I have to admit, I'm not used to reporters calling politicians out on their lies and hypocrisies -- especially Chuck Todd, of all people. Via Think Progress:

On Thursday, NBC’s Chuck Todd challenged Sen. Marco Rubio’s (R-FL) claim that the Obama administration has created a “culture of intimidation” in which “everything is about politics and destroying your opponent and dividing the American people for your electoral gain,” pointing out that the Rubio’s own PAC is actively fundraising from the ongoing scandals in Washington.

“Your PAC put out an e-mail raising money on IRS issue and doing a petition,” Todd said. “That’s campaigning. That’s politics too.” Rubio disagreed, saying that his PAC is merely trying to rally the American people against government abuse:

RUBIO: Here’s the point. I’m trying to get a petition of American citizens and Americans who support us in this endeavor to rally people. That’s different to say I’ll put on my website every donor to the Obama campaign and attack that individual, a private citizen by name, and I’m going to try to create this culture where people feel intimidated and oppose me. That’s two different things I’m talking about.

Rubio has also called for the acting IRS commissioner to be fired, introduced legislation creating criminal penalties for IRS officials who engage in political targeting and asked his supporters for money. In the eight days since the story broke, Rubio’s senate office put out seven different press releases about the IRS and he has granted numerous print, radio and TV interviews to discuss the matter.

Cab Drollery - like luggage and herpes, we will never be rid of Benghazi!;

Feministing - sexual assault prevention officers not getting their own memos;

Liberal Values - why let a doctored email ruin a perfectly good scandal (Benghazi!);

Squatlo-Rant - Benghazi! + IRS scandal > 13 Cheneys + 27 Hitlers + Watergate + Iraq War dead;

The American Prospect - if you're tired of Benghazi! and the IRS mess, there's always the AP scandal.

blogenfreude blogs at stinque.com (@blogenfreude on Twitter) and suggests that people who endorsed Mitt Romney probably shouldn't be making major motion pictures.
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So someone actually asked SmoothieFreak "How Do Black People Feel About Spring?" Thank goodness she is the spokesperson for all black people everywhere 18 months running. Ahem. Warning: she says a swear.

Open thread below.

Seems kinda like a trend, doesn't it?

WASHINGTON — A soldier assigned to coordinate a sexual assault prevention program in Texas is under investigation for "abusive sexual contact" and other alleged misconduct and has been suspended from his duties, the Army announced Wednesday.

The announcement came just one week after an Air Force officer who headed a sexual assault prevention office was himself arrested on charges of groping a woman in a parking lot.

The two cases highlight a problem that is drawing increased scrutiny in the Congress and expressions of frustration from top Pentagon leaders. Pentagon press secretary George Little said after Wednesday's announcement that Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel is angry and disappointed at "these troubling allegations and the breakdown in discipline and standards they imply."

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Wow. I admit I'm very surprised to read that none other than Michelle Malkin is defending Obama over the Associated Press wiretapping "scandal."

The frenzy over AP is a stark reminder of basic party differences on the War on Terror. The Democrats put security first. The Republicans put trial lawyers, terrorists’ rights, and election campaigns first. The Democrats are acting to prevent another 9/11. The Republicans are stuck in a 9/10 world.

Woah!

And it turns out that it was Republicans who asked the IRS to look at the tax-exempt status of Tea Party groups.

Seven Republican members of Congress filed complaints with the IRS in 2010, claiming Tea Party groups engaged in partisan electioneering, leading to an IRS probe, according to agency documents released under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA). The Internal Revenue Service (IRS) launched an examination of the Tea Party on Oct. 8, 2010, claiming a speech by a Tea Party leader made during the organization's annual convention that criticized President Barack Obama's education and foreign policies crossed the line from issue advocacy to partisan electioneering. [...]

The documents include letters sent from members of Congress on behalf of their constituents, including Sens. Lamar Alexander (R-TN) and Susan Collins (R-ME), Rep. Jo Ann Davis (R-VA), the late Senator Strom Thurmond (R-SC), and former Reps. Larry Combest (R-TX), Joe Scarborough (R-FL) and Robert Ehrlich (R-MD).

Fascinating! Who knew Republicans were so principled?

And listen to former Senator Kay Bailey Hutchison, on a possible investigation into the Benghazi attacks.

"I don't think that anyone should start pointing fingers in a personal way or suggest that people are trying to cover their political backsides. I just think that's ridiculous. I think we need to go forward. We need to be positive. There are failures. We need to get to the root of it and try to make our country more secure."

Oh, sorry.

My bad.

Malkin was actually defending FISA wiretapping under Bush, and it was the NAACP Republicans asked the IRS to investigate during the Bush administration -- and Senator Hutchison was speaking out against the formation of the 9/11 Commission.

You can see how I got confused.

Out of the three supposed Obama beltway scandals, the AP story is clearly the worst, but what I find laughable is how conservatives are now piling on the administration in defense of journalists' right to publish stories based on government leaks against what they perceive as national security concerns. You may recall how many times conservatives called for the heads of the NY Times and Washington Post for stories about secret prisons and extraordinary renditions during the Bush years as well FISA. They went ballistic against any story that came out which made George Bush look bad, no matter what it was about. Oh, those damn journalists are all out to get George Bush, etc..librul bias...etc..

During the general election, Joe Scarborough was one such right-wing pundit who was calling for action against these nasty national security leakers because Romney and his ilk were saying these leaks were an effort to make Obama look tough on terrorism. Hmmm, now watch how Joe flips out when David Axlerod calls him on his past behavior. See, they did actually take The Scar's advice.

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The AP has a scathing reply to Deputy Attorney General’s claim that the subpoena he signed fulfilled DOJ guidelines on scope and notice. Among other details, it reveals the AP only learned via Cole’s letter that DOJ seized just portions of the call records of April and May 2012.

In addition, the AP makes the same point I keep making: the White House had told AP the risk to national security had passed and that it planned to release this information itself the next day.

Finally, they say this secrecy is important for national security. It is always difficult to respond to that, particularly since they still haven’t told us specifically what they are investigating.

We believe it is related to AP’s May 2012 reporting that the U.S. government had foiled a plot to put a bomb on an airliner to the United States. We held that story until the government assured us that the national security concerns had passed. Indeed, the White House was preparing to publicly announce that the bomb plot had been foiled.

The White House had said there was no credible threat to the American people in May of 2012. The AP story suggested otherwise, and we felt that was important information and the public deserved to know it.

Note what else is implied by the comment: the AP believed that the threat had posed a real threat, in contradiction to what the White House had been claiming at the time.

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Just the other day, I wrote about how much I despise the corporate media. And here they are, in all their Alpha Girl, Mean Girl finest!

Ed Kilgore writes at the Washington Monthly:

Well, it doesn’t get much more official than this: an VandeHei/Allen “Behind the Curtain” column announcing that D.C. (“the town”) is “turning on” Barack Obama, and there will be nothing but venom coming from any direction for the foreseeable future:

Republicans have waited five years for the moment to put the screws to Obama — and they have one-third of all congressional committees on the case now. Establishment Democrats, never big fans of this president to begin with, are starting to speak out. And reporters are tripping over themselves to condemn lies, bullying and shadiness in the Obama administration.

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The IRS certainly deserves some of the criticism it's getting, but it's also worth looking at the groups they were examining a little closer.

I've been collecting the IRS filings for these organizations since they dropped off the FEC radar in early 2009. At that time, these political "civic" organizations were springing up like weeds after a spring storm. Let's take just one subset of the larger group and look more carefully.

American Majority Action is the 501(c)(4) companion to American Majority, the Koch-funded 501(c)(3) organization devoted to "training conservative activists." It is headed up by Andrew and Net Ryun, sons of former Kansas congressman Jim Ryun. Their initial report to the IRS for the short year ending June 30, 2011 described its program services as "issue advocacy and get out the vote operations in 4 states including 9 liberty headquarters." Secondary services included "capacity building grants to 32 like-minded organizations," and tertiary services included "health care policy issue advocacy." Amounts spent were $1,020,500, $529,000 and $224,000, respectively.

What like-minded organizations received grants? Here is a list of some, not all, since they did not list all 32 grantees:

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On January 7, 200--two weeks before Barack Obama took the oath of office--the Congressional Budget Office forecast the federal budget deficit for fiscal year 2009 at $1.2 trillion. Now, the CBO is projecting the deficit will be only $642 billion for FY 2013, $200 billion less than the nonpartisan budget scorekeeper estimated as recently as February.

For policymakers in Washington, the implications couldn't be clearer. For starters, the counterproductive Beltway fixation on immediate debt reduction, which economists have warned is slowing U.S. economic growth and costing millions of jobs, should be jettisoned ASAP. And to be sure, the Republicans' next round of debt ceiling hostage-taking should be condemned as the economic sabotage it is.

The CBO explained why the U.S. fiscal picture is improving so dramatically:

If the current laws that govern federal taxes and spending do not change, the budget deficit will shrink this year to $642 billion, CBO estimates, the smallest shortfall since 2008. Relative to the size of the economy, the deficit this year--at 4.0 percent of gross domestic product (GDP)--will be less than half as large as the shortfall in 2009, which was 10.1 percent of GDP...

CBO's estimate of the deficit for this year is about $200 billion below the estimate that it produced in February 2013, mostly as a result of higher-than-expected revenues and an increase in payments to the Treasury by Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. For the 2014-2023 period, CBO now projects a cumulative deficit that is $618 billion less than it projected in February. That reduction results mostly from lower projections of spending for Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, and interest on the public debt.

By 2015, the annual deficit is now projected to just 2.1 percent of U.S. gross domestic product, well below the 40-year historical average of 3.1 percent. The gap is expected to grow to 3.5 percent by 2023, "because of the pressures of an aging population, rising health care costs, an expansion of federal subsidies for health insurance, and growing interest payments on federal debt."

The new CBO numbers are just the latest confirmation of House Speaker John Boehner's admission that "we have no immediate debt crisis." Coming on the heels of an analysis by the Hamilton Project estimating that austerity at the federal, state and local level has cost up to 2.2 million American jobs, the CBO report should help put to lie that more budget cutting is needed in Washington. As the New York Times explained just last week:

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