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The American people have lost faith in U.S. Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr., and he must be replaced, a top GOP senator said Sunday. “I lost confidence in the attorney general a long time ago over his cover-up of the Fast and Furious investigation,” said Sen. John Cornyn, Texas Republican, referencing Mr. Holder’s role in the infamous gunrunning scheme that went awry and cost the life of a U.S. Border Patrol agent. Calls for Mr. Holder’s ouster have grown louder since it was revealed the Justice Department gathered telephone records for at least 20 Associated Press editors and reporters...

Some things don't stack up. On Monday, Politico headlined that Speaker John Boehner was fixated with the bubbling Benghazi scandal. In fact, Politico termed the speaker's fixation as "big." So why is Boehner dragging his feet on empanelling a special (or select) committee to tackle the Benghazi disaster? Why is the speaker standing pat on last week's statement that House standing committees are getting the investigative job done? Most everyone has Boehner's snapshot: cautious by nature, a Washingtonized pol who'd rather play than fight. But, as Politico contends, the speaker is invested in the growing Benghazi controversy. Politico outlined the...

U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder is set to testify before the House Judiciary Committee about the Justice Department's gathering of Associated Press phone records. Committee chairman Bob Goodlatte says he expects committee members Wednesday to ask pointed questions about the Justice Department's secret seizure and examination of two months of telephone records of reporters and editors for The Associated (AP). Goodlatte says Congress and the American people expect answers and accountability. On Tuesday Holder defended the Justice Department's seizure as part of a probe into what he called a grave national security leak that put the American people at risk....

A new poll taken for a gun rights group confirms that Sen. Mary Landrieu, D-La., is in for a tough re-election in 2014.

Yesterday, Barack Obama tried to get ahead of the IRS scandal by promising a full investigation into the policy of targeting the administration’s opponents for extra scrutiny and harassment when applying for tax-exempt status for their groups. Color House Oversight chair Darrell Issa … unimpressed. Appearing on CBS News this morning, Issa told Charlie Rose that there is no way the House will allow the executive branch to conduct the only investigation into the systematic targeting of conservatives:CLICK ABOVE LINK FOR THE VIDEO House Oversight Committee Chairman Darrell Issa (R-Calif.) on Tuesday blasted President Obama for suggesting the administration could...

Republican Sen. Dean Heller (Nev.) is preparing legislation to prevent the Internal Revenue Service from hiring new agents to implement ObamaCare in light of the agency's targeting of conservative groups. The scandal has prompted fears that the IRS is incapable of neutrally enforcing major provisions of the healthcare reform law, including its individual mandate to buy insurance. "It is necessary that both Congress and the Department of Health and Human Services [HHS] look closely at the money given to the IRS through the healthcare law," Heller wrote to HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius on Tuesday.

Fiscal hawk Sen. Tom Coburn (R-OK) is known primarily for attacking reckless and duplicate spending programs in an effort to get our nation's budgetary woes under control through spending cuts. However, in the NFL and other professional sports leagues, he may have found some serious revenue enhancements. The Republican senator is hoping to go after the tax exempt status of the NFL and other leagues currently classified as "non-profits." The NHL and PGA would also fall into this category. Coburn estimates that re-classifying the NFL would bring in as much as $91 million per year in additional revenue. This is...

How many Americans have heard of Extortion 17? Extortion 17 was the call sign for the Chinook helicopter shot down in Afghanistan on the night of August 6, 2011. Killed in that crash were 25 special ops forces, including 15 members of Seal Team 6, 5 national Guard troops and 8 Afghans. Today, the families of the military killed in that crash held a press conference to lay out the coverup by Obama and the military that has gone on since that crash. The video of the press conference can be found here I watched the live stream of the...

House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-VA) said the House will investigate the IRS after the agency admitted to and apologized on Friday for targeting Tea Party and conservative groups during the 2012 election. "The IRS cannot target or intimidate any individual or organization based on their political beliefs," Cantor said on Friday. "The House will investigate this matter." Lois Lerner, the chief IRS official responsible for tax-exempt organizations, said the the IRS targeted groups that had the words "Tea Party" or "Patriots" in their names and that doing so was "wrong."

Former Vice President Dick Cheney told reporters on Thursday the investigation into the White House’s handling of the attack on an American consulate in Benghazi has only just begun. He said that House Republican should continue their pursuit of answers relating to the administration’s decision making in the wake of that attack. “I think Hillary [Clinton] should be subpoenaed if necessary,” said Cheney. RELATED: White House Defends Hillary Clinton, Blasts Republicans’ ‘Attempts To Politicize’ Benghazi Cheney told Fox News reporters that he thinks the former Secretary of State may have to be called to testify again before congressional investigators. Cheney...

Mark Mardell, the BBC's North American editor, issued a mea culpa of sorts today after Jonathan Karl at ABC News dropped his bombshell that proves beyond any doubt that the Obama Administration lied about its involvement in editing the CIA's talking points surrounding the September 11 attack on our consulate in Libya. In a piece titled, "After Benghazi revelations, heads will roll," Mardell writes, "In the interests of full disclosure I have to say I have not in the past been persuaded that allegations of a cover-up were a big deal." He adds, "It seemed to me a partisan attack...

The evangelical "Pray for Reform: 92 Days of Prayer and Action to Pass Immigration Reform" campaign called on Congress in a press call on Wednesday to pass meaningful legislation in the next 92 days, throwing further support behind the current momentum in Congress to finally pass a immigration reform bill. The Rev. Samuel Rodriguez, president of the National Hispanic Christian Leadership Conference, explained in the press call that the number 92 is significant for evangelicals because the Hebrew word for immigration is mentioned 92 times in the Old Testament. "This number represents the biblical call to welcome the stranger. I'm...

Thanks to House Republicans, Americans finally got to hear from the State Department officials the Obama administration never wanted to testify. They are now called “whistleblowers,” but that’s only because their accounts of what really happened in Libya on Sept. 11, 2012, were buried by the administration, apparently in the furtherance of Democrats’ election-year imperatives.Soon after the testimony, Democratic office-holders took to the airwaves and the internet to assure liberal loyalists that there was nothing really “new” here. Republicans, by contrast, trumpeted the accounts of Gregory Hicks, Eric Nordstrom, and Mark Thompson before the House Oversight Committee as proof that...

They summoned a whistleblower to Capitol Hill, but instead they got a virtuoso storyteller. Gregory Hicks, the No. 2 U.S. diplomat in Libya the night Ambassador Chris Stevens and three other Americans were killed, was to be the star witness for Rep. Darrell Issa (R-Calif.), the man leading the probe of the Obama administration’s handling of the attack on the diplomatic outpost in Benghazi. But despite Issa’s incautious promise that the hearing’s revelations would be “damaging” to Hillary Rodham Clinton, Hicks didn’t lay a glove on the former secretary of state Wednesday. Rather, he held lawmakers from both parties rapt...

The Scandal In Libya: Testimony by the Benghazi whistle-blowers presents clear evidence of shameful political manipulation of the truth seven weeks before an election and a willingness to let four Americans die to maintain a campaign narrative. What difference at this point does the truth about Benghazi make? In an emotional opening statement at Wednesday's hearing of the House Oversight Committee, Eric Nordstrom, a regional security officer of the U.S. Mission to Libya from September 2011 to July 2012, answered that question with voice cracking and a simple declarative sentence: "It matters to the friends and family of Ambassador Stevens,...

. . . . . . The office of Sen. Ted Cruz, a Republican from Texas, sent out a press release Wednesday pushing five amendments he filed to the bill, which generally tightens enforcement and provides a path to legal status for undocumented immigrants. Cruz’s amendments seek to further tighten border security, streamline the legal immigration process, deny public benefits to those here illegally, reform the high-skilled worker visa program and prohibit a path to citizenship for the undocumented. . . . . . . In a press release, America’s Voice, a leading national group that advocates for more lenient...

WASHINGTON (AP) — House Republicans who insist the Obama administration is covering up information about last year's deadly assault in Libya say their goal is to get answers. Rep. Darrell Issa, chairman of the Oversight and Government Reform Committee, said Wednesday that the three State Department witnesses at the hearing deserve to be heard.The Sept. 11 attack at the U.S. diplomatic mission in Benghazi, Libya, killed U.S. ambassador Chris Stevens and three other Americans.

Democratic strategist and former Bill Clinton adviser James Carville said something about Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Tx.) on ABC's This Week Sunday that is guaranteed to raise eyebrows on both sides of the aisle. "I think he is the most talented and fearless Republican politician I’ve seen in the last 30 years." JAMES CARVILLE: I think he is the most talented and fearless Republican politician I’ve seen in the last 30 years. I further think that he’s going to run for president and he is going to create something. I’m not sitting here saying he’s going to win, and I think...

Benghazi was nothing less than treason committed at the highest levels of our Government when Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton chose to protect Muslim sentiment in the region over the sanctity of American lives; those very individuals, our nation’s sovereignty, they swore to protect. This being said, I have some bad news for my fellow patriots: other than the White House rolling out a few “sacrificial lambs” to satiate a muted public outcry, nothing will happen. I absolutely agree Barack Obama should be impeached for his involvement in this murderous fiasco, his complete indifference, but tragically that will never happen....

Hicks Testimony, Part 1 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IvtPBzZk1JY Hicks Testimony, Part 2 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4pTgfYXHS-Q Hicks Testimony, Part 3 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-EuEQ0HdHDQ Hicks Testimony, Part 4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tlvDaljG6Ek

“We have a situation where this country has been driven by the Tea Party for the last number of years,” Reid said...

Buried deep in the colossal immigration bill that’s floating around Congress is an obscure little section that rewrites the current immigrant visa waiting list to allow millions to cut in front of the line via new categories of family-sponsored immigrants. As if it weren’t bad enough that the measure, known as the Schumer-Rubio bill after the New York Democrat and Florida Republican pushing it, already offers 11 million illegal aliens instant amnesty. A nonpartisan group dedicated to researching legal and illegal immigration into the U.S., discovered the provision in the course of dissecting the monstrous legislation, which at last count...

Live Stream Full Committee Hearing: "Benghazi: Exposing Failure and Recognizing Courage"

Eric Nordstrom, the former Libyan regional security officer with the State Department, became emotional during his opening statement to the House committee investigating the deadly attack on an American consulate in Benghazi. His voice broke describing his friends, the deceased American service and diplomatic personnel, who lost their lives in that attack. “I would also like to thank the committee for your continued efforts in investigating all the details and all the decisions relating to the attack on our diplomatic facility — specifically the committee’s labors to uncover what happened prior, during, and after the attack matter,” Nordstrom began.

The Internet music listeners should be plugged into whether or not the new chairman of the House Judiciary Committee will reform how the government sets its royalty payments. The new chairman, Rep. Robert W. Goodlatte (R.Va.) is a self-described fan of web radio and the chairman of the Congressional Internet Caucus, so the expectation is that he will bring an end to the music feudalism, where broadcast radio pays nothing in recorded performance royalties, but web-based music services, what the government calls “non-interactive transmission,” pay 50 percent of their revenues. In the last Congress, bills in the House and Senate...

Former Obama National Security Council spokesman Tommy Vietor has let loose on Twitter this morning, mocking the Benghazi hearing today as "amateur hour."Vietor also mocked the hearings as conspiracy theories on par with Area 51 and the moon landings conspiracy theories:Heard that Rep. Cummings asked Rep. Issa to include Thomas Pickering, cochair of ARB report in today's hearing, but Issa refused. #BenghaziWhy on earth would Issa refuse to let the cochair of an independent review board on #Benghazi testify at his hearing on the subject?Could it be that today's #Benghazi hearing has nothing to do with fact-finding but is just...

The Washington Post offered a splashy profile of freshman Sen. Ted Cruz on Tuesday, and the most surprising thing about it was a lack of venom. The reporter described "the self-assured, nonstop talker who won national debate championships as an undergraduate at Princeton." Cruz "honed his reputation early in his career as a dazzling Supreme Court advocate" and now "has bashed into the national conversation," most notably in attacking establishment Republicans, who've called him and other young Senate conservatives "wacko birds." This story, however, wasn't as surprising as James Carville's declaration on ABC's "This Week." He was typically blunt --...

Hearing details:WASHINGTON – House Oversight and Government Reform Committee Chairman Darrell Issa today announced three witnesses who will appear at a full committee hearing, “Benghazi: Exposing Failure and Recognizing Courage,” on Wednesday, May 8, 2013, at 11:30 AM in 2154 Rayburn House Office Building. “I applaud these individuals for answering our call to testify in front of the Committee. They have critical information about what occurred before, during, and after the Benghazi terrorist attacks that differs on key points from what Administration officials – including those on the Accountability Review Board – have portrayed,” said Issa. “Our committee has been...

The Benghazi scandal could be the final “hinge point” that brings down the Obama administration, former U.N. Ambassador John R. Bolton said. “This could be the hinge point,” he said to Newsmax. “It’s that serious for them.”

WASHINGTON (AP) -- The White House says President Barack Obama has invited House Democratic leaders to dinner Wednesday at a hotel near the White House. House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi of California will attend the private dinner, along with the No. 2 and No. 3 Democrats in the House, congressmen Steny Hoyer of Maryland and James Clyburn of South Carolina. The top Democrat on the House Budget Committee, Maryland's Chris Van Hollen, will be there, plus the chair of the House Democrat's campaign arm, Steve Israel of New York.

I just sent the following to viewer@c-apan.org With all due respect, does your organization, paid for by our tax dollars, honestly think the South Korean Presidents speech is more important than the Benghazi hearings? HONESTLY!? Put her on 3 and elevate the hearings to either C-Span or C-Span2 where most people are able to see it on their televisions. Of utmost concern, is your access to the bandwidth necessary to eliminate cutouts and drop-offs. DirecTV only has 1 and 2 on their lineup and from what I am told is the case for most other cable providers, without having to...

What we know and what we still don’t know. On September 11, 2012, terrorists attacked our consulate in Benghazi, Libya, and murdered four Americans, including our ambassador. Eight months later, we have learned some of what happened, but many questions remain. This week the House of Representatives will hold a hearing on Benghazi, because we still don’t know all the facts about how we responded during the seven and a half hours of attacks, why we could do nothing to save the lives of Ambassador Chris Stevens, Sean Smith, Glen Doherty, and Tyrone Woods, and what, if anything, we have...

Pat Smith, mother of slain State Department officer Sean Smith, who died in the September 11, 2012, attack on an American consulate in Benghazi, tore into the federal government and their efforts to investigate that deadly attack on Tuesday. In an interview with CNN host Jake Tapper, Smith said that she blames former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton for failing to ensure her staff was secure and for not taking blame for that failure after they were killed in the line of duty. “How are you holding up?” Tapper asked Smith. “Terrible,” she replied as her voice broke with emotion....

Vote Summary Question: On Passage of the Bill (S. 743, as amended ) Vote Number: 113 Vote Date: May 6, 2013, 06:12 PM Required For Majority: 1/2 Vote Result: Bill Passed Measure Number: S. 743 (Marketplace Fairness Act of 2013 ) Measure Title: A bill to restore States' sovereign rights to enforce State and local sales and use tax laws, and for other purposes.

Dave Wasserman �@Redistrict 5m It's over: Sanford wins. #SC01 Retweeted by Jay Cost and 1 other

No live thread yet, so I'm starting one. Voted at 2:30 p.m. in Mt Pleasant 19. No line. Poll worker reported 28.3% turnout so far in a precinct that had a 66% turnout in the last major election. Results should be here after the polls close.

Mark Sanford (R) vs. Elizabeth Colbert Busch (D). The special election is for the seat occupied by Tim Scott, who was appointed to the Senate to fill Jim DeMint's seat. South Carolina State Electoral Commission

BEGIN TRANSCRIPT RUSH: Now, about John Bolton thinking this could be the "hinge point" that would bring down the regime. Folks, you don't bring down a regime unless the media gets on board, and I don't see that happening. I don't see ABC, CBS, NBC getting on board with some movement to take this regime out like they tried with Reagan and Iran-Contra; like they succeeded with Nixon. There were plenty of reasons to try to take the Clinton administration out after Lewinsky. There were calls for his resignation, but the media didn't do anything but circle the wagons. They're...

   Tea Party Caucus Returns Stronger Than EverFinally, there is some good news from the nation's Capitol: the Tea Party Caucus is back in action with a new strategy and a growing membership!   Last week, I had the honor of representing Tea Party Express at the Tea Party Caucus meeting in Washington, D.C. I was joined by about 20 Republicans Members of the House of Representatives and many more staff representatives from both Houses of Congress. Dozens of Tea Party leaders on both the national and local level were also in attendance. The room was packed! According to Politico,...

The noise in the hen house this morning is the flutter and cackle of the chickens from Benghazi, scuttling home to roost. The House committee opening hearings Wednesday on what happened there is likely to serve up chicken surprise. The four whistleblowing witnesses scheduled to testify to the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee are said to be eager to tell a story far different from the various accounts, all confused and all contradictory, peddled by the Obama administration. Someone at the White House should have remembered that old Washington chestnut, as true now as ever,

A week ago, he noted on his Facebook page that his poll numbers after voting no on Toomey/Manchin put him somewhere south of “pond scum.” Today, this. He won’t face the voters again for five and a half years, but he shares a home state with Gabby Giffords and Mark Kelly. They can hurt him by campaigning against him in 2018 more than they can anyone else in the Senate. No wonder he’s looking for ways to flip: Republican Sen. Jeff Flake told CNN he is willing to reverse his opposition to expanding background checks for guns if the Senate...

Sen. Lindsey Graham (R., S.C.) wrote Tuesday he believes major revelations about the lead up to the Sept. 11, 2012 attack on the U.S. mission in Benghazi, Libya, are eminent, in a Facebook message: “I think the dam is about to break on Benghazi. We’re going to find a system failure before, during, and after the attacks. “We’re going to find political manipulation seven weeks before an election. We’re going to find people asleep at the switch when it comes to the State Department, including Hillary Clinton. “The bond that has been broken between those who serve us in harms...

President Barack Obama will be unable to finish his second term due to the Benghazi scandal, media personality and former presidential candidate Mike Huckabee expects. The prediction came Monday during his radio show, "The Mike Huckabee Show." "I believe that before it's all over, this president will not fill out his full term. I know that puts me on a limb," he said, according to Politico. "But this is not minor. It wasn't minor when Richard Nixon lied to the American people and worked with those in his administration to cover-up what really happened in Watergate. But, I remind you...

We have had a tax increase implemented. Now, with the additional revenues (taxes) added onto what we were previously taking in each year ($2.3-2.4 trillion dollars), we will still be able to make the interest payment (about $425 billion annally or $35 billion per month) on the federal debt outstanding... And thus we cannot default. After that, we use the remaining tax dollars to pay for Social Security, then Medicare, Medicaid, unemployment benefits, food stamps and a very large portion of our military budget. So... why do we need to borrow another $1 trillion plus in May?

The US Senate on Monday passed a bill aimed at ending tax-free shopping on the internet but the move looks set to face fierce opposition before it becomes law. The Marketplace Fairness Act, which has cross-party supporter and the backing of powerful retailers, would give states the power to require retailers with sales over $1m to collect state and local sales taxes for online purchases.

The Senate sided with traditional retailers and financially strapped state and local governments Monday by passing a bill that would widely subject online shopping — for many a largely tax-free frontier — to state sales taxes. The Senate passed the bill by a vote of 69 to 27, getting support from Republicans and Democrats alike. But opposition from some conservatives who view it as a tax increase will make it a tougher sell in the House. President Barack Obama has conveyed his support for the measure. Under current law, states can only require retailers to collect sales taxes if the...

Along with bombs and bombers, guns seem to be all the media wants to talk about these days. Death is sexy to our miscreant media, especially when people are killed on purpose. And when that happens, it’s all the newspapers and news stations will print and broadcast, in turn making these events appear worse than they are in reality. To understand this, one need only look at the difference in coverage between the Texas fertilizer plant explosion, which killed at least 14 confirmed people and injured 200 more at the time of writing this, versus the coverage of the Boston...

No matter what happens with Darrell Issa’s congressional committee meetings this week, we are witnessing the beginning of the end of the Obama administration, and the cause is Benghazi. It’s impossible to overestimate the blowback that has been gathering steam for the past seven months, now about to erupt with full force. Few reputations will emerge unscathed, Obama’s presidency will be crippled, Hillary Clinton‘s 2016 candidacy will be destroyed — and perhaps some new heroes will be born. My New York Post column on Friday, which was also linked at RealClearPolitics, sets the stage: On Wednesday, the FBI released photos...

With whistleblowers coming forward and charging that members of President Barack Obama’s administration actively hindered the investigation into the events leading up to and following the deadly 2012 attack on an American consulate in Benghazi, the political blame game is also taking shape. On Monday, Rep. Jason Chaffetz (R-UT) appeared on Fox & Friends where he alleged that his Democratic colleagues in the Congress were not interested in the investigation into Benghazi until recently. When asked by the Fox News Channel hosts why some members of the administration appear to have engaged in a cover-up,

Democratic strategist James Carville lavished praise on freshman Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas), who has quickly become one of the Senate's most polarizing new members. Echoing former Sen. Jim DeMint on ABC's "This Week," Carville cheered Cruz for not being afraid to take on his own party so soon into his Senate career. "I think he is the most talented and fearless Republican politician I've seen in the last 30 years," Carville said. "I further think that he's going to run for president and he is going to create something. I'm not sitting here saying he's going to win, and I...