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As Esquire's Charlie Pierce relayed to Stephanie Miller this Tuesday morning, between Benghazi, Benghazi!, BENGHAZI!, the IRS and now the Associated Press phone records, get ready for a really long summer of scandal mongering from Republicans the the beltway Villagers.

We're going to be in for one hearing after another and as Pierce wrote in his column, none of this is going away any time soon: Washington's Political Circus Is Not An Accident:

Want to know why the Benghazi, Benghazi!, BENGHAZI! mummery isn't going away, and why the marginally more serious accusations concerning the IRS aren't going away, either? Read what Howard Fineman, a very reasonable fellow, writes today about the singularly futile press conference the president held. [...]

We are now entering the we're-all-just-feathers-in-the-wind period of scandal coverage in Washington. The courtier press has decided that Washington "has turned into" a political circus, as if the process were a passing thunderstorm or an implacable seismic event. [...]

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Sen. Marco Rubio sent out a letter this Monday, calling for the IRS commissioner to resign in the wake of the latest dust up over the agency's admission that there were some conservative groups targeted by the branch in Cincinnati. The problem with his request -- the IRS commissioner when these scandals occurred was a Bush appointee who no longer heads the department:

Commissioner Douglas H. Shulman, who was appointed by President Bush in 2008 and held by President Obama, left the agency in Nov. 9, 2012. Any pre-election misconduct would have had to occur on his watch. The current acting commissioner is Steven T. Miller -- a permanent replacement has not been nominated.

When TPM originally posted their report on this, they had not heard back from Rubio's office. As they noted in their update, here's their response:

In response to TPM's query, Rubio's spokesman Alex Conant noted that Miller was deputy commissioner when the targeting took place. He did not suggest the IRS acted inappropriately under Miller's watch as acting commissioner.

"He was Deputy IRS Commissioner when all this occurred," Conant said in an email.

So after someone pointed out to them that it was a Bushie that was in charge when these supposed abuses took place, now he wants the acting-director fired, even though the practice was not continued under their watch. Chris Jansing couldn't be bothered to point that out in the clip above, where she basically just read Rubio's letter with no context.

Some saner coverage of the topic aired a little later on the network, with both Joy Reid and Katrina vanden Heuvel doing a fine job of trying to put this story into its proper perspective and with Reid making sure the audience knew just who Rubio was initially calling to have fired -- someone who no longer works for the agency. Vanden Heuvel made some very good points about the fact that all of these groups ought to be getting a lot more scrutiny after the flood of them that came in after the Citizens United ruling.

In the meantime, all this is going to be is an excuse for more Obama derangement syndrome out of Republicans -- which is in full force already -- and more partisan witch hunts in the form of more hearings from Darrell Issa.

Video and Rubio's letter below the fold.

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Rep. Marsha Blackburn (R-TN) on Monday said that she would be willing force a "thoughtful" shutdown of parts of the United States government if President Barack Obama did not agree to deep spending cuts.

"What we want to make certain is that this president, this administration, this bureaucracy realizes that kicking the can must stop," she told MSNBC's Chris Jansing. "It is spending cuts and it is imperative that we reduce the size of the federal government, that we get in on a mega-diet, that we end this out-of-control spending."

"There is the option of government shutdown," the Tennessee Republican continued. "There is an option of raising the debt ceiling in short-term increments... There's also the plan of three dollars in cuts for every one dollar of debt limit increase. So, the healthy thing is this, we are having a good discussion on it."

Jansing pointed to a study by the Bipartisan Policy Center which found that the government could continue to fund interest on the debt, Social Security, Medicare, food stamps during a shutdown -- but it would mean that almost every other federal program would grind to a halt.

"[B]ut doing all that will mean defaulting on everything — really, everything — else," The Washington Post's Ezra Klein wrote last week. "The FBI will shut down. The people responsible for tracking down loose nukes will lose their jobs. The prisons won’t operate. The biomedical researchers won’t be funded. The court system will close its doors. The tax refunds won’t go out. The Federal Aviation Administration will go offline. The parks will close. Food safety inspections will cease."

"I think that there is a way to avoid default," Blackburn insisted. "If it requires shutting down certain portions of the government, let's look at that. Let's put these option on the table, be very thoughtful, but get this spending pattern broken. We cannot afford a $4 billion a day deficit and trillion dollar plus deficits every single year."

"So, it requires thoughtfulness and it requires that we are going to have a plan to work through this. I think that's where we as Republicans are headed."

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Rather than admitting that Republican's policies just aren't that attractive to most women, and that maybe they should take a look at those policies if they ever intend to change that dynamic, Rep. Marsha Blackburn twisted herself in knots and came up with some pretty ridiculous excuses for the lack of women in GOP leadership roles.

After being asked about the backlash to House Speaker John Boehner putting 19 white men in charge of their committees before finally appointing Rep. Candice Miller to lead the House Administration Committee, Blackburn did her best to try to put a positive spin on the situation.

JANSING: Well, there is a perception out there that there's not an opportunity for them to move ahead. When I talk to women who try to recruit other women to fun for Congress, to run for higher positions, one of their concerns is that they won't really have a significant place at the table.

BLACKBURN: Well, I think that that's always a concern. But you know, one of the things that I have found is that, number one, you don’t have to be entitled in order to lead, and that is something that we see happening. Women jump in and take the leadership role and they get in there and it’s kind of the lead from behind and move to the front. They take the responsibility. They perform beyond expectations and by doing that they have the ability to change the debate.

My goodness, look at what has happened in the tea party movement. Every time I go to a tea party rally, I'm amazed. The crowd is primarily female. The organizers are female, and I think that that bodes well for participation, grass roots participation and policy making participation.

When asked about the fact that women organizers or participants at the grass roots doesn't change the fact that their numbers in leadership positions on the Congress are still sorely lacking when compared to their Democratic counterparts, Blackburn responded by saying that Democrats have more women in their ranks and who have served for longer lengths of time. She also came up with this doozy.

BLACKBURN: They have women that have had more of a career in the political process. Those of us who are conservatives, we kind of have a circuitous route in our lives. Politics is not something that is a lifelong job for us. We have careers in the private sector. Look at the women that are in the House. You know we've been marketers and nurses and we've been teachers and we're education specialists. And we bring all of that expertise to bear in the public sector.

Yeah, they have careers, unlike those Democratic women who are all just lifelong politicians. And what is it with Blackburn suddenly loving the idea of "leading from behind?" I thought that was what that Socialist, Marxist, Kenyan usurper, evil, Democratic President did.

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Apparently President Obama is now capable of time travel, since wingnut Rep. Marsha Blackburn accused him of harming American Motors, while defending Willard's big lie he keeps telling about Jeep moving all of its production to China.

Congresswoman Accuses Obama Of ‘Harming’ Auto Company That Went Defunct In 1988:

A Republican congresswoman accused the Obama administration of promulgating regulations that are undermining job creation at an auto manufacturer that has been defunct since 1988. She was responding to a question on Monday about Mitt Romney’s dishonest claims regarding Jeep moving its production overseas.

During an appearance on MSNBC, Rep. Marsha Blackburn (R-TN) dodged a question about Romney’s debunked Jeep claims and instead attacked the Obama administration for issuing regulations that are harming workers at American Motors Corporation, a company once headed by George Romney. AMC was sold to Chrysler during the Ronald Reagan administration and its brands were then discontinued:

CHIRS JENSING (HOST): Let me ask you about some of the things going on on the campaign trail, and there’s a controversy about Mitt Romney telling voters that jeep is going to move production to China. According to the company that’s entirely false. Is he lying about that?

BLACKBURN: Oh, well, I don’t know. I haven’t talked with with the campaign staff about that. I will say this. For workers in the auto industry, across the board, whether it is GM, whether it’s Nissan, whether it’s American Motors, individuals are very concerned about the impact of regulation that the EPA and OSHA and other federal agencies are heaping on our manufacturers.

It seems Romney and his surrogates don't care how low they have to go or whose intelligence they have to insult if they think it will help them win this election. Let's hope this headline from Business Insider is correct on the consequences for that -- Mitt Romney Has Been Telling A Huge Whopper About The Auto Industry, And His Campaign Is Finally Paying For It.

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After dismissing the poll numbers which are not moving in their favor and the uphill battle they're facing with the number of swing states the Romney campaign is going to need to win, Romney surrogate Bay Buchanan made this excuse for Mitt Romney not taking all of his charitable contributions as deductions after having said earlier that paying more taxes than he owed would disqualify him to be president.

BUCHANAN: No, that's simple. He's always paid exactly what's been required by law. Whatever his accountants said needed to be paid, he's written a check, no questions asked. And what happened this year is in January, he estimated, there was an estimate accountants gave him of what he would be paying. And when they finally did the tax return they said, Gov. Romney, I'm sorry but, you're not paying that high. And he said, well I told the people I was going to be paying that much, so that's what I'm going to pay.

And so it was just to make certain that it wasn't a misleading statement that he made in January. You know, this is what's interesting, is last night, Barack Obama said on television, he actually said that the last ten days of the turmoil in the Middle East was a bump in the road. Chris, four Americans were killed. Four Americans in a terrorist attack on our consulate. Flags... American flags are being burned... and, and, and what... this is a bump in the road. It's time to start talking about Barack Obama and how he's completely clueless on foreign policy and the economy.

Yeah, that's going to make people feel better. I had them fudge the numbers because I'm running for office for Pete's sake. I can't have them think I was lying. And then of course let's change the subject to the latest faux outrage of the day based on a lie that appears to have started with neocon Romney fan-girl Jennifer Rubin. They just keep looking more and more desperate, latching onto every single little sound byte they can find and blowing things out of proportion and out of context. They're just flailing around aimlessly, throwing mud against every wall praying something sticks.

And the Romney campaign really needs to get themselves some better spokespeople to come on television. Buchanan was so angry here, she's baring her teeth. I think it's a toss up between Buchanan and Sununu as to who the absolute worst surrogate they keep trotting out there. They're both about as equally angry and unhinged on the air.

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I'm not sure how many times we have to debunk at this site the notion that either partially privatizing, or entirely privatizing Medicare and Social Security is somehow going to "save" or keep solvent either program, but here's what we're running up against daily on our cable media outlets.

Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison appeared on Chris Jansing's show on MSNBC, and she did receive a tiny bit of push back at the notion that privatizing our social safety nets are going to make sure they still exist for those under the age of 55 now, it wasn't nearly enough.

As soon as you start pulling funds out of either program by giving people a "choice" as to where their money goes, you're going to starve them to where they don't exist. And if Hutchison was being honest about the Social Security trust fund, she wouldn't be telling MSNBC viewers that taking money away from the fund will keep it solvent and that there's no reason to raise taxes to assure that it is. It's a regressive tax which hits those at the lower income brackets harder and I would love to see the cap lifted and the rate lowered for those who make less money, just as they do with our federal income tax. Regardless of whether you make the tax progressive or not, just raising or lifting the cap would keep it solvent for decades to come.

I also continue to be astounded that Republicans think it's a good talking point that they don't want to screw over current seniors, but they're happy to screw over their kids and are silly enough to think that the current seniors won't care what happens to their children and their grandchildren. Don't worry anyone on the programs now... we're not going to do anything to you. So don't worry your pretty heads about what happens to anyone else who would like those same safety nets in place later. They've all been brainwashed from listening to us that the programs won't be there for them later, so who cares if we don't look out for them. They were expecting it anyway after years of listening to our propaganda.

Rough transcript of their exchange below the fold.

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I think Mitt Romney needs to find himself some better spokespeople to come on television for him. Tara Wall couldn't even handle Little Luke Russert back in July of this year. This Monday she had her hands full with Chris Jansing -- Asked For Specific Tax Loopholes Romney Will Close, Adviser Says ‘Energy Independence’:

Tara Wall, an adviser to Mitt Romney’s presidential campaign who has proven unable to outline policy specifics before, struggled on Monday to specify a single loophole Romney would close to pay for his proposed massive tax cuts. Romney has said he would eliminate loopholes that benefit wealthy taxpayers to avoid increasing the deficit or raising taxes on middle income families.

Wall continued that tradition on MSNBC. When asked by host Chris Jansing which specific loopholes Romney would close, Wall demurred, instead choosing to talk about “pro-growth policies,” “energy independence,” and Obamacare, none of which are tax loopholes:

JANSING: What are the loopholes you would close? Will you tell the American people how you’re going to to this better place that you say they have?

WALL: Well, again, the campaign has laid out a number of specifics relative to the principles that will guide the policies of a Romney-Ryan ticket. [...] Again, the specification include policies that are pro-growth in nature, that reduce the deficit, that reduce the burden on taxpayers and small businesses, small businesses number one have been hit hard by a number of regulations that have stifled growth and job creation. And so number one, those are some of the things you have to start with.

JANSING: Well, with all due respect, a pro-growth policy is not specific.

WALL: The other part of that is energy independence. That’s an approach to energy independence that will create millions of jobs. There is a target of 12 million jobs by the Romney-Ryan target. Relative to those loopholes that you mention, I agree that Congressman Ryan pointed out taht have to be put out in a public debate. But I think, again, we have to look at the overall principles that are going to drive the policies and not ram through policy as we saw with Obamacare.

As we've discussed here before and they did in the Think Progress post, of course they're not going to let anyone know what loopholes they'd close because their math doesn't add up unless you tax the middle class or bust the budget. Wall might be short on facts here, but she hasn't forgotten how to talk over her host to make sure they can't get a word in while she's refusing to answer their questions. Republican pundits must practice at filibustering like this because it's something they've all learned too well unfortunately.

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The chairman of presumptive Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney's national steering committee on Monday defended the candidate's "wisdom" that state and local government needed to "cut back" on teachers, firefighters and police.

"Let me respond as a taxpayer, not as a representative of the Romney campaign," former New Hampshire Gov. John Sununu (R) told MSNBC's Chris Jansing. "There are municipalities, there are states where there is flight of population. And as the population goes down, you need fewer teachers."

"If there's movement to the suburbs, those teachers and policeman are needed somewhere," Jansing noted.

"If there's fewer kids in the classroom, the taxpayers really do want to hear that there will be fewer teachers," Sununu insisted. "Absolutely."

"I think this is a real issue and people ought to stop jumping on it as a gaffe and understand that there's wisdom in the comment," he added.

At a campaign stop in Iowa on Friday, Romney had blasted President Barack Obama's call to hire more teachers, firefighters and police.

"He wants to add more to government," the former Massachusetts governor charged. "He wants another stimulus. He wants to hire more government workers. He says we need more firemen, more policeman, more teachers.”

“Did he not get the message of Wisconsin? The American people did! It’s time for us to cut back on government!”

But on Monday, Romney adviser Bay Buchanan said that Obama was the one to blame for job losses in the public sector.

"He says 450,000 local and government state workers have been laid off, Buchanan told CNN's Soledad O'Brien. "Why do you think they’re being laid off, Mr. President? Do you not understand when the economy is suffering, when we are having the situation we’re having today with this slow, slow, almost no growth in the country sometimes, that he is impacting? His policies are impacting what’s going on in the state and local."

“If Barack Obama could just do half the kind of job that Mitt Romney did [as governor of] Massachusetts, this country would be thriving.”

A 2009 report by the National Commission on Teaching & America's Future predicted about a third of the nation's teachers would retire by 2013, leaving drastic shortages of experienced instructors.

(h/t: Think Progress)

I'm not some big fan of MSNBC regular Jonathan Capehart because frankly the man regularly just glosses over or minimizes just how crazy the Republican Party has become these days and chalks a lot of it up to just politics as usual, when I don't think there's anything normal about how far the GOP has fallen off the cliff to the right, but the treatment he received by both host Joe Scarborough and guest New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie on this Thursday's edition of Morning Joe just sickened me.

As most people who visit this site probably already know, Gov. Christie vetoed the gay marriage bill in New Jersey and that ended up being the main topic of discussion during this segment. When Capehart tried to pin Christie down about why he thought it was acceptable to put a civil rights issue up for referendum with the voters, he ended up being bullied and talked over and interrupted by both Christie and Scarborough.

Christie is trying to have it both ways with this debate and deflect how rotten it is that he had a chance to single-handedly give a group of people in New Jersey the right to be married by signing that bill into law, and blamed his decision on the Democrats, because they claimed that a majority of people in his state wanted it, while not wanting it subjected to the will of the voters. So naturally it's all their fault because he had no other choice than to decide to try to prove them wrong instead of doing the right thing. He also tried to claim that both he and President Obama have the same stance on gay marriage.

When Capehart attempted to explain that that's not true since Obama has instructed his Justice Department not to defend DOMA, or the Defense of Marriage Act and that he has never issued any veto threats if the Congress would actually pass a law allowing gay marriage, Christie decided it was best to just talk over him and hammer him about what Obama's stance is on gay marriage. I'll give Capehart credit for this much though and that is he got Christie to admit that civil rights should not have been put up for a vote a half century ago. He didn't have that same luck trying to get him to relate that struggle to those wanting marriage equality for the LGBT community today.

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