Scandalpalooza Update: Obama's Worst Day So Far?

One thing becoming increasingly apparent that the revelations regarding the Obama scandals are comings at a faster pace and in some respects yesterday may have been the President's worst day since this "scandalpalooza" began.  As bad as today's news was the indications are that it may get much worse.

Benghazi: 

• The terrorists are free because Obama insists on trying them in civilian court.  According to the Associated Press, U.S. officials say they have identified five men they believe might be behind the attack on the diplomatic mission in Benghazi, Libya, last year. The officials say they have enough evidence to justify seizing them by military force as suspected terrorists _ but not enough proof to try them in a U.S. civilian court as the Obama administration prefers.
  

  "They have let it slip by because of politics, and now we've taken all the correlation we had and dropped the ball because of risk (aversion) -- and now the security in Libya is more fragile than ever," one U.S. special operator told Fox News. The source, speaking on condition of anonymity, confirms that U.S. forces have tracked the alleged attackers since October but have since lost the trail of some of them, as no one up the chain of command would authorize them to capture or kill the targeted militia members

So the officials say the men remain at large while the FBI gathers more evidence. The decision not to seize the men militarily underscores the White House's aim to move away from hunting terrorists as enemy combatants and toward trying them as criminals in a civilian justice system.

• The Next Whistle Blowers will be MUCH Worse. Roger Simon reported on PJM about diplomatic sources told him the next whistle blowers will tell congress that Stevens’ mission in Benghazi, was to buy back Stinger missiles from al-Qaeda groups issued to them by the State Department, not by the CIA. Such a mission would usually be a CIA effort, but the intelligence agency had opposed the idea because of the high risk involved in arming “insurgents” with powerful weapons that endanger civilian aircraft. Additionally military contacts of the diplomats tell them that AFRICOM had Special Ops “assets in place that could have come to the aid of the Benghazi consulate immediately (not in six hours).”

 And Commanding General Ham was ready to send them. However Ham was told by the White House not to send the aid to the trapped men, but Ham decided to disobey and did so anyway, whereupon the White House “called his deputy and had the deputy threaten to relieve Ham of his command.”

 According to Simon, these whistle blowers are colleagues of his diplomatic contacts and are, currently securing legal counsel because they work in areas not fully protected by the Whistle blower law. Until they are sure they can be protected they cannot testify.

• Hillary Part Two- the Hill Reports: The rising temperature of the scandal means it’s possible that Hillary could be asked to return and testify again. If she comes back, she had better be prepared, says House Oversight and Government Reform chairman Darrell Issa. “We are interviewing lots of people, most of them under oath,” Issa says, describing the “methodical” approach his committee has been using for months. “We’re going to go through . . . that so that if we bring Secretary Clinton back, we bring her back when we have a lot of questions, including who told her what, or, more importantly, who didn’t tell her something, and why” Issa says in his office in the Rayburn House Office Building. 

• The Scape Goat? Following the attack in Benghazi, Libya, senior State Department officials close to Hillary Clinton ordered the removal of a midlevel official who had no role in security decisions and has never been told the charges against him. He is now accusing Clinton’s team of scapegoating him for the failures that led to the death of four Americans last year. But what difference at this point does it make? 

IRS: 

• Senate Hearing- More of the same from our friends at the IRS. But this time Orin Hatch gave Mr. Miller.
  
  “Why did you mislead me and my colleagues, my fellow senators, and most importantly the American people by failing to tell us what you knew about the exact subject we were asking about? Why didn’t you tell us?” Hatch asked.
  
  “Mr. Hatch, I did not lie,” Miller responded. “I did not lie, sir.”
  
  “You lied by omission. You knew what was going on,” Hatch said. “You should have told us.”
  
  “I answered the questions. I answered them truthfully. Did I know about the list? Yes. Not on the first letter, by the way, because the timing I wouldn’t have known for that. On the second letter, we answered those questions, sir,” Miller said.

• I'm NOT Sorry We Targeted Conservatives:  Senator Cornyn grilled former IRS Director Schulman and asked if he like Steven Miller did would begin by apologizing for the IRS’ systemic targeting of conservative groups.
  
  “I’m deeply, deeply saddened by this whole set of events,” Shulman replied. “I’ve read the IG’s report and I very much regret that it happened and that it happened on my watch.”“Is that an apology?” Cornyn asked the Senator?

 Which eventually led to the former director saying “I certainly am not personally responsible for creating a list that had inappropriate criteria on it,” Shulman replied. “What I know, with the full facts that are out is – from the Inspector General’s report – which doesn’t say that I’m responsible for that.”

• But No One Told The President? During the White House press briefing on Tuesday, Press Secretary Jay Carney informed the media that there were discussions between White House officials and the Internal Revenue Service regarding how they would present the news that conservative groups were targeted with excessive scrutiny. Carney confirmed that Deputy White House Chief of Staff Mark Childress interacted with officials in the Treasury Department and discussed the IRS scandal. 

• I'd Take a Fifth Also:  If I was under the same pressure as Lois Lerner, I would take a fifth of single malt. But Lerner, was the IRS official who announced the scandal and followed up with a disastrous presser. Lerner was called to testify at the House Oversight Committee.
  

  “The committee has been contacted by Ms. Lerner’s lawyer who stated that his client intended to invoke her Fifth Amendment right and refuse to answer questions,” said oversight spokesman Ali Ahmad. 

• The Administration is Lying? MSNBC (yes that MSNBC)  is reporting that Bonnie Esrig, a 38-year IRS veteran, worked as an area manager in the Determinations Unit of the IRS’ Exempt Organizations department in 2011 and 2012.
  
  “The idea of two rogue employees,” Esrig said, “is inconsistent with the kinds of checks and balances that are inherent in the way the organization is set up.”
  
  Nor does she believe the IRS assertion in its response to the Inspector General’s audit that the use of such inappropriate selection criteria were “mistakes” and that “front-line career employees … made the decisions.”
  
  “Front-line employees (at the Cincinnati office) do not make key decisions about policy and how work is processed,” Esrig told us. “Work is reviewed by the managers. The employees don't operate autonomously where there is no review. The managers review.
  
  “I think that even if an employee were to veer off in a separate direction briefly, I would be very surprised if anyone could sustain that before management became involved.” 

• Your Tax Dollars at work: Entrusted with a government credit card, an Internal Revenue Service worker allegedly used the plastic for a years-long Amazon.com shopping spree that netted her hundreds of items, including a chocolate fondue fountain; Bollywood movies; Pampers; Harlequin romance novels; Omaha Steaks; Apple Bottoms skinny jeans; mango body wash; and a Ginsu knife set.
  
  Yetunde Oseni, 37, was named this month in a U.S. District Court felony complaint charging her with embezzling government funds. Oseni has worked since 2000 as a secretary in an IRS office in Lanham, Maryland. According to a court filing, Oseni was given a Citibank MasterCard for the “purchase of office supplies for her business unit.”

• As the Story Changes- Jay Carny came up with another timeline for the IRS Scandal. Obama's hired spinner Carney said WH Counsel Kathryn Ruemmler was informed by the Treasury Department’s General Counsel’s office April 24 that the Inspector General for Tax Administration was completing a report that found that IRS employees improperly scrutinized political organizations seeking tax exempt status by searching their applications for words including “Tea Party” and “patriot.”
  
  The previous week, on April 16, Ruemmler had learned more generally that there were a number of Inspector General reports being finalized and an IRS investigation was among those investigations, Carney said.
  
  Carney’s comments today are at odds with what he told reporters last week, when he said the White House counsel “only found out about the review being conducted and coming to conclusion by the inspector general.”

The War on The Media:

• And Sharyl Attkisson Too? Sharyl Attkisson, the Emmy-award winning CBS News investigative reporter, says that her personal and work computers have been compromised and are under investigation.
  
  "I can confirm that an intrusion of my computers has been under some investigation on my end for some months but I'm not prepared to make an allegation against a specific entity today as I've been patient and methodical about this matter," Attkisson told POLITICO on Tuesday. "I need to check with my attorney and CBS to get their recommendations on info we make public."

• Carney the Laughing Stock: The White House Press Corps/Jay Carney daily briefing has become nothing but contentious. At one point today,  Carney took tough questions on a series of issues that could damage the White House politically, the press secretary aligned himself with White House Communications Director Dan Pfeiffer, who over the weekend accused Republicans of engaging in “partisan fishing expeditions “You know, we could go down the list of questions — we could say, what about the president's birth certificate?" Carney responded. “Was that legitimate?”

• Carney Gets Slammed-Witness this conversation between Jay Carney and  Hans Nichols of Bloomberg News:
  

  JAY CARNEY: What is it that you're trying [to do]?
  HANS NICHOLS: I'm trying to figure out how people in this building knew what they knew and when they knew it. And we seem --
  CARNEY: Let's step back.
  NICHOLS: You just dinged us for not asking precise questions. Here I am asking precise questions and you’re acting like I’m petulant.
  CARNEY: Well, I'm just trying to figure out what it is that we provided you. I can't believe anybody would call you petulant. But we provided you --
  NICHOLS: Or you forthcoming.

That's just what happened during the past 24 hours. Scandal upon scandal it seems as if things are building....it also seems that the administration is cracking at the seams. All of the above, on top of Fast and Furious, Obamacare falling apart and of course that doesn't even include the rumor from Drudge that there is a fourth scandal, the one the Administration fears most of all--just waiting to burst out.

Today may very well have been Obama's worst day so far in this Scandalpalooza, but based on the past 24 hours...it may get much, much worse.