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Following President Obama's big speech this Thursday on national security and counterterrorism, The Daily Show's Jon Stewart took the opportunity to go after the Obama administration and the DOJ for their willingness to go after whistleblowers, journalists, potheads, hackers and even people who just lied on their mortgage applications, while refusing to prosecute a single Wall Street banker.

While I agree with Stewart on majority of his criticisms here, I'd use the term "journalist" lightly when it comes to anyone from Fox and as Tommy Christopher over at Mediaite pointed out, James Rosen was not just simply reporting that North Korea wanted to do more nuclear tests to draw the government scrutiny he did, as Stewart asserted here.

I'd also like to hear more about that AP story and what was going on there before rushing to judgement as well, although I think the bigger argument ought to be over all of our privacy rights and just how much of that has been thrown out the window.

In an age following the hysteria right after 9-11 and the Patriot Act and with the NSA pretty well out of control along with most corporations who aren't kept in check with protecting our private information, I'm glad to see there is at long at last some attention being drawn to the subject.

It's pitiful that it took some members of our corporate media finally being subjected to what sadly is potentially perfectly legal overreach for them to care at all about what's been happening to a whole bunch of our citizens for years on end now, and well before Barack Obama was elected president. Maybe they could do something constructive like calling for members of Congress and President Obama to roll back some of the horrid legislation that was passed during the Bush administration. But then, who am I kidding... right? They'd rather just use this as an excuse to pile on with the scandal-mongering we've seen over the last half a year or so.

But back to The Daily Show segment above, when it comes to criticism about these Wall Street bankers run amok and the fact that not a one of them has ever gone to jail, while they're aggressively going after things like medical marijuana dispensaries, or someone who lied about their income on their mortgage papers, or whistleblowers who are actually trying to uncover government malfeasance, and not the Benghazi/IRS Tourette syndrome scandal-mongering we've been subjected to -- by all means, have at them Jon Stewart.

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Hey what do you know -- someone on Morning Joe got to call out a Republican for pulling factoids out of their posterior without Scarborough there screaming over them and interrupting. I guess he was taking a break during this segment. Don't worry though, his co-host Mika Brzezinski did her best to keep up scandal-mongering in his absence.

As a rule, you may as well turn on just Fox and be done with it than to sit through any of this show on MSNBC, but you do have some rare occasions where something like this happens: MSNBC’s ‘Morning Joe’ Slams GOP Chair For Insinuating Obama Is Involved In IRS Scandal:

On MSNBC’s Morning Joe Thursday morning, panelist John Heilemann got into a heated argument with GOP Chairman Reince Priebus over President Obama’s role in the targeting of conservative groups applying for 501(c)4 status. Priebus offered a series of comments trying to tie Obama to the scandal — which Republicans have attempted to frame the IRS scandal as Obama’s ‘Watergate’ moment — leading Heilemann to shout “that’s an assertion that’s not actually borne out by any of the facts”:

HEILEMANN: Okay. You used two phrases just now saying we have to wait for the facts but I’m entitled to my opinion and before we have the facts just wait. You then said it’s lawlessness and guerrilla warfare and Obama is in the middle of. You say we need to have all of the facts before we can determine whether President Obama is in the middle of it and now you’re asserting the fact he’s in the middle of it. That is your public tweet.

PRIEBUS: I would say it is consistent. When I start out an investigation and say it’s low level employees in Cincinnati and then you find out there are senior level people in Washington. Then Pfeiffer goes on five Sunday morning shows and says the White House didn’t know anything about this and two days later you figure out that the chief of staff actually knew about it. You have a hundred and, what? 15 visits from Shulman to the White House and 132 Democratic senators pleading with the IRS to investigate this. And the Chief of Staff of the White House is now involved or at least knew about it when — two days earlier Pfeiffer said they didn’t know about it.

HEILEMANN: I thought you said you have the facts you need. If you don’t have the facts you need why are you saying he’s in the middle of it?

Never mind as they noted that the IG's report found nothing of the kind, and as Lawrence O'Donnell has been pointing out over and over again, the real scandal here is that any of these organizations doing political activities have been given tax exempt status as "social welfare" groups.

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The Daily Show's Jon Stewart ripped former Reagan speech writer and fan girl Peggy Noonan for her selective memory on Meet the Press this past Sunday where she seemed to forget all about her former boss St. Ronnie and his problem called Iran-Contra.

STEWART: Now, think hard Peggy Noonan. Never in your lifetime have you seen a scandal this bad? What if the president secretely sold weapons to Iran in return for American hostages and then used the proceeds to illegally fund a bunch of coked up right-wing jungle rapists in Nicaragua? Ring a bell? Here's a hint. You worked in his White House as a high profile speech writer.

Stewart followed up by playing some old footage of her from back in 2001, where she was making excuses for The Gipper and claiming that he "wanted to help the hostages" "but it spun out of control and Reagan by the end was surprised at some of the things that had happened." And of course it was also just "bad luck."

STEWART: Bad luck! Reagan was just on the wrong place at the wrong time. Specifically the White House during his own administration. This Iran-Contra wasn't a ahhmmm... it wasn't a scandal.

NOONAN from 2002: It was a mistake. It wasn't a disaster, but it was a mistake.

STEWART: Mistake! It's like writing the wrong date on a check... or writing the wrong address on a box marked weapons. Oops...

So how about Obama? Is he off the hook then for his mistakes?

Of course it goes without saying that those two aren't held the same standard in Noonan-world. After reading some of her book about her imaginary boyfriend, Stewart wrapped things up by noting:

STEWART: But here's the deal. You can't really get so upset about Obama if you've written the book, Fifty Shades of Greygan.

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ABC's Jonathan Karl and his part in helping to feed the scandal-mongering over Benghazi wasn't the only recent Republican drummed up outrage Stephen Colbert decided to take on during this Monday's show. After his "Mazda-Scandal Booth" on Benghazi, Colbert took his next turn in the booth on the IRS, grasping "wildly at any accusation that floats past."

And as Arturo Garcia from Raw Story reported, here's what he found: Colbert concludes tea partiers are ‘a bunch of pussies’ after consulting his lawyer:

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Unlike his cohort Jon Stewart, who hasn't bothered to mention Jonathan Karl's Benghazi email scandal all week, Stephen Colbert had no problem taking the ABC reporter to the woodshed and giving him the treatment he deserved after his non-apology over the weekend.

Bruinkid over at KOS actually took the time to transcribe the whole show which I'll share part of here: Stephen Colbert lays waste to ABC's Jonathan Karl for his Benghazi lies:

And tonight's scandal is... Benghazi!!

Yes, Benghazi. Following the tragic attacks of eight months ago, Benghazi, and the rumored cover-up, has become problem #1 for the Obama administration. [...]

Yes, Benghazi is the biggest scandal since sliced bread was caught funneling money to Nicaraguan death squads. And folks, if Republicans are angry now, imagine how they'll feel when they learn where Benghazi is. [...]

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As we already discussed here, Donald Rumsfeld found himself getting a nice softball interview from NBC's David Gregory this weekend on Meet the Press, but not all of his book tour has gone quite as smoothly as the big wet kiss he got from Gregory this Sunday.

Majority FM's Sam Seder walked his listeners though some of the highlights of Rumsfeld's contentious interview with American Public Media's Kai Ryssdal, who, as the KOS diary I linked in the prior post on the subject noted, asked "Rumsfeld some of the questions we've all wanted to ask."

As Seder noted, Rumsfeld might be looking to find himself a new publicist after that one, since he certainly didn't expect anyone to actually hold him accountable for his actions during the Bush administration and our invasion of Iraq. Seder says he hopes that it's not the last time he's subjected to an interview like this one because the government sure isn't going to hold him accountable, but I wouldn't hold my breath on whether he'll let it happen ever again.

Sadly, we're not going to see the corporate media hold him accountable either. We're going to see more interviews like the shameful one we got from David Gregory or we won't see him on the air at all.

One final note on the video above: Seder incorrectly identified Kai Ryssdal as working for NPR. He works for APM.

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I'm not sure what happened, but it appears Candy Crowley has either gotten tired of being beaten up on by right-wingers for being unfair to poor old Mittens during the presidential debates, or she's developed a really bad case of amnesia since she first stunned Romney by fact checking him when he claimed that President Obama did not call the attack in Libya an act of terror.

Whatever the reason, she did a complete 180 and began the right's game of parsing the President's words when interviewing White House advisor Dan Pfeiffer this Sunday: CNN's Crowley Adopts False Right-Wing Claim That Obama Didn't Call Benghazi A Terrorist Attack.

Transcript via CNN below the fold.

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What does $23 million in donations to public television get you? A lot more than a tote bag, according to The New Yorker’s Jane Mayer. A New York public television outlet, WNET, went to great lengths to placate conservative industrialist David Koch as PBS aired an Alex Gibney documentary on income inequality that focused on the conservative billionaire. The president of WNET called Koch and offered to let him film a roundtable discussion that would air after the documentary, among other conciliatory gestures. The controversy reportedly also prompted PBS to back off another Koch-focused documentary in the pipeline. All the placation didn’t work: Koch resigned from his position on WNET’s board and reportedly canceled a large donation. Also, according to Koch’s doorman, Koch’s philanthropy doesn’t extend to tips. “We would never get a smile from Mr. Koch,” he says in the Gibney film. “Fifty-dollar check for Christmas, too—yeah, I mean, a check! At least you could give us cash.”

Jane Mayer:

Shortly before “Park Avenue” aired, Melissa Cohlmia, the chief spokesperson for Koch Industries, sent WNET a two-paragraph statement criticizing the film as “disappointing and divisive.” Cohlmia acknowledges, however, that neither she nor Koch had watched it. WNET aired the statement, unedited, immediately after the film. Cohlmia said that she based the critique on the trailer.

The weekend before “Park Avenue” aired, Gibney said, it was clear that “something weird had happened.” Shapiro called him at home. “He was very upset,” Gibney said. “They were thinking of pulling the program.” Gibney was told that the most pressing problem was Charles Schumer, the Democratic senator from New York. Schumer’s staff had called WNET, arguing that “Park Avenue” falsely accused the Senator of supporting tax loopholes for hedge-fund managers. Gibney double-checked his research and stood by his interpretation. Nevertheless, Shapiro told him that he planned to allow Schumer to add a response after the broadcast. But, Gibney noted, “Shapiro told me nothing about the Kochs.”

Gibney gives credit to Shapiro and WNET for airing his film uncensored. He is disappointed, though, that the station gave Koch and Schumer the last word. “They tried to undercut the credibility of the film, and I had no opportunity to defend it,” he said. Moreover, WNET replaced the introduction to “Park Avenue,” which was delivered by the actor Stanley Tucci, with one calling the film “controversial” and “provocative.” Gibney noted that he had asked to interview the Kochs while making “Park Avenue,” but they had refused. Cohlmia initially denied this, but after Gibney’s office provided me with the relevant e-mails she acknowledged that she had been contacted.

Shapiro emphasized that, by showing the Gibney film, he had made “the right call.” Still, spokespeople at WNET and PBS conceded that the decision to run the rebuttals was unprecedented. Indeed, it was like appending Letters to the Editor to a front-page article. Gibney asked me, “Why is WNET offering Mr. Koch special favors? And why did the station allow Koch to offer a critique of a film he hadn’t even seen? Money. Money talks.” He added that the Kochs’ willingness to issue a disclaimer without seeing the film “does not give me much confidence about how they might run the Tribune’s newspapers.”

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Deputy White House Communications Director Dan Pfeiffer told ABC's George Stephanopoulos that Republicans owed Susan Rice an apology after they misled the country about the Benghazi emails -- a story that was hyped by his network's correspondent Jonathan Karl. After Stephanopoulos feigned ignorance on the matter, Pfeiffer should have told him ABC owes her an apology as well.

Karl gave a sorry excuse for apology this weekend, saying that he regrets that "the email was quoted incorrectly." More like he regrets getting caught. So to sum things up after reading his statement and listening to this interview -- not only is ABC refusing to come clean about the names of the Republicans who lied to them and conned them into hyping and giving new life to this so-called scandal that was being ignored by most of the networks other than Fox until Karl and ABC decided to lend it some credibility -- Stephanopoulos decides to sit there and pretend he doesn't have any idea why someone might want Republicans to apologize to Susan Rice after what they did to her.

Instead he decided to ask Pfeiffer about the emails without a word on Karl's "apology" or any acknowledgement of his network helping to spread lies for Republicans by hyping doctored versions of them. Stephanopoulos should have been opening This Week with a statement from the network on their shoddy "journalism" and with Karl's statement instead of trying to pretend it didn't happen.

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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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