WASHINGTON DC – Senator Ted Cruz says the IRS scandal “harkens back to the days of Richard Nixon,” and proves that President Obama keeps an “enemies list.”

“This is part of a distressing pattern of the Obama administration of being less than honest with the American people and using the machinery of government to target their political opponents,” Cruz tells National Review in an interview.

“It harkens back to the days of Richard Nixon and maintaining a political enemies list and treating the federal government as a tool to exact the administration’s retribution,” he adds. (more…)

Update 2:  The White House Reponds –  (Politico) — The White House has “no knowledge” of the Justice Department’s efforts to obtain phone records of Associated Press reporters and editors, press secretary Jay Carney said Monday.

“Other than press reports, we have no knowledge of any attempt by the Justice Department to seek phone records of the AP,” he said in a statement.  (link)

Update 1 :  Eric Holder personally approved of wiretapping reporters – On Monday afternoon, the Associated Press reported that the U.S. Department of Justice had “secretly obtained two months of telephone records” from 20 phone lines assigned to reporters and editors from the global news organization. The shocking revelation comes on top of news that the IRS targeted conservative groups for special scrutiny. It will be harder for President Obama to pin the DOJ’s action on lower level bureaucrats, however, because requests to subpoena news organization records require the approval of Attorney General Eric Holder.  (link)

WASHINGTON (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. (more…)

….. and we’re not JUST talking about the 12 version “talking points”, but the epicenter of the actual White House response – or, lack thereof.

Perhaps now the media has accepted the fact that the “talking points” were highly manipulated, they will turn their investigative eye onto the origin, and subsequently on to something we outlined earlier:

Back in January  we posted a discussion around a newly released photo from the White House. The picture was taken in the oval office on Sept 11th 2012, the date of the Benghazi attack.

At the time we thought the picture was worth a thousand words.  After research, and with the hindsight of the latest revelations, it appears we were correct. Yet again, it provides more sunlight into the events surrounding the Benghazi, Libya events and who made the critical decisions in those moments of crisis.

At 5pm, according to the White House and media reports, President Obama was set for a prior scheduled meeting with Defense Secretary Leon Panetta and Chairman of Joint Chiefs Martin Dempsey.   It was just prior to this meeting that White House National Security Advisor Tom Donilon tells President Obama of the attack and the fire at the main villa…

…..how long the meeting took is unknown, but we do know by 6:30pm President Obama and Joe Biden were on the phone with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. (more…)

Given the fact the media huddled with the White House prior to the Carney press briefing this should not be a surprise.   Nah, probably just another one of those now famous NBC production mistakes….  move along, move along…. nothing to see here folks….  Look, over there, shiny things.

(Via Newsbusters)  If you were a journalist reporting on Benghazi whistleblower Gregory Hicks, wouldn’t you find it interesting that he was a Democrat who voted for Barack Obama twice?

Someone at NBC News didn’t according to Hicks’s attorney Victoria Toensing who disclosed the spike job to NewsMax host Steve Malzberg on WMAL radio Saturday

VICTORIA TOENSING: By the way, Mr. Hicks is a Democrat. He voted for Hillary – I’ve yet to announce this – he voted for Hillary in the primary and Obama twice. You know what? NBC spiked the story where I told it before the hearings. It’s just amazing what the press is still trying to do to cover this up…So they try to make this partisan because of the lawyer. Well I’m not the messenger, he’s the messenger…The modus operandi, you know, to find anything they can do to just attack. So why wouldn’t NBC News report this? (more…)

Imagine the media response if George Bush were in office and the groups targeted were liberals…

WASHINGTON Associated Press  — A federal watchdog’s upcoming report says senior Internal Revenue Service officials knew agents were targeting tea party groups in 2011.

The disclosure contradicts public statements by former IRS Commissioner Douglas Shulman, who repeatedly assured Congress that conservative groups were not targeted.

On Friday, the IRS apologized for what it acknowledged was “inappropriate” targeting of conservative political groups during the 2012 election to see if those groups were violating their tax-exempt status. (more…)

The Weekly Standard’s Stephen Hayes is reporting that several more ‘whistleblowers’ want to come forward to testify under oath about Benghazi.  The Blaze also reports:

[…] Joseph diGenova, attorney for acting Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for Counterterrorism Mark Thompson, did not specify how many new witnesses there were, but said they had been “on the ground” and “in the fight” during the September assault that left four Americans dead. Thompson was one of three whistleblowers who went before the House Oversight Committee on Wednesday.  (link)

(Via Mediaite)  NBC’s Lisa Myers told panelists on The Morning Joe yesterday that Benghazi is starting to worry Democrats. NBC Reporter Kelly O’Donnell read from portions of emails in which high ranking State Department officials coordinated with the CIA to alter the official talking points on the Benghazi attack to remove any references to prior warnings or Islamic terrorism.

“This is quite the window into what is usually the hush-hush process about how to deal with these types of attacks and the spin that irrevocably comes afterwards,” NBC reporter Luke Russert opined. (more…)

Please watch forty seconds of this video.   From 1:00 to 1:40:  Then continue reading….

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Internal Revenue Service apologized Friday for what it acknowledged was “inappropriate” targeting of conservative political groups during the 2012 election to see if they were violating their tax-exempt status.

IRS agents singled out dozens of organizations for additional reviews because they included the words “tea party” or “patriot” in their exemption applications, said Lois Lerner, who heads the IRS division that oversees tax-exempt groups. In some cases, groups were asked for lists of donors, which violates IRS policy in most cases, she said. (more…)

This story deserves to be shared with everyone you know….

“Extortion 17” was the call sign for the Chinook helicopter shot down in Afghanistan on the night of August 6th, 2011.   Among the killed in the crash were 25 special operations forces, including 15 members of SEAL Team 6, five National Guard troops, and eight Afghan nationals.

Yesterday, the families of the military personnel  killed in that crash held a press conference to lay out the cover-up by Obama and the military ever since. (more…)

Something is totally FUBAR with this reporting. I can’t figure out where the disconnect is yet. See the bottom after the article:

(more…)

“red rover, red rover, the truth’s coming over”…

WASHINGTON DC – On the night of Sept. 11, as the Obama administration scrambled to respond to the Benghazi terror attacks, then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and a key aide effectively tried to cut the department’s own counterterrorism bureau out of the chain of reporting and decision-making, according to a “whistle-blower” witness from that bureau who will soon testify to the charge before Congress, Fox News has learned.

That witness is Mark I. Thompson, a former Marine and now the deputy coordinator for operations in the agency’s counterterrorism bureau. Sources tell Fox News Thompson will level the allegation against Clinton during testimony on Wednesday before the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, chaired by Rep. Darrell Issa, R-Calif. (more…)