When House Republicans called a hearing in the middle of their long recess, you knew it would be something big, and indeed it was: They accidentally blew the CIA’s cover.
The purpose of Wednesday’s hearing of the Oversight and Government Reform Committee was to examine security lapses that led to the killing in Benghazi last month of the U.S. ambassador to Libya and three others. But in doing so, the lawmakers reminded us why “congressional intelligence” is an oxymoron.
Through their outbursts, cryptic language and boneheaded questioning of State Department officials, the committee members left little doubt that one of the two compounds at which the Americans were killed, described by the administration as a “consulate” and a nearby “annex,” was a CIA base. They did this, helpfully, in a televised public hearing.
2 Political Junkies was named in Washington Post's The Fix’sBest State-based Political Blogs for 2011. We were also named in 2009 (there was no list for 2010). We are the only PA blog to make both lists (which may say more about our obsessiveness than anything else).
I would write a critique of Kathleen Parker's Washington Postpiece, but as a woman, my communication skills would suffer from my passivity and my "rhetorical-testosterone deficit."
Try a thought experiment: What would conservatives have said if a group of loud, scruffy leftists had brought guns to the public events of Ronald Reagan or George W. Bush?
How would our friends on the right have reacted to someone at a Reagan or a Bush speech carrying a sign that read: "It is time to water the tree of liberty"? That would be a reference to Thomas Jefferson's declaration that the tree "must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants."
Pardon me, but I don't think conservatives would have spoken out in defense of the right of every American Marxist to bear arms or to shed the blood of tyrants.
A few paragraphs later:
This is not about the politics of populism. It's about the politics of the jackboot. It's not about an opposition that has every right to free expression. It's about an angry minority engaging in intimidation backed by the threat of violence.
Dana Milbank and Chris Cillizza have been offering up a video segment at The Washington Post website called "Mouthpiece Theater." Generally, it's just juvenile and deeply unfunny. The last edition, however, crossed over into pure ugly.
Their spoof of the "Beer Summit" included the line "We won't tell you who's getting a bottle of Mad Bitch" with a flashed photo of Hillary Clinton (because as we learned during the primary it's not wrong to call a bitch a bitch if she's a bitch - ugh).
The segment received enough criticism that WAPO decided to pull the video. You can still see it in all it's gory glory courtesy of Media Matters:
The May 27 editorial "The President's Pick" incorrectly referred to Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor as the daughter of "immigrant" parents. Judge Sotomayor's parents were not immigrants but were born in Puerto Rico after passage of a 1917 law that automatically conferred U.S. citizenship on island-born residents.
This time it's Richard Cohen of the Washington Post, who describes himself thusly:
I am one of the journalists accused over the years of being in the tank for McCain. Guilty. Those doing the accusing usually attributed my feelings to McCain being accessible. This is the journalist-as-puppy school of thought: Give us a treat, and we will leap into a politician's lap.
Not so. What impressed me most about McCain was the effect he had on his audiences, particularly young people. When he talked about service to a cause greater than oneself, he struck a chord. He expressed his message in words, but he packaged it in the McCain story -- that man, beaten to a pulp, who chose honor over freedom. This had nothing to do with access. It had to do with integrity.
But not any more:
McCain has turned ugly. His dishonesty would be unacceptable in any politician, but McCain has always set his own bar higher than most. He has contempt for most of his colleagues for that very reason: They lie. He tells the truth. He internalizes the code of the McCains -- his grandfather, his father: both admirals of the shining sea. He serves his country differently, that's all -- but just as honorably. No more, though.
And:
His opportunistic and irresponsible choice of Sarah Palin as his political heir -- the person in whose hands he would leave the country -- is a form of personal treason, a betrayal of all he once stood for. Palin, no matter what her other attributes, is shockingly unprepared to become president. McCain knows that. He means to win, which is all right; he means to win at all costs, which is not.
When you've lost your allies at the Washington Post, you're in deep doo-doo.
Two things immediately spring to mind about today's article in the Washington Post on Pittsburgh Mayor Luke Ravenstahl (well, they spring to my mind anyway):
1) Alecia Sirk thinks that comparing Lil Mayor Luke to Britney Spears is in any way a good thing?
2) If only they had added the word "hope" the following quotes would have reminded me of another pol:
"We are a town that could use some fresh perspective," said Sophie Masloff, 90, a former Pittsburgh mayor. "I like this boy, Ravenstahl. Something needs to change, so why not take our chance?"
The Washington Post's The Reliable Source answers the most important question about the Eliot Spitzer, uh, affair:
The governor of New York allegedly paid $4,300 for an N.Y.C. call girl who traveled to D.C. Could he have saved by hiring locally?
Hard numbers are tricky: The D.C. Madam charged $250-$300 for fantasy dates; a scan of Washington's Craigslist for "erotic services" finds a "sexy kitty" available for $250, a "busty brunette" for $180 an hour. That's much more than streetwalkers (who averaged $27 per hour in a Chicago economic survey) but way less than high-end escorts; former N.Y.C. prostitute-turned-novelist Tracy Quan claims she made $400 per hour. Escort fees fall under the economic theory of "Veblen goods" -- the higher the price, the more desirable a commodity.
Personally, I do think that it should be noted that as the governor of NY, it is laudatory that he employed a fellow New Yorker. .
I understand that having published Charlotte Allen'sexpose on how stupid women are (and "weaker," "dumber" and "dim" with a "pre-frontal cortex [turned] into Cream of Wheat"), the Washington Post will next print a column by black white supremacist Clayton Bigsby on how awful black people are.
(Note to WAPO: Comedy Central is a comedy network while you claim to be a source of "news" and we don't believe for a second that Allen was being "tongue in cheek" based on her past verbal diarrhea.) .
