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While others in the media are finally acknowledging that the Benghazi "scandal" which Fox has been pushing for months on end is nothing but a witch hunt and that ABC's big "scoop" on White House emails just left egg on their face and was nothing but lies being fed to them by Republicans, what are they doing over at Fox?

You guessed it... still scandal-mongering over Benghazi. And of course there was no acknowledgement by anyone on the panel of Fox News Watch this Saturday that the Republicans were caught feeding lies to ABC News. In Fox-land, the talking points by Susan Rice are still supposedly a scandal. They're carping that the White House doesn't treat the press nicely enough to suit them and that they don't know how to handle their messaging properly -- because we all know if they were better at messaging and nicer to the press, Fox would then give them a fair shake, right? They haven't managed to make this fake scandal of theirs stick, but they're still grasping at straws to be outraged about.

I thought that maybe they would just move on, since they've got themselves a couple of new drummed up "scandals" to chase after as well, but apparently they're not ready to let this witch hunt go any time soon.

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I'm not sure what else Rep. Adam Smith expected to hear from host Chris Wallace on Fox News Sunday this weekend, since his network has been in full fake Benghazi outrage mode ever since the attacks in Libya, and taking the insanity to new heights ever since ABC helped legitimize the witch hunt last week -- but I was glad to see Wallace get some push back for continually parroting the GOP's talking points.

Wallace's response to some of Smith's criticisms was to say "I'm not a potted plant." That's always the case when he has a Democrat on the air. Every once in a while he decides to stop acting like one when a Republican is on.

Congressman Tears Into Fox News Host For Obsessing Over Benghazi Talking Points:

Rep. Adam Smith (D-WA) tore into Fox News’ Chris Wallace and House Intelligence Committee Chairman Mike Rogers (R-MI) for obsessing over the talking points U.N. Ambassador Susan Rice used when talking to the media in the days following the attack in Benghazi, Libya rather than focusing on identifying the perpetrators of the killings. “I think the desire of the Republicans to create a scandal here has really undermined any ability to have a credible look at what actually happened,” Smith said during an appearance on Fox News Sunday alongside Rogers.

While acknowledging that the administration’s initial assessment of Bengazi did not reflect what officials later learned about the incident, Smith criticized Fox for suggesting that that Rice’s remarks on five Sunday news shows presented a definitive picture of the events of Sep. 11, 2012.

“[The administration] didn’t reach conclusions the way you just presented that was that by the Sunday afterwards that the administration said here is what happened, here is our conclusion,” Smith explained. “But the president never said, no terrorism, no Al Qaeda. There was a dispute about how soon to lead to specific conclusions that now is being made into Watergate and Iran-Contra.” Read on...

As they went onto explain, President Obama and Hillary Clinton did describe the attacks as terrorism. For anyone having trouble keeping track of the latest round of lies, Media Matters has updates here: The Truth About The Right's Latest Benghazi Attacks .

As Smith rightfully noted during his interview, it would be a lot more productive if they focused on what actually happened and finding those that perpetrated the attacks, rather than debating how a memo was put together. Instead, now it's not just Fox, but all of our corporate media has decided to turn this into the next big "scandal." It's disgusting to watch to put it mildly.

Transcript via Fox below the fold.

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This "access" whinefest by the media, which has been going on for the better part of the week, isn't legitimate and isn't about their ability to practice journalism.

I'm sorry, but I don't buy it. Howard Kurtz and his panel this Sunday, which included David Zurawik, Julie Mason and Bill Plante come across as still being pissed off that none of them had a chance to snap a picture of President Obama playing golf with Tiger Woods.

As Kevin Drum said, it would be easier to sympathize with these national reporters if they really did ask tough, unpredictable questions of the President, but they don't. And Drum's observations on the Politico article and their complaints about the White House using social media and going around the press, can be applied to the conversation here as well:

At the same time, the reporters interviewed for this piece seem to be weirdly upset over the fact that the Obama White House uses Twitter and Facebook and releases lots of its own photos. Why is this a problem? It's 2013, guys. Why shouldn't a president communicate with the public using whatever mediums the public happens to consume? Over the past century, that's evolved from whistle-stop tours to radio to TV to Facebook, but so what? Why should reporters be unhappy about this?

Given the sorry state of our corporate media these days, I don't think they're going to get much sympathy from most of the public.

Transcript below the fold.

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CNN host Erin Burnett on Wednesday suggested that the National Rifle Association (NRA) had not crossed the line by targeting President Barack Obama's daughters in an advertisement.

The NRA advertisement released on Tuesday branded the president an "elitist hypocrite" for opposing armed guards in schools while his own daughters were being protected by the Secret Service. White House Press Secretary Jay Carney slammed the ad as "repugnant and cowardly" because "a president's children should not be used as pawns in a political fight."

Speaking to Burnett on Wednesday, CNN contributor Roland Martin agreed that the NRA was "weak and cowardly."

"There's no need to invoke the president's daughter's in this conversation," Martin insisted. "I can guarantee you that had anybody invoked the daughters of President George W. Bush in a similar ad attacking him, folks on the right would be just as upset. It makes no sense."

"But what about the fact that politicians use their kids when they want to politically all the time?" Burnett wondered.

The CNN host then displayed a photo of Bill and Hillary Clinton holding hands with their daughter Chelsea, followed by a second photo of Barack Obama with his arms around daughters Malia and Sasha.

Burnett explained: "Remember the famous picture of Chelsea Clinton, after the Monica Lewinski affair, walking between her parents? Or -- hold on, let me just finish -- this time before the DNC, when the White House released the picture of the president with his two daughters snuggling on the couch -- there it is -- watching Michelle Obama."

"You know, they use their children for political purposes when they want to," she opined.

"First of all, walking with Chelsea to the helicopter, they were going on vacation," Martin replied. "And so what are they supposed to do? Take her to another helicopter or through the back door or somewhere?"

"It was the hand holding!" Burnett interrupted.

"Okay, so what? If there was a photo and there was no hand holding then it's okay?" Martin shot back. "I mean, seriously, that is not the same as putting an ad out where you mentioning the president's daughters. It makes no sense. And, again, if you're the NRA, you don't have to actually do that, you don't have to go that far. If you want to do that, why don't you go to Chicago and say, 'How many armed guards are in Chicago schools where the president is from?' That's legitimate."

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Bill O'Reilly's been on a hell of a tear this week attacking the Occupy Wall Street movement. On this Monday's show, he was calling them "terrorists" because a protester was giving him a hard time while watching a show on Broadway. Our friends over at News Hounds have more on that and O'Reilly's double standard when it comes to what sort of protesters he likes.

And never mind the hypocrisy of someone like Bill O'Reilly having the nerve to call protesters "terrorists" when he's done his best to inspire a few actual terrorists of his own as Dave Neiwert wrote about here: Bill O'Reilly has Dr. George Tiller's blood on his well-stained hands.

This Tuesday, he followed up as promised and here's how Fox's blog, Fox Nation promoted the piece tonight: The O'Reilly Factor: The Architects of The Occupy Movement:

Bill O’Reilly Asks: Who is Backing the Occupy Protesters and Why Won’t President Obama Repudiate the Movement?

Thousands of protesters and members of the Occupy movement hit the streets of Chicago during the NATO summit. 90 people were arrested and dozens were injured including a police officer who was stabbed. Tonight on The O’Reilly Factor, host Bill O’Reilly looked further into who is really behind the movement, which he notes is now very well organized. He called it a “hardcore, far-left movement designed to cause as much trouble as possible.”

He found that the movement is being run out of Washington, D.C. in offices belonging to the Institute for Policy Studies. The director of the Institute is John Cavanagh, a longtime liberal activist and his nonprofit accepts money from George Soros through the Tides Foundation. O’Reilly also reported that the Service Employees International Union headed by Mary Kay Henry is paying rent for the OWS crew in D.C. at about $4,000 month.

O’Reilly stated, “It is long past time for President Obama to condemn the anarchistic element of the occupiers, which is now dominant. Instead, the president falls back on protecting freedom of speech platitudes. Sure, tell that to the Chicago cop who got stabbed, Mr. President.”

The Institute for Policy Studies' John Cavanagh responded to O'Reilly's attacks on their organization and Occupy Wall Street later that same evening here: The Nonsense Zone:

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Ann Coulter wasn't the only one at last month's Media Research Center's "Dishonor Awards" making extremely bad jokes and insulting remarks. Red State blogger and now one of CNN's "best political team on television" was there to lob some insults at the "lamestream liberal" media as well. I wonder if his new employer had any issues with this? Since he's still on the air helping them do their best to become Fox-lite, it doesn't appear they did.

After awarding Newsweek's Evan Thomas the "Obamagasm Award" for an appearance of his on Hardball where he said "I mean, in a way Obama's standing above the country, above the world, he's sort of god" host Neal Boortz brought on Erickson to accept it.

While I think that Evan Thomas' remarks about President Obama and his speech in Cairo were silly and that it's ridiculous to compare any politician to "god" for any reason (and all he did is feed the right wing with another reason to repeat their ridiculous "messiah" insults of Obama), I don't think that justifies the type of childish, hyperbolic remarks made by Erick Erickson here about Thomas, White House Press Secretary Jay Carney and the crew over at Media Matters.

ERICKSON: I want you people to know I called Evan Thomas and I asked Even Thomas what he wanted me to say and he said first of all thank god the award came out before Fineman made that statement last week about Obama Biblically proving himself to be an effective commander in chief. Then he said to thank the academy because that's what you do in times like this, whether there is one or not and also that it was really funny that he would be given an award called the Obamagasm Award because truth be told that he's gone through wet wipes like the parent Of quadruplets in the past two years. About the only person who uses them more is Jay Carney watching The West Wing and imagining what a real White House Press Secretary looks like.

In all seriousness Evan Thomas wanted me to convey his sincere thanks to David Brock and his crack team Media Researchers. He said they spent hours each day eating box after box of Twinkies, drinking Red Bulls, finding clips on people like Evan Thomas who are able to combat radical Republicans and racists teabaggers and their racist political allies like Nikki Haley, Bobby Jindal, Tim Scott and Herman Cain, but for the fine efforts of Media Matters he would not be able to do his job.

And I had to stop him say Evan it's not Media Matters, it's the Media Research Center. Uh, he said Brent Bozell can go to hell and thank you very much.

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White House press secretary Jay Carney announced Friday that the US was planning to take "unilateral and multilateral" sanctions against Libya to encourage them not to use violence against their own people.

Carney said specifics about the sanctions would be disclosed in the near future.

Tripoli, the Libyan capitol, was under siege Friday as forces controled by leader Muammar Gaddafi reportedly killed and kidnapped protesters.