memeorandum: Diplomat: Request for Special Ops team in Benghazi denied (Washington Post)

10:00 AM ET, May 9, 2013

Top Items:

Official Offers Account From Libya of Benghazi Attack — WASHINGTON — A State Department official presented a minute-by-minute account on Wednesday of what happened during the seige of the diplomatic compound in Benghazi last Sept. 11, offering the first public testimony from an American official …

Discussion: ThinkProgress, Power Line, Sky Dancing, Mediaite, Hot Air, American Spectator, Riehl World News, The Hugh Hewitt Show, Patterico's Pontifications, The Other McCain, msnbc.com, The Week, Daily Kos, Washington Wire, The BLT, Doug Ross, Michelle Malkin and The Hill

Michael Hirsh / NationalJournal.com:

Benghazi: Incompetence, But No Cover-up — The hearings deepen the tragedy, but not the scandal. — There was tragic incompetence, plainly, in the Obama administration's handling of the Benghazi attacks, and even possibly some political calculation. It is a record that may well come …

Discussion: Speaker.gov, Daily Mail, Outside the Beltway, protein wisdom, The Moderate Voice, National Review, American Power and Most Recent

Washington Post:

Diplomat: Request for Special Ops team in Benghazi denied — The veteran diplomat who oversaw the response to the deadly attacks on U.S. installations in eastern Libya last year offered a riveting account on Wednesday of that frantic night, as House Republicans sought to use his testimony …

Discussion: The Maddow Blog, americanthinker.com, Betsy's Page, Mother Jones, BBC, Yahoo! News, Rush Limbaugh, New York Times, The Week, Washington Wire and National Review

John Podhoretz / New York Post:

Failings of Bam & Hill laid bare — After a remarkable House hearing yesterday, we can say this with almost complete certainty: The Obama administration knew perfectly well that last year's Sept. 11 attack on Americans and American facilities in Benghazi was a terrorist act …

Discussion: PJ Media and Politico

Tom Bevan / Real Clear Politics:

A Coverup Laid Bare — Thanks to House Republicans, Americans finally got to hear from the State Department officials the Obama administration never wanted to testify. They are now called “whistleblowers,” but that's only because their accounts of what really happened in Libya on Sept. 11 …

Discussion: Washington Times, Washington Free Beacon and PJ Media

Rosie Gray / BuzzFeed:
Benghazi Investigation Creeps Closer To Hillary Clinton

Discussion: Wall Street Journal and The Hill

Allahpundit / Hot Air:
Hicks: Higher-ups at State told me not to talk to GOP congressman about Benghazi; Update: “Effectively demoted”

Discussion: The Daily Caller, Politico, American Power, CNN and JustOneMinute

Fox News:
Whistle-blower: Botched talking points hurt FBI probe of Benghazi attack

Discussion: Atlas Shrugs, Mediaite, Hot Air and Weasel Zippers

Lindsey Boerma / CBS News:
Benghazi “whistleblowers” head to House committee

Discussion: NewsBusters, ThinkProgress, Hot Air, Taylor Marsh, The Impolitic, Mediaite, Gawker, FP Passport, Yahoo! News, TIME and American Spectator

Joel Gehrke / Washington Examiner:
Benghazi whistleblower: 'I've been demoted' for challenging Susan Rice's claims

Discussion: Weasel Zippers and Jihad Watch

Andrew Kaczynski / BuzzFeed:
Benghazi Witness Says State Dept. Told Him Not To Meet With Congressional Investigators

Discussion: Wizbang, Right Turn, Mother Jones, Washington Free Beacon, Politico, Weasel Zippers and Wake up America

David Scharfenberg / WBUR:

Markey Edges Gomez In WBUR Senate Poll — BOSTON — A new WBUR poll (PDFs - topline, crosstabs) shows U.S. Rep. Edward Markey leading former Navy SEAL Gabriel Gomez 41 to 35 percent in the Massachusetts U.S. Senate race. — Markey's six-point edge expands to an eight-point margin …

Discussion: Politico, Taegan Goddard's …, The Plum Line, Ballot Box and The Reaction

Joshua Miller / Boston Globe:
National Democrats hit Gomez for role with group critical of Obama

Discussion: CNN, Ballot Box and The Reaction

Agoldberg / The Smoking Gun:

Cleveland Hero Was A Repeat Domestic Abuser — Charles Ramsey battered his wife, did prison time for three attacks — The Cleveland man credited with helping free female captives from a house of horrors is a convicted felon whose rap sheet includes three separate domestic violence convictions …

Discussion: The Hinterland Gazette, Politic365, AMERICAblog, Taylor Marsh, Mediaite, Gawker, The Raw Story and Slate

Talking Points Memo:

Top Republican ‘Fairly Satisfied’ With White House's Account Of Benghazi — Senate Foreign Relations Committee Ranking Member Bob Corker (R-TN) said Wednesday that he's “fairly satisfied” with the Obama administration's account of events that led to the deaths of American diplomats in Benghazi last year.

Discussion: The Reality-Based Community, Washington Monthly and PoliticusUSA

Ben Armbruster / ThinkProgress:
Benghazi Review Board Chair Says Notion Of Cover Up Is ‘Pulitzer Prize Fiction’

Discussion: Alan Colmes' Liberaland and democracyarsenal.org

TechCrunch:

Microsoft Mulling Nook Media LLC Purchase For $1 Billion — Microsoft is offering to pay $1 billion to buy the digital assets of Nook Media LLC, the digital book and college book joint venture with Barnes & Noble and other investors, according to internal documents we've obtained.

Discussion: Mock, Paper, Scissors, Mashable, VentureBeat, The Verge and Engadget, more at Mediagazer »

Hunter / Daily Kos:

We are governed by outright morons: … You gigantic dumbass. Sorry; there's just no other way to put it. The entire purpose of “sequestration” was to be cuts enforced without choice. The mechanism was meant to be so abominable that not even the human clusterf—ks that are our current Congress …

Discussion: The Huffington Post and Eschaton

Jonathan Martin / Politico:

Lindsey Graham faces down primary challenge — COLUMBIA, S.C. — If any Senate Republican up for re-election next year would seem ripe for a primary defeat it's Lindsey Graham. — Running in a conservative, Southern state that has proven friendly to insurgents in recent years …

Discussion: Red Racing Horses and WJLA-TV

Rym Momtaz / ABCNEWS:

New Terrorist Magazine Targets Obama, Drones — President Barack Obama appears with a bull's-eye on his head in a new English-language magazine published online apparently by Islamist militants, who also urge Muslims around the world to try to hack and manipulate American drones. — “Wanted Dead Only.

Discussion: Weasel Zippers and CANNONFIRE

Gary Langer / ABCNEWS:

Poll Finds Majority Acceptance of Gays From the B-ball Court to the Boy Scouts — A new ABC News/Washington Post poll finds further public acceptance of gay rights in the United States, in areas ranging from the professional basketball court to the Boy Scouts, as well as the institution of marriage.

Discussion: Joe. My. God. and Towleroad News #gay

Meghashyam Mali / The Hill:

Census Bureau: Black turnout passed white voters in 2012 — A Census Bureau analysis released Wednesday shows that in the 2012 election black voters surpassed the turnout of white voters for the first time. — According to the report, 66.2 percent of eligible black voters cast their ballots …

Discussion: CNN

Rick Weiland / Argus Leader:

Rick Weiland's Senate run draws support from Daschle, others — South Dakota Democrats got a candidate for Senate on Wednesday - and it wasn't who people expected. — Rick Weiland, a former Tom Daschle aide who ran for Congress in 1996 and 2002, told the Argus Leader that he will try …

Discussion: Ballot Box, First Read and The Fix

Simon Shuster / TIME:

Exclusive: Dagestani Relative of Tamerlan Tsarnaev Is a Prominent Islamist — Last year, when Tamerlan Tsarnaev spent six months in the Russian region of Dagestan, he had a guide with an unusually deep knowledge of the local Islamist community: a distant cousin named Magomed Kartashov.

Discussion: Weasel Zippers, TalkLeft and Riehl World News

Guardian:

Stephen Hawking: Furore deepens over Israel boycott — Political motive revealed after Cambridge University first claimed scientist's non-attendance was on medical grounds — The celebrated physicist Stephen Hawking became embroiled in a deepening furore today over his decision to boycott …

Discussion: Israel Matzav, Informed Comment, Sky Dancing and The Dish

Brian Skoloff / Associated Press:

Jury Reaches Verdict in Jodi Arias Trial in Ariz. — Jurors reached a verdict Wednesday in the trial of Jodi Arias after deliberating about 15 hours over four days on whether the former waitress should be convicted of murder in the 2008 fatal stabbing and shooting of her one-time boyfriend.

Discussion: Scared Monkeys and Taylor Marsh