"The scandals are falling apart" by Ezra Klein at the Washington Post

[applegrove]

The scandals are falling apart

by Ezra Klein at the Washington Post

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2013/05/16/the-scandals-are-falling-apart/

"SNIP............................


1) The Internal Revenue Service: The IRS mess was, well, a mess. But it’s not a mess that implicates the White House, or even senior IRS leadership. If we believe the agency inspector general’s report, a group of employees in a division called the “Determinations Unit” — sounds sinister, doesn’t it? — started giving tea party groups extra scrutiny, were told by agency leadership to knock it off, started doing it again, and then were reined in a second time and told that any further changes to the screening criteria needed to be approved at the highest levels of the agency.

The White House fired the acting director of the agency on the theory that somebody had to be fired and he was about the only guy they had the power to fire. They’re also instructing the IRS to implement each and every one of the IG’s recommendations to make sure this never happens again.

If new information emerges showing a connection between the Determination Unit’s decisions and the Obama campaign, or the Obama administration, it would crack this White House wide open. That would be a genuine scandal. But the IG report says that there’s no evidence of that. And so it’s hard to see where this one goes from here.

...

2) Benghazi: We’re long past the point where it’s obvious what the Benghazi scandal is supposed to be about. The inquiry has moved on from the events in Benghazi proper, tragic as they were, to the talking points about the events in Benghazi. And the release Wednesday night of 100 pages of internal e-mails on those talking points seems to show what my colleague Glenn Kessler suspected: This was a bureaucratic knife fight between the State Department and the CIA.


..........................SNIP"

[Tx4obama]

1. GOP Rep Claims Responsibility For AP Surveillance

GOP Rep Claims Responsibility For AP Surveillance

Here: http://www.addictinginfo.org/2013/05/16/no-choice-gop-congressman-cites-national-security-defends-doj-investigation-of-ap-video/

and

GOP Congressman Defends DOJ Surveillance: ‘They Are Doing What We Asked Them To Do’

Here: http://thinkprogress.org/justice/2013/05/15/2013511/gop-congressman-defends-doj-surveillance-they-are-doing-what-we-asked-them-to-do/

[southernyankeebelle]

2. Republicans are sooooo happy with all the so called scandals. Well to me

it's nothing more than shit and giggles.