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Sen. Rand Paul continued with his charges from earlier this week that former Sec. of State Hillary Clinton had "her fingerprints all over these talking points" on the Benghazi attack and claims that she never "really accepted culpability" because she failed to resign shortly after the tragedy. When CNN's Candy Crowley asked Paul if he was worried about appearing to politicize the controversy by making his remarks in Iowa and other presidential battleground states, Paul dismissed the notion that his remarks were based on politics.

It's laughable that anyone expects us to believe that Republicans care one iota about this trumped up Benghazi story for any other reason than to muddy up Hillary Clinton, because they all assume she's going to be the front-runner for the next presidential election.

And I'd say it's safe to assume Rand Paul is going to take up his father's mantle and make a career out of perpetually running for president as a fundraising scheme. It worked out pretty well for his dad and the press is already propping him up because of it -- with this being the latest example -- so why not?

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One of these things is not like the other, but this is what's passing for political debate on CNN this weekend. Republican strategist and dirty trickster Alex Castellanos did his best to help the network continue on their path to becoming Fox-lite with this false equivalency on the drummed up Benghazi "scandal" they're all having the feeding frenzy over this week.

CROWLEY: Now, while I'm asking you this question I want to put up an NRCC, a Republican campaign committee, an ad they put up asking for funds saying, you know, we're after Benghazi. Is it smart to go after substantive things with Rand Paul in Iowa attacking Hillary, who might run in 2016 and the NRCC raising funds off of it. Isn't that kind of a mixed message?

CASTELLANOS: Well sometimes if you make something too political you undermine your motive that you really want -- a fair investigation.

CROWLEY: Do you think that has happened here?

CASTELLANOS: Not yet. Politics is also how we govern our governors. It's the only control we have. So, when government fails, the political arena is the place that we want to expose something and bring it to people's attention. And this is bad news for Hillary Clinton. This could be what mission accomplished was for George Bush. What difference does it make could be for Hillary Clinton? She -- three bad mistakes here. She didn't look after the people under her care in Benghazi. She either allowed or encouraged or didn't know about a cover up and then she marked it with a YouTube moment and those things last and travel in politics. This is going to make it very tough for her in 2016.

Ah yes, taking part of Hillary Clinton's testimony during the Republicans witch hunt on Benghazi out of context is exactly like Bush declaring that we'd "won" in Iraq right as things were about to go to hell after our illegal invasion of a country that was not a threat to us. Just the same! Jesus this crap makes my head hurt. And not an ounce of push back from host Candy Crowley, of course.

Full transcript from the segment above below the fold.

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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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Conservative Weekly Standard editor Bill Kristol is lashing out at Karl Rove and his American Crossroads super PAC for using last year's attacks in Benghazi to attack former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton ahead of the 2016 presidential race.

During a Fox News panel segment on Sunday, Kristol complained that there had been a "partisan reaction" to both the attacks in Benghazi and the news that the Internal Revenue Service had targeted tea party groups to find out if they had violated their tax exempt status.

Kristol pointed to a web video released by American Crossroads last week that attacked Clinton for allegedly participating in a Benghazi "cover up."

"I do not like the conservative Republican groups putting ads up about Hillary Clinton," he said. "What is the point of that? That is just fundraising by American Crossroads and these other groups. It's ridiculous! There's no campaign going on!"

"Let's pull the partisanship back. It's a genuine outrage what happened in Benghazi, it's a genuine outrage what the IRS did... So I wish the Republicans would just be quiet for while -- I mean, the partisan Republican groups that are fundraising off this -- would be quiet on both issues for a while, and let's find out what really happened."

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Cue the right-wing outrage over this Friday's Real Time with Bill Maher in 10...9...8... for the way he ended his New Rules segment while talking about the dangers of record income disparity in the United States:

MAHER: If you're rich, you should be begging the government to redistribute your wealth, because you know what happens in countries where there's a huge disparity between the rich and the poor? The rich get kidnapped. It happens seventy two times a day in Mexico.

He went onto talk about people resorting to using flame throwers on their cars in South Africa to stop it. He made a lot of really good points about what's happening to our society in the wake of the latest remake of The Great Gatsby being released, and our new Gilded Age which is worse than the last one. I'm sure all those on the right will hear is that he wants to raise your taxes and the clamor will be "Why doesn't he just volunteer to pay more himself?" -- because we all know how well just asking the wealthy to voluntarily pay more taxes, and only a tiny portion of them actually doing it, would work to solve our economic problems and the huge wealth gap we have now.

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As our friends over at Media Matters took note of this Thursday, the Republican propaganda channel has decided to yet again make another political attack ad for the Republicans. The Five's Eric Bolling offered up the clip shown above for Republicans (or Joe Biden) should they wish to use it against a Hillary Clinton presidential bid for 2016.

As one of the commenters pointed out in their post, this ad offered up by Bolling looks almost identical to one that the RNC had planned to run during the last presidential campaign and decided not to due to a request by Mitt Romney: Exclusive: The RNC Benghazi Attack Ad that Never Ran:

It was the Benghazi attack ad the Republican National Committee created but never aired.

ABC News has obtained an ad the RNC made last fall and approved to air in the final weeks of the presidential campaign. The ad begins with a replay of Hillary Clinton’s famous “3 a.m. phone call” commercial from the 2008 campaign and then cuts to video of the burning U.S. consulate in Benghazi Libya. [...]

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In the aftermath of this Wednesday's hearings on Benghazi, which the right has been hyping for weeks, as Chris Hayes and his guests, Rep. Carolyn Maloney and Media Matters' Eric Boehlert discussed, they turned out to be nothing more than a bust.

Surprise, surprise, right?

As Media Matters has documented, it was hard to keep track of all of the lies and myths being pushed by the right and by Fox News ahead of today's hearings, and but once they actually got started, there was very little to no new information, but plenty of attempts to lay the whole mess at Hillary Clinton's feet.

Maloney reiterated what she said during the hearing today about the Republicans and their motives:

“I find it truly disturbing and very unfortunate that when Americans come under attack the first thing some did in this country was attack Americans, attack the military, attack the president, attack the State Department, attack the former senator from the great state of New York and former secretary of state Hillary Clinton,” Maloney said, before going on to question the witnesses on the fact that the secretary of state’s signature is included on all sorts of documents he or she never actually sees.

Fox's coverage of the hearing was hardly what you'd call "fair and balanced" with them cutting away from the Democrats constantly during the hearing, including Rep. Maloney, which Hayes showed her a portion of during their discussion here.

As Maloney told Hayes during the segment as well, Republicans are entitled to their own opinions about the attacks and what went wrong, but they're not entitled to their own facts and even after being debunked, Chairman Issa is still refusing to take down their lies about Hillary Clinton on their web site.

As Hayes and Boehlert discussed, compared to other administrations, attacks on U.S. diplomatic targets are actually way down under the Obama administration. We all know that doesn't matter in Republican-land though, where their alternative reality refuses to acknowledge anything that happened prior to President Obama being elected.

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Here's a short clip from the Majority Report's Sam Seder ahead of this Wednesday's circus in the House, or as Sam called it, Fast & Furious Part Deux.

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Fox News host Chris Wallace on Sunday told Rep. Stephen Lynch (D-MA) that he was "getting off track" when he suggested that Republicans were hypocrites for continuing to attack President Barack Obama's administration over last year's attacks in Benghazi after pressuring the State Department to cut funding for security personnel by voting to cut embassy funding.

During a discussion to promote upcoming testimony by whistleblowers who Republicans say will tell the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee that the Obama administration intimidated them into not speaking out about the attacks in Benghazi, Lynch pointed out that Fox News had not made Rep. Jason Chaffetz (R-UT) answer for his vote to cut security funding.

"We're talking about -- including my colleague, Mr. Chaffetz -- when Secretary [Hillary] Clinton and the State Department asked for additional funding for embassy security, they all voted no," Lynch said.

"No, no, no," Chaffetz grumbled.

"We're getting a little bit off the track," Wallace interrupted.

"They've already admitted this on CNN," Lynch added.

"I understand there's an issue about security, it's a little bit off the track," Wallace insisted. "I want to try to stay on course here."

"No, this is the point!" Lynch pressed. "They're complaining about a lack of security at the embassies after they voted against funding for security at the embassies. That's what they're complaining about... Is that not related?"

"The chief financial officer for the State Department sent in an email that finances had nothing to do with the decisions about funding at the facility," Chaffetz replied. "This is a facade, it's a distraction. There are four people dead here, Chris."

"And I want to talk about... Let's talk about beforehand," Wallace said, changing the subject. "Two weeks ago, the Republican chairs of five House committees -- and I will agree with Congressman Lynch here, it was just the Republicans, not the Democrats -- issued an interim report on Benghazi in which they charged that then-Secretary of State Clinton misled Congress when she said she had never seen any request for more security."

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This ain't ever going away as long as the Republicans think there's a snowball's chance in hell that Hillary Clinton is going to run for president. Sen. John McCain appeared on Neil Cavuto's show this Wednesday, after calling for a select committee on Benghazi, because lord knows they haven't quite beaten this horse to death yet: GOP senators want Obama to release Benghazi names:

A trio of Republican senators are calling on President Obama to release the names of Benghazi survivors to Congress after the White House said it was unaware anyone was blocked from testifying.

Sens. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), John McCain (R-Ariz.) and Kelly Ayotte (R-N.H.) wrote to Obama on Wednesday asking that names be released of the survivors of last year’s attack at the U.S. consulate in Benghazi, Libya, for interviews with Congress.

“In light of your comments yesterday about the Benghazi attacks, we again request your administration immediately provide the names of the Benghazi survivors to Congress so we can conduct interviews to gain a clearer understanding of what happened before, during, and after the attack,” the senators wrote. [...]

The Obama administration has pushed back this week against allegations that a State Department employee has been prevented from testifying about the terrorist attack, in which four Americans were killed.

Victoria Toensing, a former Justice Department official and one-time Republican counsel to the Senate Intelligence Committee, told Fox News earlier this week that a State Department employee she represented was threatened by superiors if he cooperated with the House Oversight Committee’s investigation into Benghazi.

If anyone thinks those names sound familiar, here's a reminder of who they are from Media Matters: Who Are The Right-Wing Media's Benghazi Lawyers Victoria Toensing And Joseph diGenova?.

And I highly recommend reading both Digby and Charlie Pierce's take on this debacle, which you can read here:

What's really going on with this Benghazi obsession?

and here:

Getting The Band Back Together and I'll share a bit from Pierce's article:

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