Hundreds of residents of Gush Etzion, south of Jerusalem, were astounded Monday morning to see an oversized Nazi flag flying next to a mosque in the Arab town of Beit Omar.
The residents notified the IDF.
A resident, Uri Arnon, told the Tazpit News Agency: “I felt we were going back 75 years, losing our hold on the land. The Arabs no longer feel the need to hide their murderous tendencies, announcing out loud that they wish to annihilate us.”
An IDF spokesman said that the flag was hung on an electrical line, and that they were waiting to professionals to come and remove it.
“The Jewish religion is under attack in Europe”, declared the Conference of European Rabbis president Pinchas Goldschmidt. Many polls (such as the study on behalf of the German Social Democratic Friedrich Ebert Foundation) bring an iconic number measuring the disaster: 150,000,000 Europeans have a delegitimizing and demonizing view of the State of Israel and its citizens.
For a large sector of Europe, the cities, skyscrapers, hospitals, cinemas, and schools on that tiny sliver of land named “Israel” are merely real estate that will be restored to Islam once this malefic Jewish form is swept away.
This is a popular mobilization against Israel in the “Raus mit Uns” spirit. 150,000,000 Western citizens believe that Zionism is a misconceived project to be brought to an end as soon as possible. It is the consequence of the Palestinian-Islamic psychological war (note: the European Union has just contributed 20 million euros to the payment of salaries and pensions for April of nearly 76,000 Palestinian Arabs).
See what happened to Europe’s Jews in little more than a week.
In Hungary, where Adolf Eichmann obsessively hunted down all the Jews, a wave of fascist Judeophobia is poisoning the social cohesion and the head of the Raoul Wallenberg Association was injured in anti-Semitic attack.
A Labour party member in the UK, Nazir Ahmed, resigned after anti-Jewish remarks made on television.
A scientific genius, Stephen Hawking, embraced the racist boycott of the State of Israel.
The BBC planned a “documentary” claiming that the Jewish exodus from Jerusalem was a myth.
Dozens of French mayors rallied for the liberation of the Palestinian terrorists.
A Scottish Christian document erased the Jewish links with to the holy land.
In the French town of Villeurbanne, a rabbi and his son were stabbed.
It was an ordinary week of anti-Semitism in Europe.
RUSH: Did you hear how David Axelrod attempted to defend Obama on the IRS scandal? I think he was on MSNBC today. David Axelrod said (paraphrasing), “Well, you know, the government’s too big. The government’s simply too vast for Obama to control it.” Bingo! Exactly! That’s the whole reason the Tea Party exists. The government is too big. Not only is the government too big, it’s growing. It’s growing to the point that it is unmanageable, although that is a big, I think, diversion in and of itself.
They managed all of this. They were able to direct all of these scandals, folks. And yet the theme of the day in the Drive-By Media, guess what it is? Now all of a sudden Obama is just too disengaged. He’s too passive. He’s too disinterested. He couldn’t possibly have had a direct role in any of this ’cause he doesn’t care enough. He’s not engaged enough. Dana Milbank actually has a name for him in his Washington Post column. The headline of Milbank’s piece: “Obama, the Uninterested President.” And he refers to him as “President Passerby.”
Folks, I am telling you, the media is now being split up. That may not be the accurate way to say this, but some elements of the media are loaded for bear now, or appear to be at least on the IRS scandal. Some of them are still circling the wagons around Obama, and one of them is Dana Milbank. But there is in certain sectors of the State-Controlled Media, the theme today is that Obama couldn’t have been involved directly in any of this stuff. Obama couldn’t be. He’s too passive. He’s too disinterested. He’s focused on other things. His job has never really been all that challenging to Obama. I mean, it’s so beneath his skill set.
This guy is really capable and qualified of so much more and so much of this bores Obama, because he can’t get as much done as he wants to get done. There’s all this gridlock because of Limbaugh and the Republicans, and so he’s just frustrated. The poor guy, it’s almost to the point where he’s just thrown up his hands and said, “Well, to hell with it. Everything moves so slow I can’t get anything done,” and that’s why he goes out and plays golf ’cause he really doesn’t care that much. This is what they are constructing, folks, as a way of insulating Obama from any of these scandals, about which there are now four.
There is an EPA scandal that is developing and it involves treating conservative organizations much the same way the IRS did. But, boy, I tell you, Axelrod: the government is just too big, it’s just too vast for Obama to control. Exactly. Exactly. You know, folks, it’s kind of funny. It seems like only a few days ago Barack Obama was telling the graduates at the Ohio State University commencement exercise about the joys of big government. He was mocking right-wingers who distrust big government for their paranoid suspicions about tyranny. He was warning them about all the voices, and he meant one; I’m now convinced it was me, since I do live rent free in his head.
Iran will preside over the United Nations arms control forum this month, despite the fact that it is under U.N. sanctions for illicit nuclear activities and routinely supplies arms to the terrorist organization Hezbollah in violation of international law.
The U.N.’s annual Conference on Disarmament, which Iran is slated to lead from May 27 to June 23, is the organization’s primary multilateral forum for negotiating arms control agreements.
The forum has given way to major international treaties on nuclear non-proliferation, prohibitions on chemical weapons, and bans on nuclear tests.
UN Watch, a Geneva-based watchdog group, blasted the decision to allow Iran to chair the conference.
“This is like putting Jack the Ripper in charge of a women’s shelter,” said UN Watch executive director Hillel Neuer in a statement. “Iran is an international outlaw state that illegally supplies rockets to Syria, Hezbollah, and Hamas, aiding and abetting mass murder and terrorism. To make this rogue regime head of world arms control is simply an outrage. Abusers of international norms should not be the public face of the U.N.”
The organization said it plans to hold protests with Iranian dissidents outside the U.N. hall.
“Obama never tried, U.S. diplomats died.” Shocking lies by the Obama Administration over Benghazi were unmasked on May 8. Testimony about the September 11 terrorist attacks on the U.S. Consulate in Libya were heard by the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, led by Congressman Darrell Issa (R-CA).
Some of what was expected did not materialize. Other bombshells turned out bigger. Clearly, we still do not know everything. Jaw-dropping topics are being discussed by other conservative journalists.
First, Gregory Hicks is the only person so far to speak in public about these events who was actually in Libya at the time. Hicks was the Deputy Chief of Mission in Tripoli, Libya – that is, Deputy Ambassador. As soon as Ambassador Chris Stevens died, Hicks became Acting Ambassador to Libya.
However, we still have not heard from anyone who was in Benghazi during these events. The 30-40 survivors are still in mysterious seclusion. Their eyewitness accounts will offer future revelations.
Second, Hicks dropped a bombshell: The USA never asked Libya for permission to fly through Libyan airspace to defend the Consulate in Benghazi. The Obama Administration never intended to come to the defense of Ambassador Stevens. Hicks – fluent in Arabic and familiar with Libya’s government – testified that Libya would have granted permission.
Congressman Jason Chaffetz (R-UT) keeps reminding us that no one knew how long the attack would last. In fact, it was 3 days later when the Embassy staff in Tripoli returned from evacuation at an annex. So at the time, U.S. F-16’s might still have been needed long past the first 7 hours. Hicks confirmed that he thought the situation was still dangerous for 3 days. Yet the U.S.A. never requested Libyan permission in case U.S. aircraft might be needed.
When it became clear last fall that the CIA’s now discredited Benghazi talking points were flawed, the White House said repeatedly the documents were put together almost entirely by the intelligence community, but White House documents reviewed by Congress suggest a different story.
ABC News has obtained 12 different versions of the talking points that show they were extensively edited as they evolved from the drafts first written entirely by the CIA to the final version distributed to Congress and to U.S. Ambassador to the U.N. Susan Rice before she appeared on five talk shows the Sunday after that attack.
White House emails reviewed by ABC News suggest the edits were made with extensive input from the State Department. The edits included requests from the State Department that references to the Al Qaeda-affiliated group Ansar al-Sharia be deleted as well references to CIA warnings about terrorist threats in Benghazi in the months preceding the attack.
That would appear to directly contradict what White House Press Secretary Jay Carney said about the talking points in November.
We’ve heard the official line of Obama administration officials. Benghazi happened “a long time ago.” Benghazi has been thoroughly investigated—all the questions have been asked and answered, all the key officials have given their on-the-record testimony. The media have had their chances to ask their questions.
If all that is true, then why did the testimony of Gregory Hicks before a House committee today provide such a riveting and enlightening picture of the events of Sept. 11, 2012? Hicks was the State Department’s deputy chief of mission in Libya that night. He would become the chief before the night was over, as U.S. Ambassador J. Christopher Stevens, as well as three other U.S. personnel, perished in the attacks.
As House Oversight and Government Reform Committee Chairman Darrell Issa (R-Calif.) noted in the hearing, the public hadn’t heard direct testimony from “a single person who was in Libya that night.” He instructed Hicks to give a rundown of what happened the night of Benghazi, and to take his time.
Hicks complied, to towering effect.
His narrative toggled between events in Benghazi, where the attacks began around 9:30 p.m. local time, and events in Tripoli, where Hicks was based: “As I remember September 11, 2012—it was a routine day at our embassy.” Routine, that is, until word came of the upheaval at the U.S. Embassy in Cairo, at which point Hicks notified Stevens, in Benghazi, about the disturbing news.
Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) aims to block any illegal immigrant from ever receiving any state, local, or federal welfare or public benefits with a series of amendments to the immigration reform bill currently under review in the U.S. Senate.
Cruz has filed five amendments to the bill. The one currently marked “Cruz 2” on the Senate Judiciary Committee website (the amendments have not yet received official numbers) has a stated purpose to “provide that aliens who have entered or remained present in the United States while not in lawful status shall not be eligible for means-tested benefits.”
The amendment would insert language into the bill that specifically says no illegal immigrant who broke the law to enter or stay in the country “shall be eligible for any Federal, State, or local government means-tested benefit, nor shall such alien be eligible for any benefit under the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act Pub. L. 111-148), regardless of the alien’s legal status at the time of application for such benefit.”
Tomorrow’s hearings on Benghazi will define the Obama presidency if the truth is finally allowed to be told. I encourage everyone to tune in and hear the revelations that are long overdue. We’ll also see whether the president’s reliable lapdog cheerleaders in the media will continue to cover up for him and in so doing disgrace their profession. The following link is to something I posted way back on October 25th of last year asking questions that we should have had answers to long ago.
- Sarah Palin
There are many questions about the Benghazi attack that Americans deserve answers to. It’s been too long an “investigation” and too tragic for the families of lost loved ones for the White House and its friends in the media to ignore these questions:
- When and why did the YouTube trailer of the anti-Muhammad movie surface as any kind of credible reason for the attack?
- Where is the proof that that video was linked to Benghazi? It’s a weak excuse to claim some supposed rumored link between Benghazi and the attacks on our embassy in Cairo. Benghazi was very different. “Spontaneous” protestors don’t come armed with rocket-propelled grenades.
- What was the President’s response to the previous Benghazi embassy attacks in April and June? Why did officials ignore the requests for beefed up security to protect Americans after these attacks?
- Why did the Obama Administration assume a YouTube video was the reason for the Benghazi attack but not all the evidence to the contrary from the postings and emails that circulated that night in real time as the attack took place and Americans were being killed? And why weren’t those emails disclosed until this week?
- Why did the Obama administration spend our tax dollars to make and air television ads that ran in the Middle East apologizing for the YouTube video when they had so much credible evidence that it was nothing but a red herring?
- How much did President Obama know about this? In an interview he gave to CBS News on September 12, President Obama alluded to the fact that the Benghazi attack was not—as his U.N. Ambassador Susan Rice and other officials were characterizing it—a “spontaneous” protest triggered by the Cairo embassy attack and the video. He told CBS News in that interview, “my suspicion is that there are folks involved in [the Benghazi attack] who were looking to target Americans from the start.” If he suspected this then why did he allow his administration to continue blaming the attack on the YouTube video? And why didn’t CBS News call him out on this when his comments in their interview with him, which they didn’t air until a month later, belie the administration’s YouTube narrative?
Someone in the media must demand answers. Until the media does its job to give us the Who What Where When and Why of this cover-up, there will be even less trust for this “cornerstone of our democracy” – if less trust and respect for the media is even possible today. We sincerely want to be able to trust the media. We need to be able to trust them. Their job is so important, and we appreciate all the good journalists in America. Our troops fight to protect all our freedoms including the freedom of the press.
The city of Dearborn, Mich., has agreed to pay Christians who were arrested at its Arab International Festival in 2010, remove all criticism of them from a city website and post a public apology that will remain online for years, according to a legal team on the case.
The American Freedom Law Center said today that the settlement follows more than two years of court negotiations and resolves the Christians’ claims against the city.
It does not, however, remove the Dearborn Arab Chamber as a defendant in the case, which will continue.
The Christians were arrested in 2010 by city authorities for preaching peacefully to Muslims at the city festival.
Christian missionaries Nabell Qureshi, David Wood and Paul Rezkalla were jailed by the city June 18, 2010, and charged with “breach of the peace.”
Robert Muise, AFLC co-founder, represented the team in a five-day criminal trial in which they were acquitted by a jury.
The Christians then filed a civil rights lawsuit against the city, naming Dearborn, Mayor John B. O’Reilly, Police Chief Ronald Haddad, 17 officers and two executives from the American Arab Chamber of Commerce. The Arab Chamber itself later was added.
The case alleged an egregious violation of the Christians’ rights.
The AFLC said the city now has agreed to a settlement, including a public apology “that will be posted …….
Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s “dereliction of duty” regarding security at the U.S. diplomatic outpost at Benghazi, Libya, should preclude her from holding any office, Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) said in a speech to the Missouri Republican Party last week. The Missouri Republicans released a video of the entire speech Tuesday morning as part of a fundraising effort, the online political publication The Run reported.
Questions and accusations concerning security arrangements and the response by President Obama and State Department officials to the assault on the mission last fall that killed U.S. Ambassador J. Christopher Stevens and three other Americans have come up repeatedly in the weeks and months since the September 11, 2012 attack. During a hearing by the Senate Foreign Relations Committee in January, Clinton said she had not read cables from Libya requesting additional security.
“Had I been president at the time” and known the secretary had not read those cables, “I would have relieved you of your post,” Paul told Clinton at the hearing. “I think it’s inexcusable.” In his Missouri speech last week, Paul said Clinton should be relieved of any future office as well.
“I think her dereliction of duty and her lack of leadership should preclude her from holding any office,” he said to enthusiastic applause from the partisan crowd. Clinton is considered the likely frontrunner for the Democratic presidential nomination in 2016 if she seeks it, and Paul has indicated an interest in the Republican nomination. Neither has made any definitive statement about a White House bid.
The attack at Benghazi occurred hours after an anti-American demonstration on the grounds of the U.S. embassy in Cairo, Egypt, where the American flag was torn down and an al-Qaeda flag raised. That event was widely reported as a response to viewing on the Internet of an American-made anti-Muslim movie. The military-style assault in Benghazi was carried out by an estimated 125 to 150 militants with assault rifles, heavy machine guns mortars and rocket grenades. For several days after the attack, U.S. officials were describing it as a spontaneous demonstration that had been taken over by extremists.
Pat Smith’s son Sean Smith, a State Department information officer, was one of four Americans killed during the attack.
JAKE TAPPER: One woman still looking for answers is Pat Smith. Her son, State Department Information Officer Sean Smith was one of the four Americans killed. Pat, thanks so much for being here. I know this is not an easy time. How are you holding up?
PAT SMITH, MOTHER OF SEAN SMITH, KILLED IN BENGHAZI: Terrible. I cry every night. I don’t sleep at night. I need answers.
TAPPER: What do you want answers to? What do you not know?
SMITH: Why was there no security for him? When they were supposed to have security and the security that they did have was called back. It just — things do not add up and I’m just told lies.
As the Sept. 11, 2012 attack on the U.S. consulate and CIA annex in Benghazi, Libya raged on for more than seven hours, a team of U.S. special forces in Tripoli was blocked from flying in to attempt a rescue, according to a top American diplomat who was in the region.
In previously secret testimony given by Gregory Hicks — the deputy chief of mission at the U.S. Embassy in Libya — to congressional investigators last month, Hicks revealed two possible courses of action that could have saved American lives that night: allowing U.S. special forces to enter Benghazi and flying a fast-moving U.S. military aircraft over the scene of the attacks.
“So Lieutenant Colonel Gibson, who is the [Special Operations Command South Africa] commander, his team, you know, they were on their way to the vehicles to go to the airport to get on the C-130 when he got a phone call from SOCAFRICA which said, you can’t go now, you don’t have authority to go now,” Hicks told congressional investigators, “and so they missed the flight,” which would have gotten the team inserted prior to the second attack on the CIA annex.
They advance a system of k-12 education where every parent, regardless of race, origin or family income, was free to choose a learning environment that was best for their child.
News, analysis, commentaries and links to outside articles with a conservative perspective from David Horowitz’s Center for the Study of Popular Culture.
Scientists now say the world stopped heating up in 1998. The BBC reported:
Scientists say the recent downturn in the rate of global warming will lead to lower temperature rises in the short-term.
Since 1998, there has been an unexplained “standstill” in the heating of the Earth’s atmosphere.
Writing in Nature Geoscience, the researchers say this will reduce predicted warming in the coming decades.
But long-term, the expected temperature rises will not alter significantly.
The slowdown in the expected rate of global warming has been studied for several years now. Earlier this year, the UK Met Office lowered their five-year temperature forecast.
But this new paper gives the clearest picture yet of how any slowdown is likely to affect temperatures in both the short-term and long-term.
An international team of researchers looked at how the last decade would impact long-term, equilibrium climate sensitivity and the shorter term climate response.
Hundreds of residents of Gush Etzion, south of Jerusalem, were astounded Monday morning to see an oversized Nazi flag flying next to a mosque in the Arab town of Beit Omar.
The residents notified the IDF.
A resident, Uri Arnon, told the Tazpit News Agency: “I felt we were going back 75 years, losing our hold on the land. The Arabs no longer feel the need to hide their murderous tendencies, announcing out loud that they wish to annihilate us.”
An IDF spokesman said that the flag was hung on an electrical line, and that they were waiting to professionals to come and remove it.
While many Americans were tuned into news coverage of the massive damage from tornadoes ravaging the state of Oklahoma, Rhode Island Democratic Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse took to the Senate floor to rail against his Republican colleagues for denying the theory of anthropogenic global warming.
Whitehouse spent 15 minutes chastising GOP senators and justified his remarks by alluding to states that seek federal assistance in the wake of natural disasters.
“So, you may have a question for me,” Whitehouse said. “Why do you care? Why do you, Sheldon Whitehouse, Democrat of Rhode Island, care if we Republicans run off the climate cliff like a bunch of proverbial lemmings and disgrace ourselves? I’ll tell you why. We’re stuck in this together. We are stuck in this together. When cyclones tear up Oklahoma and hurricanes swamp Alabama and wildfires scorch Texas, you come to us, the rest of the country, for billions of dollars to recover. And the damage that your polluters and deniers are doing doesn’t just hit Oklahoma and Alabama and Texas. It hits Rhode Island with floods and storms. It hits Oregon with acidified seas, it hits Montana with dying forests. So, like it or not, we’re in this together.”
The scandals of the Obama administration seem to be hurting not just the White House but MSNBC as well while Fox News Channel scored its second-best week of the year. After double-digit gains during last year’s presidential election, May 13-17 saw the progressive-aligned “Lean Forward” news network hit new lows as the IRS scandal erupted and revelations that the Justice Department secretly obtained AP records became public. With 350,000 viewers on average and 94,000 among the adults 25-54 demo, MSNBC had its least-watched and lowest-rated total-day results of the year last week. That was also the lowest total-day demo result the network has had since the week of June 26-July 2, 2006,
Last week’s total day results were down 17% in viewers and 22% among the demo from the comparable May 14 to May 18 week of last year. In primetime, the numbers were even worse for MSNBC as a steady decline from the beginning of the year continued. The network had 570,000 total viewers and 159,000 in the demo from 8 PM to 11 PM from May 13 to May 17, 2013. That’s the lowest rated week of the year so far for MSNBC in terms of viewers and the third lowest of 2013 in the demo. The week of May 6 to May 12 was worst in the demo with 148,000 viewers when the network had 604,000 viewers on average. These latest results come as the news network’s recently launched and struggling All In With Chris Hayes hit a new viewership of 396,000 and its second lowest demo audience of just 88,000 on May 14. It also comes on the heels of MSNBC falling in April ratings from its second place ranking of the year before.
With new reports today that the Obama Department of Justice leaked documents intended to smear a whistleblower in the Fast and Furious gunwalking scandal, it is now more obvious than ever that this administration has, in the words of Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) created a “culture of intimidation” that stretches from the White House down to myriad agencies of the executive branch.
President Obama: From his language suggesting targeting of enemies to his officials’ attempts to castigate Tea Partiers as economic terrorists, President Obama has presided over an administration that sees his political opponents as unworthy and nasty. Early in his administration, Obama threatened CEOs of banks, “My administration is the only thing between you and the pitchforks.” Whether he’s urging supporters to bring guns to a fight or suggesting that his enemies are in thrall to the gun lobby at the expense of children, President Obama’s tactics of intimidation have become commonplace. The Obama campaign singled out Mitt Romney donors for special censure, suggesting that they were lawbreakers. Not coincidentally, many of those donors ended up on the wrong end of Obama administration legal scrutiny, including megadonors like Frank Vandersloot.
Department of Justice: Today’s report from the Department of Justice Inspector General, showing that former US Attorney for Arizona Dennis Burke leaked documents intended to smear a whistleblower in Fast and Furious, are only the latest revelation on misconduct from DOJ. The DOJ has also targeted Fox News reporter James Rosen over leaks from State Department employee Stephen Jin-Woo Kim; according to Megyn Kelly, two other Fox News staffers; the Associated Press, over a story regarding CIA investigations into al-Qaeda; Gallup, shortly after the polling firm showed Mitt Romney with a substantial lead over Barack Obama in the 2012 presidential race; and True the Vote, an organization dedicated to stopping voter fraud. The Eric Holder Department of Justice has been the lead enforcement arm of the Obama agenda, going after Arizona’s immigration law and refusing to go after New Black Panther voter intimidation. The DOJ reportedly uses the non-profit group Media Matters to disseminate its talking points.
Remember Obama and Eric Holder’s attack on Gibson Guitars? Back in 2009 the Obama regime raided Gibson Guitars and demanded that its woodwork labor be done overseas. The original excuse by the Obama regime for their raid on Gibson Guitars was ‘environmental concerns.’ Court documents however, revealed that the raid and legal hassles were from a non-environmental question — which country is working on the wood?
That’s right, the Obama regime wanted the ‘fingerboards’ produced outside the U.S. In something that was overlooked at the time but makes a lot more sense now, the Gibson Guitars CEO Henry E. Juszkiewicz is a Republican donor.
When the BS about the ‘wood’ came up as an excuse from the Obama regime to attack Gibson Guitars, the corrupt media never mentioned that Gibson’s competitors used the exact same wood and faced no problems from the government.
A shocking story is coming out of Everson, Washington, where a pre-teen was raped, impregnated and coerced into aborting her child.
The girl’s attacker brought her to Planned Parenthood, where she lied about how she was impregnated and subsequently had an abortion.
It was August 2012 when the preteen told clinic workers that her 14-year-old boyfriend was the baby’s father — a lie that was apparently told to protect the adult male who had perpetrated the crime.
It wasn’t until six weeks later that she told authorities what really happened. As a result, in April, Luis Gonztalez-Jose, 31, pleaded guilty to second-degree rape of a child.
The horrific incident apparently occurred at a home in Whatcom County, while her mother was in the shower, reports The Bellingham Herald. Gonzalez-Jose will serve nearly seven years in prison as a result of the crime and will be deported upon release.
He’s compared himself to Abraham Lincoln and Teddy Roosevelt, evoked nostalgia for John F. Kennedy, sought to emulate Ronald Reagan, (belatedly) praised George W. Bush, and enlisted the assistance of Bill Clinton in his 2012 re-election effort, but as his second term stumbles along, the president with whom Barack Obama finds himself being compared is Richard M. Nixon.
My father, Lou Cannon, covered the White House with distinction for the Washington Post for many years, beginning in the Nixon administration. He employed an easy rule of thumb when fielding phone calls from anonymous tipsters:
If the caller said, “I have a story that will make Watergate look like a picnic,” Dad would hang up on him.
In the past week, Nixon’s name has been invoked often, and not in a way that pleases the current president or his loyalists. Unless it’s a reference to his dramatic 1972 visit to China, Nixon is not the president any of his successors enjoy being likened to — especially when the suffix “gate” is attached to it.
Barack Obama was only 13 years old when Nixon resigned from office one step ahead of the posse. This is old enough to know that correlations between himself and the 37th president should be contested, which Obama has done.
“I’ll let you guys engage in those comparisons,” he replied when asked at a rainy Rose Garden appearance Thursday how he felt about the Nixon parallel. “You can go ahead and read the history, I think, and draw your own conclusions.”
This response echoed language employed earlier in the week by Obama’s spokesman, Jay Carney. “I can tell you,” the White House press secretary told reporters, “that the people who make those kinds of comparisons need to check their history.”
A new poll found that Americans by a large margin believe that Congress is not overreacting to the burgeoning scandals plaguing the Obama administration.
A CNN/ORC poll found that 54 percent of Americans don’t believe that Congress is overreacting to the IRS scrutiny of conservative groups, while 42 percent said that it is. By an even larger margin, 59 percent to 37 percent, respondents said Congress is making the right moves on the administration’s actions regarding the Benghazi terror attack.
The poll came as White House senior adviser Dan Pfeiffer made the round of Sunday talk shows, defending President Barack Obama against charges that he was unaware of the IRS scandal until hearing press reports.
“Here’s the cardinal rule … for all White Houses,” Pfeiffer said. “You do not interfere in an independent investigation, and you do not do anything to give off the appearance of interference in an independent investigation.”
Pfeiffer said Obama learned about the IRS scandal on May 10, the same day as the public, even though Treasury Secretary Jack Lew and Rep. Darrell Issa, a California Republican, were aware of the probe earlier and alert the White House about it while the investigation was ongoing.
The White House might not have ordered Internal Revenue agents to target conservative groups, but a “culture of intimidation throughout the administration” made them think it was acceptable, says Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell.