[BigV]

Benghazi as a black eye, *shrug*. I can see an argument for that conclusion. That we can be invincible everywhere, an attitude I sense in the conversations I hear in the media, especially "conservative" media, is an expensive pipe dream. The bad that happened is not the bad that's being squawked about, notably about who knew what when and how did the talking points get changed. That part is ridiculous. How we could have better secured our facilities and our people is a much more important question, but that's not as interesting since it involves facts that are not unambiguously embarrassing to the Obama Administration, therefore, not newsworthy.

The IRS's behavior is also rational, though they seem to have been blind to the optics of such profiling-esque behavior. The rules distinguishing 501c(3) and 501c(4) (just from memory, don't quote me on the section names please) are vague, overlapping, and subjective. The IRS is charged to make judgements like this and I am glad to hear they're making informed judgements. One of the parameters for whether or not the "social good" organization qualifies for tax exempt status is that their political work not exceed 49% of their efforts. That kind of hairsplitting can only be done (to the spirit and the letter of the law) with lots of information, hence a lot of questions. Furthermore, someone who puts the name of an extremely popular political movement in the name of their outfit is begging to be asked about it, ffs.

The broad subpoena from the Justice Department that gave investigators extraordinary access to phone records of the Associated Press is the most troubling story in this list. There are several increasingly drastic steps that can be taken in such an investigation and it seems the Justice Department skipped lots of them, including informing the AP that they were under investigation. I like for the good guys to catch the bad guys, but I believe it is the beginning of the end when we make it easy for these good guys by acceding to their requests to skip the rules "just this one time, oh, come on, it's sooo important". That's a dangerous habit to adopt.

The military sex scandals are only scandals because in two recent cases the alleged perpetrators were themselves placed in positions of authority to prevent *exactly this* kind of bad behavior. That's what makes it scandalous, but the behavior is rampant. The most difficult aspect of this devilishly difficult problem is the abuse of power, the very power that makes the military work--respect for authority and the chain of command. I don't have any bright ideas as to how to make it better, this one makes me sad and angry.