Benghazi and The Republican Nomination Race. Off To Athens Again.

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Is the U.N. biased or is Israel that big an outlaw nation? You decide.
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In a previous memo I suggested that Rep. Gowdy would be the one on the defensive and that Congressional Hearings often fail in getting at meaningful revelations because of the way they must be conducted. I believe this proved to be the case.

The Benghazi Investigation, to date, shows Hillarious did not break any laws.  Dereliction of duty, incompetence and lying to the American public does not indicate she broke any laws.  It does show she continues to engage in unethical behaviour. It did reveal Obama put out a false narrative so it would not undercut his claim that al Quaeda had been defeated. But we already  know Obama is also an unmitigated liar.  Finally, it did  suggest Hillarious was not engaged, shifted responsibility to others to protect the four who were killed and spent more time engaged with Blumenthal than with our Ambassador.  It is for the voters to ultimately determine what difference does it make.

I would venture to say the FBI investigation will find Hillary did break some laws but again, I doubt Obama's blind Justice department will hold her to the same standard as it did Gen. Petraeus because it was out to get the General but has no desire to end the prospects of the Demwits only queen.

If the FBI investigators do find Hillarious broke laws and is given a pass by The Attorney General, as well as the Chief of The FBI, it is possible some on the FBI team might resign.

As I noted in a previous memo neither did Obama's blind Justice Department find Lois Lerner guilty of breaking any law.  In other words this Justice Department believes slow walking one group of Americans or preventing them their constitutional rights is not law breaking. (See 1 below.)

What used to separate America from many nations was we were founded on the basis of respect for the law.  This concept served us well and then Obama became president and began to break the law by not enforcing it, by parsing its meanings and by circumventing Congress.  I continue to maintain he was able to do this because he was black and intimidated those who questioned his behaviour by calling them racists.

If we survive the impact of his presidency we will look back on these tragic 8 years and realize how dangerous they were.  Whether we will ever recover fully from his imprint remains to be seen.

One of the greatest threats to our freedom is the intolerance of diverse opinions on college campuses. (See 1a below.)

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The Republican Nomination process begins to move into higher gear.  What we have witnessed to date, and still are, is focus on non-political types.  Trump remains the over-all leader but I continue to believe interest in him being a serious president will fade. Carson is gaining on Trump and his favor-ability ratings are high but as more view him as a president I believe they will come to the realization his past profession and focus does not square with the demands made of the Oval Office occupant.  I do believe he could easily be selected to run as a V.P.

Rubio and Cruz still seem to be in the race and should rise as Trump and Carson fade. If Rubio were to be nominated he would have middle road and ethnic appeal.  Were Cruz the ultimate nominee he would not have the same appeal as Rubio and would heighten Hillarious' chance of being elected.

 The $64 question is whether Christie, Kasich, Bush, Fiorina and Huckabee's campaigns can  rise from the ashes and I seriously doubt they can.  Christie would make a good campaigner but people do not like him. Kasich has a great record of accomplishment but comes across flat. Bush, like Kasich, has a solid record but is also flat. Fiorina would be great challenging Hillarious but her executive record is a killer but she might be effective on the ticket as a V.P.  Huckabee is an effective campaigner but too much a product of the South and being a past  minister offsets his achievements as Governor.

I did not include Rand for obvious reasons but he made inroads with young voters and some in the black community but that is not enough.

Time will tell.
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Should a Republican become president will this issue become a campaign matter and will a new Attorney General do anything about tracking this potential fraud and pursuing any potential perpetrators? (See 2 below.)
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Off to Athens for a committee meeting so no memos for a few days.
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Dick
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1) Justice Department: No Criminal Charges for IRS's Lerner

By Eric Tucker

WASHINGTON (AP) -- No IRS official would face criminal charges arising from the political controversy over the processing of applications for tax-exempt status, the Justice Department announced Friday.

In a letter to members of Congress, the department said that while investigators had found "mismanagement, poor judgment and institutional inertia," there was no evidence of a crime.

"We found no evidence that any IRS official acted based on political, discriminatory, corrupt or other inappropriate motives that would support a criminal prosecution," the letter stated.

The department also announced that Lois Lerner, who headed the division that processes applications for tax-exempt status at the time, would not face any charges.

A firestorm erupted more than two years ago with the release of an inspector general's audit that said IRS agents had improperly singled out tea party and other conservative groups for extra scrutiny when they applied for tax-exempt status during the 2010 and 2012 elections.

The disclosure set off investigations by the Justice Department and multiple congressional committees.

The House voted to hold Lerner in contempt of Congress last year after she refused to answer questions at two House Oversight Committee hearings. She has since retired.

1a)

The Campus Assault on Free Speech, Wesleyan edition By Roger Kimball

The onslaught against free speech on our college campuses continues apace. The latest news comes from Wesleyan University, once a respectable school, now a ludicrously overpriced politically correct backwater where the university maintains special dormitories for fragile sexually exotic snowflakes, but the student government cannot abide any opinion that does not cleave closely to this week’s list of orthodox dogmas. In The New Criterion last spring, I reported on the university’s creation of “safe space” for some of its more extravagant charges, those who are proud members of the 

LGBTTQQFAGPBDSM “community.” I thought it might be a joke, but, though funny, it is no joke; it’s meant in earnest. The silly acronym stands for “Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, Transsexual, Queer, Questioning, Flexual, Asexual, Genderfuck, Polyamourous, Bondage/Disciple, 

Dominance/Submission, Sadism/Masochism and people of sexually or gender dissident communities.” As I noted, it’s all beyond parody, but not beyond a tuition, room and board bill of nearly $63,000.

So, it’s perfectly OK for Wesleyan students to behave as walking illustrations of Krafft-Ebing’s Psychopathia Sexualis,but just let someone emit an opinion contrary to the reigning orthodoxy on any touchy subject and, Pow!, the censors are there faster than you can say Mrs. Grundy. So it happened that when the student newspaper, The Wesleyan Argus, ran an op-ed mildly critical of the preposterous “Black Lives Matter” movement, the student government unanimously voted to cut its funding by more than half.  As Boston Magazine, which reported the story, noted,  “Cutting funding for a school’s primary news organization because of a disagreement over something it published is a disturbing snapshot of the state of free speech on college campuses in the United States.”  Indeed. Argus is appealing for donations.  I have contributed a little something. You can as well by going to their donations page.

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2)

Can the Republicans answer one question in 2017?

• Posted by Judson Phillips 

2016 still looks like it may be a good year for the Republican Party.  The Democrat candidates for President, are to put it mildly, horrible.   The economy still is in the pits, despite the massive efforts of the mainstream media to convince Americans Obama’s economic policies haven’t been a disaster. 

The national debt will probably be well over $20 trillion by the time Obama leaves office. With all of that spending, there is one question the Republicans need to ask beginning in 2017.

Where did all of the money go?  All of that money was not simply wasted.  There was massive fraud involved with the Obama Regime undoubtedly funneling some of that money to help Democrats.

From Fox News.:

The federal government awarded over $5 billion to help states set up ObamaCare exchanges, with the vast majority – $4.6 billion – going to 16 states and Washington, D.C. 

But, according to a recent Government Accountability Office (GAO, much of that money has not been accounted for – and yet not returned, either.

So where did those taxpayer dollars go?

That’s the billion-dollar question.

The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA) required the establishment of health insurance exchanges – known as marketplaces – to help small employers and consumers compare and purchase insurance plans. States opted to either develop their own state-based exchanges or hand authority to the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS). And between 2010 and 2014, CMS awarded federal grants mostly to states setting up their own marketplaces, to help them get started. 

About $4.6 billion was given to these 17 recipients, including California, New York, Washington state and Kentucky.

But the GAO report found that so far, just $1.4 billion of that has been spent on IT projects, and a total of $3 billion has been “spent or drawn down,” though not all the spending is detailed.

That, then, leaves at least $1.6 billion unaccounted for. Yet only three states returned any portion of the money – a total of just over $1 million was given back.

“[T]he specific amount spent on marketplace-related projects was uncertain, as only a selected number of states reported to GAO that they tracked or estimated this information,” the report said.

Even though states were supposed to set up their marketplaces by the end of last year, they are not yet legally required to return unused funds.  

Chuck Young, with the GAO, explained that the grants also could have covered non-IT costs not addressed in the study, and the funding devoted to IT projects will generally remain available for states’ use until December – albeit with restrictions. “CMS said that, since March 2015, states may have spent additional grant funds for IT projects, re-purposed those funds for non-IT costs, or returned funds,” he said, adding that the office expects to conduct a follow-up to this report.

But in an article on the GAO, health care adviser and contributor to the publication David Catron highlighted the monetary discrepancy and raised the question of whether Democratic officials improperly diverted or spent more than $3 billion in taxpayer grant money. 

Does it shock anyone that the Obama Regime would have funneled money to their friends?

 The first thing a Republican Attorney General needs to start doing in 2017 is auditing these programs and indicting those who stole from the American people.  Nothing deters criminals like being incarcerated.

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