Is This a Scandal—Or a ‘Scandal?’ [View all]

[eridani]

http://www.nationofchange.org/2015/03/05/is-this-a-scandal-or-a-scandal/

To date, only one of them has complied: Hillary Clinton. Her aides provided more than 50,000 emails to the government — and sent about 300 to the House Select Committee that is forever investigating Benghazi.

Angry Republicans on that committee, plainly frustrated by years of failure to find any evidence that incriminates Clinton or President Obama in the loony conspiracy theories cherished by tea party Republicans, are behind the email stories first published by The New York Times. In fact, Clinton’s use of a private account has been publicly known for more than two years — but that fact didn’t seem to trouble the Republicans until now, as she prepares to run for president. And today the House Government Operations Committee, chaired by Rep. Jason Chaffetz — a right-wing extremist whose own business card lists his Gmail address – is poised to take up the “investigation.”

This unappetizing scenario is most reminiscent of the bad old days, when a House committee chair “investigated” the tragic suicide of White House aide Vince Foster by pumping several pistol rounds into a watermelon in his backyard. Back then, various Senate and House committees chaired by Republicans endlessly “investigated” Whitewater, the FBI files, and other putatively scandalous matters, at a cost of tens of millions of dollars, with no purpose beyond selective, salacious leaks to reporters at the top newspapers and networks. Then everybody would feign outrage for a day or two, and the latest whatever would pass into oblivion.