Lt. Col. Oliver North, USMC (Ret) has for quite some time been a journalist’s journalist, doing what the bulk of those mistakenly called “journalists” of the mainstream media should be doing but aren’t: reporting the truth rather than left wing political propaganda or omission/spin/whatever else is employed by the lying liars of the alphabet networks, the New York Times and the rest of that crowd.

In his latest column, he talks about the Benghazi cover-up which has become one of the banes of the Obama Administration’s left wing existence. I say “one of” because a few more have materialized of late, not least among which is the one involving the IRS in which those particular fellows and fellowettes have been putting in herculean efforts to single out conservative political groups for their dubious attentions.

But let’s stick to the issue at hand, which is Benghazi and what Col. North has to say about the events that transpired there in September, 2012. We try to copy and paste only a few key paragraphs when we link to articles and columns by others, but this one is homogeneously “key” from the first word to the last.

As published in Human Events.

We all know about the notorious Obama “Kill List.” CIA Director John Brennan proudly told us about that last year when he described how the O-Team decides which Americans should be executed by Hellfire Missile fired from remotely piloted aircraft (RPAs). Why hasn’t the White House used this capability to “take out” those who killed our diplomats in Benghazi, Libya last year?

Clip and save this column. Herein are some important events, names, places – facts your children and grandchildren will need to know about these perilous times:

Tuesday, September 11, 2012, Benghazi, Libya. The U.S. consulate and a diplomatic annex in this city on the Mediterranean coast are assaulted and destroyed by radical Islamic terrorists. Four American citizens: U.S. Ambassador Christopher Stevens, Foreign Service Officer Sean Smith and two former Navy SEALS, Glen Doherty and Tyrone Woods, are killed during two attacks over a seven-hour period. Officials in Washington take no action to stop the attacks or save lives.

Wednesday, September 12, 2012. The President, standing beside Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton, describes what happened in Benghazi as “an outrageous attack” and promises, “We will not waiver in our commitment to see that justice is done for this terrible act. And make no mistake, justice will be done.” For weeks thereafter, White House officials, the Secretary of State and lesser government functionaries, reiterate Obama’s claim the attack was fomented by a crude anti-Muslim video posted on the Internet. It’s not true.

Thursday, October 4, 2012. Thirty-two days before the presidential election, and desperate to preserve the fiction that “al Qaeda is on the ropes” because “Osama bin Laden is dead,” the State Department announces formation of an “Accountability Review Board” (ARB) headed by former U.S. Ambassador Tom Pickering and a recently retired Joint Chiefs Chairman. Though the Reagan White House provided Pickering with extraordinary additional security when he was threatened by terrorists in El Salvador, the ARB report, delivered on December 20, 2012, found “mid-level State Department officials” were responsible for security lapses in Benghazi.

Wednesday, Jan 23, 2013. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton testifies under oath before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. In response to questions posed by Senator Ron Johnson (R-WI) about who attacked the U.S. diplomatic mission in Benghazi and why, she explodes: “What difference at this point does it make?”

Wednesday, May 8, 2013, three brave men testify before the House Government Reform Committee about the lies, misfeasance, and incompetence in the Obama administration’s handling of the jihadist attack on the U.S. diplomatic mission in Benghazi. Gregory N. Hicks, deputy chief of mission at the U.S. Embassy in Libya, the highest-ranking American diplomat in the country during the attacks; Mark I. Thompson, a former U.S. Marine and operations coordinator for the State Department’s Counterterrorism Bureau; and Eric Nordstrom, formerly the senior diplomatic security officer in Libya, all testify about what really happened on 9-11-12. To avail themselves of legal protections against retribution, all three claim status as “whistleblowers.”

Their testimony indicts the President, the Secretary of State and Administration minions of incompetence and lying to the public about what happened before, during and after the Benghazi attacks. Supporters of the Obama regime describe the three as “politically motivated” and claim there is “nothing new” in what they said. That’s not true either. Herewith, a few important facts we now know thanks to the courage of these three men:

Though radical Islamists routinely use “anniversaries” to motivate adherents to violence, the Obama administration did absolutely nothing to anticipate such a possibility by pre-positioning quick-reaction military forces in the Middle East prior to the 9-11-12 attacks. Worse, instead of granting Ambassador Stevens’ repeated requests for additional security assets, the O-Team actually reduced U.S. security personnel in Libya. This abysmal failure reflects, inter alia, a near total deficit of human intelligence (HUMINT). The Ambassador and three other Americans paid for this misfeasance with their lives.

In the midst of the deadly attacks in Benghazi, bureaucratic inertia and infighting in Washington prevented any response which might have saved lives. In the aftermath, the Obama administration insulted the Libyan government by refuting their assertion that the perpetrators were radical Islamists. The result: more than two weeks before FBI agents could visit “the scene of the crime.”

Since 9-11-12, the Benghazi terror attack has been probed by five separate committees of Congress. The State Department’s ARB is at best a whitewash. Congressman Frank Wolf (R-VA) and more than 140 of his colleagues have called for a bi-partisan select committee of both houses to fully investigate the matter. Senators John McCain and Lindsey Graham support the proposal. It’s time – unless Congress wants to participate in a cover up.

It’s time – unless Congress wants to participate in a cover up…

Well said in the column and especially on that last; We here at Hard Astarboard have been wondering, for some time now, when it is that the Republicans in Congress are going to start remembering where their votes come from and start, as such, doing their job.

As is always the case, Thomas Sowell strikes right at the heart of the matter in this excellent column.

Words that replace thought

If there is ever a contest for words that substitute for thought, “diversity” should be recognized as the undisputed world champion.

You don’t need a speck of evidence, or a single step of logic, when you rhapsodize about the supposed benefits of diversity. The very idea of testing this wonderful, magical word against something as ugly as reality seems almost sordid.

To ask whether institutions that promote diversity 24/7 end up with better or worse relations between the races than institutions that pay no attention to it is only to get yourself regarded as a bad person. To cite hard evidence that places obsessed with diversity have worse race relations is to risk getting yourself labeled an incorrigible racist. Free thinking is not free.

Read On…

From Ron Capshaw via Human Events

For those who believe, like the administration that Second Amendment enthusiasms are expressed solely by the black-helicopter-fearing Right, I offer a decided socialist.

George Orwell, who Christopher Hitchens once wrote, was “conservative about many things but not politics,” nevertheless would be more in tune today with the anti-gun control crowd than any fellow socialists.

The easy riposte to this claim from the Left would be that it is only natural that a former coolie-crushing colonial policeman such as Orwell would be a gun enthusiast.

But Orwell viewed gun control through a socialist and not any law-and-order lens:

That rifle hanging on the wall
of the working-class flat or labourer’s cottage
is the symbol of democracy.
It is our job to see that it stays there.

These sentiments were not based on any theory, but hard worn experience. As a soldier on the Loyalist side during the Spanish Civil War, Orwell was aware that it was only the citizenry breaking into the armory that initially repelled Franco’s fascist rebellion. When Stalin sought to import his murderous purge trials into Spain, and thus kill off any leftist opposition, his first order of business was confiscating their weapons. Having the misfortune of belonging to a Trotskyite militia, Orwell engaged in street fighting with these gun confiscators.

This is one excellent article.

Which makes a lot of sense to me, as it apparently does to Ann Coulter, as well.

From Michael Ledeen at PJ Media:

The War Intensifies. We Babble About Peace and Retreat.

Obama lectures about peace, but the war intensifies. North Korea has cut the hotline with the south, after threatening war, and warns of imminent attack. The Saudis have once again warned Iran to stay away from Abu Musa island. What if they don’t? Meanwhile, a leading cleric warns of domestic unrest in the kingdom (h/t Drudge), where the Iranians have long incited the Shi’a minority to confront the Wahabbi royal family. Small and not-so-small armies are marching over and around Syria. It is said that we are training the Free Syrian Army at a base in Jordan. Cyberattacks against our corporations and government agencies are so common they barely warrant news coverage. Bombs and suicide attacks are daily events in Iraq and Afghanistan. A major Iranian port explodes. The Iranians are shipping Chinese weapons to Shi’a insurgents in Yemen.

Obama, leading with his behind, swears he’s not bluffing, but his actions are those of a man digging deeper into his bomb shelter…adding missile defense on the West Coast, pondering another site on the East Coast. Of the United States. And he locks out American tourists from the White House.

The entire piece is here.

This must be Obama’s rendition of protecting America from enemies, foreign and…

Ann Coulter’s got another one of her many winners up, titled TROUBLE IN THE NANNY STATE, that exposes, as usual, the idiocy and “any values but American ones” philosophy of liberals.

Like the proverbial monkey typing for infinity and getting Shakespeare, Mayor Bloomberg’s obsession with reforming New Yorkers’ health has finally produced a brilliant ad campaign.

Posters are popping up in subway stations and bus stops giving statistics about teen pregnancy that show cute little kids saying things like, “Honestly, Mom … chances are he won’t stay with you. What happens to me?” and “I’m twice as likely not to graduate high school because you had me as a teen.”

(Based on a recent CBS report, the kid could add, “Then again, I’m in the New York City public school system, so even if I graduate I won’t be able to read.”)

It’s one thing to stigmatize “Big Gulp” drinkers, but liberals are hopping mad at this attempt to stigmatize teen pregnancy, 90 percent of which is unwed. To put it another way, if you’re a New York teen with a distended belly these days, it had better be because you’re pregnant.

Planned Parenthood’s Haydee Morales complained that the ads are creating “stigma” and “negative public opinions about teen pregnancy.” (I’m pretty sure that’s the basic idea.)

Instead, Morales suggested “helping teens access health care, birth control and high-quality sexual and reproductive health education.” Like the kind they got before becoming pregnant, you mean? Are you new here, Haydee?

Snip!

Unwed mothers have been the perennial excuse for big government, going back to Richard Cloward and Frances Fox Piven, who plotted in the 1960s to create broken families, welfare dependency and urban riots to pave the way for socialist revolution.

That’s why single mothers are revered victims — victims in need of an ever-expanding social safety net, staffed with well-pensioned government workers. As described in that great book, “Guilty: Liberal ‘Victims’ and Their Assault on America,” liberals concoct fake victims in order to victimize the rest of us.

The only thing single mothers are “victims” of is their own choice to have sex with men they’re not married to. Liberals seem to believe that drinking soda is voluntary, but getting pregnant is more like catching the flu.

It would be hard to make the case that fast food, plastic bags and cigarettes do more damage than single motherhood.

Controlling for socioeconomic status, race and place of residence, the strongest predictor of whether a person will end up in prison is that he was raised by a single mother.

At least 70 percent of juvenile murderers, pregnant teenagers, high school dropouts, teen suicides, runaways and juvenile delinquents were raised by single mothers.

A study back in 1990 by the Progressive Policy Institute showed that, absent single motherhood, there would be no difference in black and white crime rates.

So liberals don’t try to make that case. They just say they’re against “shaming” and then go back to shaming gun owners, non-recyclers, smokers and “Big Gulp” aficionados — while subsidizing illegitimacy.

The column is here.

This one from The Conservative Daily News, speakum big truth…

Obama: Law Breaker-In-Chief

“I, [President's Name] do solemnly swear, that I will faithfully execute the office of President of the United States, and will, to the best of my ability, preserve protect and defend the Constitution of the United States, so help me God.”

That is the oath of office that all Presidents take when they are sworn in as President of The United States. However, it seems that Obama takes that oath with a grain of salt; I have heard Obama say “We are a nation of laws,” yet he seems to pick and choose what laws he will enforce. How can our Commander In Chief pick what laws to enforce and what laws he will ignore, what kind of message does that send?

Once again, he proves that he is not a President of all the people, but he only cares about the people that are behind his Liberal agenda. A President should uphold all the laws of the land, whether he agrees with them or not, if any of us would pick and choose what laws to follow, we would without a doubt be thrown into jail. How can we as a people, trust our own President to do the right thing, when he ignores the very laws he is sworn to uphold.

We have immigration laws in this country, which the President does not seem to care about. Our Southern boarders are being overrun with illegal aliens, but our President seems to favor them more than the citizens that live in those areas. He ties the hands of law enforcement and when Governors try to pass laws to protect their citizens, he takes them to court. He passes judgment on which illegal should go to jail and which one should go free, when they all broke the law by coming here illegally.

We have the Defense Of Marriage Act in this country, yet he comes right out and tells the Justice Department not to enforce it. The Presidents feelings about that law should not matter, he has sworn to uphold it, yet he does not. Nowhere in the Constitution or the Bill Of Rights does it say that marriage is a right. Yet when the people of California voted against same sex marriage, he sends briefs to the Supreme Court telling them they should overturn what the people have voted for, I guess he now chooses what rights are and the voice of the people be damned.

Read the entire piece here, with a great big Amen!

This one by Mark Steyn is just too funny….

A few weeks ago, Ann Coulter announced that she was bored of American politics and spending her days watching Turner Classic Movies. I confess that, when it comes to Beltway melodrama, I too am fighting vainly the old ennui, and minded to plump up the pillows and settle back with a bucket of bonbons and a beribboned Shih-tzu for an all-night Norma Shearer marathon.

At least, unlike Washington, there’s a chance you may catch something you haven’t already seen a hundred times before. For example, I’ve a yen to see “Roberta” (RKO, 1935), in which Irene Dunne sings:

“Yesterdays

Yesterdays

Days I knew as happy sweet sequester’d days …”

I believe that was the last known use of this blameless and mellifluous word until it was conscripted by the political class for this month’s dreary Mayan Apocalypse of the Month thrill ride. Say what you like about those Mayan guys, but they only schedule an apocalypse once every 5,126 years. Only Washington would try to pull it off every six weeks.

If I understand correctly, by the time you read this, the planes will be dropping from the skies; the drip-feeds in every emergency room will be dry; every creature on the endangered species list will have broken free from our pristine federally manned national parks to be left for roadkill in the potholed asphalt of America’s crumbling interstates; you’ll turn on your bathroom faucet only to find the town reservoir choked with fecal coliform; the ebola virus will be rampant across Ohio, Florida, New Hampshire, and other swing states, where it will nevertheless enjoy higher approval ratings than Mario Rubio and every other prospective GOP nominee.

LOL…Read the entire column here.

This column is spot on.

…Meanwhile, hot from the fiscal-cliff fiasco, the media are already eagerly anticipating the next in the series of monthly capitulations by Republicans, this time on the debt ceiling. While I was abroad, a Nobel Prize-winning economist, a Harvard professor of constitutional law, a prominent congressman and various other American eminencies apparently had a sober and serious discussion on whether the United States Treasury could circumvent the debt constraints by minting a trillion-dollar platinum coin. Although Joe Weisenthal of Business Insider called the trillion-dollar coin “the most important fiscal policy debate you’ll ever see in your life,” most Democratic pundits appeared to favor the idea for the more straightforward joy it affords in sticking it to the House Republicans. No more tedious whining about spending from GOP congressmen. Next time Paul Ryan shows up in committee demanding to know about deficit reduction plans, all the Treasury Secretary has to do is pull out a handful of trillion-dollar coins from down the back of the sofa and tell him to keep the change.

The trillion-dollar groat fever ran a vague bell with me. Way back in 1893, Mark Twain wrote a short story called “The Million Pound Bank Note,” which in the 1950s Ronald Neame made into a rather droll film. A penniless American down and out in London (Gregory Peck) is presented by two eccentric Englishmen (Ronald Squire and Wilfrid Hyde-White) with a million-pound note, which they have persuaded the Bank of England to print in order to settle a wager. One of the English chaps believes that simple possession of the note will allow the destitute Yank to live the high life without ever having to spend a shilling. And so it proves. He goes to the pub for lunch, offers the note, and the innkeeper explains that he’s unable to make change for a million pounds, but is honored to feed him anyway. He then goes to be fitted for a suit, and again the tailor regrets that he can’t provide change for a million pounds but delightedly measures him for dress suits, silk shirts and all the rest. I always liked the line Mark Twain’s protagonist uses on a duke’s niece he’s sweet on: He tells her “I hadn’t a cent in the world but just the million pound note.”

That’s Paul Krugman’s solution for America as it prepares to bust through another laughably named “debt limit”: We’d be a nation that hasn’t a cent in the world but just a trillion-dollar coin – and what more do we need? As with Gregory Peck in the movie, the mere fact of the coin’s existence would ensure we could go on living large. Indeed, aside from inflating a million quid to a trillion bucks, Professor Krugman’s proposal economically prunes the sprawling cast of the film down to an off-Broadway one-man show with Uncle Sam playing every part: A penniless Yank (Uncle Sam) runs into a wealthy benefactor (Uncle Sam) who has persuaded the banking authorities (Uncle Sam) to mint a trillion-dollar coin that will allow Uncle Sam (played by Uncle Sam) to extend an unending line of credit to Uncle Sam (also played by Uncle Sam).

This seems likely to work. As for the love interest, in the final scene, Paul Krugman takes his fake dead girlfriend (played by Barack Obama’s composite girlfriend) to a swank restaurant and buys her the world’s most expensive bottle of champagne (played by Lance Armstrong’s urine sample).

The entire column is here.

Ann Coulter believes, and she gets no argument here, that what the GOP needs to do is make the Democrats OWN The Obama Economy.

Read On!