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Frustrations boiled over at a House hearing on Wednesday when Attorney General Eric Holder let Rep. Darrell Issa (R-CA) know exactly how he felt about the "shameful" way the lawmaker was conducting himself as a member of Congress.

During a House Judiciary Committee hearing, Issa suggested that the Department of Justice had violated the Federal Records Act during discussions with Labor Secretary nominee Tom Perez, and that President Barack Obama's administration was covering up the crime.

But as Holder tried to reply to Issa, he was interrupted by the California Republican.

"No, no, that's what you typically do," the attorney general shot back. "No, I'm not going to stop talking now."

"Mr. Chairman, would you inform the witness as to the rules of the committee," Issa said.

"It is inappropriate and too consistent with the way in which you conduct yourself as a member of Congress," Holder insisted, shaking his finger at Issa.

"It is unacceptable and it's shameful."

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Former Republican presidential candidate Newt Gingrich on Monday tied a scandal where the Internal Revenue Service targeted tea party groups to President Barack Obama's health care reform law and last September's attacks in Benghazi.

In an interview on MSNBC, host Joe Scarborough asked the former House Speaker what the president needed to do after The Associated Press revealed that the IRS has improperly scrutinized tea party organizations to determine if they had abused their tax-exempt status.

"This is a huge problem because Obamacare relies very heavily on the IRS," Gingrich opined. "I think the president has to say he's going to open up totally, he's going to demand everybody meet with Congress, go to the hearings, he's going to fire everybody he can legally fire who's been involved in this."

"And they've got to look at changes," he continued. "How can you put Obamacare under an Internal Revenue Service -- remember this is an administration which will not profile terrorists, but profile patriots, profile constitutional groups. I mean, this is almost madness."

But Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Carl Bernstein said that Gingrich was making a mistake by tying the IRS scandal to Obamacare.

"There ought to be an investigation, there ought to be a criminal investigation if it's warranted," Bernstein explained. "And that's it. But to start making these global pronouncements about where it goes and it affects Obamacare seems to me is part of the problem."

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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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Jon Stewart ripped into Fox "News" and their continued hyping of the trumped up Benghazi "scandal" which they've been promising over and over is about to "have the lid blown off a giant coverup" at any moment now since the attacks first happened.

Stewart took his viewers back through some of Fox's coverage for the last few months now, whether it was the Greta hyping the Petraeus testimony, or Hannity ranting about the Clinton testimony, to Lindsey Graham promising that the hearing this week was "going to make you mad" and if not, well, they'll just keep having more of them until you are.

Stewart reminded his viewers that this Congress has had nine full hearings on Benghazi, but during the Bush administration there were fifty four attacks on diplomatic targets that killed thirteen Americans, but Congress only held three hearings total on embassy security back then with zero of the outrage we're seeing from Republicans now.

After asking what made things different this time around, Stewart went through the recent list of items that the wingnuts on the right believe are "worse than Watergate" and crazy GOP Rep. Steve King's remarks that Benghazi is "Watergate and Iran Contra together" and "multiplied by ten." Stewart put into perspective just what King was comparing the so-called Benghazi "coverup" to and asked, just what did President Obama do that Republicans believe is worse than some of Nixon and Reagan's worst scandals combined.

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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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On this Saturday's Fox News Watch, the fake outrage that's been going on for months on end on the network over the embassy bombings in Libya continued, with the talking heads on the panel of course doing their best to hype Darrell Issa's upcoming hearings this week. When host Jon Scott asked his guests why the other networks weren't giving this story the same type of media of coverage as Fox, hilarity ensued.

The National Review's Rich Lowry claimed there's some conspiracy with the rest of the media to do the administration's bidding and help stonewall the issue and then later call it old news and say “let's move on.” Regular and Fox token “liberal” Ellen Ratner claimed that the other networks were just “jealous” after quoting someone saying anything that comes from Fox “ought to be taken with a grain of salt.”

Scooter Libby stenographer Judith Miller called the administration refusing to answer all of her network's questions “chutzpah” and Fox's Jim Pinkerton criticized the Washington Post for running a story about protests at a nuclear facility and how dare they write that story while ignoring Fox and their fake Benghazi outrage.

Judith Miller wrapped things up by having the “chutzpah” to actually claim it's “lamentable” that this story has become “politicized.” Well, there's one thing I agree with that was said here, but it's been the Republicans and her network that are responsible for it.

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I was glad to see Sen. Dick Durbin bring this up during his interview on Fox News Sunday and go after Darrell Issa for his document dump this week, because lord knows Chris Wallace or Sen. Lindsey Graham weren't going to mention it.

Durbin Attacks Issa For Compromising US Informants In Libya:

Sen. Dick Durbin (D-IL) went after House Oversight Chairman Darrell Issa (R-CA) for publicly posting State Department cables that compromised the names of several Libyans working with the United States and put them in danger.

"This idea of Chairman Issa, that he's going to dump the names in public of Libyans who are risking their lives to support America and keep us safe, in an effort to get a political toehold in this election is unconscionable," Durbin said. "It is unacceptable."

Wallace tried to get Graham to respond and asked him if he was just trying to politicize the situation as well, and Graham completely ignored Wallace's question and Issa recklessness, and just said "thank God for some Republican control of one branch of the government," and then continued to play politics with the embassy attack in Libya.

And right on cue, the right is going nuts over Durbin's Monday morning quarterbacking reference. Break out the pearls and the smelling salts, we've got their latest fake controversy to be outraged over.

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We've had an awful lot of really terrible reporting on the so-called Fast and Furious "scandal," primarily from the right, Fox "News" and right wing hate talk and in the mean time, we also were lucky enough to have some good reporting on the issue, like Cenk here from this week, or Rachel Maddow from this week as well. This Saturday on Chris Hayes' show on MSNBC, we were treated to even more in depth coverage of the issue with this really great interview of Forbes reporter Katherine Eban.

If anyone has not read the entire article yet, here's the link: The truth about the Fast and Furious scandal.

Here's a rough transcript of the early portion of Eban's time on the show and the portion about the kids being paid for the gun walking and how ATF's hands were tied was just astounding to me, but in this day and age with the NRA having the hold it does over our members of Congress, nothing should be surprising these days.

HAYES: So Katherine, let's start with the context. I think one of the most important things about this article […] it was sort of unclear, like what was the whole problem it was set up to solve, that, it was a point unclear, like what exactly was the issue they faced? And one of the things you created is the context of this, which is that there is a massive flow right now, of weapons from the U.S. to Mexico. In fact, 70 percent of weapons recovered in Mexico come from the U.S., which is a startling statistic and that's largely due to the fact that Mexico has very tight gun restrictions and the U.S., particularly along the southwest border has particularly lax ones.

So what was the idea behind this operation to begin with?

EBAN: What's alleged or what in fact is the idea behind the operation?

HAYES: Let's go with the facts. I think the allegations have gotten a lot of time. So what was the idea?

EBAN: Basically the idea behind this ATF investigation, it's not a program, it's a single investigation called Fast and Furious was to stop straw purchasers from buying guns that they were then funneling to Mexican drug cartels.

HAYES: Explain what a straw purchaser is.

EBAN: A straw purchaser is basically somebody the cartels tap who can legally go and buy weapons, so in Arizona that might be an 18 year old kid who is not old enough to buy beer, but who, if he has no criminal record, or she, can go into a gun dealership and buy 50 AK47's, pay in cash and face no waiting period, no need for extra permits.

So there are lots of kids in Arizona for example who want to make a few extra bucks. This is what they do.

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Here we go again with Darrell Issa out there pushing the right-wing conspiracy theory started by Mike Vanderboegh, that the Fast and Furious debacle is really just a secret ploy to try to get more gun control laws enacted: GOP Oversight Chair Doubles Down On Wild Conspiracy Theory: Obama DOJ May Have Started Fast & Furious To Limit Access To Guns:

House Oversight Committee Chairman Darrell Issa (R-CA) doubled down on a right wing conspiracy theory this morning, again suggesting that the failed “Fast and Furious” operation was a secret scheme by Democrats designed to promote stronger gun control regulation. But he also admitted that he had absolutely no evidence to back the theory and likely never would. [...]

Issa is more than happy to continue to promote the theory — started and peddled by Mike Vanderboegh, a man who once called for militias to break the windows of members of Congress because of the passage of the Affordable Care Act — even though even he concedes even he does not believe he will ever be able to produce any evidence of the allegations.

Transcript below the fold.

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