustling port city of Manzanillo.

For comparison:

Typhoon Haiyan, which devastated the Philippines in 2013, made landfall with 190 mph winds. Patricia is poised to surpass that record, Karins said.

Does the obvious need saying?

GP

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The Benghazi snake eats its tail
by Tom Sullivan

What used to be called movement conservatism took off Ronald Reagan’s presidency. “Real Americans” decided that any Democrat in the White House is illegitimate – and any law, and any court ruling with which they disagree. Members insist on calling the Democratic Party the Democrat Party – emphasis on RAT. Looking to take down Bill Clinton, they paid investigators in Arkansas to dig dirt on him soon after he took office. They ginned up a score of faux scandals, allegations, and internet rumors, culminating with Clinton’s impeachment in 1998. Clinton presided over an economy about which Republicans should have crowed, but because it wasn’t one of their own in the White House, that too was illegitimate.

Top Republican leaders held a private dinner at the Caucus Room in Georgetown to discuss how to destroy Barack Obama’s presidency on the night of his inauguration in 2009. Next came Birtherism, racist images, slurs, the Tea Party, and new voting restrictions in nearly two dozen states. A half dozen GOP lawmakers and Sarah Palin suggested impeachment for Obama.

A year before the 2016 election, a Texas Republican congressman suggested that Hillary Clinton is “subject to impeachment” the day she takes office. This movement has no use for democracy if it cannot control the outcome.

Plenty of pixels and print this morning cover the outcome of “Tea Party Trey” Gowdy’s eleven-hour interrogation yesterday of Hillary Clinton before the House Benghazi Committee. Simon Maloy at Salon writes:

All in all it was a bust for Gowdy and the Benghazi committee, to the point that conservative pundits were griping about how poorly the Republicans fared against Clinton. Anyone who doubted that the committee was a partisan exercise in Clinton-bashing came away free of doubts.

Perhaps Gowdy’s committee itself should be investigated for spending public funds on what is either
an illegal Republican campaign expenditure against Clinton or an illegitimate “in-kind donation to her presidential campaign.”

Paul Rosenberg’s post deriding “constitutional conservatism” (a code word for T-party) before the hearing even ended nailed the inherent fraud in the conservatives’ posturing:

Take, for example, Michael Peroutka, a GOP county commissioner in Anne Arundel County, Maryland, a past leader of the League of the South, and the 2004 presidential candidate of the aforementioned Constitution Party. I wrote about Peroutka in 2014, before he was elected. Among other things, Peroutka believes that government bodies who don’t act as he’d like can simply be deemed illegitimate, and be ignored. I quoted from a story by Frederick Clarkson:

The day after the primary, Peroutka issued a pronouncement that is likely to make his fellow Republicans, to say the very least, uneasy. In his regular broadcast of “The American View,” he suggested that all of the laws of the state of Maryland may be invalid, because the state legislature is an invalid body of government for having considered initiatives that, in his view, “violate God’s Law.”

“For the past few years,” Peroutka declared, “the behavior of the legislature in my home state of Maryland raises the question whether the people of Maryland may be justified in reaching the conclusion that what we call our ‘General Assembly’ is no longer a valid legislative body.

And if the case can be made that the legislature of Maryland or of your state is not a valid body, then, it follows that no validity should be given to any of its enactments.”

That’s some constitutional principle! But that’s only part of an intricate alternative reality version of American constitutional law. And it’s only an example of a much broader tendency among those who like calling themselves “constitutional conservatives.”

Maybe Real Americans are “Unicornstitutional conservatives,” as Josh Marshall brilliantly suggests:

Related but by no means synonymous with the US constitution, the Unicornstitution exists as a sort of ersatz Platonic ideal form of the Constitution which exists in the ether and is ready at hand to give a big thumbs up and attaboy and ‘you go girl’ to whatever crazy bullshit thing you already decided to do, especially if you’re really angry and stupid and fundamentally see life in America as as matter of other undeserving people taking away your stuff and your not being able to do anything about it.

This is related to a point I made earlier this year (“No. Sorry. You’re not a constitutional conservative.”) But it goes a bit beyond that – the desire to wrap every completely nutball idea you have onto the Constitution. Because generally because …

As Rosenberg notes, they must repeatedly reinvent themselves each time one of their cockeyed theories goes publicly haywire and Americans are “painful reminded what conservative governance looks and feels like.” The hearings yesterday are the latest reminder, and a cue to a movement in shambles that it is time for yet another reinvention. Maybe next time instead of a coiled snake, a snake eating its own tail.

What does The Donald think about the hearings?

by digby

I knew you’d be dying to know what the GOP frontrunner for president had to say about what we watched all day today. He spoke with CNN’s expert commentator Hugh Hewitt, who fed him all the talking points he’ll need. (Great hire, by the way. Hewitt’s a real catch.)

HH: Let me begin with former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. Have you had a chance to watch any of today’s hearings?

DT: No, I want to get your input, because I actually watched her first five minutes, and then I had to go, because I had a big meeting. And I thought her opening remarks really looked bad, but I don’t know. I have not been hearing positive things. How is she doing?

HH: Terribly. There are smoking guns all over the place. It’s an armory of smoking guns. Let me play for you one exchange. This is Congressman Mike Pompeo talking to her, Donald Trump, about security at the embassy.

MP: Do you know how many security requests there were in the 1st quarter of 2012?

HRC: For everyone or for Benghazi?

MP: For, I’m sorry, yes, ma’am, related to Benghazi and Libya. Do you know how many there were?

HRC: No, I do not know.

MP: Ma’am, there were just over a hundred-plus. In the 2nd quarter, do you know how many there were?

HRC: No, I do not.

MP: Ma’am, there were 172ish. Might have been 171 or 173. That’s…how many were there in July and August, and then that week and a few days before the attacks, do you know?

HRC: There were a number of them. I know that.

MP: Yes, ma’am, 83, by our count. That’s over 600 requests. You’ve testified here this morning that you had none of those reach your desk. Is that correct also?

HRC: That’s correct.

MP: Madame Secretary, Mr. Blumenthal wrote you 150 emails. It appears from the materials that we’ve read that all of those reached your desk.

HH: What do you make of that, Donald Trump?

DT: Wow, that’s unbelievable. That sounds pretty amazing. So these were requests for protection, essentially?

HH: Yes.

DT: Wow, that’s not good. So hundreds and hundreds of requests? I would say that doesn’t sound so good. I mean, I just saw, you know, it was very interesting, because I did have to leave, and I watched maybe five or six minutes, maybe ten minutes, her opening remarks, and the way she was reading them, it sounded terrible. The whole thing sounded terrible. And I thought, I was very, I was so looking forward, and I am looking forward, actually. You know, I’m going to Florida. I’m doing a big thing at Doral tomorrow, like thousands of people, and we’re going to have 15,000 people in Jacksonville, Florida. I said I have to go back upstairs. I don’t want to watch this hearing. But I can get, from you, I’ll get better than watching it. That’s the thing I like about you. So you think that, I mean, you think that she is not doing well?

HH: I think she’s doing terrible, and there’s one aspect I want to go to your Art of the Deal experience.

DT: Okay.

HH: She has listened to the [Congressmen] with her hand on her face, with her head, you know, cocked to one side contemptuously throughout hours and hours of testimony. When you see that at a negotiation, Donald Trump, what does that tell you?

DT: Well, I think she’s trying to feign boredom, but I think she probably wants to just get out of there. It really, you know, sort of indicates two things. But she’s trying to feign disdain and boredom. And it just sounded to me, I have other friends that have been watching it very studiously today, and they are really surprised. You know, when I watched Trey Gowdy on, I think it was Face The Nation this weekend, it sounded to me like he was not going to go after her that much, Hugh, because he was sort of saying well, we have other people, and she’s just a small part of it. It sounded to me like he was pulling back. But as I’m hearing it today, they’re not pulling back at all. They’re really going into it, and I’m just hearing she’s looking very bad. 

Maybe Biden did the wrong thing getting out yesterday.

HH: Maybe he did. Here is a second, the smoking gun exchange. This is Ohio Congressman Jim Jordan with the former Secretary of State.

JJ: In that email you sent to your family, here’s what you said at 11:00 that night, approximately one hour after you told the American people it was a video, you say to your family two officers were killed today in Benghazi by an al Qaeda-like group. So you tell the American people one thing, you tell your family an entirely different story. Also, on the night of the attack, you had a call with the president of Libya. Here’s what you said to him. Ansar al-Sharia is claiming responsibility. It’s interesting. Mr. Khattala, one of the guys arrested and charged, actually belonged to that group. And finally, and most significantly, the next day, within 24 hours, you had a conversation with the Egyptian prime minister. You told him this. We know the attack in Libya had nothing to do with the film. It was a planned attack, not a protest. Let me read that one more time…

HH: Now Donald Trump, Lindsey Graham has called these the smoking gun emails.

DT: Yeah, well, it’s…

HH: What do you think?

DT: …certainly a part of it. It’s certainly a part of it, and it’s so different than what she’s been saying for so long. So that’s a problem for her. Wow. Very interesting.

HH: Do you think when you lose…

DT: You must be, you must find this very interesting, I would say, as a student. You must find this very interesting.

HH: Oh, I think her credibility is shattered, and I wonder, once you lose credibility, how do you get it back, Donald Trump?

DT: It’s very hard. It’s very hard, especially when you lose it in such a public forum. You know, a lot people are watching and want to watch it, and they’re going to be going home tonight, like me, and they want to devour it. And they want to see what’s going on. And I mean, just from the little bit that you’ve played for me. And plus, there’s a level of, you know, the questions are tough. They’re tough. The way they’re put is very tough. And…

HH: Let me ask you this. This is also occurred to me.

DT: I think it’s amazing.

HH: …as appropriate for Donald Trump. Lots of people want to get to you. Obviously, you’ve got hundreds of thousands of people want to get to you. They want you in their deals. They want your name, etc. If someone like Sidney Blumenthal gets through to you 130 times, and you respond to them, does that person have standing? Should we as an outsider say that person has standing with Donald Trump, or in this case, with Hillary?

DT: Yes, that person, that person has great standing, and Blumenthal obviously had great standing. Most people are not able to get through. I’d say 99.9, most people are not able to get through to somebody like Hillary. He gets through, and from what everybody tells me, this is not a good person. And this is not a person that she should be dealing with. And I think the President, as I remember from seeing it a long time ago, didn’t they even request that she not deal with him? They don’t like him.

HH: Yes.

DT: They don’t want him dealing with her? So she’s doing that behind the President’s back, and in theory, she’s working with the President and for the President. So I think that’s amazing, and I noticed how much he seemed, the access he seemed to have to her. And has that come up, yet, today?

HH: Oh, yeah, quite a lot. Sidney Blumenthal is in this hearing more than Ambassador Stevens is in this hearing.

DT: Wow.

HH: And it just goes to the fact that he basically owns a private channel. And does anyone have that to you, Donald Trump? If you’re the president of the United States, does anyone have a back channel to you that we should know about going in?

DT: I would say Ivanka, Ivanka Trump, okay?

HH: (laughing)

DT: Maybe nobody else. You know, it’s amazing, and what really amazed me is the level of hatred and I think distrust and everything else that the President had for Blumenthal. You know, it’s really surprising that she’d do that, because she actually, I thought somewhere along the line, sort of indicated like she wouldn’t be dealing with him much anymore.

HH: She did. Let me talk to you about secret servers, because the CIA director’s email’s been hacked. She had a secret server. These emails are now appearing. Are your emails at the Trump operation, and your servers’ protected? Does the private sector have an advantage here over government contracting?

DT: They’re in theory very secure, but you know, honestly, my emails are so boring, I would release them tomorrow. My emails are not exciting, and I’m not a big fan of the email stuff. You know, I’ve seen so many people have problems because of emails. I’ve watched it. And you know, going a step further, I’m not sure, I have a son who’s 9 years old. He’s so good with computers. And I’m not sure with computers that you know, as wonderful as they are in so many different ways, you know, we’re talking about technology. In the old days, when you wanted to attack, you’d have a courier with armed guards, and you’d have an envelope, and you’d give it to the general, right?

HH: Right.

DT: Now, you send it to the general, and you don’t have, you have no idea how many people are watching and reading, they’re, you know, they’re hacking your messages. It’s really pretty, I think MacArthur would not like the whole concept of computers. You understand what I mean. There are so many brilliant people out there that understand the innards of these machines, and when you look at heads of agencies that have been totally hacked, and I mean totally hacked, and I guess there was one yesterday or the day before where some young kid was hacking top people in different agencies.

HH: Yup.

DT: I mean, that’s pretty sad stuff. I’m not sure that you could stop it, to be honest with you.

HH: So are you going to, are you assuming that everything…

DT: I think computers are very, when you talk about lack of security, I think there’s a great lack of security with computers, I’ll tell you.

HH: Are you assuming that everything that you put on an email, or you put into a direct message, is public?

DT: I assume that.

HH: All right, that’s a good rule.

DT: And it’s totally illegal for people to do things about it, but I assume that when I send out emails, and when I sent, which are very seldom, frankly, I’m not a big believer. I like to do it as little as possible. But I assume that they’re being looked at by other people.

Benghazi recap

by digby

This pretty much sums up the Republicans today:

This sums up Clinton’s response:

Cruz is true blue. The truest and the bluest.

by digby

Cruz making the conservative case:

Cruz is attempting to appeal to conservatives who are displeased with government and the Republican Party establishment. Voters in Iowa told ThinkProgress they admire Cruz’s willingness to fight back against the Washington elite.

“He’s fought a lot against Congress when they were wrong,” Keokuk resident Joyce Schevers told ThinkProgress. “He had the guts to get up and fight.”

Schevers said she’s “very disgusted” with most Congressional Republicans who have lost their conservative values and voted with Democrats. “I’m glad that Boehner stepped down because he voted with Obama a lot and he didn’t even fight,” Shevers, who identifies as a member of the Tea Party, continued. “That’s what’s so frustrating. The Republicans won by promising this and that, and they didn’t fight.”

Fort Madison, Iowa resident Tom Schulz, who said that he has “nothing in common with the establishment Republican Party,” called Cruz “potentially the next Ronald Reagan.”

“The Republican establishment absolutely despised Ronald Reagan,” he told ThinkProgress. “Very much the same dynamic you see today. I think it’s a repeat, although I think Cruz is maybe a little deeper than Reagan in his understanding of how the Washington machine works.”

The latest Monmouth University poll puts Ted Cruz in third place with ten percent of Republicans saying they’d support him for the GOP nomination, leading all of the 11 other “establishment” candidates who together hold just 25 percent support. The only candidates currently leading Cruz — Donald Trump and Ben Carson — have never held political office.

That same poll showed that Tea Party supporters, many of whom make up Cruz’s base, have a much more negative view of the party than other Republicans. Fifty-nine percent of Tea Party supporters say the party is doing a bad job.

The Republican Party’s dissatisfaction with Washington is a direct reflection of Congress’ inability to follow through on its commitments, Cruz said. While other members of Congress will campaign on the promise they will do something — like defund Planned Parenthood or repeal Obamacare — they quickly give up their demands to compromise with the party establishment and with Democrats in Congress.

On the campaign trail, Cruz is tirelessly repeating the point that he stands up for what he believes in and follows through on promises. In Kalona, Iowa, he said that Trump’s candidacy has been “immensely beneficial for our campaign” because he has “helped frame the central question of this primary as: who will stand up to Washington?”

“Well if that’s the central question, the natural next question is who actually has stood up to Washington?” he said, to cheers from the crowd. “I can’t think of a better question for the Republican Party to be decided on than that one.”

Cruz’s ability to tout his record of standing up to Washington has helped him on the campaign trail and has put him in a good position to await Trump and Carson’s fade. “At the same time the Trump shine is starting to fade, Cruz could be positioned to become the candidate vehicle that the most conservative voters rally behind,” GOP pundit Kevin Madden told the Wall Street Journal.

FWIW, I’ve been saying this for a while. Don’t count this guy out.

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Taxpayer funded political witch hunts are an abuse of power


by digby

New CNN poll:

The vast majority of the American public believes that the Republican-led House Select Committee on Benghazi is politically motivated, according to a CNN/ORC poll released Thursday morning.

The poll, which came out the day that former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton testified before the committee about her involvement in the 2012 attacks on the U.S. consulate in Benghazi, found that a whopping 72 percent of Americans think the panel’s primary purpose is political gain. In contrast, 23 percent said the investigation was objective.

A surprising number of Republicans—49 percent—acknowledged that the panel is intent on scoring political points against Clinton, the current frontrunner in the Democratic presidential race, with 85 percent of Democrats and 75 percent of independents agreeing.

So, people understand what’s going on here.What they seem not to understand is that if this is true, it is an abuse of power. It is unethical to use taxpayers money for political purposes. And it is illegal to use congressional subpoena power to go after your political opponents, which is what they have done.

Taxpayer funded political witch hunts are crimes.

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The conservative movement old bulls still see the big picture

by digby

My piece for Salon today:

Long live the conservative puppet master: Why Grover Norquist is still more destructive than the House GOP

The GOP’s Freedom Caucus has successfully hijacked Congress—but Norquist is still an unmatched figure on the right

• by Heather Digby Parton 
•  Oct. 22, 2015 
•  6 min read 
•  original