The Truth-o-Meter says: Mostly False | Jay Carney says Susan Rice didn't play down terrorist involvement in Benghazi Journalists peppered President Barack Obama’s press secretary, Jay Carney, with a series of tough questions about Benghazi at a White House press briefing on May 10, 2013.  The incident, in which four Americans were killed at two U.S. facilities in Benghazi, Libya, was the topic at a congressional hearing on May 8. Members of Congress have criticized how the administration handled the Sept. 11, 2012, incident, both in the immediate aftermath and in the months since. One of the issues receiving the most attention is whether, or to what extent, Ambassador to the United Nations Susan Rice misled ... >> More

Last week a great theological debate broke out in the world's greatest deliberative body. Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse of Rhode Island rose on the floor of the U.S. Senate to challenge the remark of an unidentified fellow senator, whom, he said, told him that God would not allow humanity to ruin the planet. Putting the responsibility squarely back on us, Whitehouse insisted that if God created the Earth, "We must also believe that God gave us our human powers of intellect and reason. He gives us these powers so that we his children can learn and understand earth's natural laws." The debate, as it turns out, is more than academic: Someone with godlike powers -- God or otherwise -- is reshaping the planet as we know it. The evidence keeps piling up. Climatologists are now reporting for the first time ever that the concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere has reached 400 ppm, the highest such concentration in several million years. The last time carbon dioxide levels were that high, the seas ultimately rose 60 to 80 feet higher than they are today. The United Nations Environment Program (UNEP) warned a few days ago that the loss of vital habitats is threatening large numbers of migratory birds with extinction, and as dramatized by a recent National Geographic documentary, we are well on our way to wiping out African elephants. And it is not just elephants that are on the fast track to oblivion. Within the lifetimes of children being born today, humanity may preside over the virtual extinction of lions, tigers, rhinos, polar bears, and countless other mammals. Scientists writing for the journal of Nature Climate Change recently estimated that 57 percent of plants and 34 percent of animal species were likely to lose about half or more of their habitats by the 2080s if nothing more is done to limit greenhouse gas emissions and global warming. In short, the human juggernaut, now 7.1 billion people strong, is on a roll, and it is destroying or changing much of the world around us. For those who must see it to believe it, Google last week released some jaw-dropping, time-lapsed videos vividly illustrating the impact that climate change and humanity are having on the planet. The satellite images only date back to 1984, but they show just how fast the glaciers are shrinking and urban areas are expanding. To anyone who believes that we have it in our power to destroy much of life as we have known it on this planet, it's an alarming picture of what many scientists are now calling the Anthropocene Epoch, or the Age of Man. God or nature may have given us "dominion" over "all the earth," including fish, fowl, cattle, and "every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth," but surely neither God nor nature have given us license to extinguish all of the above. For centuries we have been vigorously exploiting God's creation, now we must become its steward... before it is too late. Over a century ago, when our impact on the planet was a fraction of what it is today, the poet Matthew Arnold wrote, "The will is free, strong is the Soul, and wise, and beautiful; the seeds of godlike power are in us still; Gods are we, Bards, Saints, Heroes, if we will." When Arnold wrote those words, they were intended to be inspirational. Today, when we reflect on what our "godlike power" is actually doing to the planet, they should inspire caution. For unless we change course, our descendants may see as gods, but they will not see as saints and heroes; they will see as plunderers and wastrels. Science, technology, and our ever expanding numbers may have endowed us with godlike power, but it's only great to have that power if we exercise it with godlike discretion. So far, not so good.

The American Civil Liberties Union and other human rights groups on Monday called on Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel to halt the force-feeding of hunger-striking Guantanamo detainees. In a letter addressed to Hagel, the organizations describe the process being used to deliver nutrients to 29 of the 100 prisoners who are currently protesting by not eating: The force-feeding process is inherently cruel, inhuman, and degrading. The prisoner is strapped into a chair with restraints on his legs, arms, body, and sometimes head, immobilizing him. A tube is inserted up his nostril, and snaked down his throat into his stomach. A liquid nutritional supplement is then forced down the tube. The prisoner is restrained in the chair for upwards of two hours to prevent him from vomiting. As Guantánamo hunger-striker Samir Naji al Hasan Moqbel explained recently: “I can’t describe how painful it is to be force-fed this way. As it was thrust in, it made me feel like throwing up. I wanted to vomit, but I couldn’t. There was agony in my chest, throat and stomach. I had never experienced such pain before.” 1 Debilitating risks of force-feeding include major infections, pneumonia, collapsed lungs, heart failure, post-traumatic stress disorder and other psychological trauma. Military officials confirmed the controversial process on Monday, saying that they had been managing the hunger strikers in that manner since March. The letter went on to claim that the military's handling of the hunger strike violates the Geneva Conventions and could be considered "torture" under some treaties. It also asked Hagel to investigate and to rectify any "abusive conditions and treatment" outside of the hunger strike. As of Monday, five of the 29 detainees being force-fed were being treated in the hospital. As HuffPost's Ryan J. Reilly reported in April, many of the hunger-strikers have turned to this extreme form of protest because they don't have any other options and feel they will die in the facility: Eleven years after the first prisoners arrived at Guantanamo, 166 remain, with no end in sight. More than half -- 86 -- have been cleared for transfer to other countries, but the process has been snarled by a mix of congressionally imposed restrictions and executive branch inaction. Even if President Barack Obama did have the power to close Guantanamo unilaterally, doing so would not necessarily mean that the detainees would be set free in other countries. William Lietzau, the top detainee policy official at the Pentagon, told The New York Times recently that he doesn’t believe the number of detainees being held without charges would “change radically,” even if legislative restrictions were removed. President Barack Obama addressed the hunger strike at a press conference in April, saying that he didn't "want these individuals to die." He went on to maintain that he still wants to close the prison, a goal he promised to accomplish during his first year in the White House. As critics have noted, however, Obama has not even used the powers he has to scale back the number of prisoners held at Guantanamo.

COLUMBUS, Ohio -- A gay teacher challenging her firing by an Ohio Catholic school says the local union for Catholic educators has decided not to proceed with her complaint. Carla Hale said Monday the grievance committee for the Central Ohio Association of Catholic Educators isn't supporting her efforts to get back her job as a physical-education teacher. The association hasn't returned telephone calls seeking comment. Hale also filed a complaint with the city of Columbus, which prohibits firings based on sexual orientation. Hale says she was fired from Bishop Watterson High School after her partner's name was revealed in her mother's published obituary and someone complained. Bishop Frederick Campbell says Hale was fired not because of her sexual orientation but because she violated the church's moral teaching by having what he describes as a "quasi-spousal relationship" with a woman.

Ted Nugent might be a controversy-courting, ultra-conservative lighting rod, but he's a pretty effective one. The National Rifle Association board member and anti-President Barack Obama campaigner posted a new column on conservative site WorldNetDaily last week, laying out his "Nuge Immigration Plan (NIP)." NIP allows for undocumented immigrants to become United States citizens, but only after five years of indentured servitude, according to Nugent. He writes: The NIP is not an amnesty program. Amnesty is for left-wing mollycoddlers, losers, bureaucrats and hippies. Occupy that. We need a real full-length, undefeatable border fence built. All illegal men in America should be required to work on building the fence, to be completed in one year. We would pay them minimum wage, provide food and shelter, and provide them English and American history classes at night. Everyone wins. Aspiring citizens connected to gangs will not be eligible for NIP and will be subject to deportation, Nugent writes. They must also pass an English fluency test and American history test. "The most racist thing our government does is to print literature in Spanish," Nugent argues, "thereby encouraging people not to learn English and deny themselves all the American Dream has to offer." In the past, Nugent's immigration comments have been consistently extreme. In a 2008 interview Fox News' Sean Hannity, Nugent said he'd like to kill undocumented immigrants "invading" the country. "I'd like to shoot 'em dead," he told the hosts. Similarly, in 2000, Nugent told non-English speakers to leave the country, Media Matters notes. And in 1994, during an interview with Denver music blog Westword, Nugent said the following in reference to Haitian immigrants: "We should put razor wire around our borders and give the finger to any piece of [s***] who wants to come here."

The state of play on the ongoing Benghazi inquiry, in terms of the partisan backbiting, seems to be rather simple. GOP interlocutors on the House Oversight Committee seem to believe that they are on to something important enough to merit continued attention. Their Democratic opponents believe that most of what Rep. Darrell Issa (R-Calif.) and his colleagues are up to is steeped in politics, and so they are dismissive of the proceedings. I'm a bit different. I feel that there is a worthwhile inquiry to be had and Issa and company are not currently having it. But I'm not dismissive of their efforts because I feel they are rooted purely in politics -- though there's plenty of politics to be had. Rather, I'm dismissive because the current probe is obsessed with matters that haven't managed to journey outside the realm of the superficial. To wit, there seem to be two matters under investigation. The first has to do with whether or not the response offered in what was clearly a dire emergency was adequate. With the benefit that hindsight offers, critics-slash-"whistleblowers" have stepped forward to suggest that the military response was lacking. The Pentagon has officially pushed back on these claims, suggesting that they offered up an according-to-Hoyle response and that they were not in the position to do more than they did. Absent some dynamic, evidence-based break in the case, this is probably going to end up a "he-said/another he-said" argument that won't be resolved until such time as the military has another emergency to which to respond, at which point maybe one side will prove to have been correct. Or not! The other critical track the inquiry is on involves inter- and intra-agency memo-mummery. What talking points got changed and why. What low-level functionary took the blame so that principals didn't end up looking embarrassed. How much energy was spent on a State Department-wide cover-your-ass effort, and how it compares to the energy spent on properly and efficiently disclosing the relevant information to the public. (A third thing that is being investigated is how well prepared the State Department was to deal with the predictable contingency of an attack on their facilities. There, we have consensus: the State Department was not well prepared and the State Department officially agrees. Thomas Pickering, who ran the State Department's Accountability Review Board, concluded that the "changing situation in Benghazi was not understood either on the ground, or in Washington to the degree to which it represented a danger." If that's the State Department's official consensus on the matter, the only thing left to do is determine which lawmaker can shout the loudest about it.) That said, there's no doubt that all of the agency ass-covering is bad and embarrassing, and I wish that governmental culture in the United States was vastly different from the way it is. But the reason I cited Kris Belisle's explanation of how Washington works the other day ("The number one goal of most agencies is, frankly, to try and make the principal [Washington-speak for the head of the agency] look good, no matter what the actual facts are, even if it means lying to or misleading the press") was to make a point about how hopelessly prevalent this aspect of governmental culture is. If you strip all government agencies down to their constants, through some sort of regression analysis, what you will be left with is bad lighting, indoor plumbing, and a small army of bureaucrats striving to shield their superiors from cock-ups. The one thing, of course, that makes Benghazi stand out from all the rest is the fact that four Americans are dead. But their deaths did not come about because the State Department engaged in the aforementional CYA mission. Rather, their deaths are a natural consequence of the fact that the United States intervened in Libya in the first place. And if we're going to continue a Benghazi inquiry, we should do so in a way that questions the wisdom of the intervention itself. Clearly there is reason to believe it was very unwise. But it's the original policy of Libyan intervention that deserves to be litigated -- not the after-the-fact bureaucratic touch fouls. Of course, the reason we shan't be litigating the policy is fairly obvious -- many of Benghazi's critics are simultaneously in favor of a similar intervention in Syria. Many of the same conditions present in Libya are present there as well, chief among them being a sketchy "rebel" force that includes many fighters who are just as happy harming Americans as they are battling the Assad regime. The primary difference is that an intervention on Syria would be much harder to pull off. If we actually took a searing look at the Libyan intervention itself, the dubiety of such an intervention in Syria would be more pronounced. But that's not what's happening and so it's hardly a shock that, with Syria, we have similar calls for a "no-fly zone" and "arming the rebels" in a way that ensures that only the "right" rebels get arms, all of which is supposed to be pulled off without having to put "boots on the ground." The mental disconnect between all the anger-banging about Benghazi and the screeching for more intervening in Syria reached an apotheosis on ABC News' "This Week," when Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) seamlessly transitioned from calling Benghazi a "cover-up" to insisting that U.S. forces should intervene in such a way that allow Syrian rebels to have their own "Benghazi." And, yes, that is precisely what McCain proposed, without so much as a trace of irony (emphasis mine): MARTHA RADDATZ: But how do you keep out good rebels, and bad rebels? You've got al-Qaeda rebels, running around... JOHN MCCAIN: Thank you. Martha, these are legitimate questions you're asking. But they are there. And you put them inside Syria, they then have a Benghazi. Then they have a place to organize, to -- to identify the right people. These Jihadists aren't -- there aren't that many of them, they're just so good. Because they've been fighting all over the Middle East for all these years, and they're not afraid to die. But we could still organize a legitimate and non-Jihadist group that are already there. Because it worked out so spectacularly the last time. [Would you like to follow me on Twitter? Because why not?]

ST. PAUL, Minn. -- The Minnesota Senate voted Monday to make gay marriage legal, the last legislative step before Gov. Mark Dayton's promised signature will make the state the 12th in the U.S. to do so. The Senate vote of 37-30 came four days after the House passed the bill on a 75-59 vote. A cheer erupted in the chamber after the vote was announced, and spectators in a small gallery area stood and applauded. Minnesota will become the first state in the Midwest to make gay marriage legal via a legislative vote. Iowa legalized same-sex marriage in 2009 through a court ruling. Last week, Dayton, a Democrat, called the bill "one of those society-changing breakthrough moments." Aides said he was likely to sign the legislation in a ceremony Tuesday evening on the front steps of the Capitol in St. Paul. Under the legislation, gay couples will be able to get married starting on Aug. 1. It's a rapid turnaround for gay marriage backers, who just six months ago had to organize a massive effort to defeat a constitutional amendment that would have banned gay marriage. The groups who defeated the amendment quickly turned their attention to legalizing gay marriage, and their efforts were aided by Democrats capturing full control of state government in November. In the last week and a half, Rhode Island and Delaware became the 10th and 11th states to legalize gay marriage. In Illinois, a gay marriage bill has cleared the state Senate but awaits a House vote. The House vote last Thursday drew more than a thousand demonstrators representing both sides of the issue. Supporters of gay marriage say they just want same-sex couples to have the same legal protections and societal validation that straight couples get with marriage. Opponents say gay marriage undermines an important societal building block that benefits children, and also exposes people opposed on moral grounds to charges of bigotry.

Mark Sherman, APWASHINGTON (AP) -- The Justice Department secretly obtained two months of telephone records of reporters and editors for The Associated Press in what the news cooperative's top executive called a "massive and unprecedented intrusion" into how news organizations gather the news.The records obtained by the Justice Department listed incoming and outgoing calls, and the duration of each call, for the work and personal phone numbers of individual reporters, general AP office numbers in New York, Washington and Hartford, Conn., and the main number for AP reporters in the House of...

Victor Davis Hanson, PJ MediaThere are good reasons to go into Syria, but far better ones to stay out.Let us review a few of them. Syria is a humanitarian crisis with over one million refugees and 70,000 dead. But there are similar outrages in Mali, Somalia, and the Sudan. Why no calls to go there as well? Would U.S. troops, planes, or massive shipments of weapons stop the killing, or simply ensure endless cycles of death following the Assad departure? Will Syria’s Christians and other minorities become worse off with or without Assad?More importantly, we do not at this late stage know which terrorist is a...

Sen. John McCain, TimeThe strategic and humanitarian costs of the conflict in Syria continue to rise, not just for Syrians but also for vital U.S. interests. Chemical weapons have likely been used by President Bashar Assad’s regime against civilians, and more than 70,000 people have been slaughtered. The -al-Qaeda-aligned al-Nusra Front has gained unprecedented strength on the ground. Iran and its proxy Hizballah are building a network of militias inside Syria. A staggering 5 million Syrians have been displaced from their homes. Meanwhile, cross-border spillover threatens the security and stability of...

Richard Parker, New York TimesTHIS week the Navy will launch an entirely autonomous combat drone — without a pilot on a joystick anywhere — off the deck of an aircraft carrier, the George H. W. Bush. The drone will then try to land aboard the same ship, a feat only a relatively few human pilots in the world can accomplish.

Naomi Schaefer Riley, New York PostWas the widespread sexual contact between students and teachers at Horace Mann in the 1960s and ’70s a crime, or just a sign of the times? The latter, says Gary Alan Fine, a 1968 Mann graduate. Of the allegations that have recently rocked the prep school, he told The New Yorker: “This was the late ’60s, and what we now think of as rape or sexual assault didn’t quite mean the same thing in that age of sexual awakening.”

Jill Lawrence, Natl JrnlBarack Obama put himself on the road to winning the 2008 Iowa caucuses, the Democratic nomination, and the presidency by raising the specter of Clinton-era investigations, polarization, and bitterness. Now he’s facing the same thing, with overlays of gridlock, dysfunction, soaring deficits, mass unemployment, and ideological cable networks. Are he and his party doomed, or are Republicans overplaying their hand?Talk of impeachment is in the air. It was striking that, asked point blank Sunday on ABC whether Obama should be impeached over Benghazi, Sen. John McCain did not say no....

While it is already illegal in West Virginia for adults to send sexually explicit text messages to minors, a new law in the state would punish juveniles for sexting with each other. Signed on May 6, the new law makes possessing, distributing or producing sexually inappropriate photos, videos or other media, an act of delinquency for those under 18. However, if the minor completes an educational diversion program, the delinquency charge could be dropped from his or her record, according to the Associated Press. The AP goes on to report that the educational diversion program is being created by the state Supreme Court and will inform minors about the consequences of sexting in order to prevent them from doing it again. It will clear the delinquency charge so that a single mistake does not follow an offender around for the rest of his or her life. As of December 2012, at least 20 states had passed laws punishing minors for sexting in some form. In New Jersey, juveniles risk being required to register as a sex offender; however, juveniles in West Virginia would not run that risk. Crystal Kirk, a West Virginia parent, told NBC local affiliate WVVA that she is happy about the new law. "I think it's awesome," she said. "I think it's long overdue. I think [sexting] gets our [nation's] kids in a lot of trouble, gets them active in sex way earlier than they should be." The law will go into effect on July 12.

NEW YORK -- The government has filed a last-second appeal that will delay the sale of the morning-after contraceptive pill to girls of any age without a prescription. The appeal was filed shortly before a noon Monday deadline. Brooklyn federal Judge Edward Korman says politics is behind efforts by Secretary of Health and Human Services Kathleen Sebelius (seh-BEEL'-yuhs) to block the unrestricted sale of the Plan B pill. Justice Department lawyers had asked for a stay of the month-old decision while they appeal. Korman denied the request but postponed the enforcement of his order to allow them to take the matter to a federal appeals court. Earlier this month, the FDA announced the contraception could be sold without a prescription to those 15 and older. But Korman's ruling removed age limits. THIS IS A BREAKING NEWS UPDATE. Check back soon for further information. AP's earlier story is below. The government is running out of time to try to halt implementation of a federal judge's ruling that would lift age restrictions for women and girls wanting to buy the morning-after pill. U.S. District Judge Edward Korman in Brooklyn last week refused to delay enforcement of his month-old decision while the government challenges his ruling, but said it would have until Monday to appeal to the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Manhattan. Korman said politics is behind efforts by Secretary of Health and Human Services Kathleen Sebelius to block the unrestricted sale of the Plan B One-Step morning-after pill and its generic competitors. Justice Department lawyers want the ruling stayed while they appeal. If the government fails, it would clear the way for over-the-counter sales of the morning-after pill to younger girls. The FDA announced earlier this month that the contraception could be sold without a prescription to those 15 and older, a decision Korman said merely sugarcoated the appeal of his order lifting the age restriction. Sales had previously been limited to those who were at least 17. The government warned that "substantial market confusion" could result if Korman's ruling was enforced while appeals are pending. The judge dismissed the reasoning as a "silly argument." Korman ordered levonorgestrel-based emergency contraceptives be made available without a prescription, over-the-counter and without point-of-sale or age restrictions. The order was supposed to take effect on Friday. The judge said he ruled against the government "because the secretary's action was politically motivated, scientifically unjustified and contrary to agency precedent" and because there was no basis to deny the request to make the drugs widely available. In court papers, attorneys for the Center for Reproductive Rights have said that every day the ruling is not enforced is "life-altering" to some women.

Bill Keller, New York TimesLast week the Heritage Foundation delivered a report claiming that legalizing undocumented immigrants will create a more-or-less permanent underclass of benefit-sucking, wage-lowering, economy-crippling parasites, with a cost to American taxpayers of "” megaphone, please "” SIX POINT THREE TRILLION DOLLARS! The report was promptly denounced, not least by reputable conservative economists, for example here and here and here. Then one of the report's co-authors resigned from Heritage after The Washington Post discovered that he had once proposed...

Mark Steyn, NROThere are over 300 million Americans, but you’d never know it from the Beltway edition of the Almanach de Gotha:CBS News President David Rhodes and ABC News President Ben Sherwood, both of them have siblings that not only work at the White House, that not only work for President Obama, but they work at the NSC on foreign policy issues directly related to Benghazi. Let’s call a spade a spade.

Carl M. Cannon, RCP(Detail of Winslow Homer's "The Veteran in a New Field," reprinted by permission of The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, Bequest of Miss Adelaide Milton de Groot (1876-1967), 1967, 67.187.131 Image: © The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York) Confiding to a friend after her son returned from the Civil War, a Massachusetts mother named Henrietta Maria Benson Homer wrote: "He came home so changed that his best friends did not know him, but is well & all right now."One factor in helping make her son "well" is that he...

It's not just people like you and me who like vacations. The leaders of the free world have also been known to enjoy some ice cream at the beach. Or a few rounds of golf. Or, more recently, a jaunt on a Segway. This wasn't always the case. President Theodore Roosevelt was the first U.S. president to take his professional responsibilities on vacation. In the summer of 1902 he headed for Oyster Bay, New York for a working holiday. Throughout the last 100 years, the tradition of presidential sojourns has become more established. Truman had the Little White House in Florida, Nixon had the La Casa Pacifica in California, George W. Bush had the "Western White House" in Texas, Obama has Hawaii and since 1935, all of them have used Camp David. Jimmy Carter is the modern president with the least amount of vacation days, only 79 in his four years in office. There isn't any data on George Washington's vacation days, but he did spend at least one year in office without taking a day off. Click through the slideshow for a glimpse into the sweet world of presidential relaxation -- do these photos inspire any trips of your own?

The cicadas are back ... and they've missed a lot. By late May 2013, millions of cicadas will emerge from the ground along the U.S. East Coast for the first time in 17 years. Most of the noisy, inch-and-a-half long insects -- dubbed "Brood II" -- have been living underground since 1996. Not all cicadas lie in wait for 17 years. "Annual" cicadas also appear every summer in some areas. The insects won't cause harm to humans or animals and you can track the cicadas here with WNYC's Cicada Tracker. Since these guys have clearly been living under a rock, it's time to show them what they've missed in the past 17 years:

WASHINGTON -- The Republican chairman of the House oversight panel is asking a veteran diplomat and a former chairman of the Joints Chief of Staff for sworn testimony about their investigation into the deaths of four Americans at a diplomatic outpost in Benghazi, Libya. Rep. Darrell Issa, chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, planned on Monday to seek depositions from retired Ambassador Thomas Pickering and retired Adm. Mike Mullen. Issa, who is leading Republicans' investigations into the attacks on a State Department consulate last September, said he wants to know with whom the pair spoke to reach their conclusion that then-Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton did not direct the response to the pair of nighttime attacks in Libya. "This is a failure, it needs to be investigated. Our committee can investigate. Now, Ambassador Pickering, his people and he refused to come before our committee," Issa said Sunday. Pickering, sitting next to Issa during an appearance on one Sunday show, disputed the chairman's account and said that he was willing to testify before the committee. "That is not true," said the former top diplomat, referring to Issa's claim that he refused to appear before the committee. Pickering has served in Republican as well as Democratic administrations. Issa said he would like to speak with Pickering and Mullen privately and under oath. Pickering, a seasoned diplomat who penned a highly critical report on security at a U.S. outpost in Benghazi, Libya, defended his scathing assessment but absolved Clinton. "We knew where the responsibility rested," said Pickering, whose career spans four decades. "They've tried to point a finger at people more senior than where we found the decisions were made," Pickering said of Clinton's critics. In a separate interview, Pickering said he asked, via the White House, to appear at Wednesday's session. He said he could have answered many of the questions lawmakers raised, such as whether U.S. military forces could have saved Americans had they dispatched F-16 jet fighters to the consulate, some 1,600 miles away from the nearest likely launching point. "Mike Mullen, who was part of this report and indeed worked very closely with all of us and shared many of the responsibilities directly with me, made it very clear that his view as a former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff that there were nothing within range that could have made a difference," Pickering said. Republicans and Gregory Hicks, the former deputy chief of mission in Libya, have questioned why the military couldn't move faster to stop the two nighttime attacks over several hours. Hicks, who testified before the House Oversight panel this past week, said a show of U.S. military force might have prevented the second attack on the CIA annex that killed security officers Tyrone Woods and Glen Doherty. The Accountability Review Board, which Pickering headed with Mullen, did not question Clinton at length about the attacks but concluded last December that the decisions about the consulate were made well below the secretary's level. "I was surprised today that they did not probe Secretary Clinton in detail," Sen. Kelly Ayotte, R-N.H., said of the review board. Pickering and Mullen's blistering report found that "systematic failures and leadership and management deficiencies at senior levels" of the State Department meant that security was "inadequate for Benghazi and grossly inadequate to deal with the attack that took place." Issa spoke on NBC's "Meet the Press." Pickering spoke on CNN's "State of the Union," CBS' "Face the Nation" and NBC. Ayotte appeared on CBS.

Caitlin Huey-Burns, RCP"Groundhog Day" comes to the House of Representatives this week, as Republicans plan to vote on repealing Obamacare. Again.It's not that GOP leaders believe the 37th time -- literally -- is the charm. They know that repeal legislation will never make it through the Senate, let alone the president, and that the Supreme Court upheld the Affordable Care Act last June. In fact, House Speaker John Boehner is on record as acknowledging that the vote is primarily cathartic. He and Majority Leader Eric Cantor apparently believe that bringing a repeal vote to the floor Wednesday is...

Michael Barone, DC ExaminerWhat were Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton thinking? Why did they keep pitching the line that the 9/11/12 Benghazi attack that killed Ambassador Christopher Stevens and three other Americans started as a spontaneous protest against an anti-Muslim video?One possible explanation is confusion. There was such an attack on our embassy in Cairo earlier that day that fit that description.When Hillary Clinton on Sept. 14 talked of a "mob" and "violent attacks" over the caskets of the Americans slain in Benghazi, she could have been referring to the attacks in Cairo. In that case,...

E.J. Dionne, Washington PostMILWAUKEE -- Public officials are very selective about when violence and death matter.Massacres and terrorist incidents cannot be ignored, but the day-to-day toll from gun violence is often swept aside. Politicians who tout themselves as advocates of law and order don't want to be unmasked as caring even more about their ratings from gun lobbyists.And opponents of the most moderate gun reforms engage in a shameless game of bait-and-switch. Because measures such as background checks would not stop every murder, they're declared useless even though they'd still save lives. Then...