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Sen. Kelly Ayotte was once again asked by her constituents at a town hall meeting about her vote against the Manchin-Toomey background check legislation and her response this time around was to make stuff up:

Before saying anything about New Hampshire Sen. Kelly Ayotte, let's establish one thing: Although the Manchin-Toomey background check proposal would have expanded background checks for gun purchases, it wouldn't have created a national firearms registry. In fact, it would have strengthened existing law barring the creation of any such registry and stiffened penalties against any official who violated or tried to violate the prohibition.

With that said, check out Ayotte's explanation on Thursday afternoon for why she voted against expanded background checks:

I will tell you in terms of a universal background check, as it's been framed, I have a lot of concerns about that leading to a registry that will lead to a privacy situation for lawful firearms owners.

That's total bull. The text of the legislation would have explicitly prohibited the creation of a national gun registry in not one, not two, but three separate places. Read on...

Here's more from Steve Benen: The facts Ayotte doesn't want her constituents to know:

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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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Fox News host Geraldo Rivera on Friday said that "angry, old, white men" like Sens. John McCain (R-AZ) and Lindsey Graham (R-SC) demanded Susan Rice give up any ambition to be secretary of state as a "minimum price" for the September attacks in Benghazi.

Speaking to the hosts of Fox & Friends, Rivera explained that female Republican Sens. Kelly Ayotte (R-NH) and Susan Collins (R-ME) gave cover to "the angry, old, white men" by joining in their attack on Rice "and then it couldn't be a male-female issue against this poor, beleaguered black woman."

"Angry, old, white men?" asked co-host Gretchen Carlson.

"I am speaking expansively and metaphorically and for effect here," Rivera insisted. "But it became clear she couldn't be the beleaguered damsel in distress -- the poor, black, embattled ambassador. It became clear that she was the minimum price... she was the minimum price to pay for the administrations dissembling on the facts and circumstances of the Benghazi attacks. She was going to be the minimum price that the Democrats, that the Obama administration had to pay for that clear offense."

"In Washington, you make minimum prices. She's the sacrificial lamb."

NBC News White House correspondent Chuck Todd, however, on Thursday said that Rice had also been a victim of conservative media outlets like Fox News.

"She became victim of the attacks. ... and it was all driven, in many cases, by conservative outlets who were making her the center of the Benghazi story," Todd told MSNBC's Martin Bashir. "It's too easy now in the way our media landscape is set up: You can become collateral damage in a hurry, in the way you can just get piled on — whether it's Twitter, whether its advocacy journalism, talk radio. ... That's what she was. Make no mistake, she was political collateral damage."

(h/t: Mediaite)

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Republicans have been having a hissy fit over the potential nomination of Ambassador Susan Rice for Secretary of State, and I agree with Rachel Maddow, Karoli and others' assessment that the likely reason we're seeing the "three amigos" and company on television screaming about her being unqualified, is they want Sen. John Kerry nominated instead so Scott Brown can potentially make his way back into the Senate.

What has been ignored by all of them and by the better part, but not all of our corporate media, is a real reason to have issues with her nomination, and that's her conflict of interest over the Keystone XL pipeline.

From Democracy Now's headlines this Thursday: Report: Susan Rice Holds Stock in Keystone XL Oil Firm:

U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Susan Rice is receiving criticism of a different kind after it was revealed she holds up to $600,000 worth of stock in the firm behind the controversial Keystone XL oil pipeline. TransCanada is seeking federal permission to transport Canadian tar sands oil to the U.S. Gulf Coast. If confirmed as secretary of state, Rice could play a key role in determining the fate of the pipeline.

I think if Ambassador Rice would like the job as Secretary of State, she needs to be divesting herself of those stocks, and if she doesn't and is nominated, she may find herself having problems with more Senators than just McCain, Graham and Ayotte, who look like they've all lost their freaking minds over this Benghazi nonsense.

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Senators John McCain and his BFF Lindsey Graham found themselves receiving some similar criticism to that dished out last week by Rachel Maddow, when she slammed McCain for all of the times he said something wrong on a Sunday show. If these two and their "third amigo" Kelly Ayotte want to keep making hypocritical asses of themselves with their petulant attacks on U.N. Ambassador Susan Rice, I just hope there's more segments like this to come.

Jon Stewart exposes blatant hypocrisy of McCain and Graham:

The two senators have pilloried Rice for saying the attack in Benghazi was the result of a spontaneous protest against an anti-Islam film. However, Stewart noted that both McCain and Graham had falsely told the public that Iraqi strongman Saddam Hussein was stockpiling weapons of mass destruction.

“Unfortunately, that’s not really a fair one-to-one comparison, because Susan Rice admitted to the error within weeks — these two still refuse to acknowledge that invading a country based on information from a source named ‘curveball’ was actually considered a pretty shitty idea by many at the time,” Stewart said.

“If only we had a more direct comparison to make here. Like another high-ranking government official passing what they knew at the time was misleading intelligence to the American public on a Sunday news show, also in line to become secretary of state, and was African American, and a woman, and lets say her name was also Rice. That’d be something.”

Stewart went on to play a mash-up of clips of McCain and Graham, lying about our invasion of Iraq and defending Condoleezza Rice. What's really pathetic is that any of these hypocrites are allowed to appear before what passes for our "news" organizations without being ripped to shreds as Stewart did here.

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The Morning Joe crowd got a big laugh over John Heilmann's seeming word stumble this morning, with Scarborough in particular busting a gut. In the subsequent re-airs, and on the web this part was edited out, as first noted by TV/Newser

via Greg Mitchell

John Heilemann, very early on Morning Joe today, in a discussion about opposition to Susan Rice, suggested that Sen. Lindsey Graham is, essentially, a "woman." This was in the context of Sen. Kelly Ayotte replacing outgoing Joe Lieberman in the "three amigos" grouping (McCain, Graham, Lieberman). Heilemann said that now two of the three are actually "women." Well, Joe Scarb had a good laugh about it right on camera and then they moved on. And, as Mediaite just noted, that bit was pulled when the segment was re-aired after 8 a.m.

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Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) on Tuesday pointed to the example set by Democrats who refused to confirm John Bolton as U.S. ambassador to the United Nations when he was asked if he would be willing to back Ambassador Susan Rice as secretary of state.

Speaking to reporters after meeting with Rice, Sens. Graham, John McCain (R-AZ) and Kelly Ayotte (R-NH) all seemed to escalate their opposition to the current U.S. ambassador to the United Nations over her public assessment of September attacks on Americans in Benghazi, Libya.

"I'm more disturbed now than I was before that the 16 September explanation about how four Americans died in Benghazi, Libya by Ambassador Rice, I think, does not do justice to the reality at the time and in hindsight clearly was completely wrong," Graham explained. "But here's the key, in real time, it was a statement disconnected from reality. If anybody had been looking at the threats coming out of Benghazi, Libya it was jump-out-at-you that this was an al Qaeda storm in the making."

The South Carolina Republican added that he was "very disappointed in our intelligence community" but Rice should have known better than to suggest that the attacks could have been related to an anti-Muslim video.

When asked about the possibility of supporting Rice to be the next secretary of state, Graham insisted that she could not be confirmed until Congress was provided more information from the FBI investigation into the Benghazi attack.

"I remember the John Bolton episode pretty well," he pointed out. "Our Democrat friends felt like John Bolton -- they didn't have the information needed to make an informed decision about Ambassador Bolton's qualifications -- John Bolton to be ambassador -- and Democrats dug in their heels and said, 'We're not going to vote, we're not going to consider this nomination until we get basic answers to our concerns.'"

"All I can tell you is that the concerns I have are greater today that they were before. We're not even close to getting the basic answers."

In 2005, President George W. Bush recess-appointed Bolton to the post of U.S. ambassador to the United Nations after Democrats filibustered the nomination because the White House refused to provide information about his mishandling of N.S.A documents and his questionable assessment of Syria's nuclear, chemical and biological weapons programs.

"This is about partisan politics, not documents," White House spokesperson Scott McClellan said at the time. "They have the information they need."

After Bolton was forced to resign as ambassador, Graham opined that the Democrats' filibuster "unfairly undermines President Bush's prerogative to appoint his own people to his team."

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As we've already discussed here, even though Susan Rice has been vindicated and John McCain has been made to look like a fool for attacking her, he's still out there acting as though he's the foreign policy "expert" for the Republican party, along with his other two "amigos," Lindsey Graham and Kelly Ayotte, who were out making more waves over the Gaza ceasefire this Wednesday.

Susan Rice defended her initial comments on Benghazi and called McCain's criticism "unfounded" and was much more gracious to him than he deserves after the way he's acted. In the segment above, after noting that McCain's primary complaint about Susan Rice has been that she "said something wrong on a Sunday show," Rachel Maddow walked her viewers though the many, many times that John McCain -- who has made some twenty Sunday show appearances just this year, with another one coming up on Fox this Sunday -- has said something wrong on a Sunday show.

If your career has to come to an end for that transgression, when is McCain going to be held responsible for all of the remarks he made about the invasion of Iraq, or his election loss in 2008?

If it's Sunday, it's John McCain getting something else wrong on one of the bobble head shows. Too bad someone doesn't ask David Gregory's producers to quit putting him on the air week after week.

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As Think Progress reported this Monday morning, Senators John McCain and Kelly Ayotte are out there raising fears about the pending cuts to the military budget which are coming as part of the sequestration plan passed by Congress during the debt ceiling debacle, but they had some trouble making a legitimate case on CNN as to just how those cuts would be "devastating."

McCain Can’t Explain Why Military Spending Cuts Would Be ‘Devastating’:

In their current campaign against automatic military spending cuts, Republican Senators John McCain (AZ), Lindsey Graham (SC) and Kelly Ayotte (NH) claim the reductions will be “devastating” to the U.S. military. But when asked to provide specifics on that claim on CNN this morning, McCain came up empty: [...]

Panetta does repeatedly say the military spending sequester would be “devastating” to the U.S. military but he has also failed to explain why. Panetta’s most specific remark on this point has been to say that the U.S. would have to reduce its presence in Latin America and Africa — i.e. hardly a “devastating” blow to the military or U.S. security. Moreover, a recent non-partisan Congressional Budget Office report found that the automatic spending cuts would bring the Pentagon’s budget back to what it spent in 2006.

As for McCain’s jobs argument, defense industry CEOs and other experts have said warnings that the military spending cuts will damage the economy and cause massive layoffs are “overblown.” And if you’re going to argue that federal spending is necessary to create jobs — a concept Republicans are now embracing in order to protect the nation’s bloated military budget — it’s probably better to, as one study has found, try to direct those dollars away from the Pentagon toward other domestic priorities.

Neither of them did a good job of explaining why we need a military budget, as O'Brien pointed out, five to eleven times larger than China, Russia or Britain. And McCain just completely brushed off the fact that his party is protecting the wealthy by refusing to raise taxes on the richest among us. And sadly neither of them were really challenged on any of their assertions by O'Brien. Another softball interview where politicians are allowed to spew their talking points unchallenged from CNN. It doesn't do much good to ask the right questions and then refuse to do any follow up when those questions aren't answered or answered with lies.

Transcript via CNN below the fold.

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Sen. Kelly Ayotte seems to be confused about who has been doing the hostage taking and unwilling to negotiate in Washington, because it's not the Democrats who were unwilling to make a deal back when this sequestration plan was agreed to. It was the Republicans who walked away from a deficit reduction plan because they refused to raise a dime in taxes, and they've continued that to this day.

You notice none of them ever get this worked up about the cuts to our social safety nets, but you talk about making cuts to the military budget and they're squealing like stuck pigs.

Ayotte: Dems using military as ‘bargaining chip’ in fight over cuts:

A freshman Republican senator accused the White House and congressional Democrats of using the military as a bargaining chip in a debate over spending cuts.

"It makes me sick that some in Washington, particularly some of the Senate Democrats want to play, and even our president unfortunately, want to use our military as a bargaining chip," said Sen. Kelly Ayotte (R-N.H.) told CNN's "State of the Union" on Sunday.

Ayotte said House and Senate GOP leaders have asked President Obama to come to the table to figure out how to resolve the issue of sequestration, a plan passed by Congress a year ago that would cut $1 trillion in spending over 10 years, including $500 billion from defense.

Lawmakers have expressed concern over the volatile mix of spending and tax hikes that could put the U.S. economy over the so-called “fiscal cliff.”

Republicans and Democrats are also at odds on the expiring Bush-era tax rates, with Democrats and the White House looking to extend the lower rates for those couples making below $250,000 a year. Republicans however want the rates extended across the board, a move the White House has threatened to veto to force the wealthier to pay higher rates to offset cuts.

Ayotte, who has been named as a possible vice presidential nominee for GOP presidential candidate Mitt Romney, said the choice is not between whether to extend tax breaks for those earning at least $250,000 a year or slashing defense spending.

"That's not the choice and where is our commander-and-chief on this," she said.

"Why isn't he right now at the table with members of both sides of the aisle resolving this. He could lead this effort and he has been AWOL on this."

Waiting until after the election would be "undermining our national security and cost nearly 1 million jobs," she said.

I thought the government didn't create jobs. Isn't that what they're telling us day in and day out? I guess those jobs only count if they're part of the military industrial complex. President Obama has continually tried to negotiate with Republicans only to be greeted with the back of their hand. I don't know why Sen. Ayotte thinks anyone should believe they'd behave differently right now.