Citizens United, the group whose decision to make an anti-Hillary Clinton documentary triggered a landmark Supreme Court case on the First Amendment and political speech, is working on another film: “Fast Terry.”

McAuliffe will probably brag about it, as it’s just one more thing he has in common with Hillary Clinton.

UPDATE: The full “Fast Terry” movie can now be viewed in its entirety here.

From the midweek edition of the Morning Jolt:

Why Generic Denials Just Won’t Cut It for the Latest State Department Scandals

Let’s take a close look at what we know about that State Department Inspector General memo, shall we?

An internal State Department Inspector General’s memo, several recent investigations were influenced, manipulated, or simply called off. The memo obtained by CBS News cited eight specific examples. Among them: allegations that a State Department security official in Beirut “engaged in sexual assaults” on foreign nationals hired as embassy guards and the charge that members of former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s security detail “engaged prostitutes while on official trips in foreign countries” — a problem the report says was “endemic.”

After the Secret Service scandal in Cartagena, Colombia, government security officials’ having sex with prostitutes simply cannot be dismissed as unthinkable. And there are some who suspect, or fear, that this sort of thing is a lot more widespread and even quasi-accepted than we would ever believe. As a detailed Washingtonian article on the Secret Service scandal concluded, “To believe that the Cartagena affair was unique, you’d also have to believe that this group of 13 men — not all of whom knew one another — broke into separate groups and independently got the idea, for the first time ever, to go out looking for prostitutes.”

Now the really shocking scandal that IG memo referenced:

In one specific and striking cover-up, State Department agents told the Inspector General they were told to stop investigating the case of a U.S. Ambassador who held a sensitive diplomatic post and was suspected of patronizing prostitutes in a public park.

The State Department Inspector General’s memo refers to the 2011 investigation into an ambassador who “routinely ditched . . . his protective security detail” and inspectors suspect this was in order to “solicit sexual favors from prostitutes.”

Sources told CBS News that after the allegations surfaced, the ambassador was called to Washington, D.C. to meet with Undersecretary of State for Management Patrick Kennedy, but was permitted to return to his post.

Notice the plural, “agents.” So it’s not just one agent of the State Department’s Diplomatic Security Service suddenly going cuckoo for Cocoa Puffs and attempting to smear the name of an ambassador over a vendetta or something. While it’s possible you could get two agents to make up a bombshell allegation like this . . . it seems a little less likely, and they must have been plausible enough to get the IG’s office to take them seriously. Note that CBS News spoke to two diplomatic security agents who spoke, on camera, about higher-ups quashing their investigation: Aurelia Fedenisn and Mike Poehlitz.

Anyway, the ambassador named came out and denied the charges:

In a fast-developing story, U.S. ambassador to Belgium Howard Gutman has been named as the diplomat accused of soliciting “sexual favors from both prostitutes and minor children,” according to State Department documents obtained by NBC News. Gutman denied the allegations, in a statement to The Cable and other outlets.

“I am angered and saddened by the baseless allegations that have appeared in the press and to watch the four years I have proudly served in Belgium smeared is devastating,” he said. “At no point have I ever engaged in any improper activity.”

For someone accused of a horrific crime, it’s a Catch-22. Past experience makes us skeptical of weaselly, carefully worded, over specific denials; but blanket denials and an effort to dismiss the whole thing, without answering questions from a skeptics on the record, don’t provide much reassurance, either.

The score so far: two detailed accounts from two professional diplomatic security personnel, found credible by the Department’s Inspector General, against two generic sweeping denials.

If the allegation is true, there will be a lot of witnesses — particularly the ambassador’s security detail. Beyond that, we can verify or refute other parts of the story. Was Gutman called to Washington to meet with Kennedy? If so, what did they discuss?

Oh, and here’s the note you’ve been waiting for:

On Tuesday, Nicholas Merrill, a spokesman for Hillary Clinton, said Clinton was completely unaware of any of the investigations mentioned in the Office of the Inspector General’s reports and memos, including the case involving her personal security detail allegedly soliciting prostitutes.

“We learned of it from the media and don’t know anything beyond what’s been reported,” Merrill told CNN in a written statement.

Of course. Of course! Why would she know about investigations of crimes by State Department employees, right?

Here’s Hillary, unveiling a new report on human trafficking and sex trafficking, back in June 2012:

“This report gives a clear and honest assessment of where all of us stand,” Clinton said Tuesday. “It takes a hard look at every government in our world including our own . . . It is important that we hold ourselves to the same standard as everyone else.”

Thank goodness there’s a new sheriff in town at Foggy Bottom, running a much tighter ship.

Above: The new sheriff.

Do you have room for another scandal? Because this looks like a really big one:

The State Department responded to claims that internal investigators dropped a probe into alleged misconduct by department personnel, including an ambassador, who were accused of inappropriate activities including prostitution and pedophilia in a government memo.

The ambassador who came under investigation “routinely ditched his protective security detail in order to solicit sexual favors from both prostitutes and minor children,” according to documents obtained by NBC News.

The alleged misconduct took place during former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s tenure, according to the documents, which also say those activities may not have been properly looked into.

Top state department officials directed investigators to “cease the investigation” into the ambassador’s conduct, according to the memo.

NBC reports, “A state department spokesperson would not confirm the specific investigations, but told NBC News ‘the notion that we would not vigorously pursue criminal misconduct in a case, in any case, is preposterous.’”

Keep in mind that an ambassador would have diplomatic immunity from prosecution in the host country.

The ambassador that this government memo refers to is named by the New York Post in this article; as detailed here, the ambassador named in the article is an extremely generous donor to the Democratic party, President Obama, and Hillary Clinton.

Tim Miller of America Rising PAC examined Hillary Clinton’s 2008 campaign rhetoric and finds, “Secretary Clinton served as a senior member of a national security team that was implementing surveillance programs she once vocally opposed.”

He cites several examples, but perhaps the most glaring is from a 2005 fundraising e-mail that declared, “I am resolved to keep speaking out about my disagreements with this administration and their congressional allies: a budget that cuts back on health care . . . Cronyism and incompetence . . . weaken the social fabric of our nation. A secret program that spies on Americans!”

A secret program that spies on Americans! Yeah, that would be terrible, wouldn’t it, Madam Secretary?

Their graphic:

 

Busy Morning Jolt today, looking at the retirement announcement of Michele Bachmann, the frequency of the IRS commissioner’s visits to the White House, Helen Smith’s assertion that American men are going on strike, and then this examination of a key Hillary Clinton backer…

Meet the Wealthy Apparel Magnate Backing the Early Effort to Help Hillary

The America Rising opposition research shop introduces us to the first major Democrat celebrity-with-gobs-of-money to back a SuperPAC encouraging a 2016 Hillary Clinton presidential campaign:

Today, Pro-Hillary Clinton Super PAC announced it had signed on Democrat fundraiser Susie Tompkins Buell, co-founder of clothing line Esprit. In the 1990s, while Tompkins Buell held control of Espirit, the Bay Area sweatshops which were contracted to make garments for Espirit were raided by the federal government. The Department of Labor found that the sweatshops doctored payroll records, paid workers less than minimum wage, and refused to pay overtime.

When asked to cut ties with the manufacturer an Espirit company spokesman said it was more important for the “socially responsible” Espirit to stay in business than to pay its workers the government mandated minimum wage.

For further perspective, she withheld financial support from Barack Obama in 2012 because he hadn’t done enough on climate change to suit her tastes.

Espirit’s whole process of growing cotton and apparel manufacturing, that doesn’t generate any carbon emissions, right? 

She’s also credited with delaying the White House’s decision on the Keystone Pipeline:

In October, Buell made headlines after she led a protest of monied Democrats in San Francisco against the controversial 1,700-mile Keystone XL oil pipeline. Her fellow protesters outside an Obama fundraiser included Michael Kieschnick, co-founder of CREDO Mobile and Working Assets, which has donated $75 million to progressive causes; IT executive David desJardins; and Anna Hawken McKay, wife of Rob McKay, a wealthy philanthropist whose father founded Taco Bell.

The Democrats, who could have easily afforded the $5,000-a-plate Obama fundraiser, stood on the curb outside the W Hotel as Buell delivered a tough assessment of the president: “I don’t know where he stands on anything,” she said.

Kieschnick said Buell’s decision to take an aggressive stance was pivotal to the eventual outcome – a White House announcement last month that the application for the pipeline from the Canadian province of Alberta to Texas refineries would be rejected.

“Before her involvement, the powers that be clearly dismissed our concerns” about the long-term environmental impacts of the pipeline, said Kieschnick, who has known Buell for 20 years. People inside the White House “clearly noticed,” he said. “Then they realized this was not only bad policy, this was bad politics.”

Oh, and her corporate management style wasn’t all hearts-and-flowers:

But Esprit de Corp. also ultimately came to epitomize the worst side of another decade, the me decade, the 1980s and its junk-bond daddies and S&L pirates and slick-suited sharpies. After helping manage the company with her then-husband, Doug Tompkins, for 22 years, Susie Tompkins led a 1990 leveraged buyout that gained her control of the company, and netted her an estimated $150 million.

Esprit emerged from the buyout so deeply in debt — and Tompkins Buell’s subsequent helmsmanship left the company in such desperate financial straits — that it went into technical default on its outstanding loans within less than two years. Esprit then spent five years shriveling to a morsel of its former self before Tompkins Buell relinquished all ownership of and involvement in the company in December.

More background on Espirit and sweatshops:

[In 1993] the Department of Labor raided a San Francisco garment shop that works on contract for Esprit and owed its workers $127,000 in back wages. Although the minimum wage is barely livable at $4.25 an hour, the shop contract by Esprit paid only $3.75 with no overtime. Just six months earlier, in a bust of eight Bay Area garment contractors, three of those cited were working for Esprit.

Those three, according to D.O.L. documents, were doctoring payroll records and not paying overtime. After the shops paid the back wages, at least one seamstress complained to the state Labor Commission that the employer was asking for kickbacks.

Esprit’s affable spokesman Dan Imhoff says that garment workers should be paid a wage that “allows them a reasonable life style.” But asked specifically about what Esprit could do to insure this, he shifts the responsibility back to the contractor. “The bottom line is Esprit has to pay its own workers a fair wage. Do you think a socially responsible business would survive if it would pay twice as much to its contractor? How can a company stay in business? This is getting in a very tough nerve.

“Perhaps,” he continues. “Esprit isn’t the shining example that you want . . . [Esprit] can only change so many things at one time.”

I guess it’s easier to support raising the minimum wage when you treat it as optional.

On “Morning Joe” at the moment, the roundtable seems convinced that yesterday’s release of 100 pages of internal e-mails relating to the Benghazi talking points exonerates the White House and all of the senior-level officials. This suggests that most in the press have not looked at these e-mails all that closely.

There were at least four lines in the Benghazi e-mails that jumped out at me.

Page 4: NE (Near East Desk/Bureau/Division) will add material about warning we gave to Cairo prior to the demonstrations, as well as warnings we issued prior to 9/11 anniversary

We don’t know whether this reference to warnings was a particularly specific one, i.e., beware of anti-American groups trying to stir up trouble outside our embassy in Cairo, or whether it was generic, i.e., beware of groups trying to stir up trouble on September 11 in the Middle East. But I believe this is the first time we’ve heard that the CIA gave warnings to Cairo — either to the Egyptian government or to our diplomatic security in that city — about a potential threat or danger to our diplomatic staff there. This information does not help the “no one could have seen this coming” excuse, particularly when coupled with the requests for additional security from staff in Libya.

Page 61: Fyi FBI says AQ (not AQIM) was involved and they are pursuing that theory.

“AQ” is a reference to al-Qaeda; “AQIM” refers to “al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb,” the Algerian/North African franchise. This means that by Friday evening, the FBI’s focus was on al-Qaeda, the main international portion, not the groups aiming to overthrow the Algerian government.

If the FBI investigation was focusing al-Qaeda as early as Friday, that doesn’t help explain Ambassador Susan Rice’s emphasis of the protests of the YouTube video on Sunday.

Also on Page 61: “The State Department had major reservations with much or most of the document. We revised with their concerns in mind.”

The first version of the talking points mentioned, “Since April, there have been at least five other attacks against foreign interests in Benghazi by unidentified assailants, including the June attack against the British Ambassador’s convoy. We cannot rule out that individuals had previously surveilled the US facilities, also contributing to the effacy of the attacks” — which would undoubtedly raise questions about what precautions the State Department was making in the weeks and months preceding the attack. The references to the earlier attacks against foreign interests were one of the details edited out.

The evidence that the talking points turned into uninformative, inaccurate mush because of the State Department’s involvement does not help Hillary Clinton.

CIA Office of Congressional Affairs, 9/15: “No mention of the cable to Cairo, either? Frankly, I’d just as soon not use this, then.”

My understanding is that this comment refers to or echoes the assessment of then–CIA director David Petraeus. This comment indicates that at least one party in this complicated process understood that they were losing sight of what they were supposed to be doing — informing Congress and the public of what happened — and generating meaningless, detail-free pabulum.

UPDATE: Ed Morrissey notices that almost everyone who is reporting on this has failed to mention to the reference to the FBI.

I’m seeing some Republicans e-mail this Buzzfeed article by Rosie Gray, headlined “Benghazi Investigation Creeps Closer to Hillary Clinton.”

As I said on “Daily Rundown,” it is a mistake for the media — and Republicans — to examine the events in Benghazi, the decisions before, during, and after it, and the investigation into all of this, through the lens of the 2016 presidential race.

A full uncovering of the facts may be enormously damaging to any presidential aspirations of Hillary Clinton, or it may not be. (We may strongly suspect it will be, but we don’t know that, and it would be foolish to let that concern drive the investigation.) A thorough account of everyone’s actions that night may leave Clinton looking awful, or the facts may reveal she did the best she could in difficult circumstances. The point is that we don’t really know right now, and the issue should not be dropped until the public feels like they know how and why those key decisions were reached.

The Pickering-Mullen investigation, requested by the U.S. State Department, had so many strange omissions and failed to interview so many key witnesses and figures that even the State Department’s inspector general is reviewing it.

Today Andrew Malcolm asserts that “the big Benghazi mystery” was “where was Obama while four Americans perished?” The answer has always been pretty clear: at the White House. He was informed at the beginning of the evening by Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta and General Martin Dempsey, and then informed of the aftermath the following morning. As far as he and his administration were concerned, his staff was on it.

SEN. KELLY AYOTTE (R-NH): But just to be clear, that night [the president] didn’t ask you what assets we had available and how quickly they could respond and how quickly we could help those people there-

PANETTA: No. I think the biggest problem that night, Senator, is that nobody knew really what was going on there.

AYOTTE: And there was no follow up during the night, at least from the White House directly?

PANETTA: No. No, there wasn’t.

DEMPSEY: I would, if I could just, to correct one thing. I wouldn’t say there was no follow-up from the White House. There was no follow-up, to my knowledge, with the president. But his staff was engaged with the national military command center pretty constantly through the period, which is the way it would normally work.

AYOTTE: But no direct communication from him?

DEMPSEY: Not on my part, no.

It’s not clear that the president’s staying awake and getting constant updates would have changed the outcome. The president’s involvement matters if A) there was some sort of operation that only he could authorize, and that he failed to, or B) he ordered forces to stand down, an allegation not yet proven.

Hicks testified yesterday that “Lieutenant Colonel Gibson,” a Special Operations Command Africa commander in Tripoli, wanted to board a C-130 that was going to fly to Benghazi. According to Hicks, Gibson commanded a four-person Special Forces team, a quartet that was once part of a 14-person team assigned to establish security for U.S. diplomats after the 2011 Libyan revolution.

Gibson told Hicks that he had been ordered he was not to proceed to board the airplane.

I realize that Representative Ann Wagner stated that only the president could give a “stand down” order for a rescue operation. But right now, the only witness we have for this “stand down” order is Hicks, and at this point we don’t even know Gibson’s first name.

For now, one of yesterday’s most stunning revelations was the news that at no point did the U.S. ask the Libyans for permission to fly into their airspace for a rescue operation, presumably one of the first steps in putting together an operation like that. In other words, at no point during the seven hours did the ball get rolling on an effort to rescue them. With all of the U.S. military personnel, aircraft, and NATO air bases in Italy, Greece, and Turkey, nothing got moving. Baffling to the point of madness. If their had been an operation in the works that arrived too late, the public reaction would be completely different — the fury out there isn’t because these four Americans weren’t rescued in time; it’s because at this point, there’s no evidence anyone in our entire apparatus tried.

Let the facts of this investigation lead us to the conclusion, not the other way around.

UPDATE: Today’s “Daily Rundown” appearance:

Visit NBCNews.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

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:

The U.S. State Department spent $85,000 on a “Global Townterview” with Hillary Clinton — that’s the actual term used by the department — at the Newseum in Washington, D.C., on January 29. The event occurred one week before Secretary Clinton departed her position.

It lasted one hour and ten minutes and can be seen here.

Your pre-sequestration tax dollars at work.

I hope you’ll forgive the grim tone that launches the Thursday edition of the Morning Jolt . . .

Benghazi Hearings Mark End of Accountability, Forever

At the end of a day of Senate and House hearings on Benghazi, we know . . . not much more than we knew the day before.

Four Americans dead.

Nobody brought to justice. The lone suspect in the attack was released earlier this month by the Tunisians, citing a lack of evidence.

The release dramatized the negligible progress in any investigation into the attack, which killed Ambassador J. Christopher Stevens and three other Americans on Sept. 11 last year. The feebleness of Libya’s transitional government since the fall of Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi has stymied any progress, despite what Benghazi residents describe as an abundance of leads.

In fact, the perpetrators are up to new attacks:

Several Egyptian members of the squad of militants that lay bloody siege to an Algerian gas complex last week also took part in the deadly attack on the United States Mission in Libya in September, a senior Algerian official said Tuesday.

The Egyptians involved in both attacks were killed by Algerian forces during the four-day ordeal that ended in the deaths of at least 38 hostages and 29 kidnappers, the official said. But three of the militants were captured alive, and one of them described the Egyptians’ role in both assaults under interrogation by the Algerian security services, the official said.

If confirmed, the link between two of the most brazen assaults in recent memory would reinforce the transborder character of the jihadist groups now striking across the Sahara. American officials have long warned that the region’s volatile mix of porous borders, turbulent states, weapons and ranks of fighters with similar ideologies creates a dangerous landscape in which extremists are trying to collaborate across vast distances.

No one at the State Department fired for failing to heed the requests for additional security on the ground. And nobody can specify what the heck “administrative leave” entails:

Spokeswoman Victoria Nuland said Clinton “pledged not only to accept all 29 of the recommendations, but to have the implementation of those recommendations well under way before her successor took over. So I think she’ll want to give a status on that.”

Asked for the number of State Department employees fired for their handling of Benghazi, Nuland said four people were put on administrative leave. They included Eric Boswell, who resigned from the position of assistant secretary of diplomatic security.

But Nuland declined to say if Boswell and the others still are working for the department in some capacity.

And no elected Democrat in Congress gives a hoot.

Oh, they say they care, but every time their turn came in the Clinton hearings, they shifted the topic to House Republican proposals to limit the budget, as if we hadn’t just had this issue resolved, by State Department officials in October:

REP. DANA ROHRABACHER (R-CA): “It has been suggested the budget cuts are responsible for lack of security in Benghazi, and I’d like to ask Ms. Lamb, you made this decision personally, was there any budget consideration and lack of budget that led you not to increase the number of people in the security force there?”

STATE DEPARTMENT DEPUTY ASSISTANT SECRETARY FOR INTERNATIONAL PROGRAMS CHARLENE LAMB: “No, sir.” (U.S. House Of Representatives, Oversight and Government Reform Committee, Hearing, 10/10/12)

What we did learn is that Hillary Clinton thinks it is silly or unreasonable to ask why the administration kept talking about a video for five days, when everyone and their brother could have figured that the date of September 11 was pretty a key indicator that al-Qaeda-sympathizers or like-minded Islamists were out to mark the anniversary in their own murderous way.

“The fact is we had four dead Americans. Was it because of a protest? Or was it because of guys out for a walk one night who decided they’d go kill some Americans? What difference, at this point, does it make?” Clinton told Sen. Ron Johnson, R-Wis. “It is our job to figure out what happened and do everything we can to prevent it from ever happening again, senator.”

What’s astounding are the number of folks on the Left who think this is a fantastic answer.

For starters, if your assessment of why an attack happened is wrong, doesn’t that make it less likely you’ll be able to prevent another one?

I’ll leave it to the Washington Post’s Erik Wemple to state the obvious:

No matter your view of the media’s role in Benghazi; no matter your take on whether U.S. Ambassador to the U.N. Susan Rice leveled with the country on the Sept. 16 talk shows; no matter your view of Fox News’s Benghazi campaign, it surely does make a difference whether it was “because of a protest or was it because of guys out for a walk one night who decided they’d go kill some Americans.” It makes a difference to the media, the public, the government, everyone.

The trustworthiness of the administration’s version of events — even the early one — makes a difference. Whether it was hard-core terrorism or a spontaneous attack or something else — that makes a difference too, with strong implications for intelligence accountability. Goodness gracious, in her very own statement, Clinton herself even seems to acknowledge that it makes a difference, when she says, “It is our job to figure out what happened . . .”

Pardon me a comparison that may seem frivolous or silly, but I was reminded of a quite furious response from screenwriter Terry Rossio after he saw the 2006 movie Superman Returns. To say Rossio hated the movie was an understatement; on his web site, he laid out all the different ways in which the movie simply didn’t “work” given the characters and concepts the creators chose to begin with, and made it clear that as a professional, as someone who believes in aiming for the best in his craft, it deeply offended him that the movie could be made the way it did, with such disregard for quality and respect for the audience, and that the movie’s success illustrated something profound to him:

Okay, here’s the part about the profound effect it had on me. First off, I just felt really, really good that I worked on Pirates and had nothing to do with that movie. I know crap-plus-one is a mistake, but on an emotional level, I just felt genuine relief and contentment to bear no responsibility for that film.

But here was the epiphany. From Superman Returns on, I realized that there are truly no standards any more.

The film got better reviews than Pirates, it got made, it’s going to make $190 million dollars.

There are actually people in the world who enjoyed it.

The next time I get notes on a screenplay (‘’I think this main relationship doesn’t work,’ ‘this ending isn’t clear, etc.’) I can just point to Superman and say, “You may be right but so what? It’s better than Superman Returns.” It’s the ultimate, “Keep your notes to yourself and just tell me if you’re making the film” movie.

Why would anyone, anywhere, even bother to attend a creative meeting on any project — after seeing that film?

Ultimately, stuff goes up on screen because somebody wanted it up there, not for any other reason. So it might as well be me who decides — right?

When we look at how our government has responded to the night of September 11 in Benghazi, Libya, we see there are truly no standards any more.

If the decision making before, during, and after the Benghazi attack is insufficient to get anyone fired, what decision in government will ever warrant that consequence? If Democrats on Capitol Hill can’t take off their partisan blinders for one day to attempt to hold people accountable for decision-making that resulted in American deaths at the hands of extremists, and then lying to the public about it, then when will they ever? If Hillary Clinton can exclaim that it doesn’t matter that the administration spent five days talking about a video when the video had nothing to do with it, and everyone on her side applauds, why should she or anyone else ever respond to an accusation with anything but audacious defiance?

This is it, folks. This is the government we have, and the lack of a public outcry about Benghazi ensures this is the government we will have for the foreseeable future.

Sen. Marco Rubio, a member of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence and Senate Foreign Relations Committee, just released the following statement in response to the State Department’s report on Benghazi:

“The independent report on the September 11 attacks on our mission facility and annex in Benghazi confirms what we have long known to be true: that Ambassador Stevens and the other Americans who lost their lives in the attacks could have been saved by better protection, a swifter military response and more attentive leadership from Washington. In the months leading up to the attacks, credible reports were brought to the attention of the State Department alleging insufficient security in the area. These reports also contained warnings of rapidly growing radical militias that threatened anti-American attacks. Despite all of the information available to them, the State Department failed to construct an adequate safety plan, declined to provide sufficient security personnel and failed to consider closing the mission given the growing threat.

“This is evidence of a flawed process to access and provide security for our diplomats. Such oversight failure and neglect is unacceptable. The report made strong recommendations regarding personnel who should be held accountable, and I am pleased that some individuals in positions of responsibility have resigned today. However, such resignations are a small step toward addressing this issue, which can only be fully resolved by an open and transparent internal review of the State Department’s relevant policies, operations and procedures. The men and women who represent our nation have the right to expect that our government is taking every possible measure to ensure their safety, and it is now clear that a leadership failure at the State Department led to grossly inadequate protection of our diplomats in Benghazi. I join my colleagues in wishing Secretary Clinton a speedy recovery. However, as she is ultimately responsible for the department and U.S. posts around the world, her testimony before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee is indispensable to any effort to address this failure and put in place a process to ensure this never happens again.”

Note Sen. Marco Rubio’s pitch-perfect tone in this statement: he never suggests that Hillary Clinton’s sudden sickness/head injury are faked excuses to avoid testifying, but makes clear that she will need to answer questions under oath in the near future.

For what it’s worth, The New Yorker’s David Remnick attended the Saban Forum in Washington and came away with a clear conclusion about Hillary Clinton’s future:

Friday night, however, was on the record—and surprisingly revealing. Hillary Clinton was the main speaker. In a packed ballroom of the Willard Hotel, she was greeted with a standing ovation and then a short, adoring film, a video Festschrift testifying to her years as First Lady, senator, and, above all, secretary of state. The film, an expensive-looking production, went to the trouble of collecting interviews with Israeli politicians—Benjamin Netanyahu, Ehud Barak, Tzipi Livni—and American colleagues, like John Kerry. Tony Blair, striking the moony futuristic note that was general in the hall, said, “I just have an instinct that the best is yet to come.” . . .

When the videos were over (and as the evening moved on), there was much chatter about what Clinton would do after she steps down from the Cabinet next month—get a haircut; take a few weeks sleeping off jet lag at Canyon Ranch; read the polls and the political landscape; do good works; do good works for the good people of, say, Iowa—and so on. Everyone had a theory of which they were one hundred percent certain. There wasn’t much doubt about the ultimate direction. 2007-8 was but a memory and 2016 was within sight. She’s running.

Of course, this is just Remnick’s reading of the mood of Hillary Clinton and her strongest supporters gathered in that room.

Two quick, basic notes to add to Marc Ambinder’s examination of whether Hillary Clinton will run for president in 2016: She is 65 years old now and will be 69 on Election Day 2016. If elected, she would become the country’s second-oldest president after Ronald Reagan.

Secondly, while there have been no public reports of any health issues, she does look a bit run down in recent public appearances — undoubtedly, the globetrotting role of secretary of state takes its toll, as this late October Reuters photo suggests:

Perhaps her coming retirement from Foggy Bottom will give her time to rest, recharge, and come back to the world of politics with renewed energy. But as we have seen, running for president is a physical, mental, and emotional marathon like few others, and one she may not feel quite the same burning desire to pursue.

Hillary Clinton, discussing the attack on the U.S. consulate in Benghazi, to CNN Monday in Lima, Peru: “I take responsibility. I’m in charge of the State Department’s 60,000-plus people all over the world, 275 posts.”

There’s a strange habit in politics of public figures declaring that they’re “taking responsibility” for something going wrong . . . but then not following up with any particular action, contrition, or consequence.

Back at the beginning of this administration, February 3, 2009:

Tom Daschle, the former Democratic leader in the U.S. Senate, withdrew earlier Tuesday as news that he failed to pay some taxes in the past continued to stir opposition on Capitol Hill.

“I think I screwed up,” Obama said in an interview with CNN’s Anderson Cooper. “And, I take responsibility for it and we’re going to make sure we fix it so it doesn’t happen again.”

Of course, earlier this year we learned that 36 Obama aides owe $833,000 in back taxes.

Obama said he “took responsibility” for the millions in bonuses paid to AIG executives as part of the bailout. Of course, the bonuses stayed in there.

Discussing the debt and the state of the economy at a fundraiser for state senator Creigh Deeds in Virginia on August 6, 2009, Obama said, “I don’t mind being responsible. I expect to be held responsible for these issues, because I’m the president.” Of course, we’ve added $4.4 trillion in new debt since he said those words.

After Obamacare passed, the president did admit that he didn’t keep his promises on how the legislation would be handled.

He was pressed by freshman Rep. Jason Chaffetz of Utah to explain why Obama had not followed through on his pledge that negotiations over the healthcare bill would be broadcast on television. Obama argued that most of the debate had in fact been aired, except for some of the talks close to the Senate vote. “That was a messy process,” Obama said. “I take responsibility.”

But it was too late to change anything at that point, obviously.

On May 28, 2010, President Obama discussed the BP oil spill and declared, “I ultimately take responsibility for solving this crisis. I am the president and the buck stops with me.” The well was not capped until July 15, and it was not officially sealed until September 19, 2010.

President Obama said he “took responsibility” for the 2010 midterm results . . . but there was little or no sign that he changed his governing approach, philosophy, or policies in response to the lopsided results in favor of the Republicans that year.

Finally, it is easy to overlook that the president admitted that he misjudged the severity of the economic difficulties facing the country when he came into office.

In response to a question from a Twitter follower from New Hampshire, Mr. Obama said another mistake he made was not explaining to Americans how long the economic recovery would take, because he failed to grasp the severity of the recession quickly when he took office.

“Even I did not realize the magnitude, because most economists didn’t realize the magnitude of the recession until fairly far into it,” Mr. Obama said. “I think people may not have been prepared for how long this was going to take, and why we were going to have to make some very difficult decisions and choices. I take responsibility for that.”

He takes responsibility . . . and asks the country to trust that judgment for another four years.

The Tuesday edition of the Morning Jolt includes a debate preview, look at both the USA Today swing-state poll and new intriguing results in Pennsylvania from Quinnipiac, and then the busy night for news on Libya . . .

U.S. Military Strikes in Libya Coming Soon?

You’re going to hear a lot about “wag the dog” scenarios in light of this news…

The White House has put special operations strike forces on standby and moved drones into the skies above Africa, ready to strike militant targets from Libya to Mali — if investigators can find the al-Qaida-linked group responsible for the death of the U.S. ambassador and three other Americans in Libya.

But officials say the administration, with weeks until the presidential election, is weighing whether the short-term payoff of exacting retribution on al-Qaida is worth the risk that such strikes could elevate the group’s profile in the region, alienate governments the U.S. needs to fight it in the future and do little to slow the growing terror threat in North Africa.

Details on the administration’s position and on its search for a possible target were provided by three current and one former administration official, as well as an analyst who was approached by the White House for help. All four spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the high-level debates publicly.

But if we have an opportunity to capture or kill the folks who had a hand on the attack on our consulate and the murder of our ambassador and three other Americans — and presuming the Libyan government is unable, unwilling, or untrustworthy enough to take action against the perpetrators — shouldn’t our government be doing this?

(By the way, with three current and one former administration official, as well as an analyst talking to the Associated Press on this . . . I guess it’s not much of a sneak attack now, huh?)

As for the “untrustworthy enough” angle on the Libyan government . . .

U.S. State Department officials suspected that two Libyan guards hired by its own security contractor were behind an April incident in which a homemade bomb was hurled over the wall of the special mission in Benghazi, according to official e-mails obtained by Reuters.

But the men, who had been taken into custody the day of the attack, were released after questioning by Libyan officials because of a lack of “hard evidence” that could be used to prosecute them, the State Department emails show.

As for the “unable” angle . . .

The Pentagon and State Department are rushing to help the Libyan government create a new commando force to combat Islamic extremists like the ones who killed the American ambassador in Libya last month and to help counter the country’s fractious militias, according to internal government documents.

The Obama administration quietly won Congress’s approval last month to shift about $8 million from Pentagon operations and counterterrorism aid budgeted for Pakistan to begin building an elite Libyan force over the next year that could ultimately number about 500 troops. American Special Operations forces could conduct much of the training, as they have with counterterrorism forces in Pakistan and Yemen, American officials said.

The effort to establish the new unit was already under way before the assault that killed Ambassador J. Christopher Stevens and three other Americans at the United States Mission in Benghazi, Libya. But the plan has taken on new urgency since then as the new civilian government in Tripoli tries to assert control over the country’s militant factions. According to an internal State Department memo sent to Congress on Sept. 4, the plan’s goal is to enhance “Libya’s ability to combat and defend against threats from Al Qaeda and its affiliates.” A companion Pentagon document envisions that the Libyan commando force will “counter and defeat terrorist and violent extremist organizations.” Right now, Libya has no such capability, American officials said.

But is this going to be a real operation that disrupts al-Qaeda’s ability to pull off an attack like the one on September 11, or just a symbolic one to alleviate the sense that our ambassador’s murder is going unavenged? Some in Congress have their doubts:

Longtime Michigan Congressman Pete Hoekstra — the former chairman of the powerful House Intelligence Committee — tells Newsmax TV that the Obama administration probably lacks “the kind of intelligence that will enable us to attack” those responsible for killing Ambassador Chris Stevens and three other members of the U.S. diplomatic mission in Libya. What he fears is an empty gesture with some staged attacks on loose targets designed to give the appearance the administration is on the case.

“You’re only acting decisively if you have the clearly identified target and you take the target out,” warned Hoekstra in an exclusive interview on Monday. “I’m concerned that what we may see with this administration is they may fire a few missiles from some drones at some suspected target and will either kill the wrong people or we won’t kill anybody at all.”

Needless to say, we live in a cynical age.

Jim Pethokoukis: Strikes “on whom, the guy who made the video?”

James Poulos: “Eeny meeny miney drone.”

John Podhoretz: “Is there an aspirin factory near Benghazi?”

Heck, we haven’t bombed Libya in, like, a year.

Meanwhile . . .

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton accepted blame for the security lapses before the attacks on the U.S. Consulate in Benghazi that killed four Americans, including U.S. Ambassador Chris Stevens.

“I take responsibility,” Clinton told CNN Monday in Lima, Peru. “I’m in charge of the State Department’s 60,000-plus people all over the world, 275 posts.”

She added, “The president and the vice president wouldn’t be knowledgeable about specific decisions that are made by security professionals.”

Clinton also said that the U.S. has been aware that militants were regrouping in Libya and that there would be an effort to reestablish bases.

Is this Hillary Clinton falling on her sword to help the president to get the Benghazi debacle out of the headlines? Or is responsibility jujitsu, where she looks presidential by declaring the buck stops with her, and he looks cowardly for using her as a scapegoat?

Last night, Senators John McCain (R., Ariz.), Lindsey Graham (R., S.C.) and Kelly Ayotte (R., N.H.) released a statement on Clinton’s comments:

We have just learned that Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has claimed full responsibility for any failure to secure our people and our Consulate in Benghazi prior to the attack of September 11, 2012. This is a laudable gesture, especially when the White House is trying to avoid any responsibility whatsoever.

However, we must remember that the events of September 11 were preceded by an escalating pattern of attacks this year in Benghazi, including a bomb that was thrown into our Consulate in April, another explosive device that was detonated outside of our Consulate in June, and an assassination attempt on the British Ambassador. If the President was truly not aware of this rising threat level in Benghazi, then we have lost confidence in his national security team, whose responsibility it is to keep the President informed. But if the President was aware of these earlier attacks in Benghazi prior to the events of September 11, 2012, then he bears full responsibility for any security failures that occurred. The security of Americans serving our nation everywhere in the world is ultimately the job of the Commander-in-Chief. The buck stops there.

Furthermore, there is the separate issue of the insistence by members of the Administration, including the President himself, that the attack in Benghazi was the result of a spontaneous demonstration triggered by a hateful video, long after it had become clear that the real cause was a terrorist attack. The President also bears responsibility for this portrayal of the attack, and we continue to believe that the American people deserve to know why the Administration acted as it did.

A senior State Department official, briefing reporters about Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s meeting with Egyptian President Morsi: “It began with the Secretary thanking the President for the security that was provided to our Embassy. We all understand that in the first hours, as the Egyptians themselves have said, it may have been a little slow, but indeed quite quickly Egypt provided to our Embassy and has continued to provide to our Embassy quite professional and quite effective security.”

Ah, those diplomatic euphemisms. This is what “a little slow” looks like:

Yes, we offer you effusive gratitude, President Morsi, for eventually meeting your basic obligations under the Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations.

President Obama and his team would never seize upon the news of a deadly attack in the Muslim world to attack a political opponent, right?

Eh, let’s look back to December 2007, when Benazir Bhutto’s assassination became a big topic in the Democratic presidential primary, just days before the Iowa caucus: “Three hours after news of Bhutto’s slaying broke, Obama delivered a withering rebuke of Clinton’s experience, depicting her lengthy political resume as a hindrance to solving big problems, including crises abroad.”

Then there was the comment from David Axelrod:

Axelrod, a senior Obama strategist, was more direct, linking the Pakistani crisis to the different positions that Clinton and Obama took on the Iraq war in 2002, when Clinton voted to authorize it in the U.S. Senate, and Obama, then an Illinois state senator, spoke out against it.

“Obama opposed the war in Iraq explicitly because he feared it would divert our attention from al-Qaeda, Pakistan, the whole region,” Axelrod said. “It underscores the fact that you have to have a president who understands the world, who is going to analyze these events, and who will chart the right course, counter to the conventional thinking.”

Surely Obama would rebuke his longtime aide, arguing that the killing of an anti-Taliban Pakistan leader by extremists shouldn’t be used as a political cudgel, and that hours after such an atrocity is an inappropriate time to make such heated political charges, right? Of course not.

OBAMA: : He was asked — he was asked very specifically about the argument that the Clinton folks were making that somehow this was going to change the dynamic of politics in Iowa. First of all, that shouldn’t have been the question. The question should be, how is this going to impact the safety and security of the United States, not how is it going to affect a political campaign in Iowa. His response was simply to say that if we are going to talk politics, then the question has to be, who has exercised the kind of judgment that would be more likely to lead to better outcomes in the Middle East and better outcomes in Pakistan. His argument was simply that Iraq has fanned anti-American sentiment and it took our eye off the ball, to the extent that there are those who are claiming now that their experience somehow makes them superior to deal with these issues. I think it’s important for the Americans people to look at the judgments they made in the past. And the experienced hands in Washington have not made particularly good judgments when it comes to dealing with these problems. That’s part of the reason we’re in this circumstance.

Obama was actually right then, and the griping about Romney now is wrong. If you believe that different parties and different leaders will give you different policies, and that different policies will give you different results, then these sorts of things have to be discussed.

If a presidential candidate thinks that embassy statements “condemn[ing] the continuing efforts by misguided individuals to hurt the religious feelings of Muslims” suggest weakness, or that the United States believes that we believe that outraged protesters have legitimate reasons for their rage, or imply that the U.S. government has some sort of legal or censoring authority in these matters, he should say so. If he thinks that a too-optimistic view of the “Arab Spring” has left the administration to underestimate anti-American attitudes and threats to Americans overseas, he should say so. If he thinks that roughly $1 billion per year in foreign aid, and a proposed additional $1 billion in debt forgiveness for Egypt are bad ideas, he should say so.

Who knows, maybe President Obama will discuss these issues at tonight’s fundraiser at a private residence in Washington, D.C., the one that is closed to the press.

Or maybe he’ll discuss his thoughts on the news that “Muslim Brotherhood secretary general Mahmoud Hussein called for protests ‘in front of the mosques of the whole country … to show the whole Egyptian people’s anger.’”

Over at ABC News, they write that Secretary of State Hillary Clinton will not be speaking at this year’s convention because “federal statute and the State Department’s ethical guidelines prohibit Clinton from participating in political activities such as a party convention. Other cabinet secretaries, such as Defense Secretary Robert Gates, Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner and Attorney General Eric Holder, will also not be in Charlotte for the same reasons that will keep Clinton away.”

But several members of Obama’s cabinet are scheduled to speak in Charlotte: Secretary of Education Arne Duncan, Small Business Administration administrator Karen Mills, Secretary of the Interior Ken Salazar, Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack, and Secretary of Health and Human Services Kathleen Sebelius.

The U.S. State Department may have guidelines that prevent Clinton from speaking, but the Hatch Act permits it — as long as the cabinet member doesn’t use his current title. Thus, the above five cabinet members are referred to as “the honorable” on the official program. The rules:

When engaging in political activity (i.e., activity directed at the success or failure of a political party, candidate for partisan political office, or partisan political group), such as speaking at a political campaign event, may a Cabinet secretary use the title “Secretary?”Answer: No. Hatch Act regulation states that an employee may not use his or her official title while participating in political activity. 5 C.F.R. § 734.302(b)(1). Accordingly, a Cabinet secretary may not use the official title “Secretary” when engaging in political activity, such as speaking at a political campaign event. However, a Cabinet secretary may use a general form of address, such as “The Honorable,” when engaging in political activity, as such address does not identify his or her position. 5 C.F.R. § 734.302, Example 1.

The fun question will be if anyone forgets and introduces the cabinet figures by referring to them as “Secretary.”

Early candidate for the Romney campaign’s most useful surrogate: Hillary Clinton.

I eagerly await the Priorities USA response ad that concludes, “Hillary Clinton . . . you just can’t trust her.”