House called useless, decides to investigate Benghazi again.

[Crossroads Inc.]

No seriously… Via REUTERS It was announced that the US. House on Friday will be forming a special independent committee to investigate supposed criminal wrong doing concerning Benghazi… AGAIN!

By Patricia Zengerle

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Congress overseer subpoenas Kerry on Benghazi AFP
Boehner to appoint select Benghazi committee Associated Press
House panel subpoenas Kerry to testify on Benghazi Associated Press
Darrell Issa Subpoenas John Kerry To Testify On Benghazi Huffington Post
[$$] House Republicans Plan to Set Up Panel to Investigate Benghazi Attacks The Wall Street Journal
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The Speaker of the House of Representatives said on Friday the House will vote to create a special committee - the same type of panel that investigated the Watergate scandal - to probe the deadly September 2012 attack in Benghazi, Libya.

Ohio Republican John Boehner made his announcement days after a conservative watchdog group released previously undisclosed emails that it said showed the White House was concerned primarily with protecting President Barack Obama's image in the wake of the attack that killed four Americans.

"The administration's withholding of documents - emails showing greater White House involvement in misleading the American people - is a flagrant violation of trust and undermines the basic principle of oversight upon which our system of government is built," Boehner said in a statement.

Also on Friday, the House Oversight Committee said it issued a subpoena for Secretary of State John Kerry to testify at a May 21 public hearing about the attack.

Committee Chairman Darrell Issa, a California Republican, said the panel wanted Kerry to answer questions about the State Department's response to the congressional investigation of the Benghazi attack.

View galleryU.S. Secretary of State John Kerry speaks during a …
U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry speaks during a news conference at the U.S. Embassy in Juba May 2 …
Kerry did not become Secretary of State until 2013, but Issa said the State Department had shown "a disturbing disregard" for its obligations to Congress.

State spokeswoman Marie Harf said the department was surprised by the subpoena and found it unusual that it was issued before an official invitation to Kerry, who is due to be in Mexico on May 21.

"We have our suspicions that this is just another attempt to use this politically," she said at a news briefing.

CLINTON 2016

Benghazi has become a favored political issue for Republicans, who say Obama's administration did too little to help during the attack and then misled the public to protect Obama's image as he ran for re-election in November 2012.

It also is a way to attack Hillary Clinton, a likely 2016 Democratic presidential candidate, who enjoyed high approval ratings as secretary of state during Obama's first term.

Chris Arterton, a professor of political management at George Washington University, said Benghazi would come up if Clinton runs but voters were more likely to focus on the economy than an attack that took place four years earlier.

"We're a long way up from a very deep and troubling deficit, and if that continues... that will be much more important than something like Benghazi," he said, explaining that an improving economy would benefit Clinton, or any 2016 candidate from the party controlling the White House.

The U.S. unemployment report released earlier on Friday showed that employers hired workers in April at the fastest clip in more than two years.

Select committees include members of both parties and are appointed to perform a specific function or investigate a certain event. In the past, they were created to investigate the Watergate scandal during the Nixon administration and the assassination of President John F. Kennedy.

A senior House leadership aide said one of the members being considered to chair the new panel is South Carolina Representative Trey Gowdy.

For those that have not already gone through this a dozen times…
The US Conservatives main beef revolves around the following accusations…

*Obama/Democrats cut funding to key security forces that could have defended the Ambassador if not cut (This has been proven false)
*Obama/Hillary knew from the start that it was a terrorist attack, but called it a "protest" to cover it up. (This has been proven false)
*Obama/Hillary could have sent security forces from (somewhere) But chose not to so he could let the Embassy people die. (This has been proven false)
*Obama was informed before hand that an attack was going to happen but did nothing (This has been proven false)
*Obama was out golfing/campaigning at the time, and couldn't be bothered with the events, thus showing he is a terrible president (This has been proven false)

So if at first you don't succeed, Fail Fail again!

[Gaidin]

I think the best part is that with them subpoenaing Kerry for an event that happened when he was a Senator, all he can really do is answer questions in a fashion like "According to documents..."

[Channel72]

Whatever. The segment of the voting public that still cares about Benghazi is already voting Republican.

[Gaidin]

Whatever. The segment of the voting public that still cares about Benghazi is already voting Republican.

They're protecting congressional leadership from the Tea Party. They either need to cause some useless mess against the President or the Tea Party causes a painful mess against the Congressional Republican leadership.

[TimothyC]

I think the best part is that with them subpoenaing Kerry for an event that happened when he was a Senator, all he can really do is answer questions in a fashion like "According to documents..."

They are subpoenaing Kerry for not turning over the documents that he said he would turn over - and those that have been turned over have been redacted into uselessness (even after they have been set to go to the representatives with the proper clearances to read any classified documents). Obama's open government for ya.

[Gaidin]

I think the best part is that with them subpoenaing Kerry for an event that happened when he was a Senator, all he can really do is answer questions in a fashion like "According to documents..."

They are subpoenaing Kerry for not turning over the documents that he said he would turn over - and those that have been turned over have been redacted into uselessness (even after they have been set to go to the representatives with the proper clearances to read any classified documents). Obama's open government for ya.

Issa has the clearances of his position. Just that everything he's been given tends to get conveniently leaked so the Executive branch has taken to telling him, his committee and any committee he's on to screw off and risk the consequences. Other committees have gotten the documents and have said nothing's amiss.

[Simon_Jester]

If you're in the habit of demanding classified documents purely so you can make political hay out of them, long past the point where a reasonable person would stop hunting for evidence of real wrongdoing...

Sooner or later you can expect to see more black boxes on those documents.

[Gaidin]

If you're in the habit of demanding classified documents purely so you can make political hay out of them, long past the point where a reasonable person would stop hunting for evidence of real wrongdoing...

Sooner or later you can expect to see more black boxes on those documents.

It's not so much classified documents yet, that he's done this to. He's just done it to issues like the ACA and the IRS, which he has access to documents that have sensitive but unclassified information. He'd subpoena them, then those documents would start finding their way into the press's hands redacted in their own special way as to make the Executive Branch look bad, to the point that the Democratic side of his committee started calling shennanigans. The Executive has started playing hard to get on unclassified documents he's subpoenaed for all he has the right and power to ask for them. If he thinks he's going to have an easy time getting his hands on documents for an issue for which the odds are higher that the documents are classified? Uhhh...yea. He'll have an easier time just getting Kerry in front of him and getting vague answers out of him than getting actual documents in his hands to leak in a conveniently redacted fashion again.

Though if he did that with a classified document, I wonder what could be done with him, even if he is a Representative.

[Block]

If you're in the habit of demanding classified documents purely so you can make political hay out of them, long past the point where a reasonable person would stop hunting for evidence of real wrongdoing...

Sooner or later you can expect to see more black boxes on those documents.

It's not so much classified documents yet, that he's done this to. He's just done it to issues like the ACA and the IRS, which he has access to documents that have sensitive but unclassified information. He'd subpoena them, then those documents would start finding their way into the press's hands redacted in their own special way as to make the Executive Branch look bad, to the point that the Democratic side of his committee started calling shennanigans. The Executive has started playing hard to get on unclassified documents he's subpoenaed for all he has the right and power to ask for them. If he thinks he's going to have an easy time getting his hands on documents for an issue for which the odds are higher that the documents are classified? Uhhh...yea. He'll have an easier time just getting Kerry in front of him and getting vague answers out of him than getting actual documents in his hands to leak in a conveniently redacted fashion again.

Though if he did that with a classified document, I wonder what could be done with him, even if he is a Representative.

Another good example was the IRS nonsense, where the actual report said the exact opposite of what he claimed.

[Metahive]

Does anyone remember when the right wing attacked Obama over using mustard instead of ketchup? Yeah, dodged a bullet when they didn't chose to dig this up again for their "next" big "scandal".

It's damn infuriating when the opposition attacks the government over non-issues just like this but allows all the more serious stuff to slip. NSA spying, dronestrikes and Guantanamo? Bah, all fine and dandy, but uhh, something something Benghazi, that's the real bummer!

[Terralthra]

It's damn infuriating when the opposition attacks the government over non-issues just like this but allows all the more serious stuff to slip. NSA spying, dronestrikes and Guantanamo? Bah, all fine and dandy, but uhh, something something Benghazi, that's the real bummer!

Problem is, all the things that are serious abuses of civil and human rights are things the Republicans openly favor, unlike Obama's pretend opposition to them.

[Simon_Jester]

Yes; I remember speaking of that a lot during the election.

"All those things you hate Obama for doing? Romney is quite explicit that he'd do them harder."

So the Republicans don't serve as a functional opposition party, for practical purposes. Obama doesn't actually do anything significant that they can focus on to oppose and win any real advantage, because of how effective they are at blocking his initiatives. So they have to concentrate on petty bullshit while patting themselves on the back about how hard they're opposing him.

[Crossroads Inc.]

It's damn infuriating when the opposition attacks the government over non-issues just like this but allows all the more serious stuff to slip. NSA spying, dronestrikes and Guantanamo? Bah, all fine and dandy, but uhh, something something Benghazi, that's the real bummer!

Problem is, all the things that are serious abuses of civil and human rights are things the Republicans openly favor, unlike Obama's pretend opposition to them.

Which just goes to prove that the republicans really are a "do nothing" party.
When out of power all they do is talk about how awesome things would be if they were in power. And make sure liberals don't get anything done.
When in power all they do is help turn America into a plutocracy or a theocracy or sometimes both.

When people point out all the ways Obama has let me down and screwed up and pissed away golden opportunities, and then ask why I still vote democrat and not third party or something. I tell them that however bad the democrats are, the republicans are worse.

It's a really REALLY bad and STUPID argument, but it is sadly true.

[SirNitram]

Amazing how this sort of inquisition didn't come out when, say, thousands of Americans died on lies and fabrications in a sandpit.

[Crossroads Inc.]

Oh don't worry, The faux news echo chamber people have a ready made response to that acquisition...
Response one: You can't blame any of it on Bush and the Republicans because democrats voted for the war.
Response two: It WASN'T a lie, Saddam DID have WMD's but they were all moved secretly to Syria!

The US Army found WMDs in Iraq. FACT....

Besides Prezzy Bill Clinton...12/16/1998..."earlier today, I orded America's armed forces to strike military and security targets in Iraq....their mission is to attack Iraq's nuclear, chemical and biological weapons programs..."

As for what happened to them, we did monitor the border into Syria. James Clapper (who headed the National Imagery and Mapping Agency at the time) said that US intelligence detected a large amount of traffic -- mostly civilian trucks -- from Iraq into Syria.

Clapper suggested it may have been WMD material. So there is the "Proof" you wanted for invading Iraq.