Below, a couple of streaming links. I think this is YouTube's first live-streamed committee hearing

It's also on CSPAN, and live-streamed at this link.

Added: Below, "The Hillary Shuffle," aka "What Difference Does It Make?," created by @mamaswati, via @ameliahammy.

Opening Statements: Issa called for Cummings to join him in getting to the truth. Cummings claimed he welcomed and supported the whistelblowers, and had written a letter to SecState Kerry asking that they be free of reprisal. That letter was sent yesterday. People have been trying to get these people protection for months.

After noting how much he loved whistlebowers, he basically said they were full of shit because Obama's people said they were.

One bit of possible news: He claims the "signature" on the order to draw down security was not Hillary Clinton's signature at all, but some kind of mechanically-added recitation of her name.

We'll see how that claim stands up.

Thompson: Per @laurawkwalker, "WH told me the FEST was taken off the table. I asked why. WH said "not the right time for them to go in".

FEST is an acronym for "Foreign Emergency Support Team." It's a group tasked with rapid response to terrorism against US interests abroad.

Cummings to Hicks: "Death is Part of Life." Waxing philosophical about the inevitability of death -- "What difference does it possibly make?," redux -- he tells Hicks he "feels his pain."

For his part, Hicks had testified that the hospital to which Stevens was brought was under Ansar al-Islam's control.

more...

Posted by: Ace at 07:39 AM | Comments (517)
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Root, root root for the home team, if they don't win it's a shame.

Posted by: Ace at 07:32 AM | Comments (21)
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A good reporter.

What's interesting is that the Washington Post suggests she's a tool of the right because she follows stories the right is interested in.

The Washington Post doesn't say this out of its own mouth, but it does ask the question, by noting she's a "Rorschach test" viewed differently by the right and the left.

If Atkisson's a tool of the right because she follows stories featuring liberal villains, what does this line of reasoning suggest about the entirety of the liberal media? Whoops, I gave away the answer in the question.

Note that Atkisson offers the standard media response to the charge of bias -- she just goes where the story is, without prejudice or favor. Atkisson does indeed go where stories are -- even if the rest of the media has embargoed them.

Does this mean she's "partisan"? Why? Because she means it when she says she'll go wherever a story takes her, and the rest of the media most emphatically does not?

Liberals see a partisan tool. “I think Attkisson has completely given herself over to the right and is very happy to be their champion,” says Eric Boehlert, a senior fellow at the liberal Media Matters for America organization.

Attkisson, 52, sees neither. She says she bears no partisan grud-
ges, not on the Benghazi story or another in which her reporting nettled Obama administration officials — the Justice Department’s problem-plagued gun-tracking operation, known as Fast and Furious (for which Attkisson won an Emmy for investigative reporting).

“IÂ’m a political agnostic,” she says. “I donÂ’t think about whoÂ’s good and whoÂ’s bad. I just go where the story leads. . . . People can say what they want about me, I donÂ’t care. I just want to get the information out there.”

But Attkisson, who holds a third-degree black belt in taekwondo, takes a fighting stance when she feels sheÂ’s being stonewalled. Which is exactly what she thinks the White House has done to her on Benghazi.

Liberals seem not to believe her claim to be a "political agnostic." Strangely enough, liberals themselves often say exactly this about themselves.

What is it about this statement that they find difficult to believe? Do they know something about the typical reporter who claims it which causes them to have skepticism about it?

Do they know they themselves are lying when they say it?

...

Attkisson’s general approach to her work may be spelled out in the self-description on her Twitter account: “Investigative Journalist. Dreaming of a day when public officials answer questions as if they know they work for the public.”

I suppose to the media, the Public Relations Office of the Government, that seems like a partisan remark.

The article is worth a read, as it notes the angry pushback she gets from the White House, with taxpayer-paid government officials calling CBS to complain about her. But:

. “My goal is to report on untouchable subjects in a way that is fearless.”

Via @adamsbaldwin

Posted by: Ace at 06:59 AM | Comments (196)
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• The Iowahawk Tweet Heard Round The World
  
• Philip K. Dick And Our Predicament
  
• Americans Still More Interested In Jobs, Not Guns And Immigration
  
• Former Bill Clinton Adviser: Sanford Wins. Women Lose.
  
• The US Has More Than 10 Million People On Disability
  
• Having Kids Does Change Your Outlook
  
• Internet Traffic In Syria Suddenly Disappears
  
• Judge Rips Obama Over His Right Wing Plan B Decision
  
• Gun Crime Has Plunged, But Americans Think It Is Up
  
• Airforce Sidelines 17 ICBM Officers
  
• Show Jesse Jackson Jr Mercy, Apparently He Was Good At Karaoke
  
• College Grads: Heads Up!
  
• Gosnell Resolution Blocked In The Senate
  
• MLB Pitcher Hit In Head By Line Drive (autoplay video)
  
• Unfortunately It Appears Prince Charles Won't Be Skipped Over
  
• There's No Party Like A White House Party
  
• Norks Pulling Back From The Edge
  
• Colbert-Busch Couldn't Win Despite Media Blackout On Her Leftwing Tweets And Arrest Record
  

Follow me on twitter.

Posted by: Pixy Misa at 05:28 AM | Comments (319)
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Happy Wednesday.

The Alabama Senate gave final approval to the homebrew bill, which the governor is generally expected to sign. Alabama is the last state in the nation where homebrewing is illegal.

The Delaware Senate passed a gay marriage law, which the governor signed an hour later. Delaware is the 11th state to legalize gay marriage.

All of the proposed amendments to the Gang of 8 immigration bill are listed here. Some interesting ones that I happened to spot (there are probably loads of others, these are just the one I spotted pretty much randomly):

• Cruz 3: To provide that no person who has previously been will fully present in the United States while not in lawful status shall be eligible for United States citizenship. (In addition to making all illegal aliens granted amnesty ineligible to naturalize, this would make citizenship unattainable for many individuals who are granted asylum and all individuals who are granted cancellation of removal for nonpermanent residents).


• Sessions 34: To clarify that this Act does not preempt any State or local criminal law. (This would undo the Supreme Court's decision preempting Arizona's -- and likely other states' -- immigration enforcement laws.)


• Hatch 3: To collect a DNA sample from each adult alien applying for registered provisional immigrant status for comparison against the Combined DNA Index System of the Federal Bureau of Investigation.


• Grassley 3: To require border security measures along the Northern border of the United States. (Grassley has a couple amendments to spend on border security along both borders.)


• Graham 1: To provide for termination of asylum or refugee status in cases of country return. (With an exception for "good cause." Likely a reaction to the Tsarnaevs.)


• Lee 7: To modify the physical presence requirement for application for registered provisional immigrant status. (He backs it up to December 31, 2009, instead of December 31, 2011.)

Sen. Grassley proposed the most amendments (77). Sen. Sessions came in second place with 49. Obviously, a lot of these aren't gonna make it into the bill.

Posted by: Gabriel Malor at 02:55 AM | Comments (395)
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Some Vareetied Chapooka

"What's it going to be then, eh?"

There was me, that is Alex, and my three droogs, that is Pete, Georgie, and Dim. Dim being really dim, and we sat in the Korova Milkbar making up our rassoodocks what to do with the evening, a flip dark chill winter bastard though dry. The Korova Milkbar was a milk-plus mesto, and you may, O my brothers, have forgotten what these mestos were like, things changing so skorry these days and everybody very quick to forget, newspapers not being read much neither. Well, what they sold there was milk plus something else. They had no licence for selling liquor, but there was no law yet against prodding some of the new veshches which they used to put into the old moloko, so you could peet it with vellocet or synthemesc or drencrom or one or two other veshches which would give you a nice quiet horrorshow fifteen minutes admiring Bog And All His Holy Angels and Saints in your left shoe with lights bursting all over your mozg. Or you could peet milk with knives in it, as we used to say, and this would sharpen you up and make you ready for a bit of dirty twenty-to-one, and that was what we were peeting this evening I'm starting off the story with.

Our pockets were full of deng, so there was no real need from the point of view of crasting any more pretty polly to tolchock some old veck in an alley and viddy him swim in his blood while we counted the takings and divided by four, nor to do the ultra-violent on some shivering starry grey haired ptitsa in a shop and go smecking off with the till's guts. But, as they say, money isn't everything.

Read the rest here.

Posted by: Maetenloch at 06:20 PM | Comments (619)
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The guy's a flake, but I guess he's our flake. So there's that. A ton of out of state moonbat money evaporated tonight. That's worth celebrating I guess.

Posted by: Open Blogger at 06:04 PM | Comments (148)
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SANFORD WINS

Colleton, with one tiny precinct, in, 70-29 Sanford
Berkeley County 33/44 in Sanford up 60-39
Beaufort 80/80 in Sanford up 53-46.5
Sanford up over ECB Charleston 50-49

In the race to fill the seat vacated by Tim Scott, South Carolina Republicans chose their disgraced former governor, Mark Sanford. On the Democratic side, sister of Stephen Colbert, Elizabeth Colbert-Busch, has attempted to capitalize on Sanford's scandals while pretending to be anything but a progressive stooge. I will be surprised if the results actually end up as close as this race has been hyped, but we'll know soon enough. Polls close at 7pm, and I will update the thread with results as we go. more...

Posted by: CAC at 02:57 PM | Comments (835)
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They seem to feature a lot of fighting in earth's atmosphere, which I don't remember in the book (except as an old flashback, maybe). I guess that's to add Immediate Menace.

more...

Posted by: Ace at 02:42 PM | Comments (156)
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Interviewed by Tapper on CNN.

Tapper played a portion of former Sec. Clinton’s testimony before Congress in which she asked “what difference, at this point, does it make” what the impetus behind the attack on the consulate was.

“Well, that’s what I want to know,” Smith shot back. “Why did it happen? And she is in charge. Why couldn’t she do something about it? I blame her.”

“That’s her department. She’s supposed to be on top of it, and yet she claims that she knows nothing – it wasn’t told to her,” Smith said. “Who’s running the place?”

Video at the link.

Posted by: Ace at 02:06 PM | Comments (185)
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