I recommend reading Sharyl Attkisson's latest, if y'all haven't.  There are lots of pull quotes, but these are my favorite:

"We're portrayed by Republicans as either being lying or idiots," said one Obama administration official who was part of the Benghazi response. "It's actually closer to us being idiots."

However, absent the CSG's collective advice, there's evidence that some high-level decision makers were unaware of all available resources. In October, on a phone call that included then-Deputy National Security Adviser Denis McDonough (now White House Chief of Staff), Vietor initially told CBS News: "I don't know what [FEST] is... it sounds antiquated."

"Sir, I'm taking Vice President Biden's place today.  I hope he enjoys his day off at the petting zoo."

Meh, stuff like this goes on all the time during hearings.  I'd have to watch what happened before this little tiff to get the context.  It's sad that people will watch a 2 minute clip and come forth with all sorts of conclusions.  But you can take my word, as someone who watched/listened to most of one of the House hearings on F & F, and watched/listened to most of the recent House hearing on Benghazi:

The media does a terrible job of reporting on these things, because doing a good job requires a lot of background work, and a long attention span.  Mix in a bit of True Believer that most of our press corpse have, and voila, you have a recipe for playing up what doesn't matter and amplifying the insignificant.

Noam Scheiber's spin on the IRS scandal in the New Republic, as discussed here, might perhaps be even better than Toobin's.  As a bonus at the link, you'll see another excellent point regarding the famous Legal Analyst's claptrap.

Bottom line: The Leftists writing these defenses aren't the least bit interested in the actual facts of what happened.

Stefano said she tried to start her own group called The Loyal Opposition between 2010-2011. But when she applied for tax exempt status, the IRS responded with a litany of questions that put her off.

“I was pregnant and on a single income and they were asking me questions like, ‘Are you on Facebook,” she said incredulously. “They wanted my personal Facebook page.”

“A lawyer told me, ‘They’re going to come after you and if you make one mistake they could ruin your life’,” Stefano added. “I like to think of myself as very tough, but I’m ashamed to say I was intimidated and frightened, and I shut it down.”

But remember:

A handful of I.R.S. employees saw this and tried, in a small way, to impose some small sense of order.

Excellent analysis.

Famous right-wing nutjob Dana Milbank:

But there would be more sympathy, and support, for Holder if he took seriously the lawmakers’ legitimate questions about his department’s abuse of power in the AP case. He may have recused himself from the leak probe that led to the searches of reporters’ phone records (a decision he took so lightly that he didn’t put it in writing), but he isn’t recused from defending the First Amendment.

Didn’t the deputy attorney general who approved the subpoenas have the same potential conflict of interest that Holder claimed?

“I don’t know.”

When did Holder recuse himself?

“I’m not sure.”

How much time was spent exploring alternatives to the subpoenas?

“I don’t know, because, as I said, I recused myself.”

But when the Justice Department undermines the Constitution, recusal is no excuse.

Pretty much everyone has acknowledged this.  It's a statement of the obvious.

A handful of I.R.S. employees saw this and tried, in a small way, to impose some small sense of order. For that, they’ll likely be ushered into bureaucratic oblivion.

That, however, is something else.

Eh, I think all steps should involve mentioning Bush.  I'm waiting for the Democrats to go full moonbat Internet commenter and start frothing at the mouth about how, in comparison to the millions of babies that Halliburton slaughtered in Iraq at the command of Cheney/Rumsfeld/Wolfowitz, what difference do any of these so-called "scandals" make?  Pelosi is already pretty much at this level, but the press studiously ignores her less, shall we say, coherent statements.

Hey, not talking about it is the second stage of bigotry.  We know your trickses, precious.

Yep, nailed it.  Those of us who deal with the output of government bureaucrats (albeit indirectly in my case) know just how feckless they are.  That's what happens when people have lots of power and little accountability, which is the current way of the world wrt federal government.

I remember the "no scandals" comment, and my jaw still aches.  You can't expect a genius like Brooks to spend time visiting websites like cleanupatf.org or waronguns.blogspot.com, though, so we'll just have to let the bruxism take its natural course.

The AP piece also begins with:

The seasoned diplomat who penned a highly critical report on security at a U.S. outpost in Benghazi, Libya, defended his scathing assessment but absolved then-Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton. "We knew where the responsibility rested," Thomas Pickering, whose career spans four decades, said Sunday.

Is this octogenarian's four decades relevant to his expertise in conducting investigations?  If so, why aren't we told that Greg Hicks has spent 22 years at State?  Wouldn't that be relevant, as well?

Of course, the ARB never interviewed Hillary.  Big surprise there.

This is also amusing:

"They've tried to point a finger at people more senior than where we found the decisions were made," Pickering said of Clinton's critics.

No mention of Hicks and Nordstrom specifically identifying Patrick Kennedy, who is more senior than anyone put on administrative leave, yet is below HRC.  Don't you see, it's all about politics!  The Republicans want to get Hillary!  So we'll just ignore what the whistleblowers actually testified to.

And they're still at it at AP:

The hourslong hearing produced no major revelation but renewed interest in the attacks that happened during the lead-up to the November 2012 presidential election.

We've also got:

Pickering and Mullen's scathing report released in December found that "systematic failures and leadership and management deficiencies at senior levels" of the State Department meant that security was "inadequate for Benghazi and grossly inadequate to deal with the attack that took place."

There's the "Scathing report" language.  It's like the duty every MSM reporter had to refer to F & F as "botched" or "flawed".  They just copy the BS off of each other, I suppose.  

Senior levels, my backside.

We're making other people pay for your pills whether they like it or not! #HappyMothersDay, suckers!

Access.  Gotta love the way that word is used now.

Clearly, everyone who asks Jay Carney questions is a member of the GOP.  That makes so much sense.