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SNIP To lead the Republican majority staff, Gowdy selected Philip Kiko, a key aide to Rep. James Sensenbrenner, R-Wis., when the latter served as chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, and more recently a registered lobbyist for the Smith-Free Group, a K Street lobbying firm with a diverse roster of clients. House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio, swiftly welcomed Gowdy’s choice, calling Kiko “a man of unquestioned integrity with a record of distinguished service” in and out of Congress... SNIP However, emails obtained by Fox News show that some conservatives are unhappy with Kiko’s appointment, chiefly because of his recent lobbying...

This video comes from a press conference given by Rep. Trey Gowdy (R-SC) earlier this week [see update - from late last year], but Real Clear Politics picked it up today, and it’s definitely worth a fresh look. As the newly-appointed chair of the select committee investigating Benghazi, Gowdy has bristled at criticisms that all of the questions have already been answered — especially when those criticisms come from national media outlets who have shown remarkably little curiosity about the collapse of American policy in Libya. In his presser, Gowdy challenged the critics to answer the questions his committee...

Here’s why Boko Haram is awful news for Hillary: Because it adds to the list of things she is known for. AND ALL OF THEM ARE BAD.Hillary Clinton is running on fumes. The fumes of fame. There is no other reason that people will vote for Hillary Clinton other than that she is famous. Many others share her ideas. Some state them more eloquently. But Hillary is more famous.Hillary’s problem is that, at a certain point in the Democratic primaries, someone else will become equally famous....Because her record, you see, in the public mind, consists of these five things:1. Benghazi: Clinton has...

On his Monday radio show, conservative talker Rush Limbaugh presented his theory as to why then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton didn’t declare Boko Haram a terrorist group back in President Barack Obama’s first term, which he declared to be based on race. “How many people do you think know that this terror group, Boko Haram, has been attacking Christians since 2009?” he said. “The jihad aspect of Boko Haram is almost completely ignored by the White House and the media. And I can tell you why – I just saw why. There’s video that has been released of about half...

(CNN) -- The Islamist terrorist organization Boko Haram has been active as a violent group since 2009 and in recent months has killed Nigerians, both Christian and Muslim, at rates frequently exceeding a hundred people weekly. It is puzzling how little attention this has received in world media, especially in comparison to, say, the attack of Islamist militants on the mall in Kenya in September, resulting in 67 dead. That is, until now. The abduction of a reported 276 schoolgirls from Chibok village in the northeastern Borno state has shocked people around the world. A deeper examination of Boko Haram...

Who the hell does National Security Advisor Susan Rice think she is? Does she believe in freedom of speech? How else to explain her disdainful tweet: “Personal attacks in Israel directed at Sec Kerry totally unfounded and unacceptable.” Unacceptable? Is it only Israel that has no right to criticize him? Has Rice forgotten that Israel, like the United States, is a democracy that enshrines the freedom of speech? There has been a penchant of late by those in the Obama Administration to treat Israel like an errant schoolboy. When Israel Defense Minister Moshe Ya’alon said, according to media reports, that...

Dr. Susan Rice, This week while fielding questions at a foreign policy lunch you broke out a new piece of your stand-up act. The "scoff at the idiots still asking about Benghazi" portion of your routine actually scored laughs from the mostly friendly crowd who came to lunch with you. “Danged if I know,” Rice said, to audience laughter. “I mean honestly, the administration has produced, I think, 25,000 pages of documents. It’s hard to imagine what further will come of yet another committee." Please excuse me if I didn't see the humor in it. Besides being the only National...

“Never in my life did I ever believe that our country would be taken over by people like the people who are running it at this day.” “When we have leadership that thinks that the Constitution of the United States of America is a joke, when we have a President who has almost a thousand Executive Orders now, when we have a Department of Justice that thinks that any kind of a judicial system that they make up as they go along can get by with whatever they decide that they won’t do.” “What’s happened with Fast and Furious? What’s...

Hillary Rodham Clinton brings a quarter-century of public service to her potential presidential campaign, but it’s her most recent job as secretary of state for President Obama — overseeing relations with Russia, handling the terrorist attack in Benghazi and negotiating over the war on terrorism — that could come back to haunt her. Many of Mr. Obama’s current political problems also could affect Mrs. Clinton, including the handling of Russian President Vladimir Putin and the decision not to slap the terrorist label on Boko Haram, a group responsible for kidnapping hundreds of Nigerian schoolgirls last month. Even the Keystone XL...

National Security Adviser Susan Rice, at a foreign policy lunch on Wednesday, seemed to scoff at a question on whether a select committee investigation on Benghazi would reveal new evidence. "Danged if I know," Rice said, to audience laughter. "I mean honestly, the administration has produced, I think, 25,000 pages of documents. ... It's hard to imagine what further will come of yet another committee.

National Security Advisor Susan Rice disputed Republican critiques of President Obama's foreign policy by arguing that "political polarization" accounts for the "one weakness" of American strength in international affairs. "The one weakness that our friends and partners point to and the one thing that undermines our strength around the world is our political polarization," Rice said during an event hosted by the Women's Foreign Policy Group. Rice didn't mention Republicans specifically, but cited policy fights that they have provoked, such as over budget issues. "When countries look at us, they wonder and they worry if we will have our collective...

This is just breaking, so I thought I’d serve it up for y’all: Onstage with Robert Gibbs and CBS correspondent and “Spies Against Armageddon” co-author Dan Raviv, Rove said Republicans should keep the Benghazi issue alive. He said if Clinton runs for president, voters must be told what happened when she suffered a fall in December 2012. The official diagnosis was a blood clot. Rove told the conference near LA Thursday, “Thirty days in the hospital? And when she reappears, she’s wearing glasses that are only for people who have traumatic brain injury? We need to know what’s up with...

Benghazi: The language in an email from Obama aide Ben Rhodes used to prep Susan Rice is virtually identical to one issued by the former secretary of state 36 hours before — the first public official to mention the video. One of the first questions we hope the Select Committee on Benghazi asks is who gave Ben Rhodes the authority and the content for the Sept. 14, 2012, email from him, an assistant to the president and deputy national security adviser, on how to prep Susan Rice for her talk show tour on Sept. 16 blaming a video for the...

...Clearly, the Benghazi terrorist attack had to be kept under wraps, no matter what, lest Obama’s campaign be blown out of the water. Thus, a decision was made to do nothing so as not to attract attention to Benghazi – a decision inimical to the national interests, but logical from the political point of view. Hence the White House’s refusal to mount a military rescue operation and its cold-hearted willingness to sacrifice Americans in Benghazi. As a matter of fact, aside from the four Americans who were killed in Benghazi, there were another three dozen U.S. personnel who were abandoned...

Almost nobody in Japan heard about the Battle of Midway until after the war. The Emperor Hirohito, upon hearing of the debacle ordered a comprehensive cover-up. The wounded were isolated on hospital ships. All mail was censored. Surviving enlisted men and officers were held incommunicado until they could be shipped off to distant battlefields from where it was hoped they would never return. The sunken ships themselves were gradually written off over the course of the war until their loss blended in with the general demise of the imperial fleet. In order to coordinate this effort Hirohito created a special...

MSNBC host Joe Scarborough interrupted Alex Wagner’s dismissal of the Obama administration’s secret Benghazi talking points on Thursday, telling her not to “insult our intelligence.” Wagner appeared on “Morning Joe” to discuss the Benghazi scandal, which reached new heights last week after unreleased emails revealed White House attempts to insulate President Obama from criticism. The emails, which were revealed by a conservative group’s lawsuit, has prompted the formation of a House select committee to investigate Benghazi. As she often does on her own MSNBC show, Wagner tried to wave off the controversy as much ado about nothing. “Everybody has focused...

House Speaker John Boehner would not say Thursday if the House GOP’s campaign arm should stop including the Benghazi attacks in fundraising appeals. Asked three times whether the National Republican Congressional Committee should be fundraising based on what they call Democratic obstruction of the Benghazi investigation, Boehner answered only: “Our focus is on getting the answers to those families who lost their loved ones. Period.” An NRCC email sent Wednesday morning included a link to “become a Benghazi watchdog” – which led to a page where supporters can donate cash. A separate website called “BenghaziWatchdogs.com” still contains a link encouraging...

Rep. Trey Gowdy, the tea party Republican tapped to lead the new committee investigating the 2012 Benghazi attacks, made a telling slip Wednesday morning in describing his mission. Asked by MSNBC’s Joe Scarborough about the possibility that his panel’s work would continue into the 2016 election campaign, Gowdy replied that “if an administration is slow-walking document production, I can’t end a trial simply because the defense won’t cooperate.” A trial? And the Obama administration is the defense? So much for that “serious investigation” House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) promised; his new chairman intends to play prosecutor, proving the administration’s guilt...

Here’s an unsolicited tip for Rep. Trey Gowdy: A smoking gun explanation for the Obama Administration’s use of false talking points has already been found. And the culprit is not a White House adviser or State Department bureaucrat. It’s the intelligence community’s reliance on the media. It’s tucked inside the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence report on Benghazi, which reveals a key source of the bad intelligence that made it into Ambassador Susan Rice’s famous talking points: the media incorrectly reported that before the attack on Sept. 11, 2012 there were protests outside the U.S. facilities in Benghazi when there...

Scandal: On the day after Benghazi, the brother of the White House staffer who wrote the Susan Rice prep email said the government believed it was not just a mob reaction to a video. So who told him that? When you're Ben Rhodes, an assistant to the president and deputy national security adviser for strategic communications, and you've been tasked to prep U.N. Ambassador Susan Rice on how to deflect blame from the Obama administration for the Benghazi massacre, it's good to have a brother who happens to run a TV network quite willing to push the White House spin....