Having spent the larger amount of two years digging through innocuous reports, FOIA documents, and media reports (mostly foreign), the Gowdy announcement today is more than a little bit disingenuous.
We’ve previously predicted, long before the select committee was announced, that the Benghazi investigation would amount to all hat and no cattle.
The reasoning is very simple:
Both sides of the UniParty were charged with intelligence oversight of the joint CIA/State Department operations in Libya (2011) and Syria (2012) through the Congressional Intelligence Gang-of-Eight.
At the time the “Intelligence Gang-of-Eight” was:

♦ Speaker – John Boehner, ♦ Minority Leader – Nancy Pelosi; ♦ House Permanent Select Committee on Intel Chairman – Mike Rogers, and his ♦ Democrat counterpart Charles Ruppersberger; ♦ Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, and ♦ Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid; along with ♦ Senate Intel Chair Diane Feinstein and her ♦ Republican counterpart, Saxby Chambliss.

Together with Hillary Clinton and President Obama the “Gang-of-Eight” was duplicitous in everything that took place.  Therefore there is no independent motive for the Gowdy committee to find any responsibility – the entire investigation is for public appearances only.
Further evidence therein can be found in this latest press release.  Note the specific wording and the specific emphasis we provide:  (more…)

Tonight at 8:00pm the heavy political news day continues with a five candidate Presidential Town Hall hosted by CNN.

The event begins at 8:00pm EST and is scheduled through 11:00pm.

Candidates Hillary Clinton, Ted Cruz, John Kasich and Donald Trump will appear live on  CNN.  Bernie Sanders is scheduled to appear via satellite feed.  All five presidential candidates will be questioned individually by host Anderson Cooper and Wolf Blitzer – it appears most of the Q&A will be interview style.

There is not a publicly available schedule to find out the order of appearance.

The Town Hall event is being broadcast on CNN and CNNi.

(This thread will remain at the top of the page for the duration of the broadcast)

♦ Corrupt progressive union officials control the ports and transit hubs of Oregon.  ♦ This is the same type of missile recently admitted as being “accidentally” shipped to Cuba.  ♦ In a little discussed 2014 article, the Obama administration announced they were sending 5,000 of these missiles to Iraq.  ♦ Is it possible these sketchy transfers are lining up to be a similar problem evidenced in Operation Zero Footprint?

BELGRADE, Serbia (AP) – Serbia’s authorities are investigating reports that a cargo package bound for the U.S. containing two missiles with explosive warheads was found on a passenger flight from Lebanon to Serbia.

N1 television said the package with two guided armor-piercing missiles was discovered Saturday by a sniffer dog after an Air Serbia flight from Beirut landed at Belgrade airport.

Serbian media say documents listed the final destination for the AGM-114 Hellfire missiles as Portland, Oregon. The American-made projectiles can be fired from air, sea or ground platforms. (more…)

Sometimes you have to wonder how much of this stuff an ordinary Democrat voter can swallow before they too are suffocated by the obfuscation and avoidance.  It looks like Hillary has found another person to put on her “vast right wing conspiracy” list.

(Via Bloomberg) The Hillary Clinton campaign has gone on the attack against the government official who conducts oversight of the State Department she used to run, accusing him of partisanship and misconduct without any direct evidence. That strategy could backfire by politicizing the role of the government’s inspectors general and undermining needed State Department reforms. (more…)

People are making a rather big deal of the DOJ granting immunity to a Clinton staffer who was involved in the set up of the private email servers. The presumption is this may be her undoing. 

Sorry, but you can put me in the cynical column.  The Democrats and Republicans cooperated together to protect the congressional intelligence gang-of-eight oversight committee surrounding Benghazi, do you really think the DC UniParty is going to let one of their leaders suffer a DOJ indictment?  Not-Going-To-Happen, ever.

(Via WaPo) The Justice Department has granted immunity to the former State Department staffer who worked on Hillary Rodham Clinton’s private email server as part of a criminal investigation into the possible mishandling of classified information, according to a senior law enforcement official.

The official said the FBI had secured the cooperation of Bryan Pagliano who worked on Clinton’s 2008 presidential campaign before setting up the server in her New York home in 2009. (more…)

The U.S. State Department released more of Hillary Clinton’s emails today.  One of those emails is noted as originating on March 22nd 2011, the exact day President Obama launched the attacks on Libya.

The newly released email confirms what many already knew – it was Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, Susan Rice and Samantha Power who convinced President Obama to go to war in Libya:

“Turning POTUS around on this is a major win for everything we worked for”..

(more…)

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Obama administration confirmed for the first time Friday that Hillary Clinton’s unsecured home server contained some of the U.S. government’s most closely guarded secrets, censoring 22 emails with material demanding one of the highest levels of classification. The revelation comes just three days before the Iowa presidential nominating caucuses in which Clinton is a candidate.

The State Department will release its next batch of emails from Clinton’s time as secretary of state later Friday.

(more…)

There’s no way these media reports are accidental or not directly connected.  And none of this looks the least bit good against the larger dynamic of the Syrian crisis and President Stompy Feet’s prior position on ISIS.

Yesterday, well, actually Friday, the release of the information was yesterday, Vice-President Joe Biden met in Turkey with President Recep Erdogan.  They met for several hours as reported in The Hill and the topic was an escalated U.S./Turkish military footprint against ISIS :

Vice President Joe Biden on Saturday said the U.S. and regional ally Turkey are prepared to seek a military solution in Syria to try to solve the nation’s five-year-long civil war.

Speaking after a meeting with Turkish Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu in Istanbul, Biden stressed that a political solution to the problem would still be preferable.

“But we are prepared if that’s not possible to having a military solution to this operation and taking out Daesh,” he said, according to AFP, using another name for the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS).

(more…)

(Via Fox News) Hillary Clinton’s emails on her unsecured, homebrew server contained intelligence from the U.S. government’s most secretive and highly classified programs, according to an unclassified letter from a top inspector general to senior lawmakers.

Fox News exclusively obtained the unclassified letter, sent Jan. 14 from Intelligence Community Inspector General I. Charles McCullough III. It laid out the findings of a recent comprehensive review by intelligence agencies that identified “several dozen” additional classified emails — including specific intelligence known as “special access programs” (SAP).   (more…)

It is a good thing, a great thing, the U.S. hostages/prisoners are being released.  However, to find out that President Obama and John Kerry allowed the hostages to be used as leverage to block sanctions – is a little disappointing. 

The day before new sanctions were due to be implemented, Iran told the U.S. the fate of the prisoners was dependent on no new sanctions. Kerry agreed.

As with all other strategic decisions from this administration our adversaries only need to consider the political benefits of President Obama in their counter-strategy.  Knowing the White House only makes deals based on political best interests, gives our adversaries a significant structural advantage in how they approach negotiations. 

(Via Reuters)  The day before the Obama administration was due to slap new sanctions on Iran late last month, Iranian Foreign Minister Javad Zarif warned U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry the move could derail a prisoner deal the two sides had been negotiating in secret for months.

Kerry and other top aides to President Barack Obama, who was vacationing in Hawaii, convened a series of conference calls and concluded they could not risk losing the chance to free Americans held by Tehran. (more…)