David M. Drucker:
House Republicans on the Benghazi select committee aren’t waiting for Democrats to make up their mind about joining, moving quickly to exercise the panel’s expanded powers to review evidence.
While Democrats still mull whether to fill the five slots reserved for them, the seven Republicans appointed by House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio, are scheduled to convene later this week for what a House GOP aide described Monday as an “organizational” meeting.
Members began personally examining existing information within days of the select committee’s May 9 formation.
The panel is investigating the Sept. 11, 2012 terrorist attack on the U.S. consulate in Libya that left Ambassador Christopher Stevens and three other Americans dead.
The committee’s focus is on hiring staff. Phil Kiko, who has a strong legal background and previously served on Capitol Hill, was hired last week as majority staff director, a position equivalent to committee chief of staff. A timeline for when the committee will begin to question witnesses and hold hearings has yet to be revealed. Committee chairman, Rep. Trey Gowdy, has also gone quiet regarding his strategy.“I’m not going to talk about it for now. We’ll just let the work speak for itself,” the South Carolina Republican said during a brief interview.
But a review of the rules governing committee procedures points to a powerful panel that has the potential to break new ground not already covered by the five standing committees that had been investigating the attacks. The select committee’s key authorities, as established in the House-passed resolution creating the panel, include:
· Granting Gowdy the unilateral power to issue subpoenas and order witnesses to be deposed.
@Greg:
Wow….you really are drunk on marxist kool aid, aren’t you?
You assume so much in your arrogance. How much more money do you suppose people would have if the government allowed opting out of social security, provided they invested in a private retirement fund?
Tell us, when the national debt becomes so high that interest on tbe debt makes it impossible to pay social security checks, foodstamps and medicare, would that qualify as “living in poverty” for all those who the government has inculcated dependency on handouts?
@Greg: “I think that line of though comes out of a republican fixation on the fact that it was the Obama administration that finally eliminated Osama bin Laden, after over 7 years of failure on the part of the Bush administration.” What an interesting concept. So, you feel the fact that Bush did not find bin Laden in the first weeks after 9/11 is “failure”? The first year? The second? Does that administration get no allowance for the time it takes collect data and clues? No, I guess not.
So, by your way of thinking, Obama “failed” until 2010; almost TWO years. And, even at that, after he failed and failed and failed, he eventually had to go back and use old, failed Bush era intelligence to find bin Laden (at least he allowed him to be killed rather than let him go 4 or more times, like Clinton did).
Why has Obama FAILED to find and bring to justice Ayman al- Zawahri, who has taken command of al Qaeda since bin Laden retired? Why has Obama FAILED to free Dr. Shakil Afridi, who identified that it was bin Laden in Abbottabad, making Obama’s ONE success possible, and has been imprisoned for his efforts (this kind of abandonment makes anyone else who might wish to help us think twice). Why has Obama FAILED to find and rescue the 200 school girls held hostage by Boko Haram, the terror group Hillary refused to call terrorists? Why has Obama FAILED to free Pastor Saeed Abedini, held prisoner in Iran?
If you want to characterize not immediately completing a complex and difficult task as failure, then fine… let’s identified ALL the failures.
As to the privatization of Social Security, of course the left opposes that. If that happened, they would lose one of their ATM machines from which to draw cash for their many vote-buying schemes they use to stay in power in spite of failure after failure to honor the promises they make.
Gee, Greg.
You should already know this one.
UTILITIES.
Utilities are all monopolies and they produce a product everyone needs to have and use.
You don’t just buy electricity or natural gas once, but daily!
These companies never run a sale, either.
The run-up over time in utilities has been around 6%.
But the fact is, younger investors can go much higher risk because they have TIME.
BUT, to your sarcastic question, I’ll ask you this:
What makes you think Social Security or gov’t bonds are ”risk free?”
They are NOT.
People working today and paying in are unlikely to have much return when they retire.
The age for SS will rise and the payments will not keep up with inflation.
@Nanny G: Not all utilities, solar and wind are going to break all of us if this administration continues to use tax dollars to prop them up.
@Randy: Solar and wind are both too dependent on gov’t subsidies.
As soon as those end they both fall apart.
We’ve seen it in Europe.
And they punch utility prices through the roof for homes and businesses.
No, I wouldn’t touch either of them as solo affairs.
If a big utility company uses a bit of solar or wind, I’d be OK with that.
@Nanny G:
Nanny, most utilities that have built solar farms are losing their butts on that segment of the business. I have not heard of any that are anxious to expand that segment of their business without gov subsidy. Even with a subsidy, they are keeping that segment separate. Solar or wind is never going to make money.
US warns all Americans to get out of Libya — and expands evac force
Maybe there’s some YouTube video the Collective can blame this on…
@Kraken, #107:
Hot Air provides an abundance of what its name suggests, and I’m never entirely sure which end the wind is blowing from.
I don’t recall anyone in the Obama administration announcing that Libya had become the very model of a stable Islamic democracy. What happened was that we took sides in a ongoing civil war in an effort to prevent the least desirable rebel factions from emerging in total control of the situation. That worked, for a time. Libya wasn’t immediately taken over by Islamic extremists. That threat has continued to exist all along, however.
the problem is to not know where to stand with,
if you stand with the rebels all the time, in more than one or two or three or four
governments established who, suddenly a group start a revolution, only because you have been elected,
you become suspicious,
and lose your credibility,
ASSAD is the only one who did not aggree to resign, WHEN OBAMA CALL ON HIM TO LEAVE HIS GOVERNMENT TO REBELS,
and all the other governments asked to resign, resulted in change to prove nefarious, AND ASSAD SEEM TO HAVE BROKEN THE TREND OF HAVING ALL LEADERS RESIGNING WHEN ASK TO, by OBAMA, AND ASSAD IS THE LAST ONE TO HOLD, BECAUSE OBAMA HELP THE REBELS, TO CONTINUE FIGHTING,
which took the lives of many,
for having repeated the same actions OF PROTESTING ,
than the previous rebels of other countries, made leaders, but killed in masses,