“Your Tax Dollars At Work”: What Conspiratorial Madness Looks Like
Over the last 18 months, the deadly attack in Benghazi has been investigated by the independent State Department Accountability Review Board, the Senate Intelligence Committee, the Senate Armed Services Committee, the House Intelligence Committee, the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, the House Armed Services Committee, the House Committee on Oversight & Government Reform, and the House Committee on Foreign Affairs.
How many of them uncovered evidence of a cover-up? None.
And so far-right lawmakers said what’s really needed is a special, brand new committee. For months, House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) resisted these calls, content to leave the matter in the hands of the existing committee chairs. This morning, it appears Boehner changed his mind.
Speaker John A. Boehner of Ohio established a special committee to investigate the Sept. 11, 2012, attack on a U.S. consulate in Benghazi, according to a senior leadership aide.
The news comes the same day House Oversight and Government Reform Chairman Darrell Issa subpoenaed Secretary of State John Kerry, aiming to compel him to testify before Congress about the administration’s response to the attack.
“The new emails released this week were the straw that broke the camel’s back,” an aide in Boehner’s office told Roll Call.
In reality, the “new emails” only confirmed what was already known and offered nothing in the way of new information.
This, in a nutshell, is what conspiratorial madness looks like.
House Republicans have no health care bill. They have no immigration bill. They’ve passed no jobs bill. They won’t consider extending unemployment benefits or raising the minimum wage or fighting for pay equity or investing in infrastructure or taking climate science seriously or even tackling a compromise on debt reduction. Since Republicans took over the House, Congress’ ability to actually pass laws has slowed to levels unseen in modern times.
But good lord are they invested in discredited conspiracy theories involving Benghazi.
Remember, the materials that “were the straw that broke the camel’s back” are effectively meaningless.
Ultimately, the new e-mails do little more than buttress what has been known for a year about the immediate communication among the Obama team as it rushed to cobble together talking points from the information it had to feed to Rice, who was only asked late in the day Friday to be the White House mouthpiece.
Dave Weigel added that in order to take the “smoking gun” argument seriously, “you need to forget the previously-known” information that’s already part of the public record. Indeed, conspiracy theorists should feel discouraged, not emboldened – the “new” information Republicans are so excited about “reveals nothing new.”
But Congress has decided it wants a new committee to tackle the work that’s already been done by other committees. Your tax dollars at work.
Rep. Trey Gowdy (R-S.C.), is reportedly set to head this new committee.
By: Steve Benen, The Maddow Blog, May 2, 2014
“Republican’s ‘Un-American’ Activities”: Darrell Issa Tries McCarthyite Move To Revive Flailing IRS Probe
GOP congressman and House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform chairman Darrell Issa’s quest to uncover the smoking gun of the IRS scandal story — the missing Gotcha! moment that will cause the Obama administration to crumble under the weight of its own corruption — has run aground lately, primarily due to the people in Issa’s cross hairs pleading the Fifth Amendment. But that doesn’t mean Issa is quite yet ready to give up.
According to a report in the Huffington Post, Issa and his allies are considering making a rare argument and a procedural move in order to force former IRS official Loris Lerner to testify. Lerner used to be the head of the IRS department tasked with figuring out whether to grant tax-exempt status to groups claiming to be apolitical in nature and focused primarily on “social welfare.” Republicans have charged that the IRS disproportionately targeted right-wing organizations for review. Lerner resigned and has spoken to Issa’s committee, but has also refused to answer some questions by pleading the Fifth.
In response to Lerner’s invocation of this constitutional right, Issa is now arguing that because the former government official did speak with the committee before pleading the Fifth, she waived her right to do so and is thus eligible to be held in contempt of Congress and even possibly face criminal charges. A report by the Congressional Research Services that is pushing Issa’s argument calls Lerner “critical to the Committee’s investigation[.]” Further, the report states that “Without [Lerner’s] testimony, the full extent of the IRS’s targeting of Tea Party applications cannot be known, and the Committee will be unable to fully complete its work.”
One potential problem with Issa’s latest move, however, is the fact that no American has ever been successfully prosecuted for pleading the Fifth before Congress. Indeed, even the attempt to prosecute on such grounds is rare, with most of the examples in recent history having occurred during the McCarthyite years of the 1950s.
Most of the cases involved the House Un-American Activities Committee and its communist witch-hunts in the 1950s. But one that is particularly instructive involves a Buffalo, N.Y., woman named Diantha Hoag, who was fired from her factory job after Sen. Joe McCarthy (R-Wis.) and his Senate Committee on Government Operations accused her of being a communist and she pleaded the Fifth.
In that case, Hoag answered many more questions than Lerner did. She listed several places where she had lived, said she worked at a Westinghouse plant, and told committee members that she knew Westinghouse contracted with the military. Lerner never went beyond a short opening statement professing her innocence.
Hoag flatly refused to answer questions about her associates and any communist connections she may have had.
When McCarthy attempted to compel her testimony through the courts, as Issa is now threatening, a judge did not look kindly on the bid, declaring: “I reach the conclusion that the defendant did not waive her privilege under the Fifth Amendment and therefore did not violate the statute in question in refusing to answer the questions propounded to her. Therefore, I find that she is entitled to a judgment of acquittal on all counts.”
By: Elias Isquith, Salon, April 9, 2014
“Darrell Issa, GOP’s Resident Thug”: Contempt For Congressman Elijah Cummings, Contempt For The American People
The farce that is Rep. Darrell Issa continues. He put on an amazing spectacle shutting down the ranking member of the House Oversight Committee, Elijah Cummings, on Wednesday, repeatedly cutting off Cummings’ microphone and, finally, turning his back and walking away. I especially loved Issa’s little gesture pulling his finger across his throat like a knife, to cut the mic a second time. I called it “thuggish” on “Politics Nation” and folks on the right aren’t happy. That’s OK; it was thuggish.
Issa had once again called former IRS supervisor Lois Lerner to testify before the committee, knowing she was going to again use her Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination. But what Issa didn’t reveal is that Lerner’s attorney had offered last month to share her answers to the committee’s questions via what’s called a “proffer.” That’s when the subject of an investigation reveals the rough outlines of what they know, which can also help determine whether they deserve immunity from prosecution (in order to get them to share more). But Issa rejected the proffer and staged a show trial designed to have Lerner take the Fifth again, in front of television cameras and a packed hearing room.
Cummings asked for time to make a statement, once Issa announced himself satisfied that Lerner wouldn’t testify Wednesday and tried to adjourn. That’s when Issa cut his mic.
“We’re adjourned. Close it down,” Issa said.
“I am a member of the Congress of the United States of America. I am tired of this!” Cummings replied, though his mic was off. “You cannot just have a one-sided investigation. There is something absolutely wrong with that. It is absolutely un-American … Chairman, what are you hiding?”
On “Politics Nation” Wednesday committee member Rep. Eleanor Holmes Norton explained Cummings was going to ask about Lerner’s attorney’s proffer, and that was why Issa shut him down. Issa was trying to “keep us from revealing that we could have learned exactly what [Lerner] would have said,” Norton explained. Cummings’ office confirmed her account.
So why would Issa reject that proffer if he was committed to learning the truth about the IRS “scandal”? Because from the beginning he’s known it wasn’t a scandal. From the beginning Issa has selectively leaked testimony and other evidence from his committee’s investigation to Fox News – which he treats as a fourth arm of government — consistently distorting the facts.
We now know that IRS staffers, overwhelmed by post-Citizens United political activism, used certain terms to screen groups on the right and the left to make sure they deserved tax-exempt status. Groups with “Tea Party” or “Patriots” in their names, as well as “Occupy” or “Blue,” were flagged for special scrutiny. So far the only known group to lose its tax exemption was a Democratic group, Emerge America, which works to elect Democratic women to public office.
But over and over again, Issa has leaked one-sided testimony designed to show a bias against conservatives. Over and over Cummings has asked him to make public all of the testimony and evidence gathered by their committee, only to have Issa refuse. A few times Cummings has himself released testimony, including that of a self-identified “conservative Republican” manager of an IRS screening group who said no one from the Obama administration had anything to do with the selection of Tea Party groups for scrutiny.
Issa showed remarkable contempt for Cummings on Wednesday, but he also showed contempt for the American people. Issa’s investigation has cost at least $14 million, and eaten up 97,542 hours of IRS staffers’ time. The agency has coughed up more than 500,000 pages of documents; 35 former and current IRS employees have sat for interviews. Treasury and IRS officials have testified at 15 separate congressional hearings. After all of that, a leader who wanted the truth would have listened to what Lerner had to say through her attorney. That’s not what Issa’s after. He’s trying to shame the White House, and Cummings makes a great stand-in.
By: Joan Walsh, Editor at Large, Salon, March 6, 2014
“A Confederacy Of Dunces”: President Obama Is Truly Blessed In The Idiocy Of His Enemies
You probably saw a news item about a hearing yesterday of the House Government Oversight Committee. The reason you saw it is that it ended with some shouting, which is a relatively rare occurrence on Capitol Hill, and therefore that became an irresistible piece of news. But what really mattered about that hearing wasn’t Darrell Issa cutting off Elijah Cummings’ mike, causing Cummings to get extremely angry. It was that the hearing was happening at all. I’m not sure if there’s ever been an opposition party more thoroughly convinced of a president’s corruption yet so utterly incapable of doing anything about what they see as his crimes. You might think that’s because Barack Obama is not particularly corrupt, and that’s part of the story. But the Republicans’ buffoonery—and Issa’s in particular—when it comes to making Obama pay for his alleged misdeeds seems to know no bounds.
If I were a Republican, I’d really be wondering right now whether Issa can tie his own shoes, much less whether he’ll be able to take down the President of the United States. Just look at how this thing developed. On Sunday, Issa went on television and said that Lois Lerner, the former IRS official whom Republicans believe holds the key to showing how a lengthy application process for Tea Party groups seeking 501(c)(4) status was the linchpin of a White House conspiracy to destroy its enemies, would finally be testifying in front of his committee, answering all the biting and incisive questions Republicans have. Later that day, Lerner’s attorney told reporters that he had no idea what Issa was talking about. Lerner had invoked her Fifth Amendment rights, and she was going to continue to do so; there would be no testimony. Yet Issa still maintained she would be answering questions, and when she was brought before the committee on Wednesday, he was apparently surprised that she invoked those rights and would not answer their questions.
There are a few explanations for how this happened. One is that Lerner’s lawyer simply lied to Issa and his staff, telling them that she was ready to answer questions when he had no intention of letting her do so. This seems rather unlikely, particularly since he said publicly that she wouldn’t testify. The second possibility is that there was some kind of misunderstanding somewhere along the way, leading Issa and his people to believe she would answer questions when she actually wouldn’t. Again, this would seem to be contradicted by the fact that the lawyer said publicly she wouldn’t testify. The third is that Issa sensed some weakness in her position and thought that if he got her under the hot lights, he might force a few answers out of her.
Not knowing anything about the internal deliberations, I can’t say which of those three most resembles what happened, but given that from the outset this investigation has been an endless string of embarrassing pratfalls on Issa’s part, I suspect it’s the third. But what I wonder is, do they actually believe that they’re just one hearing away from busting this whole thing wide open? Just how deluded are they?
Meanwhile, you have Republicans like Lindsey Graham telling anyone who’ll listen that the reason for the crisis in Ukraine is…Benghazi! Yes, that must be it. If we can’t actually use it to impeach Obama, at least we can blame it for everything that happens anywhere in the world that we don’t like. Why is China still communist? Benghazi. Why did Oscar Pistorius shoot his girlfriend? Duh, Benghazi. Why did the women’s hockey team lose the gold medal game to Canada? Obviously, the Canadians were emboldened by Benghazi.
And I think they genuinely believe that Benghazi is going to keep Hillary Clinton from the White House. Sure, their potential 2016 candidates may look like a collection of amateurs and extremists. But just you wait—once Americans hear the truth about Benghazi, she doesn’t stand a chance!
Barack Obama has ridden a lot of ups and downs in his presidency, some of his own making and some that he could not have controlled. But he has been truly blessed in his enemies. They’re such a bunch of incompetent clowns, he could strangle the Dalai Lama on the White House lawn in full view of the cameras and they wouldn’t be able to pin it on him.
By: Paul Waldman, Contributing Editor, The American Prospect, March , 2014
“There’s Something About Darrell”: Issa Praises Waxman For Ideas Issa Opposed
Rep. Henry Waxman (D-Calif.), one of the most effective federal legislators in a generation, announced he will retire at the end of this term. House Oversight Committee Chairman Darrell Issa (R-Calif.), a frequent sparring partner of Waxman, issued a nice statement honoring his fellow Californian’s “long and distinguished career.”
“While I didn’t always agree with Chairman Waxman on matters of both policy and oversight tactics, his tenure helming the Committee set important precedents and innovated new investigative tools such as the use of subpoenas for closed-door depositions.
“A number issues [Waxman] doggedly began to follow during his two years as Chairman such as the use of the White House Office of Political Affairs to advance partisan political agendas with taxpayer funds, the over-classification and pseudo-classification of information to hide embarrassing government blunders, and the problematic use of non-official e-mail accounts for official government business remain on the Committee’s agenda today.”
It is, to be sure, a nice gesture when a member from one party extends best wishes to a member from the other party.
But there’s something about Issa’s praise for Waxman’s investigations that seems odd.
In his press release, note that Issa expressed admiration for some specific efforts launched by Waxman during his two-year tenure as chairman of the House Oversight Committee, including the “use of the White House Office of Political Affairs to advance partisan political agendas with taxpayer funds” and “the problematic use of non-official e-mail accounts for official government business.”
Issa’s not wrong about the merit of Waxman’s efforts during the final two years of the Bush/Cheney presidency, but I was following the Oversight Committee pretty closely at the time and I recall a Republican member of the panel expressing outrage that Waxman would dare launch these investigations.
I believe the member’s name was Darrell Issa.
On the former, Bush’s Office of Political Affairs, as led by Karl Rove, engaged in alleged misconduct over and over again. Investigators later reported that Bush’s political office, in one of the era’s lesser-appreciated scandals, engaged in “a systematic misuse of federal resources.”
When Waxman began looking into this in 2007, Issa not only opposed congressional subpoenas intended to get to the bottom of the story, the Republican also rejected the very idea that there was anything untoward about a White House political office using taxpayer money for partisan purposes since Congress does the same thing. “It’s a little bit of hubris that one body can’t do something without the other body pretending that we don’t do what we do,” he said at the time.
And yet, now Issa is praising Waxman for launching the investigation Issa opposed.
As for using non-official e-mail accounts for official government business, when Waxman began looking into this in 2008, Issa could barely contain his disgust, accusing the committee of becoming a “Peeping Tom.”
“Mr. Chairman,” Issa said at the time to Waxman, “I think what you are doing is going to prove in retrospect to be shameful.”
So much for that idea.
By: Steve Benen, The Maddow Blog, January 31, 2014
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