Oh no! We can’t let Romney win, he’ll let lobbyists in the White House!!!

From The Examiner

October 16, 2012 | 1:10 pm

If Romney wins, will lobbyists defile the White House that Obama has kept so clean and so pure? That’s what Politico suggests with this piece today headlined “Lobbyists ready for a comeback under Romney.”

President Barack Obama’s gone further than any president to keep lobbyists out of the White House — even signing executive orders to do it.

In crafting and signing those executive orders, I wonder if Obama relied on the help of White House deputy counsel Cassandra Butts (1), White House special assistant Martha Coven (2), or the chief of staff or the White House Office of Intergovernmental Affairs, Michael Strautmanis (3), all of whom were registered lobbyists. (I’m only numbering registered lobbyists.)

Politico’s Anna Palmer reports:

Industry insiders believe that Mitt Romney will unshackle the revolving door and give lobbyists a shot at the government jobs their Democratic counterparts have been denied for the past four years

Yeah, I bet those Republican lobbyists will get envious stares from the likes of Fannie Mae, Cigna, Credit Suisse lobbyist Laricke Blanchard(4), whom Obama named deputy director of policy for the Pension Benefit Guarantee Corporation. Former teachers union lobbyistGabriella Gomez (5) would be jealous – if her job as assistant secretary of Education gave her the time for such self-indulgence. Former crop-industry lobbyist Krysta Harden (6) must be thinking “why couldn’t I get a government job – besides my job as assistant secretary of Agriculture.”

Palmer writes of the possibility of Romney

“Allowing lobbyists back into the White House”

You mean after he kicks out the lobbyists in Obama’s White House like Patton Boggs lobbyist Emmett Beliveau (7), O’Melveny & Myers lobbyist Derek Douglas (8), and Pfizer’s, AT&T’s lobbyist at Akin Gump Dana Singiser (9)?

Romney would have to toss out Obama’s orders, which shook up how President George W. Bush did business and let Obama claim his agenda wouldn’t be hijacked by special interests.

Yes, it let Obama claim that – falsely. Remember how the stimulus was a pork fest for K Street? Remember how the drug lobby wrote much of Obamacare. Remember how Obama gave Chrysler to the UAW? Remember – oh, I could go on, but I’ll return to the Politico piece.

“there are clear signs that lobbyists could be back in the executive branch.”

Does the Department of Energy count as “the executive branch”? Because former K Street lobbyists Scott Harris (10) and Daniel Poneman (11) got jobs there from Obama. How about the office of the U.S. Trade Representative? They’ve hired Mayer Brown lobbyistMichael Punke (12), CropLife America lobbyist Isi Siddiqui (13), former Verisign lobbyist Miriam Sapiro (14), Akin Gump lobbyistDemetrios Marantis (15).

“Some of the highest-level positions in a potential Romney administration are expected be filled by former lobbyists and Washington insiders.”

Former lobbyists in some of the highest-level positions? Shock! What would HHS Secretary — and former head of the lobbying group Kansas Trial Lawyers Association – Kathleen Sebelius say? Or former NEA lobbyist, now Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack (16)? Or former Fannie Mae lobbyist and Goldman Sachs consultant Tom Donilon(17), now National Security Advisor. Or even Atty. Gen. and former registered lobbyist Eric Holder (18)?

Does Defense Secretary Leon Panetta (19) hold one of “the highest-level positions”? Because he was a registered lobbyist, too.

More Palmer:

Health care consultant Mike Leavitt, who served as the head of the Environmental Protection Agency for Bush, is leading Romney’s transition effort. He’s considered a shoo-in for either White House chief of staff or Treasury Secretary.

For perspective on this, Palmer could have interviewed health-care-company consultant Tom Daschle, whom Obama originally nominated HHS secretary, and on whom Obama relied throughout the crafting of Obamacare.

And a corporate consultant as White House chief of staff? Politico could have gotten color from former Goldman consultant Rahm Emanuel who served as a political fixer for a Chicago hedge fund. Or Rahm’s successor as White House chief of staff, Bill Daley, who sat on Fannie Mae’s board.

Politico also discusses campaign fundraisers:

Romney’s campaign has also relied heavily on K Streeters to organize high-dollar fundraisers, including David Tamasi of Rasky Baerlein Strategic Communications”

I wonder if that makes things awkward with Tamasi’s bosses Lawrence Rasky and Joseph Baerlein, who are both top donors to Obama’s campaign – you know, the campaign that doesn’t accept lobbyist donations.

And then there are Obama’s bundlers like Sally Sussman, who runs Pfizer’s lobbying shop.

And there is certainly precedent for a Romney administration to hire lobbyists. Bush brought on many K Streeters, including Nick Calio, who had run his father’s White House legislative affairs shop, before moving on to become a hired gun.”

Yes, there’s also the precedent of Barack Obama, who brought on registered lobbyists Melody Barnes (20), Jacqueline Barrien (21), William Corr (22), Philip Crowley (23), Patrick Gaspard (24), David Hayes (25), Eric Hirschhorn (26), Sean Kennedy (27), Jon Liebowitz (28), Robert Litt (29), Elisa Montoya (30), Paul Nash (31), Mark Patterson (32), Robert Perciasepe (33), Thomas Perrelli (34), Peter Rundlet (35), Melanie Sabo (36), Susan Sher (37), Nancy Stoner (38), Thomas Strickland (39), Robert Sussman (40), Michael Taylor (41), Karl Thompson (42), John Trasvina (43), Dan Turton (44), Christine Varney (45), Richard Verma (46), William Wilkins (47), and Thomas Zoeller (48), just to name a few.

Finally in the 15th paragraph, after all of the above material suggesting no lobbyists breached the gates of Obama’s White House, Palmer hints that maybe things aren’t as pure as she’s implied:

But even Obama has felt political heat when he approved exceptions to the lobbying ban or allowed former lobbyists who deregistered to join his administration. More than a dozen former lobbyists, including Vice President Joe Biden’s current chief of staff Steve Ricchetti, have held high-profile administration jobs.

“More than a dozen”? Yes, I’d say we’ve found more than a dozen. Politico only names Ricchetti (49), Biden’s current chief of staff. But she could have named Ricchetti’s predecessor Ron Klain (50), who at O’Melveny and Myers lobbied on behalf of ImClone, Time Warner, and Fannie Mae.  Or Klain’s deputy chief of staff in Biden’s office, Alan Hoffman (51), whose lobbying clients included RAND Corporation and oil giant Unocal.

 Still, others argue that even Democrats have criticized Obama’s policy, which limited the administration’s choices in finding experienced aides if candidates were tainted with the “Scarlet L.”

You know who wore a “Scarlet L,” for real once? Lobbyist Heather Podesta. Her husband founded the lobbying firm Podesta Group together with Obama’s transition director John Podesta, who has visited the White House more than anyone else. The Podesta Group in 2009 won the race to hire up the first Obama administration official, as far as I can tell, plucking Oscar Ramirez from the Labor Department to be a lobbyist.

Obama’s rules bar lobbyists from serving in agencies they’ve lobbied within the past two years,

Ooh, don’t tell that to Deputy Defense Secretary William Lynn (52), who was lobbying the Pentagon on Raytheon’s behalf in 2008. Or White House director of Intergovernmental Affairs Cecilia Munoz (53)who was lobbying the White House on behalf of La Raza, or recent lobbyist Jocelyn Frye (54) hired in the Office of the First Lady.

Palmer writes that Obama’s rules also:

shut down lobbyists from serving on federal boards.

Again, this is only true on the most legalistic level. Vint Cerf works at Google with the job title “Internet Evangelist.” An “evangelist” is allowed on Obama administration advisory boards, apparently, as Cerf served on tech policy. While there he explicitly lobbied the White House,emails show. In fact, he lobbied his former colleague, former top Google lobbyist Andrew McLaughlin (55), who somehow sneaked into the White House.

In Cerf’s category is also Steve Westly, the green energy investor whom Obama put on a board advising the administration on green technology. The administration has yet to disclose Westly’s communications with the administration.

Given all this undue corporate influence already going on, imagine what would happen if lobbyists got jobs in the administration!!!

A123 Bankruptcy Gives Romney New Example of Green ‘Loser’

From Bloomberg

By Angela Greiling Keane - Oct 16, 2012 5:48 PM CT

Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney called the bankruptcy filing by battery makerA123 Systems Inc. (AONE), which received a $249.1 million U.S. grant, an example of President Barack Obama’s failed green-energy policy.

“A123’s bankruptcy is yet another failure for the president’s disastrous strategy of gambling away billions of taxpayer dollars on a strategy of government-led growth that simply does not work,” Andrea Saul, a Romney campaign spokeswoman, said in an e-mailed statement today.

Enlarge image

A worker moves crates for batteries on an assembly line at the A123 Systems lithium ion automotive battery manufacturing plant in Livonia, Michigan. Photographer: Jeffrey Sauger/Bloomberg

The electric-car battery producer’s filing today, hours before the second presidential debate was to take place, gave Republicans fresh ammunition to criticize Obama’s record on the economy. A123 wasn’t one of the green-energy companies Romney called “losers” in the first debate with Obama two weeks ago, in discussing choices of U.S. aid recipients.

A123, based in Waltham, Massachusetts, received the U.S. Energy Department grant from Obama’s economic stimulus package in 2009 to build a factory in Michigan.

Romney singled out Fisker Automotive Inc., Tesla Motors Inc., Solyndra LLC and Ener1 Inc. during the Oct. 3 debate as “losers.” Solar-panel maker Solyndra filed for bankruptcy last year, and Ener1, parent of a battery company that received a $118 million Energy Department grant, sought bankruptcy protection in January.

‘Another Failure’

“President Obama has been very strategic and aggressive in pointing to the auto bailout as an example of what the government did right,” Julian Zelizer, a history and political affairs professor at Princeton University, said in an interview. “This is the reverse. Romney will bring this out as an example not of corruption as in Solyndra but as an example of failed investment.”

Under Obama, the government has invested about $5 billion in the U.S. electric car industry through loans to auto companies including Fisker and Tesla, grants to companies such as A123, and tax credits of as much as $7,500 for customers who buy plug-in cars. Some of the current administration’s investment is a continuation of programs begun during RepublicanGeorge W. Bush’s presidency, before Obama took office in January 2009.

Republican Support

The company, which started with processes developed at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, sold its first products when Romney was the state’s governor. It received U.S. grants in 2003 and 2007 under Bush’s administration. The 2003 grant, from an Energy Department program for small businesses, was A123’s first outside funding, then-Energy Secretary Samuel Bodman said in a 2008 speech.

A123 Chief Executive Officer David Vieau met with Bush at the White House in 2007, according to an A123 press release and White House video of the event.

A123 was one of the companies named in a letter from the Michigan congressional delegation supporting stimulus grants for battery suppliers. Signers of the May 2009 letter to Energy Secretary Steven Chu included Representative Fred Upton, a Republican who later criticized Energy Department green-energy loans, and then-Representative Thaddeus McCotter, a Republican who resigned in July.

They cited the state’s support for companies including A123 and Johnson Controls Inc. (JCI)and asked that the U.S. government follow suit.

A123 was given $125 million in refundable tax credits from the state of Michigan that it never collected, said Mike Shore, spokeswoman for the Michigan Economic Development Corp. The company did collect a $10 million state grant, he said.

Fisker Batteries

A123 supplied lithium-ion batteries for Fisker’s $103,000 luxury plug-in Karma, which was panned by Consumer Reports after it stopped running in the middle of a test drive. That led to a recall by Fisker, which has also been backed by the Obama administration, that cost A123 $55 million and helped put it on the financial brink.

“A123’s promising technology has a long history of bipartisan support,” Dan Leistikow, an Energy Department spokesman, wrote today in a blog post on the agency’s website. “In 2007, the company received a $6 million dollar grant as part of the Bush administration’s efforts to promote advanced battery manufacturing, and the company has used $132 million of a 2009 grant from the Department of Energy.”

Jen Stutsman, an Energy Department spokeswoman, declined to comment beyond the blog post.

Political Contributions

A123 officials have contributed to Democratic political candidates including Obama, according to the Center for Responsive Politics, a Washington group that tracks campaign finance.

Vieau gave $2,300 to Obama’s campaign less than a month before the 2008 election, and has contributed to other Democratic candidates and groups, including Senator John Kerry and Representative Edward Markey, both from Massachusetts, and Louisiana Senator Mary Landrieu, according to data from the center.

Gururaj “Desh” Deshpande, an A123 board member, was one of 26 people appointed in 2010 to a White House advisory board on technology innovation and entrepreneurship. Others appointed included Steve Case, a co-founder of AOL Inc., and Jerry Yang, a co-founder of Yahoo Inc. In that role, Deshpande attended a ceremony in April at which Obama signed his jobs bill into law.

Grassley, Thune

Representative Darrell Issa, the Republican chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, today called A123 “the latest cautionary tale against the administration using taxpayer dollars to sponsor pet projects and then running from responsibility when they’re not successful.”

Republican U.S. Senators Charles Grassley, an Iowa Republican who is his party’s ranking member on the Senate Judiciary Committee, and John Thune, a South Dakota Republican, last week questioned A123’s plan, announced in August, to give Wanxiang Group Corp., China’s largest auto-parts maker, a majority stake in exchange for financing.

A123 is abandoning the Wanxiang plan and agreed to sell its automotive business to Johnson Controls for $125 million, Vieau said in a statement today.

The bankruptcy raises questions about whether A123 should have received the grant, Grassley and Thune said in a statement today.

“The bankruptcy raises the prospect that the taxpayers will get little or no return on their investment in A123 and will lose millions of dollars,” they said.

Environmentalists React

The sale to Johnson Controls, while better than the proposed transaction with Wanxiang, is “small comfort, given the hundreds of millions of dollars wasted on this firm,” Grassley and Thune said.

Environmental groups said A123’s bankruptcy doesn’t mean the advanced-battery industry, or Obama’s support of it, is a failure.

“The fact that the advanced-battery sector is growing 25 percent a year doesn’t mean that every company will be a winner,” said Mindy Lubber, president of Ceres, a Boston-based non-profit group that works to make business more sustainable.

The A123 plant in Michigan was trumpeted by the company when it opened in September 2010 as the largest lithium-ion automotive battery plant in North America. Then-Governor Jennifer Granholm, a Democrat, lobbied the Obama administration for the battery-maker grants and hailed the plant as the next wave of Michigan’s economic recovery.

Michigan’s unemployment rate was 12.2 percent at the time the plant opened.

Consolidation in advanced-energy industries is to be expected, Granholm said in a statement today. She quoted Energy Department statements that its investments will cut the cost of a 100-mile-range electric-car battery to $10,000 by 2015, from $33,000.

To contact the reporter on this story: Angela Greiling Keane in Washington atagreilingkea@bloomberg.net

To contact the editor responsible for this story: Bernard Kohn at bkohn2@bloomberg.net

Enrollment in Food Stamps, Medicaid, and Disability Far Outpaces Job Growth in Last 4 Years

From The Weekly Standard

A new chart provided by the minority side of the Senate Budget Committee details the alarming fact that enrollment in federal social welfare programs like Food Stamps, Medicaid, and Disability have far outpaced job growth over the last four years. Here's the chart:

In terms of percentage growth, Food Stamp enrollment has jumped 65.2 percent over the last four years, Medicaid enrollment 19.3 percent, and Disability enrollment 17.6 percent. The "total number of employed people," according to the chart, has grown at a negative rate, -0.7 percent.

The Republicans on the Senate Budget Committee source "data from the Social Security Administration, the Department of Health and Human Services, and the Department of Agriculture."

"The numbers reflect the change in the total number of people employed and the total number of people on the two largest federal welfare programs, as well as Social Security Disability Insurance, between 2008 and 2012," the minority side of the Senate Budget Committee comments. "The employment figure was derived using the total nonfarm and seasonally adjusted number of people employed in December of 2008 (134.4 million) and the number of people employed in September 2012 (133.5 million) as reported by the Bureau of Labor Statistics. The numbers of people on food stamps and Medicaid were derived by comparing the number of program beneficiaries in 2008 (as reported by each agency) and the expected number of program beneficiaries in 2012 (as projected by the Congressional Budget Office)."

Overall, there are nearly 80 means-tested federal welfare programs and, according to the Census Bureau, nearly 110 million people in the United States receive benefits from at least one of them. (This figure includes exclusively means-tested welfare programs, not entitlements like Medicare Or Social Security. It also excludes some means-tested benefits such as the Earned Income Tax Credit or the health insurance premium subsidies included in the President’s health law. CBO estimates that the premium subsidies, scheduled to begin in 2014, will result in at least 25 million individuals receiving means-tested federal assistance by the end of the decade.)

Yet despite the increases depicted above, the Administration has instituted promotional campaigns to increase the number of people on food stamps. USDA goes so far as to advertise food stamps as a form of economic stimulus, asserting that “Each $5 dollars in new SNAP benefits generates almost twice that amount in economic activity for the community… Everyone wins when eligible people take advantage of benefits to which they are entitled.” Total spending on food stamps is projected to reach nearly $800 billion over the next 10 years, with no fewer than 1 in 9 people on the program at any given time.

Obama Administration Denied "Repeated Requests" For Increased Security in Benghazi

From Townhall

• 
 
• Guy Benson 
  Political Editor, Townhall.com

Just when you thought the Benghazi massacre story couldn't get any worse, it does.  Read this entire post -- the appalling hits just keep on coming.  Let's start here:
 

House investigators warned Secretary of State Hillary Clinton to expect a hearing into their finding that American staff at the U.S. Embassy in Libya had their request for additional security denied by Washington officials. “Based on information provided to the Committee by individuals with direct knowledge of events in Libya, the attack that claimed the ambassador’s life was the latest in a long line of attacks on Western diplomats and officials in Libya in the months leading up to September 11, 2012,”

House Oversight and Government Reform Committee chairman Darrell Issa, R-Calif., and subcommittee chairman Jason Chaffetz, R-Utah, wrote Clinton today. They dismissed out-of-hand the suggestion that the attack ever could have been regarded as a spontaneous protest gone awry. “In addition, multiple U.S. federal government officials have confirmed to the Committee that, prior to the September 11 attack, the U.S. mission in Libya made repeated requests for increased security in Benghazi,” Issa and Chaffetz added (my emphasis). “The mission in Libya, however, was denied these resources by officials in Washington.” The committee noted 13 “security threats” in Benghazi, including an attempt to assassinate the British ambassador to Libya.

Those 13 threats weren't just chatter; the US consulate was targeted by two actual bombing attempts leading up to the 9/11 raid.  Eli Lake -- who scooped everyone with the "day one" revelation that explodes the administration's excuses about their "spontaneous attack" lies -- reports:
 

In the five months leading up to this year’s 9/11 anniversary, there were two bombings on the U.S. consulate in Benghazi and increasing threats to and attacks on the Libyan nationals hired to provide security at the U.S. missions in Tripoli and Benghazi.  Details on these alleged incidents stem in part from the testimony of a handful of whistleblowers who approached the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform in the days and weeks following the attack on the Benghazi consulate. The incidents are disclosed in a letter to be sent Tuesday to Hillary Clinton from Rep. Darrell Issa, the chairman of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, and Rep. Jason Chaffetz, the chairman of the oversight committee’s subcommittee that deals with national security. The State Department did not offer comment on the record last night.  The new information disclosed in the letter obtained by The Daily Beaststrongly suggests the U.S. consulate in Benghazi and the late Ambassador Chris Stevens were known by U.S. security personnel to be targets for terrorists.

Ambassador Stevens' own journal reportedly confirms this assertion.  CNN says Stevens wrote about his fears of constant threats -- threats, incidentally, that the Obama administration has downplayed or flat-out denied.  A crew from the cable news channel discovered the diary lying on the floor of the Benghazi diplomatic outpost, which has still not been secured, and still has not been picked-over by FBI investigators (see UPDATE II, below).  But why would Washington deny "repeated requests" for beefed up security in Benghazi, even when it was so obviously required?  That's what investigations are for, but here's a common-sense working theory: This president has demonstrated many times over that the one area of government he's willing to cut -- as in real, net cuts -- is the military.  Obama's regime-change war in Libya was managed in such a way as to minimize even the appearance of US involvement, to the point of "leading from behind."  Boots on the ground were never an option because Obama wanted this to be a clean, casualty-free effort, unlike the terribly hard and costly work in Iraq and Afghanistan.  More security for US interests would have meant more US forces in Libya -- which could be perceived as escalating a new war of Obama's doing.  Couldn't have that politically, so we proceeded with an exceedingly "light footprint," to a lethal fault.  Meanwhile, guess who helped orchestrate this terrorist attack, according to intelligence sources?
 

The revolutions that swept the Middle East and North Africa also emptied prisons of militants, a problem now emerging as a potential new terrorist threat. Fighters linked to one freed militant, Muhammad Jamal Abu Ahmad, took part in the Sept. 11 attack on U.S. diplomatic outposts in Libya that killed four Americans, U.S. officials believe based on initial reports. Intelligence reports suggest that some of the attackers trained at camps he established in the Libyan Desert, a former U.S. official said.

Ahmad, who is associated with Al Qaeda, was released from an Egyptian prison following the ouster of Hosni Mubarak, a key US ally.  The Obama administration strongly supported the deposing of Mubarak, even though it chose to remain silent in Iran, where a clearly hostile, anti-American regime was slaughtering its own people during an uprising over a stolen election.  Now that Egypt's power vacuum has been filled by Islamists, monsters like Ahmad are on the street, free to coordinate the assassination of US Ambassadors.  This president's naive foreign policy vision is unraveling before our eyes, and even some mainstream media outlets are connecting the dots.  Here's CNN explicitly accusing the White House of a "cover-up:"
 

USA Today decries the administration's actions and faulty explanations:
 

Three weeks after an attack in Libya killed the U.S. ambassador and three other Americans, we now know that it did not spring from a spontaneous protest, spurred by an anti-Muslim video, as the Obama administration originally described it. In fact, every aspect of the early account — peddled most prominently by U.N. Ambassador Susan Rice — has unraveled. Spontaneous? Hardly. The administration acknowledges that Ambassador Chris Stevens died in an organized terrorist attack, likely mounted by an Islamic extremist group and an al-Qaeda affiliate.

Without warning? Not exactly. Violence against Westerners had been escalating for months in the eastern Libyan city of Benghazi. In June, an improvised explosive device damaged a perimeter wall at the Benghazi compound. On Aug. 27, the State Department issued a travel warning, citing the threat of assassinations and bombings in both Benghazi and Tripoli. According to a journal found and described by CNN, Stevens himself was worried about safety. Despite all those signals, the diplomatic outpost in Benghazi relied for protection on the young Libyan government and a small band of mostly private contract guards, according to news accounts. Fewer than 10 armed men, both Americans and Libyans, were in the compound when the attack began with gunfire and grenades on the 9/11 anniversary.

I'll leave you with two thoughts.  First, a quote from The Atlantic's Jeffrey Goldberg:
 

"There's a widespread perception in the region that Obama is a weak, somewhat feckless president," (Shadi) Hamid...  told me. "Bush may have been hated, but he was also feared, and what we've learned in the Middle East is that fear, sometimes at least, can be a good thing. Obama's aggressive hedging has alienated both sides of the Arab divide. Autocrats, particularly in the Gulf, think Obama naively supports Arab revolutionaries, while Arab protesters and revolutionaries seem to think the opposite." Leaders across the Middle East don't take Obama's threats seriously. Neither Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu nor the Arab leaders of the Gulf countries believe he'll act militarily against Iran's nuclear program in his second term..."

That says it all, doesn't it?  Which brings us to the second point.  The Wall Street Journal's Bret Stephens calls Libya Obama's "3 am phone call" moment.  To extend the metaphor, Obama bungled the lead-up to the call, slept through it, then jetted to Vegas for politics as usual -- even after receiving the horrifying voicemail message the next day.  No regrets, says the Obama campaign.

UPDATE - In the wake of our precipitous and political withdrawal, experts are warning that Iraq is on the brink of becoming a massive strategic loss for the United States.
 

*UPDATE II* - Investigation over?  What?
 

The State Department has officially removed all government personnel from the Libyan city of Benghazi, closing the consulate building and possibly ending any chance of an on-site investigation of the attack there. Although it has been three weeks since the assault there that killed Ambassador Christopher Stevens and three other embassy employees, the FBI has still not been able to visit the compound, set up any operations in the city, or even interview any witnesses who were present during the terrorist attack.

I'm absolutely flabbergasted.  This is a failure of epic proportions, from start to finish.

UPDATE III - "No comment" from the White House -- which, they'll remind you -- is "committed" to transparency:
 

White House press secretary Jay Carney declined to comment on an assertion by the chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee that requests from diplomats in Libya for added security prior to the September 11, 2012 attack on the diplomatic post in Benghazi, Libya, were denied. “I’m not going to get into a situation under review by the State Department and the FBI,” Carney said.

Ah yes, "under review" until at least November 7th, I'd imagine.  And how are these entities investigating anything?  We just learned today that we're abandoning Benghazi (see previous update), having never secured or examined the "crime" scene.