Benghazi Committee Wine & Gun Club

The House Select Committee on Benghazi has dragged its hearings out for 17 months without finding anything damning. The hearings drag on anyway since, as House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R, CA-23) reminded us, the real purpose of the hearings is GOP Hillary bashing. Since the facts no longer matter,there’s no more fact-gathering. So how are committee members and staffers spending their time?  Former committee investigator Major Bradley F. Podliska (Air Force Reserve) tells the Times:

“With the slow progress, members have engaged in social activities like a wine club nicknamed ‘Wine Wednesdays,’ drinking from glasses imprinted with the words ‘Glacial Pace,’ a dig at Representative Elijah E. Cummings, Democrat of Maryland and the committee’s ranking member, Major Podliska said. Mr. Cummings used the term to question the speed of the committee’s work.
At one point, several Republican staff members formed a gun-buying club and discussed in the committee’s conference room the 9-millimeter Glock handguns they intended to buy and what type of monograms they would inscribe on them, Major Podliska said.”

— “Clinton Emails Became the New Focus of Benghazi Inquiry,” Eric Lipton, Noam Scheiber, and Michael S. Schmidt, New York Times

Mitt Romney, International Statesman

Republican presidential hopeful Mitt Romney has taken a bold stand on foreign policy, standing firmly atop the dead bodies of American diplomats in a sordid attempt to score political points. As is his habit, when it became clear that his charges were at variance with the facts, he repeated them. Perhaps that works in the murky world of private equity, but it’s less effective in international relations, where lives are at stake, not just other people’s money.

So what’s Mitt Romney’s position on Libya? Take your pick; he’s had five of them. And that was just last year.

Apart from his accounts in offshore banks and his LDS missionary work in France, Mr. Romney has had little experience in foreign affairs. He’s certainly a quick study, though. First a world tour of gaffes, insults, and intelligence leaks; now this.

Italians to Bomb Libya

Italy has announced that it will join NATO forces in bombing Libya. It’s done that before:

“Libya 1911: How an Italian pilot began the air war era,” Alan Johnston, BBC News

Image (“da Vinci Anticipates Aviation”) by Mike Licht. Download a copy here. Creative Commons license; credit Mike Licht, NotionsCapital.com

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