NYT:Dems Debating Whether To Participate In Benghazi Committee-Shouldn't Hesitate To Skip This Farce

[kpete]

Center Ring at the Republican Circus
By THE EDITORIAL BOARDMAY 8, 2014

..............................They won’t pass a serious jobs bill, or raise the minimum wage, or reform immigration, but House Republicans think they can earn their pay for the rest of the year by exposing nonexistent malfeasance on the part of the Obama administration. On Thursday, they voted to create a committee to spend “such sums as may be necessary” to conduct an investigation of the 2012 attack on the consulate in Benghazi, Libya. The day before, they voted to hold in contempt Lois Lerner, the former Internal Revenue Service official whom they would love to blame for the administration’s crackdown on conservative groups, if only they could prove there was a crackdown, which they can’t, because there wasn’t.

..........................




Republicans are frothing about a newly released email message showing that the White House wanted Susan Rice, the American ambassador to the United Nations at the time, to go on television in 2012 and make the case that the attack was not a failure of administration policy. The message should have been turned over earlier because all it shows is a routine attempt to spin the news in the most favorable way to the White House. Though it is not the slightest evidence of a cover-up, it has become the foundation for the committee’s existence. Demonstrating the panel’s true purpose, Republican political operatives are already raising money by stoking donor anger on Benghazi.

Democrats who are now debating whether to participate in the committee shouldn’t hesitate to skip it. Their presence would only lend legitimacy to a farce.

Similarly, the Justice Department should not press Ms. Lerner’s contempt citation before a grand jury. She invoked her Fifth Amendment rights at a hearing last year and refused to testify, but Republicans claim, without foundation, that she waived those rights by first proclaiming her innocence. Her refusal, they said, was contemptuous of Congress. Little nuisances like constitutional rights or basic facts can’t be allowed to stand in the way when House Republicans need to whip up their party’s fury.



MORE:
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/05/09/opinion/center-ring-at-the-republican-circus.html?ref=opinion&_r=1

[underpants]

1. Complete and scathing

Well done NYT

[KittyWampus]

2. Some DU'ers suggest having Dems there who only ask "why did Republicans cut security funding?"

over and over and over again.

A repeating script that could potentially damn these idiots.

[leftyohiolib]

3. that has been my point to keep repeating that and that the republicans wanted

khdaffi out and that removing him destabilized the area then by denying the extra security makes them look like they caused benghazi. that's the point i woud keep bringing up

[Bandit]

4. The one bad aspect to that is that Obama also supported and signed it.