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Former Republican vice presidential candidate Paul Ryan (R-WI) on Sunday used the news that the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) had scrutinized tea party groups to slam the agency's connection to President Barack Obama's heath care reform law.

Host Chris Wallace pointed out to Ryan on Fox News Sunday that the Treasury inspector general had suggested that a recent IRS scandal had been a "bureaucratic snafu" because tea party groups only represented 96 of the 298 groups that received special scrutiny about their tax-exempt status.

Ryan, however, insisted that the IRS had targeted conservative groups based on their political beliefs and "to suggest that this is some bureaucratic snafu, that's already been disproven."

"The other point I'd say is that as bad as this is, the person in charge of this bureaucratic snafu is now been put in charge of implementing Obamacare," he continued. "I mean, the IRS is now going to be granted huge amounts of unprecedented power over our health care in the implementation of Obamacare."

"And so this is just rotten to the core. This is arrogance. This is big government cronyism. And this is not what hard-working taxpayers deserve."

CBS News observed last week that there was no evidence that Sarah Hall Ingram, who headed the IRS office overseeing tax-exempt organizations between 2009 and 2012, "sanctioned or was even aware of the targeting practices."

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Here's something you don't see every day -- someone in our corporate media actually calling out Republicans for feeding them lies. Good for CBS and Major Garrett.

Via TPM: Wow, This is Pretty Epic:

Generally, once partisan, tendentious sources leak information that turns out to be wrong, nothing’s ever done about it. That’s for many reasons, some good or somewhat understandable, mostly bad. But on CBS Evening News tonight, Major Garrett did something I don’t feel like I’ve seen in a really long time or maybe ever on a network news cast. He basically said straight out: Republicans told us these were the quotes, that wasn’t true. Quick transcript after the jump …

SCOTT PELLEY: Also at his news conference today the president called for tighter security for U.S. diplomatic facilities to prevent an attack like the one in Benghazi, Libya, last year that killed U.S. Ambassador Chris Stevens and three other Americans.

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Former Secretary of Defense Robert Gates told CBS News that Republican lawmakers who are blasting President Barack Obama's administration for failing to take military action during last September's surprise attacks in Benghazi have a "cartoonish" view of the military.

"I listened to the testimony of [Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta] and [Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Martin Dempsey]," Gates explained to CBS host Bob Schieffer in an interview that aired on Sunday. "And, frankly, had I been in the job at the time, I think my decisions would have been just as theirs were."

"We don't have a ready force standing by in the Middle East -- despite all the turmoil that's going on -- with planes on strip alert, troops ready to deploy at a moment's notice. And so, getting somebody there in a timely way would have been very difficult, if not impossible."

He continued: "And, frankly, I've heard, 'Why didn't you just fly a fighter jet over and try and scare them with the noise or something?' Well, given the number of surface to air missiles that have disappeared from [former Libya dictator Muammar] Gaddafi's arsenals, I would not have approved sending an aircraft, a single aircraft, over Benghazi under those circumstances."

Gates pointed out that others had suggested that the military could have sent in Special Forces or some other small group.

"Based on everything I've read, people really didn't know what was going on in Benghazi contemporaneously, and to send some small number of Special Forces or other troops in without knowing what the environment is, without knowing what the threat is, without having any intelligence in terms of what is actually going on on the ground, I think, would have been very dangerous," the former defense secretary observed. "And personally, I would not have approved that."

"It's sort of a cartoonish impression of military capabilities and military forces. The one thing that our forces are noted for is planning and preparation before we send people in harm's way. And there just wasn't time to do that."

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Conservative radio host Glenn Beck responded to a shooting at Houston's largest airport on Thursday by suggesting that it had been a plot to "set up" gun owners like the the burning of German's parliament -- or Reichstag -- in 1933, which Nazis exploited as a pretext to suspend constitutional rights.

According to CBS News, a man named Carnell Moore fired a pistol into the ceiling of Terminal B at Bush International Airport and was shot by a federal agent. At the same time, Carnell also shot himself. A fully-loaded, black Smith & Wesson AR-15 was found in a suitcase next to where he was sitting.

Messages on social media indicated that Carnell had planned a mass shooting, but a suicide note found on the body suggested that he changed his mind.

But because the shooting happened as members of the National Rifle Association (NRA) were arriving in Houston for its annual convention, Beck saw a conspiracy behind Carnell's actions.

"The idea that this is happening at the airport with the NRA is too much to believe," Beck told a studio audience in Houston. "If I were a journalist -- let me correct that -- if I were an honest journalist, I would be looking for these connections. Look for the connections of who this man is and any connection he might have to the uber-Left."

"I believe this man could fall into the category of somebody who has lost his job, is depressed, etc., etc. Somebody comes in off to the side, winds him up, says, 'Oh, you should make a statement, you should make a statement.' I believe that's probably -- I shouldn't say that -- I believe it is a very good chance that is what happened."

But Beck speculated that the man realized that "that's not who I am" and decided not to go through with the mass killing.

"If I were an honest journalist, I'd find out where these guns came from -- were they purchased or were they illegal?" he continued. "If there were illegal, oh, I can guarantee you, this is a set up. Someone knows history. I do."

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Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX), who calls himself a "proud wacko bird," told CBS News that President Barack Obama was plotting to make immigration reform fail so that Democrats could campaign on it in 2014 and 2016.

In an interview that aired on Wednesday, Cruz explained to CBS reporter Jan Crawford that Obama was playing a political game on Republicans by pushing a path to citizenship as a part of comprehensive immigration reform.

"President Obama does not want an immigration bill to pass," he stated confidently. "I think the president wants to campaign on immigration reform in 2014 and 2016. And I think the reason the White House is insisting on a path to citizenship for those who are here illegally is because the White House knows that insisting on that is very likely to scuttle the bill."

Crawford pressed Cruz one what he would do with the estimated 11 million undocumented immigrants who were already living in the United States.

"I think there could probably could be a compromise on that if a path to citizenship was taken off the table," he insisted.

Earlier this year, fellow Republican Sen. John McCain (R-AZ), one of eight senators helping to craft the immigration reform proposal, called Cruz a "wacko bird" for filibustering the nomination of CIA Director John Brennan over the administration's use of drones.

"If standing for liberty and standing for the Constitution makes you a wacko bird then I am a very, very proud wacko bird," Cruz quipped to Crawford.

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Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-IA) on Friday said that Monday's tragic bombing at the Boston Marathon was a reason not move to quickly to pass a bipartisan proposal for comprehensive immigration reform.

"Given the events of this week, it's important for us to understand the gaps and loopholes in our immigration system," Grassley told the Senate Judiciary Committee. "While we don't yet know the immigration status of people who terrorized the the communities in Massachusetts, when we find out, it will help shed light on the weaknesses of our system."

"How can individuals evade authority and plan such attacks on our soil? How can we beef up security checks on people who wish to enter the United States? How do we ensure that people who wish to do us harm are not eligible for benefits under the immigration laws, including this new bill before us?"

CBS News reported on Friday that 19-year-old Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, the man being hunted by police as a suspect in Monday's bombings, became a U.S. citizen on Sept. 11, 2012 after coming to the country on a tourist visa in April 2002. Before becoming a citizen, he sought asylum in September 2002 and gained lawful resident status in February 2007.

Dzhokhar Tsarnaev's 26-year-old brother, Tamerlan Tsarnaev, was killed in a firefight with police on Thursday night. His legal status was not immediately known.

Earlier this week, Rep. Steve King (R-IA) speculated that the bombings in Boston had been perpetrated by a “foreign national” and that Congress should proceed with caution on any immigration reform efforts. Rep. Louie Gohmert (R-TX) also warned that “radical Islamists” were “being trained to come in and act like Hispanics.”

(h/t: Huffington Post)

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A Pentecostal bishop on Sunday told a rabbi and an imam that the U.S. was a "Christian nation" that was bridging religious divisions because Christians would "let" other faiths worship and "we're not going to persecute you."

Speaking to a interfaith panel on CBS News, Hope Christian Church Pastor Harry R. Jackson responded to Rabbi David Wolpe, who said that the Americans should "celebrate difference" because "God is greater than any religious tradition."

"In deference to the Christian foundation of this nation, it is that foundation that allows us freedom," Jackson explained. "I don't see this diversity in other places. So to the credit of our Christian foundation of this nation, this freedom we're experiencing is because folks came and said, 'We believe this is to be a Christian nation. We feel like we've been persecuted in the places we came from, and we're going to intentionally let this nation be founded in a way that if you come here and you're Islamic and you come here and you're Jewish, we're not going to persecute you.'"

"Although we don't worship as Jewish people, we're going to let this country be guided in a place where there's going to be liberty and freedom or worship. I feel we'd be remiss if we act like some other set of countries has operated in this way."

Imam Suhaib Webb, however, reminded Jackson that Christians persecuted Christians during the early days of the United States, while Jews and Muslims lived together in Harmony in Spain.

"You're saying I'm wrong that -- that foundation doesn't bring us to this point?" Jackson asked.

"I don't know if that was foundational or negotiated would be a better word for it," Webb pointed out.

"Negotiated by who?" Jackson replied. "Negotiated with Christians by Christians."

"Or by deists as well," Webb added. "I mean, I think we need to be really careful."

"We have strong disagreements," Jackson grumbled.

"But we still love each other," Webb said.

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A depressed Florida man shot his wife and two children before killing himself after closing his hot air balloon business and facing losing his job as a Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) inspector because of automatic budget cuts known as "sequestration."

A source told CBS News that 45-year-old Carlos Zuniga was depressed in the weeks before he shot his wife 43-year-old wife, Michelle, his 14-year-old daughter, Lauren, and his 11-year-old son, Stefan. Carlos Zuniga then killed himself.

Stefan Zuniga died at Jackson Memorial Hospital’s Ryder Trauma Center on Thursday morning. Both the wife and the daughter were in critical condition.

According to The Miami Herald, Carlos Zuniga was in the process of shutting down Winds Aloft Aviation Inc., a hot air balloon business that he had started with this wife in 2005. He had recently taken a job as a safety inspector for the Federal Aviation Administration. But the FAA is expected to be forced to furlough a "vast majority" of it's employees because of automatic budget cuts in the so-called "sequester" if Congress does not act quickly.

"FAA is going to face a cut of roughly $600 million under sequester," Office of Management and Budget controller Danny Werfel told a Senate committee last week. "A vast majority of their 47,000 employees will be furloughed for one day per pay period for the rest of the year, and, as importantly, this is going to reduce air traffic levels across the country, causing delays and disruptions for all travelers."

Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood has also notified senators that allowing the automatic cuts "would force the FAA to undergo an immediate retrenchment of core functions."

Earlier this week, President Barack Obama warned that there would be stark consequences if Congress allowed the automatic cuts to take place.

"These cuts are not smart," Obama said on Tuesday. "They are not fair. They will hurt our economy. They will add hundreds of thousands of Americans to the unemployment rolls. This is not an abstraction -- people will lose their jobs. The unemployment rate might tick up again."

Former Republican National Committee chairman Haley Barbour on Tuesday told Fox Business that "I hope and believe that Republicans will allow the sequestration to go into effect, so that we can start down a path of trying to get control of spending and reduce the deficit."

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I'm not sure why PBS and CBS News feel that the public needs to be treated to yet another fawning interview with former Vice President Dick Cheney, but maybe they're hoping to pick up some of that Fox viewership, because Charlie Rose's hour long disgrace propping this guy up is what we're usually treated to on that network.

Apparently Cheney doesn't mind the drone program and called it a "good program" -- but what bothers him about it is not what should disturb most of us, like whether it's legal, the lack of oversight, overreach by the executive branch and the fact that dropping bombs on civilians' heads is just going to create more enemies and potential blowback when people rightfully get sick of watching their friends and their family members killed.

No, Cheney doesn't care about any of that. What bothers him is that we're killing these supposed terrorists instead of torturing them as we were doing under the Bush administration.

Cheney: Obama wants to weaken U.S. role in world:

Cheney insists that Obama's worldview and foreign policy is making the U.S. "vulnerable to the future."

And while Cheney voiced support for Obama's use of drones -- calling it a "good program" -- he said the president's national security nominees reflect "choices ... based on people who won't argue with him" and in the case of Hagel, "I think he wants a Republican to be the foil ... for what he wants to do to the Defense Department, which I think is to do serious, serious damage to our military capabilities."

Turning to a controversial policy of the George W. Bush administration, Cheney defended the use of enhanced interrogation techniques, saying that officials engaged in a "very long, difficult and elaborate process" with the Justice Department to determine "where the red line is."

"And we got approval for the programs that did go, that they were quote 'not torture,'" he said, but added that ultimately the administration stopped the use of waterboarding "because there was so much flak over it."

Rose did actually ask Cheney why he won't call the program torture during the interview, but there was zero follow up to this response. You can add this interview to the mile long list of evidence that proves that anyone who claims that PBS is some "liberal" network deserves to be mocked roundly for such a ridiculous assertion.

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Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) on Sunday suggested that President Barack Obama was "disengaged" and personally responsible for some of the deaths caused by a terrorist attack on the U.S. consulate in Benghazi on Sept. 11 of last year, but seemingly forgot that President George W. Bush read the book "My Pet Goat" for seven minutes as almost 3,000 people died during the 2001 terrorist attacks.

"Did the president at any time during this eight hour attack pick up the phone and call anybody in Libya to get help for these folks?" Graham opined during an interview on CBS News. "And I do believe if he had picked up the phone, called the Libyan government, these folks could have gotten out of the airport to the annex, and the last two guys may very well be alive... But if he failed to call on behalf of those people under siege then I think that's a massive failure of leadership by our commander in chief."

CBS host Bob Schieffer asked Graham if he had any proof that the president had not made an attempt to contact Libya during the September attacks.

"I don't know what the president did that evening," the South Carolina senator admitted. "I don't know if he ever called anyone, I know that he never talked to the secretary of defense, I know that he never talked to the chairman of the Join Chiefs. They never talked to anybody at the White House."

"This was incredibly mismanaged, and what we know now, it seems to be a very disengaged president," he added. "Again, if he had lent his voice to this cause, I think it would have made a big difference. And I'm not going to stop until we get an accounting."

"We know nothing about what the president did on the night of Sept. 11th during a time of national crisis, and the American people need to know what their commander in chief did, if anything, during the eight hour attack."

As Bush was reading the book "My Pet Goat" with school children on Sept. 11, 2001, Chief of Staff Andrew Card interrupted to let him know a second plane had hit the World Trade Center in New York City.

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