0 and then he tweeted out that picture from his twitter account. and the caption, as you see here, says essentially, democrats have excused themselves from the testimony of the benghazi heroes family members. and that #pgnet, i m assuming those are trying to highlight it for conservative media, pgnet there. look at outrage, right? he s saying, that not all the democratic seats are filled at this hearing. it is very, very important. dave weigel writing at slate.com tested darrell issa s outrage for accuracy and noted that, yes, while there were some empty chairs on the democratic side of the room for that committee hearing, there were also lots and lots of empty chairs on the republican side of the room for that committee hearing. of the 23 republicans on that committee, judging by all the empty chairs, it looks like 17 of the 23 were absent. which does not outrage darrell issa at all! because they re republicans who are absent. he s only outraged by the missing democrats. and you kn
0 three scandals, right? there was benghazi. that didn t work out the way the republicans wanted it to. irs, that did not work out the way republicans wanted it to. the third scandal that broke simultaneously, right? they re all happening, all bogging down the administration and dooming the obama second term starting in may of this year. the third one that broke at the same time was always a little harder for republicans to get partisan traction on, and it arguably was the only one that didn t seem like it was the product of an overtuned agro political narrative. it just seemed like something that the administration had actually done that they couldn t quite explain and that seemed out of keeping with not just precedent, but what they said they believed as an administration. it was the story about the justice department, right? the justice department, as the justice department related to a specific bomb plot, an al qaeda bomb plot in yemen last year that did not happen. really interest
0 scandals that the obama administration was sort of having to deal with all at once. remember back in may it was scandal overdrive, right? you had headlines like this one from the ap obama s second-term agenda waylaid by controversies. do you remember this period in the spring, right? the early summer? trio of controversies roiling washington, emboldening republicans, a establishment willing to second guess the white house. so, one of those was benghazi, which is still a tragedy and a terrible terrorist attack, but it has never really caught fire as a partisan scandal or as a democratic conspiracy in the way republicans really wanted it to. hence, you get darrell issa and his half the room photo desperation tactic where he is only excited about missing democrats and not at all excited about missing republicans. so, that was one of the three scandals. the second one was the irs, where it initially appeared like the irs was singling out tea party groups for special scrutiny on app
chemical weapons around, hiding them from u.s. or western military action. and this is the key test of syria s compliance with this, how forthcoming will they be with all this information? kate and chris, we still don t know how well they re going to follow through. that s really the basic question, if you can t answer that, then there s nowhere to go from there. jim, thank you so much. a lot of news developing at the house hour. let s get right to john berman who s in for michaela pereira. a massive explosion rocking an area near the u.s. consulate in afghanistan. this happened during an intense gun fight between militants and security fors. the blast causing major damage to the consulate s front gate. there were no u.s. casualties. the taliban has claimed responsibility. an alabama man who joined a terror group in somalia reportedly has been killed. militants claim the 29-year-old omar hamami was ambushed by members of al shabaab. he was in the group at one time, may have bee
let s start off with this, horrible, no other way to describe it. less than a year after the devastation of hurricane sandy, two towns struggling to recover alongside the jersey shore are hit by tragedy once again. a big stretch of the iconic boardwalk and dozens of businesses damaged and destroyed by flames in seaside heights and seaside park. it s a one-two punch that clearly no one saw coming. new jersey governor chris christie calling the destruction unthinkable. don lemon is live from seaside park. months of rebuilding and healing. they re looking to a good season. wiped out in a heartbeat for so many people. reporter: and you know what, kate, i wish i had good news but i think it s to be honest here, by the time the sun comes up this is going to be worse than we thought. reports of businesses being destroyed are going up as we talk to officials here. and what we re hearing is that what sandy didn t destroy, this fire certainly did. a state of emergency on the jersey