The Pentagon accused China of cyber-espionage; the conflict in Syria is now “a brutal campaign of sectarian cleansing,” with death toll around 80,000; sectarian violence is spreading to Iraq and Lebanon; North Korea is issuing new threats; more bombings in Pakistan; our overseas consulates have indicated possible terror attacks this summer; the suicide rate is up 28 percent in the past ten years; millions of part-time U.S. workers may see their hours cut because of the Obamacare rules; wages have been virtually flat since 2009 and, as Bloomberg puts it, “long-term unemployment is turning the jobless into pariahs”; only 57 percent of Americans are doing any saving for retirement at all (down from 65 percent in 2009); and the rate of single parenthood has increased more dramatically as the Great Recession drags on.

So, what’s the president doing tonight, Mark Knoller? “This evening, Pres Obama attends a DNC fundraiser at a local hotel. His 5th fundraiser this year. But no press coverage.”

He golfed yesterday, of course, his twelfth round in his second term.

Hmmm:

“We want somebody who wakes up thinking about jobs, thinking about the economy, thinking about finding a great deal, thinking about training the workforce,” [Democratic Sen. and former Gov.] Tim Kaine said. “That’s why I’m supporting Terry McAuliffe to be the next governor of the Commonwealth.”

Oh, I have no doubt McAuliffe is quite skilled at finding a great deal. The question is, “a great deal for whom?”

Elsewhere in the Washington Post’s coverage, they note, “Beyond education, McAuliffe’s policy blueprint calls for targeted business incentive programs and diversifying the state’s economic base.”

“Targeted business incentive programs.” Oh, I have no doubt that economic assistance under a Governor McAuliffe would be targeted.

As he said in his autobiography:

Let me tell you, it’s a lot easier to raise money for a governor. They have all kinds of business to hand out, road contracts, construction jobs, you name it.

You may scoff: Surely the risk of humilation would prevent him from directing “incentives” to his friends and donors! But as he proudly boasts when discussing the time a casino owner demanded he go up and sing on a stage for a donation, “For $500,000 I don’t mind humiliating myself for five minutes.”

Would a Governor McAuliffe mix politics and business? Heck, he brags about how he does it:

McAuliffe has said that his work in politics has bolstered his business career. “I’ve met all of my business contacts through politics. It’s all interrelated,” he told the New York Times in 1999.

As he summarized it to the Washington Post in 2009:

I’ve done business with people I’ve met in politics, who I went to law school with, who I grew up with . . . Who do you do business with? People you meet in life.

From the Tuesday edition of the Morning Jolt:

The Benghazi Hearings: No Showboating, Please

Dear Republicans on the House Oversight Committee:

Please do not grandstand. Please do not take the time before the television cameras to tell us how outraged you are, even though what you are investigating is, indeed, outrageous. There will be plenty of time for that after the hearing. All day Wednesday, give us the facts, and then more facts, and then more facts.

Just ask the questions of the witnesses. Let them speak and don’t cut them off. Do not give the Obama administration any cover to claim that this is a partisan witch hunt from unhinged political opponents. Don’t waste time complaining about the media’s lack of interest or coverage so far. Just give them — and us — the facts to tell the story, a story that will leave all of us demanding accountability.

Sheryl Attkisson’s excellent reporting for CBS gives us a sense of what to expect, with three big issues.

First: Leading up to September 11, why did the State Department keep reducing the amount of security protecting diplomatic staff in Libya, in light of the increasingly dire requests from those in country?

The former deputy chief of mission for the U.S. in Libya, Gregory Hicks was interviewed by congressional investigators on the House Oversight Committee in April. He told them, “We had already essentially stripped ourselves of our security presence, or our security capability to the bare minimum.”

Second: Precisely what happened that night? Was there a time when a rescue could have been authorized, but wasn’t? Were any forces told to “stand down” and not attempt a rescue?

From Hicks’s interview:

A: So Lieutenant Colonel Gibson, who is the SOCAFRICA commander, his team, you know, they were on their way to the vehicles to go to the airport to get on the C-130 when he got a phone call from SOCAFRICA which said, you can’t go now, you don’t have authority to go now. And so they missed the flight. And, of course, this meant that one of the . . . 

Q : They didn’t miss the flight. They were told not to board the flight.

A: They were told not to board the flight, so they missed it. So, anyway, and yeah. I still remember Colonel Gibson, he said, “I have never been so embarrassed in my life that a State Department officer has bigger balls than somebody in the military.” A nice compliment.

Wait, there’s more from another witness:

On the night of Sept. 11, as the Obama administration scrambled to respond to the Benghazi terror attacks, then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and a key aide effectively tried to cut the department’s own counterterrorism bureau out of the chain of reporting and decision-making, according to a “whistle-blower” witness from that bureau who will soon testify to the charge before Congress, Fox News has learned.

That witness is Mark I. Thompson, a former Marine and now the deputy coordinator for operations in the agency’s counterterrorism bureau. Sources tell Fox News Thompson will level the allegation against Clinton during testimony on Wednesday before the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, chaired by Rep. Darrell Issa, R-Calif.

Third, what happened afterwards, and was there an effort to lie to the American people about what happened?

Hicks, again:

Greg Hicks: . . . The net impact of what has transpired is the spokesperson of the most powerful country in the world has basically said that the President of Libya is either a liar or doesn’t know what he’s talking about. The impact of that is immeasurable. Magariaf has just lost face in front of not only his own people, but the world . . . my jaw hit the floor as I watched this . . . I’ve never been as embarrassed in my life, in my career as on that day . . . I never reported a demonstration; I reported an attack on the consulate. Chris’s last report, if you want to say his final report, is, “Greg, we are under attack.” . . . It is jaw-dropping that — to me that — how that came to be.

Finally, did the previous efforts to investigate this amount to a cover-up?

Jed Babbin:

Last week, we learned that the State Department’s Inspector General is investigating the Pickering-Mullen “Accountability Review Board” for, among other things, its failure to investigate and get statements from the Benghazi survivors. Before there were whistleblowers there were survivors, yet the comprehensively misnamed “Accountability Review Board” didn’t question them.

Which isn’t a surprise. The ARB did what it was paid to do: limit the damage and blame people under Hillary Clinton for the failures of leadership and management. It was, simply, a whitewash. We’ll probably wait a long time for the IG to report the facts — 2017 sounds like the right time frame.

In the press conference announcing the report, Adm. Mullen said something that’s been bothering me ever since. He said that no military assets could have been deployed in time. In time to do what?

Jed makes a good point here: Just how did the U.S. military and diplomatic folks outside of Benghazi know how long they had to rescue anyone? How did they know how long our guys would be able to hold out, or how long the attack would go on? After the fact, you can calculate that not enough forces could have reached the site in time, but how did they know that as the events were ongoing?

If that means, in Clintonian terms, that they wouldn’t have been in time to save Ambassador Chris Stevens, that doesn’t mean that they wouldn’t have been in time to save the SEALs.

If you parse Mullen’s words — as we learned we must when Hillary’s hubby was president — he almost certainly meant that the ambassador was killed in the early moments of the attack.

In short, what we don’t need is a bold, expectation-setting, agenda-hinting prediction like this:

Former Republican presidential candidate Mike Huckabee said on his radio show Monday that President Obama “will not fill out his full term” because he was complicit in a “cover-up” surrounding the attack that killed Ambassador Christopher Stevens and three other Americans in Libya.

“I believe that before it’s all over, this president will not fill out his full term,” Huckabee said. “I know that puts me on a limb, but this is not minor.”

If Mark Sanford succeeds in his improbable comeback tomorrow, a lot of people will be asking, “How did he do it?” A serious answer will be: “He just outworked his opponent.”

Earlier today, Dave Weigel tweeted, “Sanford has 5 campaign stops today — one avail already — before Colbert Busch’s first event.” Sanford has eleven public events scheduled today; Colbert Busch has five.

The week of April 22, he did 15 public events. She did six in those five days, according to her campaign’s web site. He did three public events Wednesday; she did one. He did three public events Thursday; she did none. He did ten events public Saturday, she did five.

He did take Sunday off; she did three events that day.

Sanford’s campaign just announced he’s doing 10 events tomorrow, before his Election Night party:

7:45 AM — Pages Okra Grill, 302 Coleman Blvd, Mt. Pleasant

8:30 AM — Huddle House, 261 Johnnie Dodds Blvd., Mt. Pleasant

9:15 AM — Brown’s Court Bakery, 199 St. Philip Street, Charleston

10 AM — Vote — 75 Calhoun Street, Charleston

11 AM — Pep Boys, 1550 Savannah Highway, West Ashley, Charleston

11:45 AM — Moe’s Southwest Grill, 1812 Sam Rittenberg Blvd., West Ashley, Charleston

12:45 PM — Cookout Restaurant, 8968 University Blvd., North Charleston 29406

1:30PM — Alex’s Restaurant, 309 St. James Avenue, Goose Creek

2:30 PM — Piggly Wiggly, 9616 Highway 78, Suite 1, Ladson

4 PM — Farmer’s Market Mt. Pleasant, Moultrie Middle School, 645 Coleman Boulevard, Mt. Pleasant

7:30 PM — Watch Party — Liberty Tap Room & Grill, 1028 Johnnie Dodds Blvd., Mt. Pleasant

A busy campaign schedule can’t completely change the dynamics of a race, but it certainly can’t hurt, as long as the candidate can keep the energy and enthusiasm up.

The editorial board of the Hilton Head, S.C., Island Packet asked Elizabeth Colbert Busch why she ran as a Democrat.

She answered for several minutes, beginning with seeing an “incredible-looking” John Kennedy drive by in a black Lincoln Continental with the top down in 1960 when she was six years old, and how Jackie Kennedy was “such a fierce mother, protecting her children.”

“I’ve always just felt that I was a Democrat — although a fiscally conservative Democrat.”

Her answer didn’t mention President Obama, House minority leader Nancy Pelosi, assistant House minority leader and South Carolina representative Jim Clyburn, or any other modern Democratic leader.

Some might argue that today’s Democratic party has a quite different worldview and agenda than the 1960-era John F. Kennedy version.

Asked whether she would vote for Nancy Pelosi to be speaker, Colbert Busch responds, ”I wouldn’t even be able to vote until 2015. I don’t know who’s going to be on that ballot. Nobody knows who’s going to be on that ballot. But who I will vote for is the person who will be on the ballot. It’s not until 2015 anyway, so it’s kind of a hypothetical question.”

Terry McAuliffe strongly believes that Ronald Reagan’s campaign conspired with the Iranian ayatollahs to prevent the release of the hostages in 1980:

Reagan’s Inauguration hit us all like a kick in the gut, and not just for the obvious reasons. President Carter was racing the clock trying to free the hostages before Reagan was inaugurated, and it didn’t look as if he would make it. Then Inauguration Day came and exactly five minutes after Reagan was sworn in, the U.S. hostages were finally released after 444 days in captivity. A former National Security Council (NSC) staffer named Gary Sick spent years investigating and put together a strong case that a deal had occurred between Reagan’s people and the Iranians to sway the elections by delaying the release of the hostages — and in return for helping Reagan, the Iranians would be rewarded with weapons shipments from Israel.

Let me tell you why I’m sure the Reagan people had a hand in this. First of all, the arms transfers from Israel to Iran began almost immediately after Reagan became president. Second, the main defense of the Reagan people was that it would have been too terrible a crime for Reagan to cook up secret deals with the Iranians in violation of U.S. law, but that is just what the Reagan administration did when it sold arms to the Iranians and used the profits to illegally fund the contra rebels in Nicaragua.

Finally, the key to Reagan’s deal on the Iranian hostages was Bill Casey, a swashbuckling Cold War spy master who served Reagan as campaign manager and CIA Director. Sick’s sources told him that Casey met with the Iranians in a Madrid hotel in July 1980 and again several months later, and made the deal.

— What a Party! pp. 35–36

The first advocate of the “October Surprise” theory was Lyndon LaRouche.

The Israeli-arms-to-Iran deal beginning in 1981 described by McAuliffe was Operation Seashell, an Israeli operation designed to prevent Iran from losing to Saddam Hussein during the Iran-Iraq War, not an American operation. French and Portuguese arms dealers were the intermediaries, not American ones.

Daniel Pipes pointed out that Sick used the “I refused to believe this theory until recently” line in 1991, while publicly espousing it in 1988.

The House of Representatives formed a special task force to invesigate the “October Surprise,” spending $1.3 million and looking at the issue for ten months, looking at tens of thousands of documents, conducting more than 230 formal interviews in ten countries. Indiana representative Lee Hamilton, a Democrat, chaired the task force and concluded that it “found no truth to the accusations that members of the Reagan presidential campaign conspired in 1980 to delay the release of the American hostages in Iran until after the November election.”

Hamilton:

The overall conclusion of the task force is that there is no credible evidence to support the central October Surprise allegations. We found, first, wholly insufficient evidence that officials of the Reagan presidential campaign secretly met with Iranian officials in 1980; no credible evidence that members of the Reagan presidential campaign conspired to delay the release of the hostages;a and no credible evidence that the Reagan administration provided directly, or indirectly through Israel, arms in exchange for a delay in the release of the hostages.

The task force concluded that “nearly all of the individuals claiming firsthand knowledge of the October Surprise allegations were either wholesale fabricators or were impeached by documentary evidence.”

Finally, Newsweek back in 1991:

NEWSWEEK has found, after a long investigation including interviews with government officials and other knowledgeable sources around the world, that the key claims of the purported eyewitnesses and accusers simply do not hold up. What the evidence does show is the murky history of a conspiracy theory run wild.

Casey’s whereabouts during the July “window” are convincingly established by contemporary records at the Imperial War Museum in London. Casey, it turns out, took a three-day breather from the campaign to participate in the Anglo-American Conference on the History of the Second World War. As a veteran of the Office of Strategic Services — the forerunner of the CIA — Casey delivered a paper on OSS operations in Europe during the war. He went to a reception for conference participants on the evening of July 28, and he was photographed there. He delivered his paper on the morning of July 29.

ABC News acknowledged these facts in an update later in June — but still maintained that Casey had enough time on July 27 and 28 to fly to Madrid to meet with the Iranians. A close examination of the conference records by NEWSWEEK, however, demonstrates that Casey in fact was present at the conference sessions in London on July 28. Historian Jonathan Chadwick, who organized the conference, kept a precise, day-by-day and session-by-session record of who was present and who was not. According to Chadwick’s records, Casey was present at 9:30 a.m on the 28th, stayed for the second morning session, leaving after lunch and returning at 4 p.m.

The truth is out there, Terry. Maybe the cigarette-smoking man got to everyone else!

Oh, look who’s in the news again:

Bill Ayers says people can’t equate the bombings that he and others in the Weather Underground did 40 or so years ago with the April 15 twin bombings in Boston that killed three people.

There is no relationship at all between what Weather Underground members did and the bombings that two brothers allegedly committed on April 15 in Massachusetts, Ayers said in response to a reporter’s question. No one died in the Weather Underground bombings.

Wrong.

Three Weathermen are killed when bomb manufacturing goes awry. The organization becomes the Weather Underground as key players including Bernardine Dohrn, Bill Ayers and Kathy Boudin go into hiding .  . Kathy Boudin resurfaces to participate in an armed robbery in Nanuet, New York, which results in the shooting deaths of three men.

Ayers goes on to say . . .

“How different is the shooting in Connecticut from shooting at a hunting range?” Ayers said. “Just because they use the same thing, there’s no relationship at all.”

First, it’s good to see that Ayers sees the futility of cracking down on lawful, responsible gun owners because of the actions of the Newtown shooter. Secondly, show me the safe, responsible use of a pipe bomb.

U.S. Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., committed daily war crimes in Vietnam “and I get asked about violence when what I did was some destruction of property to issue a scream and cry against an illegal war in which 6,000 people a week are being killed,” Ayers said. “Six thousand a week being killed and I destroyed some property. Show me the equivalence. You should ask John McCain that question . . . I’m against violence.”

“I’m against violence,” said the bomb-builder. Finally, the reporter covering the event feels the need to point out the glaring gaps in Ayers’s story of himself as a misunderstood hero:

In his talk to the crowd, Ayers mentioned that in 1970, he lost three friends in the Weather Underground, including his lover, Diana Oughton. He did not explain in his talk how they died — they were killed when nail bombs they were making in a Greenwich Village townhouse blew up.

Telling the crowd the circumstances of those deaths would have been “inappropriate,” Ayers said afterward. “Everybody here knows,” he said.

Authorities said the bombs were intended to be used at a dance at the Fort Dix Army base in New Jersey.

But remember, Bill Ayers is totally, totally different from the Boston bombers, honest!

Ayers recently elaborated on his relationship with Barack Obama and his political allies earlier in life:

David Axelrod said we were friendly, that was true; we served on a couple of boards together, that was true; he held a fundraiser in our living room, that was true; Michelle [Obama] and Bernardine were at the law firm together, that was true. Hyde Park in Chicago is a tiny neighborhood, so when he said I was “a guy around the neighborhood,” that was true.

As Ben Smith summarized:

Ayers and Dohrn, who have been semi-officially rehabilitated in Chicago but still inspire a wide range of feelings, played a modest but real part in launching Obama’s political career.

This is not what Democrats wanted to or expected to see, the day before South Carolina’s special House election:

PPP’s final poll of the special election in South Carolina’s 1st Congressional District finds a race that’s too close to call, with Republican Mark Sanford leading Democrat Elizabeth Colbert Busch 47–46. The 1 point lead for Sanford represents a 10 point reversal from PPP’s poll of the race two weeks ago, when Colbert Busch led by 9 points at 50–41.

Sanford has gotten back into the race by nationalizing it and painting Colbert Busch as a liberal. A plurality of voters in the district — 47% — say they think Colbert Busch is a liberal compared to 43% who characterize her as ideologically ‘about right.’ Colbert Busch’s favorability rating has dropped a net 19 points compared to 2 weeks ago, from +25 then at 56/31 to +6 now at 50/44.

While Colbert Busch is seen as too liberal, 48% of voters think that Sanford’s views are “about right” on the issues compared to just 38% who see him as too conservative. Sanford’s also seen some repair to his image over the course of the campaign. Although he’s still unpopular, sporting a –11 net favorability rating at 43/54, that’s up a net 13 points from our first poll in March when he was at 34/58.

A ten-point shift!

Either the Sanford campaign is a bunch of messaging geniuses . . . or perhaps Colbert Busch’s lead was never that high. As our Betsy Woodruff notes, “Representative James Clyburn (D., S.C.) told reporters at the press conference today that internal polling data never gave Colbert Busch more than a 3-point lead.”

Do PPP polls often show the Democrat performing six points better than their internal polling?

The pollster further explains:

The other key development in this race over the last two weeks is that Republicans are returning to the electorate. On our last poll, conducted right after the trespassing charges against Sanford became public, we found that the likely electorate had voted for Mitt Romney by only 5 points in a district that he actually won by 18. That suggested many Republican voters were depressed and planning to stay home. On our final poll we find an electorate that’s Romney +13 — that’s still more Democratic than the turnout from last fall, but it’s a lot better for Sanford than it was a couple weeks ago.

Or perhaps the previous sample just wasn’t a realistic portrait of the likely turnout in this district, even in a special election, and even with these unusually high-profile candidates?

For what it is worth, last week a poll commissioned by Red Racing Horses showed the race tied. So Sanford may have the momentum, but it’s not over until the votes are counted tomorrow night.

So, other than Israel intervening in Syria — with no heads-up to the United States — and unnamed administration officials telling the New York Times that the “red line” policy was a giant accident, and the fact that the Benghazi hearings appear set to have the deputy chief of mission contradicting all kinds of administration statements about the attacks, and bad news for Democrats in South Carolina and Virginia . . . well, other than all that, President Obama had a good weekend.

From the first Morning Jolt of the week:

The New White House Line: Maybe We Don’t Care About Chemical-Weapons Use After All

Ladies and gentlemen, some unidentified White House official, within our government:

“How can we attack another country unless it’s in self-defense and with no Security Council resolution?” another official said, referring to United Nations authorization. “If he drops sarin on his own people, what’s that got to do with us?”

I realize that we’re all tired of war, that we’re tired of being asked to intervene in Arab countries, with their tribal loyalties and factionalism and blood feuds and cycles of revenge and seemingly endless reserves of cruelty and capacity for bloodshed. But if we don’t see any purpose or value in attempting to prevent, deter, or punish the use of chemical weapons against civilians, we might as well close up shop. Every two-bit dictator and ruthless regime is watching the international response to Syria or lack thereof, and we’ve already sent the signal that you can probably escape serious consequence if your use of chemical weapons is hard to prove and on a small scale.

Elliott Abrams:

How soon they forget. According to the Times that line was uttered last August, not quite four months after Mr. Obama established his “Atrocities Prevention Board.” In a speech on April 23, 2012 he said this at the Holocaust Museum:

And finally, “never again” is a challenge to nations. It’s a bitter truth — too often, the world has failed to prevent the killing of innocents on a massive scale. And we are haunted by the atrocities that we did not stop and the lives we did not save.

We may feel like the use of chemical weapons isn’t enough to justify airstrikes, a no-fly-zone, a “safe zone” for refugees, or any other steps beyond a sternly worded United Nations resolution, but other countries see their own interests in what happens in Syria, and they’re acting.  Also this weekend:

Israel launched airstrikes into Syria for the second time in three days, said Syria and its allies, targeting what it believes are stores of advanced missiles that could be transferred to the militant group Hezbollah, amid new concerns that the Syrian civil war could widen into broader regional conflict.

Surely a lot of factors go into the decision to use military force, but it’s tough to ignore that that the Israeli Defense Force suddenly got a lot more active in Syria just a couple of days after Obama said that crossing the red line meant . . . well, that we would “rethink the range of options that are available to us.”

The Benghazi Hearings: This Week’s Must-See TV

Jake Tapper offers a preview of what we can expect from this week’s hearings on Benghazi, and everyone crying “oh, this is a partisan witch hunt” can go sit in the corner.

Greg Hicks, former deputy chief of mission at the U.S. Embassy in Tripoli, Libya, told congressional investigators that the State Department internal review of the catastrophe at the mission in Benghazi “let people off the hook,” CNN has learned.

The Accountability Review Board “report itself doesn’t really ascribe blame to any individual at all. The public report anyway,” Hicks told investigators, according to transcript excerpts obtained by CNN. “It does let people off the hook.”

The board’s report on the Benghazi attack, in which Ambassador to Libya Chris Stevens and three other Americans were killed in September, is being reviewed by the State Department’s Office of Inspector General.

Rep. Darrell Issa, the chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, said Sunday on CBS that Hicks will testify Wednesday in a congressional hearing on the deadly attack in Benghazi.

“In our system, people who make decisions have been confirmed by the Senate to make decisions,” Hicks told investigators. “The three people in the State Department who are on administrative leave pending disciplinary action are below Senate confirmation level. Now, the DS (Diplomatic Security) assistant secretary resigned, and he is at Senate confirmation level. Yet the paper trail is pretty clear that decisions were being made above his level.

Whom might Hicks be referring to? He specifically mentions Under Secretary of State for Management Patrick Kennedy.

“Certainly the fact that Under Secretary Kennedy required a daily report of the personnel in country and who personally approved every official American who went to Tripoli or Benghazi, either on assignment or TDY (temporary duty), would suggest some responsibility about security levels within the country lies on his desk,” Hicks said.

In the interview, conducted on April 11, Hicks also makes clear that he immediately believed the September 11 attack on the U.S. mission in Benghazi had been conducted by terrorists, though the White House and other officials in the Obama administration initially suggested that the attack was the result of an out-of-control demonstration against an anti-Muslim YouTube video.

“I thought it was a terrorist attack from the get-go,” said Hicks, who was in Tripoli during the attack. “I think everybody in the mission thought it was a terrorist attack from the beginning.”

Looks like a rough week ahead, Mr. President.

Hey, remember how you heard that Republican senator Kelly Ayotte was running into hostile crowds at her town-hall meetings up in New Hampshire, allegedly as a result of her vote on the Toomey-Manchin background-check proposal? Well, take a look at this exchange from Thursday’s town-hall meeting:

Boy, that crowd was so hostile, they tried to hurt her eardrums by clapping and cheering loudly when an audience member called her “presidential.”

And now, perhaps the most intriguing section of today’s Morning Jolt:

Suddenly, Three Big Developments in the Investigation Into the Benghazi Attack

This news cycle has three new developments related to the Benghazi attack you must see and keep handy for the next time you hear a White House press secretary say it was “a long time ago” or a Secretary of State ask “what difference does it make?” whether it was a preplanned terrorist attack or a spontaneous demonstration.

DEVELOPMENT ONE, courtesy CNN’s Paul Cruickshank, Tim Lister, Nic Robertson, and Fran Townsend:

Several Yemeni men belonging to al Qaeda took part in the terrorist attack on the U.S. diplomatic compound in Benghazi last September, according to several sources who have spoken with CNN.

One senior U.S. law enforcement official told CNN that “three or four members of al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula,” or AQAP, took part in the attack.

Another source briefed on the Benghazi investigation said Western intelligence services suspect the men may have been sent by the group specifically to carry out the attack. But it’s not been ruled out that they were already in the city and participated as the opportunity arose.

So, unless these multiple sources are wrong, this can accurately be described as an al-Qaeda attack, either preplanned or a target of opportunity.

DEVELOPMENT TWO, from Adam Housley of Fox News:

On the night of the Benghazi terror attack, special operations put out multiple calls for all available military and other assets to be moved into position to help — but the State Department and White House never gave the military permission to cross into Libya, sources told Fox News. 

The disconnect was one example of what sources described as a communication breakdown that left those on the ground without outside help.

“When you are on the ground, you depend on each other — we’re gonna get through this situation. But when you look up and then nothing outside of the stratosphere is coming to help you or rescue you, that’s a bad feeling,” one source said.

Multiple sources spoke to Fox News about what they described as a lack of action in Benghazi on Sept. 11 last year, when four Americans, including Ambassador Chris Stevens, were killed.

“They had no plan. They had no contingency plan for if this happens, and that’s the problem this is going to face in the future,” one source said. “They’re dealing with more hostile regions, hostile countries. This attack’s going to happen again.”

Under normal circumstances, authorities in Benghazi would have fallen under the chief of mission, one source said — the person in charge of security in the country who in this case was Stevens. But once Stevens was cornered and members of his security detail pushed his distress button, that authority would have been transferred to his deputy. However, that deputy was out of the country.

That meant the authority then reverted directly to the U.S.. State Department, and oversight of the response to the attack that night fell to then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and Undersecretary of State Patrick Kennedy, who were calling the shots.

It would be very useful to know more about this source. Perhaps it’s someone with an agenda, or someone whose recollection of that night is inaccurate. But if it was someone within the special-operations community, someone with firsthand knowledge of what happened that night, well . . . then this is explosive; there was a call for help, and IF there were actions that could be taken, and the State Department decided against it. If it really did lead all the way back to Hillary Clinton, this would end her 2016 chances. “She left Americans to die horrible deaths” is pretty much the worst charge a presidential candidate could possibly face.

And while we don’t know it absolute certainty that what this source is saying is true . . . if it is true, it would explain a lot about the third big development:

DEVELOPMENT THREE, courtesy Fox News’ James Rosen:

The State Department’s Office of Inspector General is investigating the special internal panel that probed the Benghazi terror attack for the State Department, Fox News has confirmed.

The IG’s office is said by well-placed sources to be seeking to determine whether the Accountability Review Board, or ARB — led by former U.N. Ambassador Thomas Pickering and former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Adm. Mike Mullen — failed to interview key witnesses who had asked to provide their accounts of the Benghazi attacks to the panel.

The IG’s office notified the department of the “special review” on March 28, according to Doug Welty, the congressional and public affairs officer of the IG’s office.

This disclosure marks a significant turn in the ongoing Benghazi case, as it calls into question the reliability of the blue-ribbon panel that then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton convened to review the entire matter. Until the report was concluded, she and all other senior Obama administration officials regularly refused to answer questions about what happened in Benghazi.

Since the ARB report was issued in December — finding that “systemic failures and leadership and management deficiencies at senior levels” well below Clinton were to blame for the “inadequate” security at Benghazi — Clinton and other top officials have routinely referred questioners to the conclusions of the board report. Now the methodology and final product of the ARB are themselves coming under the scrutiny of the department’s own top auditor.

Let me offer two sections from the Morning Jolt newsletter to begin Friday morning. First . . .

Opposition Research, in Fun Graphic Style

The good folks at the America Rising PAC — Matt Rhoades, Mitt Romney’s campaign manager and the research director for George W. Bush’s 2004 campaign, and former RNC research director Joe Pounder and spokesman Tim Miller — launched a Tumblr site; declaring, “This will be our home until we launch the full website.”

Some notable launch material: 

1. Three Sleaziest Terry McAuliffe Political $ Moments (On Video)

#1 - 1988: “I Will Stop At Nothing To Try And Get A Check From You.”

#2 - 2001: “If The Worst Thing You Say About Me Is ‘Terry McAuliffe Has Done Business With People He’s Met Through Politics,’ So Be It. I Plead Guilty.”

#3 - 2007: “It’s A Lot Easier To Raise Money For A Governor. They Have All Kinds Of Business To Hand Out, Road Contracts, Construction Jobs.”

2. America Rising Prepping for Hillary Clinton 2016

3. McAuliffe Flip Flops on Abandoning Wife & Kids For Political Fundraisers

That last bit of video, featuring Terry McAuliffe on “Meet the Press” in 2001, is pretty funny in light of the story of McAuliffe stopping at a fundraiser on the way home from the hospital with his wife and newborn child:

So, UMass-Dartmouth, you have a campus where one student decided to place a bomb next to a child and blow up marathoners, and several of his friends, also students, learned of his actions, and then turned around and tried to help him by destroying evidence.

This is on a college campus, a place where “tolerance” is considered the supreme value. Yet somehow, Dzhokhar Tsarnaev never learned to tolerate the existence of American children watching a marathon. Somehow his friends managed to find blowing up Americans tolerable. However, they couldn’t quite tolerate a successful FBI investigation leading to the capture or arrest of Tsarnaev.

Just what were these students learning, seeing, and experiencing on that campus? What made Tsarnaev believe that blowing people up was okay? Why didn’t he encounter any person or group or place that would stir a sense of moral objection in him, if indeed it was his brother who first proposed the attack? Why didn’t he encounter anything that would make him think, “wait a minute, no, hating Americans and trying kill them is wrong”?

Why didn’t these other students react with horror at the thought that their friend could be a terrorist? Why didn’t they call the cops or FBI? Why was their first instinct to help their friend, instead of helping the authorities take a dangerous bomb-maker off the streets?

How did all of these young man fail to encounter one professor, one mentor, one role model, one person around them who would lead them to conclude that mass murder is wrong, and those who do it ought to be punished?

The culture on the campus of UMass-Dartmouth didn’t create the monster that Tsarnaev became, nor did it make his friends into moral pygmies. But that campus atmosphere sure failed to mitigate any of this, didn’t it?

For what it’s worth:

Less than a week before the contentious special election between Mark Sanford (R) and Elizabeth Colbert-Busch (D), a RRH/PMI automated survey of 650 likely voters in South Carolina’s 1st Congressional District finds the race as close as can be, with both candidates taking 46 percent of the vote and 7 percent undecided. The survey has a margin of error of +/- 5 percent. . . .

2012 presidential results in the survey were 54% Romney, 41% Obama. This result shows a turnout marginally more Democratic than the turnout in the 2012 presidential election, in which Romney won the seat 58-40. The relatively Democratic electorate suggests somewhat high enthusiasm among Democrats and liberals, and somewhat decreased enthusiasm among conservatives.

The electorate we found was 60% Female and 40% Male. The electorate was weighted to the following racial balance: 79% White, 15% African American, 2% Hispanic, 1% Asian, and 3% Other races.

Polling and forecasting turnout in a special election is particularly difficult; the usual low turnout of special elections is likely to be mitigated in this case with two candidates with higher-than-normal profiles, a former governor known for an infamous scandal and the sister of a television comedian. Normally, one could conclude that a currently undecided voter would be unlikely to vote on Tuesday, but this race seems to be anything but normal.

Having said that, it will be interesting if turnout Tuesday really splits 60–40 along gender lines.

The Democratic firm Public Policy Polling will survey the district again this weekend.

The Heritage Foundation offers a comparison that articulates why so many Republicans are so wary about the Gang of Eight immigration bill:

After Obamacare, I don’t think you’ll see the conservative grassroots feeling confident about any 800-page bill for a long time.

As noted on Twitter, most Democrats’ view on immigration reform begins and ends with, “yeah, yeah, yeah, enough with the boring stuff about respect for the rule of law, economic impact on unskilled workers, assimilation, or border security, tell me how soon my party can get 11 million new voters.”

Most folks on the Right don’t trust the motives of the congressional Democrats pushing it or trust the Obama administration to enforce the law; we see immigration laws currently on the books ignored and ineffectively enforced all the time (hello, Boston bomber friends); we’re not convinced of any significant political benefit; we believe that any aspect of the law that proves inconvenient for the Democratic party’s allies will face immediate pressure to be repealed or altered;  and we believe it rewards those who have broken the law. But other than that, it looks great.

Coming soon to an attack ad near you: Terry McAuliffe describes stopping on the way home from the hospital to attend a political fundraiser, leaving his wife, Dorothy, and their newborn child in the car. The event raised $1 million for the Democratic party.

“Nobody ever said life with me was going to be easy.” Now there is a winning slogan for a gubernatorial campaign.

Over on the homepage, I have an interview with Mark Sanford, getting his sense of the race in South Carolina’s first congressional district, and what’s at stake in the special election:

GERAGHTY: We’ll get the official spending numbers in the near future, but what’s your sense of how badly you’re being outspent? I’ve heard some people say anecdotally they’re seeing four or five ads for Colbert Busch for every one ad for you.

SANFORD: That’s correct; it’s been a four- or five-to-one ratio — which is not what you want in the world of politics.

People are scratching their heads and saying, “Wait a minute, if the Democratic party is willing to put this kind of money into this race, why do they want this seat so badly?” . . . What’s going on here is much larger than the first congressional district. This is the first congressional election since Obama was reelected president of the United States. He has said that he wants to take the Congress in 2014 to ensure his legacy. The reason they’re pouring so much money into this race is that they believe that if they can win here, they can argue to the political-investor community that they can win the other 15 seats that they need to take back the House. There is much more in play than actually meets the eye.

GERAGHTY: The supporters of your runoff-primary rival, Curtis Bostic, are a group of several thousand Republicans who have had the chance to vote for you twice in recent months and who have chosen someone else twice. These are voters who presumably would prefer a conservative candidate to a liberal candidate but who may have some disagreements with you. What’s your approach to winning over these voters?

SANFORD: I’d say my approach is to win them over one by one. I spend a lot of time going out and doing traditional retail politics. We just came out of Hubee D’s, a chicken-finger place west of Ashley. I talk to folks literally from all walks of life. I don’t think there’s any magic formula for reaching those folks, but we’re certainly beginning that process.

Keep in mind, though, Colbert Busch herself said at the debate that she was pro-choice. I don’t think that fits in in any way with those Bostic supporters’ beliefs, either on choice or on a whole range of other issues. Colbert Busch has been largely undefined: She was unwilling to debate for the entire month of the general election, and this is the first change in that. If you’re not certain where someone is, folks will sometimes give you the benefit of the doubt, but that life-focused community of Bostic supporters, I think, were probably paying attention to what she said in the debate. It will travel out anecdotally.

Today’s Morning Jolt looks at Penny Pritzker — I remember when it was standard to just give ambassadorships to your top donors — some embarrassing stories about Terry McAuliffe, and then this ominous news in the aftermath of the Boston Marathon bombing investigation:

What Was In the Water of That Dorm Room?

These Kazakh roommates aren’t quite as bad as the Boston bombers. But they’re bad:

Kadyrbayev, 19, texted Tsarnaev that evening around 8:40 to ask [why he resembled the bombers in the released FBI videos].

“Tsarnaev’s return texts contained ‘lol’ and other things KADYRBAYEV interpreted as jokes,” according to a federal criminal complaint released today, “such as ‘you better not text me’ and ‘come to my room and take whatever you want.’” That turned out to be a fateful series of texts.

According to the complaint, earlier that day, Kadyrbayev and their mutual friend Azamat Tazhayakov entered Tsarnaev’s dorm room at the University of Massachusetts-Dartmouth . . . between 6 p.m. and 7 p.m. They watched an unspecified movie with Tsarnaev’s roommate while Tazhayakov noticed that Dzhokhar’s backpack contained “fireworks.” Allegedly, Kadyrbayev put two and two together when he saw the empty fireworks containers — it’s unclear if that happened before he texted Tsarnaev — and figured their friend was the bomber. News reports on the room TV showing the fateful footage of Tsarnaev, followed by his texts, confirmed it.

Then they decided to help their bro.

According to the complaint, Kadyrbayev and Tazhayakov gathered up the backpack, [along with] Tsarnaev’s laptop — apparently to avoid making the roommate think they were stealing Tsarnaev’s stuff — and placed it into a trash bag. During that crucial evening, Tsarnaev allegedly texted his friends, “I’m about to leave if you need something in my room take it.” The next morning, Kadyrbayev allegedly placed the bag into a dumpster near Tsarnaev’s Carriage Place apartment.

I wouldn’t even keep my side of the room clean for my college roommate, but these guys were willing to dispose of evidence? How twisted do you have to be to suddenly realize that someone you know, a friend, is actually a terrorist who killed three people and injured and maimed hundreds more, and your first thought is how to help them get away with it?

What, does UMass-Dartmouth have some sort of special jihadist student exchange program? Do they cluster them together as roommates?

And yes, there is an immigration angle to this story:

A federal law enforcement official says one of the students from Kazakhstan arrested Wednesday in the Boston Marathon bombings was allowed to return to the United States this year despite not having a valid student visa. Authorities say that after the explosions he helped remove a laptop and backpack from the bombing suspect’s dormitory room before the FBI searched it.

Federal authorities on Wednesday arrested three college friends of Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, a bombing suspect, including Azamat Tazhayakov, a friend and classmate of Tsarnaev’s at the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth. Tazhayakov left the U.S. in December and returned Jan. 20. But in early January, his student-visa status was terminated because he was academically dismissed from the university, the official told the AP.

Hey, if he’s academically dismissed, just what is he doing in this country, if he’s no longer going to school? How’s he paying his expenses?

Very few people believe the promises of the Gang of Eight, because the government does such a lousy job of enforcing the laws on the books already.

Ryan Nobles of NBC’s Richmond, Va., affiliate is definitely a reporter to keep an eye on in this governor’s race. First he and his colleagues did a fantastic, fair, tough report on GreenTech Automotive and the plant that it built in Mississippi, and now he has a ten-minute on-camera interview with Terry McAuliffe about his car company.

The interview begins with some top-shelf “word salad” in response to a direct question:

Nobles: If you had to pin down one reason why the company ended up moving to Mississippi instead of starting a manufacturing plant in Virginia, what would you pin as the primary reason for that happening?

McAuliffe: Uh, listen, we tried to put it in Virginia, we had several meetings here. It is what it is. It didn’t work out here. Businesses have to make a decision based upon their own business plans, what they want to do. Every business is unique. We tried, we looked at it, but businesses have got to make decisions what they think their own best interest [sic].

Notice that nothing in that answer says why the company settled in Mississippi. McAuliffe goes on to say, “I never blamed Virginia at all” for the decision to base their operations in Mississippi, but back in December, McAuliffe said, “We wanted to, it was their decision, VEDP, they decided they didn’t want to bid on it.”

Back in December, addressing Virginia reporters, McAuliffe appears to say “we have a thousand employees.” (About 40 seconds into this video; perhaps he means he would like to have a thousand employees.) Earlier this month, Marianne McInerney, a GreenTech vice president, told the Washington Post “the company employs about 10 employees in McLean and 78 in Mississippi.”

You’ll also hear McAuliffe say, “I want a governor who has tried many different things in the field of business.” Funny how that sort of expectation didn’t seem to come into play in the presidency, considering McAuliffe’s strong support for Bill Clinton, Hillary Clinton, and Barack Obama, none of whom “tried many different things in the field of business.”

Finally, McAuliffe says he owns a car that is currently parked at GreenTech headquarters. Apparently he once claimed he drove it from his home in McLean to GreenTech’s headquarters in Tyson’s Corner. Presuming McAuliffe takes Route 123, his MyCar’s top speed is in fact the speed limit, 35 miles per hour.

New Jersey Democrats still have a month to find a warm body not named “Barbara Buono” to run against New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie this year. (Okay, Troy Webster, an aide to the mayor of East Orange, is running in the Democratic primary, too.)

Christie unveiled his debut television ad today. At this early point, this race is looking like a rout; besides the lopsided early polling results, Buono has raised $696,000 and qualified for additional $890,449 in state matching funds.

That $1.7 million or so looks good… until you see Christie has raised more than $5 million so far. (Updated numbers will be released in mid-May.) Because of the ad rates in the New York and Philadelphia television markets, New Jersey is a particularly expensive state for campaigns.

Spending isn’t everything, of course; Jon Corzine spent $31 million in 2009, while Christie spent only $17 million.

Perhaps Chris Christie’s greatest trick has been to persuade New Jersey Democrats that there’s no point in making a serious effort against him this cycle.

Yesterday’s Morning Jolt was discussed extensively on yesterday’s Rush Limbaugh program. As if you really needed one more reason to subscribe…

Every once in a while, I continue to get complaints that the Morning Jolt e-mail newsletter isn’t arriving to some subscribers. If you have checked your spam folders and are certain it is not arriving, direct your questions, complaints, and other problems to Representedlists@newsmax.com. You’ll need to tell them what email address you are currently using for your subscription so they can check the list and see what the issue is.

(For those of you wondering, Newsmax is now handling the e-mail distribution and some marketing matters for the Jolt and other NR newsletters; they have no role in the content of the e-mails.)

Over on the homepage, Bob Costa breaks the news that Ted Cruz is thinking about running for president in 2016. A few weeks back, Elaina Johnson shined a spotlight on the Cruz “birthers.“

Some Birthers sound like they’ve never really read the law that they’re allegedly citing.

The whole reason anyone would care about the location of Obama’s birth is because his parents’ citizenship status did not automatically qualify him for U.S. citizenship:

When one parent was a US citizen and the other a foreign national, the US citizen parent must have resided in the US for a total of 10 years prior to the birth of the child, with five of the years after the age of 14.  An exception for people serving in the military was created by considering time spent outside the US on military duty as time spent in the US.

Barack Obama Sr. was a Kenyan citizen. The president’s mother, Ann Dunham, was a U.S. citizen but not yet a citizen  for the purposes of determining U.S. citizenship of offspring born overseas.

For a child to become a U.S. citizen, one parent must have resided in the United States for five years after the age of 14. Dunham was 18 when she gave birth to the president. Had Barack Obama Jr. been born in Kenya, he would not be a citizen; because he was born in Hawaii, he automatically became a U.S. citizen. This is what the whole current “birthright citizenship” debate is about – under current law and the law in effect in 1961, if you’re born here, you’re a citizen, no questions asked.

(I know, I know, the Honolulu Advertiser birth notice was an elaborate cover, and the birth certificate is faked, and there’s a vast conspiracy out there…)

These rules were in effect for those born between December 23, 1952 and November 13, 1986 – covering both Barack Obama and Ted Cruz.

Cruz’s mother, Eleanor Darragh, was in her mid-thirties when she gave birth to the senator, so she had spent well more than five years residing in the United States.

The midweek edition of the Morning Jolt features grim statistics on attitudes in the Muslim world, thoughts on Marvel’s superhero film franchises, and then these notes from the president’s press conference:

‘Hello,’ the President Lied

Three quick points on Obama’s press conference from Tuesday…

First, Obama demonstrates that the term “Game Change” is now the most useless buzzword since “value-added”:

THE PRESIDENT:  If I can establish in a way that not only the United States but also the international community feel confident is the use of chemical weapons by the Assad regime, then that is a game-changer because what that portends is potentially even more devastating attacks on civilians, and it raises the strong possibility that those chemical weapons can fall into the wrong hands and get disseminated in ways that would threaten U.S. security or the security of our allies.

Q    By game-changer you mean U.S. military action?

THE PRESIDENT:  By game-changer I mean that we would have to rethink the range of options that are available to us.

Watch your rear, Assad, or we might have to rethink the range of options.

In Syria and all of the world’s trouble spots, the American people are going to resist intervening internationally until they’re confronted with something more horrible than the loss of blood and treasure spent in the war in Iraq. Right now, Americans aren’t convinced that anything can happen overseas that is so bad, so consequential and horrific, they’ll wish they had sent their sons and daughters and neighbors to go fight and die for something. For now, they’re right; they will probably be wrong someday.

Secondly, examine Obama’s reaction to Jessica Yellin’s question:

YELLIN: Lindsey Graham, who is a senior member of the Armed Services Committee, has said that Benghazi and Boston are both examples of the U.S. going backwards on national security.  Is he right?  And did our intelligence miss something?

THE PRESIDENT:  No, Mr. Graham is not right on this issue, although I’m sure generated some headlines.

I think that what we saw in Boston was state, local, federal officials, every agency rallying around a city that had been attacked — identifying the perpetrators just hours after the scene had been examined.  We now have one individual deceased, one in custody.  Charges have been brought.

I think that all our law enforcement officials performed in an exemplary fashion after the bombing had taken place.  And we should be very proud of their work, as obviously we’re proud of the people of Boston and all the first responders and the medical personnel that helped save lives.

Notice the sneer that Graham merely wants to “generate headlines” with his statement, as if it’s outlandish to argue that a terrorist murdering our ambassador or a terrorist bombing on the streets of Boston constitute “going backwards on national security.”

Then notice that Yellin asks about the intelligence before the bombing, and Obama responds by citing the work of law enforcement after the bombing.

Thirdly, Obama declared about his signature health care reform, “ A huge chunk of it has already been implemented.  And for the 85 to 90 percent of Americans who already have health insurance, they’re already experiencing most of the benefits of the Affordable Care Act even if they don’t know it.  Their insurance is more secure.”

Jonathan Weisman of the New York Times responded, “Obama’s claim that folks who have insurance now have already gone through the ACA implementation is just not right. Lots of issues left.”

The tax penalty for not having insurance isn’t in effect yet. Businesses may still decide to drop coverage and pay the fines  (for some companies, it may actually be cheaper to pay the fines). We’re seeing companies try to shift as many employees as possible to less than 30 hours a week.  As Inc. put it:

The law’s new mandates–such as requiring insurers to cover preventive care at 100 percent–could drive rates higher. And small employers that buy insurance through the newly created Small Business Health Options Programs, or SHOP exchanges, may find higher costs once they are lumped in with a general-population risk pool.

And as for that claim that your health insurance is “stronger,” perhaps the president meant, “more expensive”: “Premiums could increase by an average of 30 percent for higher-income people in California who are now insured and do not qualify for federal insurance subsidies, the study said.”

As if the Obamacare polling result below isn’t jaw-dropping enough, now there’s this indicator of how ill-informed the public is: “Although 63 percent said that they had a favorable opinion of Planned Parenthood, including 38 percent of those who identified themselves as pro-life, 55 percent of those polled did not know that Planned Parenthood performs abortions.”

I suppose we should be thankful that the public can still differentiate between Kermit Gosnell and Kermit the Frog.

Do we need to hold a seminar on “Basic Facts in Public Debates”? Maybe have everyone carry some 3×5 index cards saying, “Planned Parenthood is the pro-abortion group”?

It is entirely possible that we have a public so spectacularly ill-informed, we are no longer capable of governing themselves. Here’s an April tracking poll from the Kaiser Family Foundation: “Four in ten Americans (42%) are unaware that the Affordable Care Act (Obamacare) is still the law of the land, including 12 percent who believe the law has been repealed by Congress, 7 percent who believe it has been overturned by the Supreme Court and 23 percent who say they don’t know enough to say what the status of the law is.”

With the public so vague on whether or not Obamacare is actually law, we should take all poll results with a grain of salt. But the law is even less popular than when it passed:

“Overall, the public remains as divided as ever when it comes to their overall evaluations of the health law. This month, 35 percent report a favorable view, 40 percent an unfavorable view, and a full 24 percent report they have  no opinion on the law, continuing a recent trend of particularly high shares not offering an opinion. Partisans remain quite divided, with a majority of Democrats in favor (57 percent) and most Republicans opposed (67 percent).”

In terms oft he law’s political future, just over half of Americans (53 percent) continue to say that they approve of efforts by opponentsto change orstop the law “so it has less impact on taxpayers, employers, and health care providers”, a view which theoretically encompasses a range of positions from hard‐core repeal supporters to those who believe the law only needs minor tweaks.One in three (including more than half of Democrats) believe that the law’s opponents should accept that it is the law of the land and stop trying to block its implementation, down somewhat from January (33 percent now compared to 40 percent at the start of the year).”

How do we know the media is downplaying the problems in implementing Obamacare? When 40 percent of Americans are unaware that the law is in place.

Last night’s debate between Elizabeth Colbert Busch and Mark Sanford aired on C-SPAN. (The video is not embeddable but can be seen here.)

The lead of the Post and Courier’s coverage of the Mark Sanford-Elizabeth Colbert Busch debate includes a revealing word:

The race for Tim Scott’s former congressional seat finally turned to issues Monday, as Republican Mark Sanford and Democrat Elizabeth Colbert Busch met for the first — and probably only — time.

Naturally, this morning the Democrats’ House Majority PAC announces they’ll be running new ads hitting Sanford on the affair.

There are no economic problems. There is no debt. There is no tough decision to be made on how to deal with illegal immigrants, and there is no controversy about gun control. The implementation of Obamacare is going fine. There are no problems beyond our shores, in places like North Korea or Syria, that any voter should spend a moment thinking about. There is only the affair. The affair knows all, the affair sees all, the affair is the answer to all voters’ questions. When the voters in South Carolina’s First Congressional District go to the polls on May 7, they will not see two names on the ballot. They will see only, “Do you like the affair that occurred back in 2009?”

For what it’s worth, Red Racing Horses is conducting a poll in the district, and recently Tweeted, “VERY early unweighted results from the first half-day looking surprisingly good for @MarkSanford. Weighting will change the results dramatically. But back of the envelope calculations and the entire first day results suggest that.poll Thursday will probably show a close race between Mark Sanford and Colbert Busch.”

From today’s Morning Jolt…

Forget the Rest of the World; President Personally Calls Some Athlete You Never Heard Of Before

Hey, remember North Korea? They’re detaining a U.S. citizen.

Unless the Syrian rebels figured out some way to fake the presence of Sarin in the bloodstream of some volunteers, the Syrian regime used chemical weapons and crossed the red line… and no one can come up with a way to demonstrate the consequences of crossing that line.

Oh, and the guys we may soon intervene to help, the Syrian rebels, may have just tried to shoot down a Russian airliner.

Remember Boston?

But U.S. Rep. Dutch Ruppersberger (D-Md.) told ABC News yesterday that the FBI is also looking into “persons of interest” in the U.S. possibly linked to the Boston bombings.

U.S. Rep. Michael McCaul (R-Texas) said he’s spoken with the FBI about the probe into possible trainers the brothers had.

“Are they overseas in the Chechen region or are they in the United States?” he said. “In my conversations with the FBI, that’s the big question. They’ve casted a wide net both overseas and in the United States to find out where this person is. But I think the experts all agree that there is someone who did train these two individuals.”

Remember Boston, again?

State lawmakers have launched an investigation into whether the suspects in the Boston Marathon bombings improperly received public benefits.

Sources who have seen the 500 pages of documents sent to the House Committee on Post Audit and Oversight told News Center 5’s Janet Wu that the Tsarnaev family — including the parents of the two bombing suspects, the two suspects themselves, their sisters, the widow of the suspect killed and their child — received “every conceivable public benefit available out there.”

Remember the economy?

We’re still stuck in the muck.

That’s the conclusion to draw from the new report on gross domestic product. The U.S. economy grew at a 2.5 percent annual rate in the first three months of the year, which was an improvement from the weak 0.4 percent of the final months of 2012… We’re muddling along at basically the same pace we’ve been at for nearly four straight years of this dismal recovery, with growth too slow to make up the lost economic ground from the 2008-2009 recession.”

National debt? $ 16,756,644,393,707.05,as of Friday. (That’s $16.7 trillion.)

Remember Obamacare?

In total, it appears that there will be 30 million to 40 million people damaged in some fashion by the Affordable Care Act—more than one in 10 Americans. When that reality becomes clearer, the law is going to start losing its friends in the media, who are inclined to support the president and his initiatives. We’ll hear about innocent victims who saw their premiums skyrocket, who were barred from seeing their usual doctor, who had their hours cut or lost their insurance entirely—all thanks to the faceless bureaucracy administering a federal law.

With all of this going on, guess what the top story was on Memeorandum, measuring what bloggers and news sites are writing about?

An NBA player coming out of the closet as gay. Wait, there’s more:

A groundbreaking pronouncement from NBA veteran Jason Collins — “I’m gay” — reverberated Monday through Washington, generating accolades from lawmakers on Twitter and a supportive phone call from President Barack Obama.

Hours after Collins disclosed his sexuality in an online article, Obama reached out by phone, expressing his support and telling Collins he was impressed by his courage, the White House said.

Collins, 34, becomes the first active player in one of four major U.S. professional sports leagues to come out as gay. He has played for six teams in 12 seasons, including this past season with the Washington Wizards, and is now a free agent.

This president can’t get squat done about North Korea or Syria, and so he doesn’t want us to focus on those far-off lands. His policies have done diddlysquat for most of the long-term unemployed. He’s not interested in throwing people off public assistance, even when they don’t deserve it, and he wants to insist that every terror attack is a one-time occurrence, instead of connected bits of an international ideological movement dedicated to killing Americans. Obamacare’s a mess, and he’s hoping you don’t notice. The debt continues to increase, even with the alleged horrors of sequestration.

“God, gays and guns.” That’s what he’s got left. And that’s what he hopes stays on your mind, for as many days between now and November 2014 as possible.

Organizing for Action sends out another e-mail on the topic of gun control — even though the legislation is kaput for the foreseeable future.

An interesting line: “In politics, there are two kinds of people: Those who say they’re going to do something, and those who actually do it.” Kind of like a president who makes big promises about a gun-control bill, and then fails to persuade a quartet of his own party’s red-state Democrats, I suppose.

The letter promises a petition to Congress demanding action . . . a short time after the Senate considered action and rejected it. Most likely, the petition is a data-gathering tool, helping Organize for Action refine their list and figure out which members are most passionate on the gun-control issue.

You’ll notice the letter asks for money . . . suggesting that some of these passionate gun-control supporters are just looking for a place to send money in order to “send a message.”

J –

I wrote you last week after 45 senators sided with the gun lobby and voted against expanding background checks for gun sales.

I said we weren’t going to forget — and that we weren’t going to stop fighting until we get the job done.

I’m writing today to follow through on that.

Next week, we’ll deliver an OFA petition to Congress demanding that they take common-sense action to reduce gun violence.

But it’ll only be as powerful as the number of supporters behind it.

Please take a minute and add your name to this petition right now.

In politics, there are two kinds of people: Those who say they’re going to do something, and those who actually do it.

I have no doubt about which of those groups OFA supporters are in.

But if we want Congress to get serious about reducing gun violence, and if we don’t want to see the fire behind this issue slip away, we are the ones who have to keep it going.

We choose who represents us in Congress — and what the constituents want is something that no politician can afford to ignore.

That’s why your voice is such an important part of this fight. People like me can talk all we want, but your representatives want to hear from you.

This letter will go to Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, House Speaker John Boehner, and House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi on behalf of OFA next week.

Make sure your name is on it:

http://my.barackobama.com/Sign-the-Petition

Thanks,

Jon

Jon Carson
Executive Director
Organizing for Action
@JonCarsonOFA

—————-
A movement of millions elected President Obama. Let’s keep fighting for change. Chip in $5 or more to support Organizing for Actiontoday.

A quick roundup of some of the news around the country in races for the U.S. House of Representatives:

ILLINOIS: Representative Aaron Schock, a third-year Illinois Republican and one of the youngest members of Congress, announced he will not be running for governor in 2014 and will instead run for reelection.

The GOP field for governor in the Land of Lincoln may include state treasurer Dan Rutherford, state senator Kirk Dillard, and wealthy businessman and investor Bruce Rauner.

WEST VIRGINIA: When Representative Shelley Moore Capito (R., W.Va.) announced plans to run for U.S. Senate, she set the stage for tough primary fights in both parties for the opportunity to replace her in the U.S. House. On the Democratic side, former Democratic-party chairman Nick Casey, state senator Herb Snyder, and Delegate Doug Skaff Jr. are considering bids. The Republican names mentioned most frequently are house minority leader Tim Armstead, former state senator Steve Harrison, Delegate Patrick Lane, and Delegate Eric Nelson. Former delegate Larry Faircloth and former state senator Steve Harrison have made their interest clear.

MASSACHUSETTS: Bay State Democrats will choose a senatorial nominee on Tuesday, and odds are likely that a House seat will open up. Democrats will nominate either Representative Ed Markey or Representative Stephen Lynch. Gabriel E. Gomez, former U.S. Attorney Michael J. “Mike” Sullivan, and state representative Dan Winslow are running on the GOP side.

State senator Karen Spilka said on Thursday she is “seriously considering” running for Congress if Markey wins the Senate seat. Markey’s district is a particularly tough one for Republicans, scoring D+16 in the Cook Partisan Voting Index.

CALIFORNIA: The Golden State’s 31st congressional district is going to see one crowded Democratic primary. Lawyer Eloise Gomez Reyes announced Saturday that she will be running against the incumbent, Republican representative Gary Miller. The primary field includes former representative Joe Baca, Redlands mayor Pete Aguilar, and San Bernardino school-board member Danny Tillman. This is one of the few swing districts in California, scoring D+2 in the Cook Partisan Voting Index.

FLORIDA: Bill Posey, the Republican who represents Brevard County on Florida’s Space Coast, has a new challenger, Democrat Corry Westbrook. (You can tell this is a heavily Republican district because the word ‘Democrat’ does not appear on Westbrook’s web site.) She is a former legislative director for the National Wildlife Federation.

Top story in today’s Washington Post:

A government task force is preparing legislation that would pressure companies such as Face­book and Google to enable law enforcement officials to intercept online communications as they occur, according to current and former U.S. officials familiar with the effort. Driven by FBI concerns that it is unable to tap the Internet communications of terrorists and other criminals, the task force’s proposal would penalize companies that failed to heed wiretap orders — court authorizations for the government to intercept suspects’ communications.

According to the article, the FBI has the authority to pursue a contempt citation for a court order, but rarely chooses to do so.

Under the draft proposal, a court could levy a series of escalating fines, starting at tens of thousands of dollars, on firms that fail to comply with wiretap orders, according to persons who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss internal deliberations. A company that does not comply with an order within a certain period would face an automatic judicial inquiry, which could lead to fines. After 90 days, fines that remain unpaid would double daily.

This debate may well echo the recent gun debate — first, asking whether government officials are effectively using and enforcing the existing laws and mechanisms, or whether this new proposal is driven by the desire to “do something” in the aftermath of a horrific event. Second, if the government has failed to use its existing powers and authorities effectively, why should it be given new authorities?

Was this the same FBI that didn’t keep an eye on Big Brother Bomber despite “at least four contacts with Russian spy services about Mr. Tsarnaev in the year before he took a six-month trip to Russia in 2012”? If they’re not effectively using the data they already have access to, why should they have greater authority to collect even more data?

Doesn’t this sound like filibuster fodder for Rand Paul?