Orange Alert Because Of Snowden?

Cannonfire: "Has Uncle Sam partnered up with Al Qaeda?"

...As I suspected would happen, we're seeing stories designed to emphasize the wonderful, heroic efforts of our noble NSA eavesdroppers, thereby justifying the great anti-Snowden campaign.

Remember the heightened terrorist "threat level" alerts throughout the 2004 campaign? Remember how those orange alerts completely disappeared after the election? ...

O Not Behind IRS

Democrat: IRS testimony shows no White House involvement - chicagotribune.com:

A conservative Republican overseeing Internal Revenue Service screeners in Cincinnati told congressional investigators that he does not believe the White House was behind IRS scrutiny of conservative groups, a leading Democratic lawmaker said on Sunday...

No Talking From IRS Official

IRS' Lerner says did nothing wrong, refuses to answer questions | Reuters:

The Internal Revenue Service official at the center of a tax scandal about extra scrutiny of conservative groups told a congressional hearing on Wednesday she had done nothing wrong but asserted her constitutional right not to answer questions...

Mole At ABC

Expect no less from the Kingdom of Mouse.

A Right-Wing Mole at ABC News — FAIR: Fairness & Accuracy In Reporting:

...Conservatives don’t just complain loudly, endlessly and inaccurately about liberal media bias. They also train right-leaning journalists to make their way into the supposedly hostile terrain of Beltway media. And one of the most famous alums of a conservative media training program is now a major star at a network news outlet: ABC’s senior political correspondent Jonathan Karl.

Backfiring Scandals

Scandals Backfire on Republicans as Obama's Approval Ratings Go Up:

Despite the many attempts by Republicans to generate a scandal, a new CNN/ORC poll found that the president’s approval ratings have increased by two points...

IRS To Kill Cons?

Grasping For New Scandals, Fox Fearmongers That Obamacare Will Allow IRS To Deny Medical Treatment | Research | Media Matters for America:

Fox News' Steve Doocy Suggests The IRS Could Use Health Records To Interfere With Conservatives' Healthcare. Fox & Friends co-host Steve Doocy suggested that the IRS would be able to access Americans' private health information and meddle in specific health procedures:...

Karl Won't Admit Error

Jon Karl makes things worse - Salon.com:

...CNN’s Howard Kurtz, who knows a little bit about being in the line of media fire for his own work, offered ABC News’s embattled Jon Karl the chance to defend himself on Reliable Sources Sunday. Karl, of course, is in hot water because his “scoop” revealing that the White House tampered with Benghazi talking points relied on doctored email leaked by House Republican sources...

Heritage Foundation Shoots Other Foot

Heritage Foundation To GOP: Attack Obama, Don't Govern | Crooks and Liars:
...“To that end, we urge you to avoid bringing any legislation to the House Floor that could expose or highlight major schisms within the conference. Legislation such as the Internet sales tax or the FARRM Act which contains nearly $800 billion in food stamp spending, would give the press a reason to shift their attention away from the failures of the Obama administration to write another ‘circular firing squad’ article...”

IRS Outs Self

Lawyer confirms she asked planted question that broke open IRS scandal | Fox News:

...The first revelation that the IRS was targeting Tea Party groups came in a planted question during a lawyers’ conference earlier this month, the attorney who asked the question confirmed Saturday with Fox News...

Scandal In VA

Virginia Governor and Attorney General Linked in Scandal - NYTimes.com:

... Virginia is in the grip of an old-fashioned, finger-licking political scandal linking all these figures. There are overlapping plot lines, a cameo by the governor’s wife and, in an offstage role portending a possible dark denouement, F.B.I. agents...

Whining About Winning

Conservative Groups Granted Exemption Vastly Outspent Liberal Ones - OpenSecrets Blog:

...Conservative nonprofits that received tax-exempt status since the beginning of 2010 and also filed election spending reports with the Federal Election Commission overwhelmed liberal groups in terms of money spent on politics, an analysis of Internal Revenue Service and FEC records shows.

Of the 21 organizations that received rulings from the IRS after January 1, 2010, and filed FEC reports in 2010 or 2012, 13 were conservative. They outspent the liberal groups in that category by a factor of nearly 34-to-1, the Center for Responsive Politics analysis shows...

Scandals 101

The scandals are falling apart:

 ...On Tuesday, it looked like we had three possible political scandals brewing. Two days later, with much more evidence available, it doesn’t look like any of them will pan out. There’ll be more hearings, and more bad press for the Obama administration, and more demands for documents. But — and this is a key qualification — absent more revelations, the scandals that could reach high don’t seem to include any real wrongdoing, whereas the ones that include real wrongdoing don’t reach high enough. Let’s go through them...

How To Screw Your Opponents

Bob Cesca: 10 Examples of Bush and the Republicans Using Government Power to Target Critics:

They say two wrongs don't make a right, but ignoring one of those wrongs while vilifying the other is intellectually dishonest and violently hypocritical, among other things. And certainly that's the case surrounding news that the IRS targeted tea-party groups as a means of determining and verifying their tax-exempt status has resurrected a familiar debate about government overreach and abuse of power...

ABC Carrying GOP Water Again

ABC’s Benghazi problem festers - Salon.com:

What did they know and when they did they know it? That question has been posed to the White House a lot this week — but it should also be put to ABC News, which has been caught reporting as fact emails about the Benghazi controversy that, it turns out, were doctored by Republican aides. There’s no indication that ABC and its reporter, Jonathan Karl, knew the emails were manipulated before reporting them, of course. But the network may run into trouble for overplaying its hand in claiming it had “obtained” emails that, we learn today from CBS News, were actually notes taken by GOP aides being briefed on the emails.

That might be less of a problem if the characterization of the emails was accurate. It was not...

Lest We Forget: The Boot Licking Press

Things In Politico That Make Me Want To Guzzle Antifreeze, Part The Infinity - Esquire:

...Selling missiles to the people who sponsored the slaughter of U.S. Marines is nothing that can't be smoothed over between the soup and fish. That's the way the country should operate. These people should live in a terrarium.

In case you've forgotten, this terrorist incident killed fifty (50) times more Americans than died at Benghazi but I don't remember a single Congressional inquiry, let alone an investigation and a special $70 million prosecutor. 

GOPers Do A Ben Bad

Republicans Altered Benghazi Emails, CBS News Report Claims:

One day after The White House released 100 pages of Benghazi emails, a report has surfaced alleging that Republicans released a set with altered text...

More Than Four Died For Watergate

Before trotting out that already cliched Benghazi phrase, you might want to read and heed this article. Watergate was not just a breaking and entering mission; it was something much more nefarious. And btw, I'm one of three living Americans who voted for Nixon.

The Death Toll of Watergate | Consortiumnews:

Exclusive: Major gaps in the history of Watergate and Iran-Contra have let Republicans minimize those scandals by comparing them to the fabricated “scandal” over the Benghazi attacks. A fuller understanding of Watergate would reveal its links to Richard Nixon’s prolonging the Vietnam War, writes Robert Parry....

It Was Already Over

Calm Down, People: Obama's Second Term Was Already in Tatters - Garance Franke-Ruta - The Atlantic:

Are the AP snooping, Benghazi, and IRS scandals about to destroy Obama's second term? Not really—because hyperpartisanship in Washington had already stalled the president's agenda and put the 113th Congress on track to become another one of the young 21st century's already-legendary do-nothing bodies...

Zen Karma: The Sound Of One Shoe Dropping

This is Where the World’s Richest People Hide Their Money - The Daily Beast

...The International Consortium of Investigative Journalists, a group of news outlets including The Washington Post, Le Monde, Radio Free Europe, and the BBC, unearthed a trove of 2.5 million files related to offshore accounts of individuals and countries from the United States to Azerbaijan. ICIJ says these documents represent the “biggest stockpile of inside information about the offshore system ever obtained by a media organization...”

Corruption In The Classroom

Atlanta School Reform Scam - Yet Another Education Reform Scam - Esquire

...The primary corrupting agent in the actual education process is the standardized test. It is the collateralized debt obligation of the education "reform" scam. Using standardized testing to measure anything, let alone using it as a basis for whether or not people can keep their jobs or not, is an open invitation to chicanery of all kinds, but especially that which involved massaging the numbers. Standardized testing is a Procrustean bed fitted with a Magic Fingers device. Once you've introduced the corrupting agent, then the corrupting agent forces on you a system of punishment and rewards that eventually guarantees that you and your whole system will look like jackasses...

Standardized tests and the people who push them are evil.