Three scandals – which will win?
May 15, 2013, 7:02 AM | Updated: 7:56 am
(AP Photo/Cliff Owen, File)
We have three active Washington scandals. Benghazi. The IRS targeting conservatives. And the latest one – the justice department seizing the phone records of Associated Press reporters.
The IRS scandal is a dead end. Oh, I’m sure someone will be fired, but those intrusive questions that the IRS was posing to various conservative groups? They pose the same intrusive questions to any group claiming to be a social welfare organization. It turns out that many of these social welfare organizations – left and right – are clearly campaign organizations fishing for tax deductions. Of course, the IRS should not have confined its intrusive questions to conservatives, but as for the questions themselves – they ask them all the time.
As for the FBI seizing the phone records of AP reporters – the records of who they called and who called them? This is an absolutely outrageous assault on the free press.
But the FBI was using the records to determine who leaked information about a failed al Qaeda plot to blow up an airplane.
And you get a hint from the Attorney General what the FBI’s defense is likely to be, “It is the top two or three most serious leaks that I’ve ever seen that put the American people at risk.”
Translation – sorry if we offended the mainstream media, but we’re trying to stop planes from blowing up.
Leaving the one scandal that has legs. Benghazi. Yes, it’s already been investigated and re-investigated, but it has an aspect the others don’t: It’s the only one that could potentially hurt Hillary Clinton. And unless she signs a sworn oath that she will not run for president nor serve if elected against her will, that to be the one that rises once again to the top.
It’s the only one with the potential to make Hillary Clinton think twice about running at all.