Those Phonhy Scandals

            President Obama is back on the campaign trail where he feels most comfortable reading from teleprompters while surrounded by hand-picked sycophants.  He sounded very much like his old self in Chattanooga, Jacksonville, and Knox College last month.  He offered a grand bargain to Republicans while berating them for their obstructionism and for pushing their phony scandals.

            When asked what phony scandals the president was talking about, his spokesman Jay Carney specified Benghazi and the IRS.  I found that very interesting, because those are the two scandals that are slowly but surely finding their way to the Oval Office.  The others, like the James Rosen persecution and the NSA spying, are easily blamed on somebody else.
            Thanks to the persistence of Congress and CNN, the Benghazi scandal isn't going away.  Three recent developments were especially significant.  In a closed door session, Colonel George Bristol, commander of the Joint Special Operations Task Force - Trans Sahara, testified before the House Armed Services Committee on the reasons why Special Forces did not come to the aid of Americans under siege in Benghazi.  Concurrently, David Ubben, one of those diplomatic security agents who waited for 20 hours on the roof of the diplomatic compound for aid that never came, is also talking after being told to keep his mouth shut.  Meanwhile,  we learn that CNN correspondent Arwan Damon managed to interview Ahmed Abu Khattala, leader of Anwar al Sharia, one of the terrorist groups that attacked and killed four Americans.  Khattala told CNN that he had yet to be interviewed by anyone from the FBI or the Libyan government, although he has been openly walking the streets of Benghazi.  All this shines a fresh light on the Administration's SOP of deny, stonewall, obstruct, and lie.
            On the IRS front we now know that IRS officer Lois Lerner colluded with the Federal Election Commission to influence the last presidential elections by divulging tax information on Conservative groups to the FEC.  This is very much in keeping with Lerner's reputation for aggressive investigations of Conservatives and Republicans while she headed the FEC's enforcement division from 1986 to 2001.  Of course, we also know from White House logs that IRS chief counsel and Democratic political appointee William Wilkins met with President Obama on 4/23/12.  The very next day IRS Commissioner Doug Shulman met with the president.  And on 4/25/12 Wilkins offered some "guidance" to Lois Lerner for approving or denying tea-party tax-exempt applications. 
            Maybe this doesn't prove that Obama used the IRS to steal the 2012 presidential elections.  But it sure does stink to high heaven. 
            But then again, it was just another one of those phony scandals.