Last week, John McCain skipped a classified briefing on the incident in Benghazi... to hold a press conference to demand a hearing on the incident in Benghazi. John, before you run off in the morning to start your day, you might want to take a glance at your appointment book. If you listen very carefully to the video of McCain at the press conference, I bet you can hear his cell phone buzzing on vibrate mode—that would be his reminder that he should be at a classified hearing on Benghazi. The briefing that McCain skipped was top secret, but I don’t think that it was so secret that they didn’t tell the participants about it. This is like the time McCain impulsively “suspended” his campaign for president to rush back to Washington to deal with the economic crisis—and then didn’t say a word in the meetings. Well at least he showed up that time. I will allow John McCain this much—there ARE a lot of unresolved issues. Most of them are issues that McCain still has with Obama over the 2008 election.
McCain and other Republicans are attacking Susan Rice for working from the same CIA talking points that all of them received. I guess she made the mistake of reading them. If Republicans paid as much attention to the CIA talking points as they have to all the recent briefings on Benghazi, I can see how they would be unfamiliar with them. What is your point, Republicans? That we should ignore what the intelligence community says? We tried that during the Bush administration—it didn’t work out well. John, Susan Rice can’t just say go on TV and repeat whatever notion pops into her head on Benghazi. I know it’s hard for you to accept that, because that’s exactly what you’ve been doing.
Republicans spent a lot of time on the Sunday talk shows repudiating Mitt Romney... at least the ones who were willing to admit they had ever heard of a Mitt Romney. The Republican Party already needed to distance themselves from everything about Mitt Romney, so in that sense, Mitt’s comments about gifts were actually a huge gift to the Republican Party. Mitt Romney may not have given the Republican Party much, but at least he gave them a handy way to disavow him.
Listen to The Randi Rhodes Show Monday through Friday 6 PM to 8 PM on WWRL 1600.
It seems that everybody wants to know what's been going on at the NSA. Everybody, that is, except for 53 US Senators. Last week Senators were given a briefing by high-ranking intelligence officials about the surveillance programs. Only 47...
Tea Party senator Ron Johnson (R-WI) says that "restoring faith in government" is "the wrong solution." Well then by all means, keep talking, Senator. Instead, Johnson says "we need to engender that healthy distrust, that healthy...
Senator Elizabeth Warren is fighting hard for government transparency, and it has nothing to do with the NSA. On Thursday, Senator Warren sent a letter to President Obama's U.S. trade negotiations nominee, calling on the Administration to...
While signing a Merry Christmas bill in June, legalizing usage of phrases like 'Merry Christmas' on school property, Texas Governor Rick Perry took the opportunity to appeal to his evangelical base. "I'm proud we are standing up for...
The Supreme Court ruled that human genes cannot be patented, because they are a product of nature. However, the offered a compromise which allowed synthetic, complementary DNA, known as cDNA, to be protected by patent law, because it is not...
Before last week, very few people knew the name Edward Snowden. Not the case now. It seems he's either a hero or traitor, depending on who you talk to and their political ideology. No matter what you think of him, however, we owe him a...
The Republican-controlled U.S. House of Representatives will do anything to avoid getting any actual work done. As if 37 votes to repeal Obamacare didn't waste enough taxpayer time and money, the House GOP has decided to vote on a...
We need to have a debate over surveillance. Even more, we need to have a debate over exactly who is doing the surveilling. Government surveillance can be worrisome, but it's much more worrisome when the surveillance is being done by private...
Today, the United States Senate will begin debate on the so-called comprehensive immigration plan. Senators will consider the overall legislation, and dozens of amendments, before a final vote can be reached. The debate is likely to last...
Is Edward Snowden a whistleblower or a leaker? This story still has a lot of gray areas. For now, he's something like a whistle-leaker. To some people, Snowden is a hero, to others he is a traitor. To most Americans, he's the guy whose face in...
