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As Think Progress noted this weekend, Mitt Romney's attacks on the Obama administration's response to the attack on our embassy in Libya are falling apart as more and more information comes out about just what happened and who had what information when, but never mind that over at Fox. They're still going to beat this dead horse for Willard as we saw Mike Huckabee do during his show this Saturday.

How Mitt Romney’s Latest Attack On Libya Is Falling Apart:

Mitt Romney has recently made the administration’s response to the attacks in Libya a centerpiece of his campaign. Romney and his campaign allege that the Obama administration “covered-up” the facts about the attacks for their political benefit. Romney’s core message is that: 1. The attacks were linked to al Qaeda, and 2. The attacks had nothing to do with an anti-Muslim video on YouTube. Here’s an excerpt from Romney’s major foreign policy address on October 8:

The attack on our Consulate in Benghazi on September 11th, 2012 was likely the work of forces affiliated with those that attacked our homeland on September 11th, 2001. This latest assault cannot be blamed on a reprehensible video insulting Islam, despite the Administration’s attempts to convince us of that for so long.

A new report this morning from the LA Times casts serious doubt on Romney’s claims:

The assault on the U.S. diplomatic mission in Benghazi last month appears to have been an opportunistic attack rather than a long-planned operation, and intelligence agencies have found no evidence that it was ordered by Al Qaeda, according to U.S. officials and witnesses interviewed in Libya.

…[I]n in Benghazi, witnesses said members of the group that raided the U.S. mission specifically mentioned the video, which denigrated the prophet Muhammad.

The LA Times bolsters earlier reports by the New York Times and Reuters. (The involvement of al Qaeda is a complex issue and the attack, if not ordered by al Qaeda, may have involved individuals sympathetic to or loosely affiliated with the group.)

A peice in the Washington Post by David Ignatius reveals that the adminstration’s initial statements citing the role of the video were based on talking points provided by the CIA:

The Romney campaign may have misfired with its suggestion that statements by President Obama and U.N. Ambassador Susan Rice about the Benghazi attack last month weren’t supported by intelligence, according to documents provided by a senior U.S. intelligence official.

“Talking points” prepared by the CIA on Sept. 15, the same day that Rice taped three television appearances, support her description of the Sept. 11 attack on the U.S. Consulate as a reaction to Arab anger about an anti-Muslim video prepared in the United States. According to the CIA account, “The currently available information suggests that the demonstrations in Benghazi were spontaneously inspired by the protests at the U.S. Embassy in Cairo and evolved into a direct assault against the U.S. Consulate and subsequently its annex.”

The article by David Ignatuis came out well before Mike Huckabee's show went on the air Saturday, but they chose to completely ignore it. Expect more of the same over at Fox in the upcoming weeks where they'll continue attack the Obama administration over this made up controversy right up to election day and then we'll never hear another word about it from them after that.

In the mean time, we're also treated to follow ups like this one where HuckaJesus brought on Bush spokespuppet Dana Perino to weigh in on whether the Obama administration is being honest with the public about the attack. After coming to the podium to carry water for the Bush administration, I guess she knows a thing or two about lying to the public. Why anyone thinks she's got anything worth adding to this debate is beyond me, but it's upside down world at Fox, so this is what they put on the air -- Dana Perino -- the supposed bastion of journalistic integrity when it comes to administrations telling the public the truth. Lord help us.

Video below the fold.

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From Majority FM, Sam Seder reads from some of a recent LA Times article which challenged anti-Social Security crusader and crotchety old man, former Sen. Alan Simpson over his many lies about the program.

Alan Simpson shows his cards to The Times:

Former U.S. Sen. Alan Simpson (R-Wyoming), perhaps our leading avatar of misinformation about Social Security, sent us a lengthy email on Friday responding to our series of posts criticizing his error-rich take on the nation’s preeminent social insurance program.

You can read his entire email here. Be forewarned: It’s a dizzying compendium of ignorance, myths, irrelevancies, and historical revisionism, leavened with a healthy dollop of defensiveness. (Simpson also seems at the outset to have confused columnist Michael Hiltzik, who has been writing about him, with editorial page editor and columnist Jim Newton, who hasn't. But leave that aside.)

Responding to all Simpson's assertions would take a tome, so we’ll simply address two of his main points: That Social Security was never designed as a “retirement system,” and that the original bill’s drafters deliberately set the retirement age at 65 because life expectancy in 1935, at the time of enactment, was 63. In other words, Simpson says it was designed from inception as a rip-off.

You can go read the rest at the link or just listen to Sam read it in the video clip above.

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Here we go again with Fox News shamelessly promoting another tea party group. Chris Wallace makes Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas' wife Ginni his "Power Player of the Week" on Fox News Sunday. John wrote about this group a couple of months ago. Heaven forbid they could be launching their new web site without Fox giving them a big plug.

The wife of Clarence Thomas launches Tea Party Group and is intrigued by Glenn Beck:

It's been noted many times that Clarence Thomas rarely utters a word when he's hearing a case before him. That silence has been a source of criticism and interest to his reputation on the highest bench in the land for along time. I think now he has a bigger problem now because his wife has helped launch a new tea party group.

LA Times:

Justice's wife launches 'tea party' group.

The nonprofit run by Virginia Thomas, wife of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, is likely to test notions of political impartiality for the court.
Reporting from Washington As Virginia Thomas tells it in her soft-spoken, Midwestern cadence, the story of her involvement in the "tea party" movement is the tale of an average citizen in action.

"I am an ordinary citizen from Omaha, Neb., who just may have the chance to preserve liberty along with you and other people like you," she said at a recent panel discussion with tea party leaders in Washington. Thomas went on to count herself among those energized into action by President Obama's "hard-left agenda."

But Thomas is no ordinary activist.

She is the wife of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, and she has launched a tea-party-linked group that could test the traditional notions of political impartiality for the court.

In January, Virginia Thomas created Liberty Central Inc., a nonprofit lobbying group whose website will organize activism around a set of conservative "core principles," she said.

Here's how Wallace framed the piece.

Chris Wallace:And our Power Player of the Week wants the people to take a pledge for activism, against what she believes is Washington’s big government agenda.

As John noted, here's some of her bio.

With 30 years of experience within the Washington beltway working alongside esteemed politicians like Dick Armey and for institutions like Hillsdale College, the Heritage Foundation and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, Ginni is committed to serving as a clearinghouse for new and more effective online activism.

Yeah, real grass-rootsy there Chris.

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It seems Bill-O isn't taking too kindly for the criticism of Fox News over their lack of coverage of the earthquake in Haiti. Bill lashes out at Media Matters: REPORT: Top Fox News programs devote scant coverage to Haiti earthquake, The LA Times: CNN does it right in Haiti, but Fox drops the ball and Peter Beinart at The Daily Beast--Doing Disaster Relief Right.

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November 11, 2009 CNN

The American Medical Assn. on Tuesday urged the federal government to reconsider its classification of marijuana as a dangerous drug with no accepted medical use, a significant shift that puts the prestigious group behind calls for more research.

The nation's largest physicians organization, with about 250,000 member doctors, the AMA has maintained since 1997 that marijuana should remain a Schedule I controlled substance, the most restrictive category, which also includes heroin and LSD.

In changing its policy, the group said its goal was to clear the way to conduct clinical research, develop cannabis-based medicines and devise alternative ways to deliver the drug.

From the LA Times read more...

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The stupid, it hurts. From the LA Times- Glenn Beck and the Society for (In)sanity in Art:

Last night Fox News ranter Glenn Beck went off on the art made more than 70 years ago for Rockefeller Center, corporate headquarters of NBC and -- not coincidentally -- supposed arch-enemy of Rupert Murdoch's television empire. To the surprise of no one, but to the great amusement of the blogosphere (here, here and here) -- Beck donned his art critic's tin-foil conspiracy hat to find hidden evidence of "progressives, fascists and communists" in the carved reliefs and paintings of a landmark Manhattan building complex that was made a national historic monument in 1987. (Let's see; who was president that year? Oh, yeah: Commie-symp Ronald Reagan.)

How nutty did Beck get? As nutty as usual. He pointed to a portrait of Lenin in Mexican master Diego Rivera's destroyed Rockefeller lobby mural, "Man at the Crossroads," but forgot to mention that old John D. had the mural removed because of it. (Facts are stubborn things -- even more stubborn than demagoguery.) With comedy stylings like that, Beck is turning out to be the Harold Harby of our day.

Who was Harold Harby? A Los Angeles city councilman in the early 1950s, Harby took up propaganda-arms with a paranoid group of right-wing loonies called the Society for Sanity in Art. They made it their patriotic duty to search out Communist symbols they just knew were hidden in that weird, postwar abstract art.

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And here he finishing up his rant about MSNBC.

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