{"id":18716,"date":"2013-05-10T05:40:11","date_gmt":"2013-05-10T09:40:11","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.rightwinggranny.com\/?p=18716"},"modified":"2013-05-10T05:40:11","modified_gmt":"2013-05-10T09:40:11","slug":"the-next-step","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rightwinggranny.com\/?p=18716","title":{"rendered":"The Next Step"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Yesterday&#8217;s <a href=\"http:\/\/online.wsj.com\/article\/SB10001424127887324244304578473350240211308.html?mod=WSJ_Opinion_AboveLEFTTop\">Wall Street Journal<\/a> posted an editorial reporting that Congressman <a class=\"zem_slink\" title=\"Frank Wolf\" href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Frank_Wolf\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"wikipedia\">Frank Wolf<\/a> of Virginia has written a letter to House Speaker John Boehner requesting the creation of a bipartisan committee to investigate what actually happened in <a class=\"zem_slink\" title=\"Benghazi\" href=\"http:\/\/maps.google.com\/maps?ll=32.1166666667,20.0666666667&amp;spn=0.1,0.1&amp;q=32.1166666667,20.0666666667 (Benghazi)&amp;t=h\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"geolocation\">Benghazi<\/a> on September 11, 2012. <a href=\"http:\/\/cnsnews.com\/news\/article\/62-house-gop-now-co-sponsoring-bill-special-committee-benghazi\">CNS News<\/a> reported yesterday that 143 House Republicans are now co-sponsoring a bill that would authorize a special committee to investigate Benghazi. So why don&#8217;t we have the committee?<\/p>\n<p>The article at CNS News quotes the letter from Congressman Wolf to Speaker Boehner:<\/p>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 30px;\"><strong>&#8220;Chairman Issa\u2019s hearing yesterday was a positive step forward in the effort to investigate the administration for its apparent cover up of key information about the nature of the attack and its response,&#8221; Wolf told Boehner.\u00a0 &#8220;I appreciate your leadership and that of the committees to advance the investigation to this point.<\/strong><\/p>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 30px;\"><strong>&#8220;However, the hearing also made clear that a thorough inquiry will require witnesses from across government&#8211;including the Defense Department, <a class=\"zem_slink\" title=\"United States Department of State\" href=\"http:\/\/maps.google.com\/maps?ll=38.8941666667,-77.0483333333&amp;spn=0.01,0.01&amp;q=38.8941666667,-77.0483333333 (United%20States%20Department%20of%20State)&amp;t=h\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"geolocation\">State Department<\/a>, Intelligence Community, Justice Department and even the <a class=\"zem_slink\" title=\"White House\" href=\"http:\/\/maps.google.com\/maps?ll=38.8976694444,-77.03655&amp;spn=0.01,0.01&amp;q=38.8976694444,-77.03655 (White%20House)&amp;t=h\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"geolocation\">White House<\/a>,&#8221; said Wolf. &#8220;Only a <a class=\"zem_slink\" title=\"Select committees of the Parliament of the United Kingdom\" href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Select_committees_of_the_Parliament_of_the_United_Kingdom\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"wikipedia\">Select Committee<\/a> would be able to bring the cross-jurisdictional expertise and subpoena authority to compel answers from these agencies.&#8221;<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>The hearings on Wednesday featured three whistleblowers who were willing to testify before the <a class=\"zem_slink\" title=\"United States congressional committee\" href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/United_States_congressional_committee\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"wikipedia\">House committee<\/a>. Ambassador Thomas Pickering and retired <a class=\"zem_slink\" title=\"Michael Mullen\" href=\"http:\/\/twitter.com\/thejointstaff\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"twitter\">Admiral Mike Mullen<\/a>, who chaired the State Department Accountability Review Board that conducted the administration&#8217;s internal investigation of the Benghazi attack, have refused to testify before the committee or even talk with the committee staff informally.\u00a0 Unless a Select Committee is formed, the American public will never hear their side of the story.<\/p>\n<p>The article in the Wall Street Journal concludes:<\/p>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 30px;\"><strong>Mr. Boehner said on Thursday that the Administration should release its email communications on Benghazi, but it won&#8217;t do so unless they are subpoenaed. Frank Wolf, one of the House&#8217;s most senior Members, has it right. Benghazi&#8217;s explanation deserves the best effort elected officials can give it, and the right vehicle is a Select Committee with subpoena power and deposition authority.<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>It would be nice to live in a world where witnesses would come forward voluntarily, but right now we don&#8217;t live there. We need to take action to encourage witnesses to give their testimony publicly.<\/p>\n<div class=\"zemanta-pixie\" style=\"margin-top: 10px; height: 15px;\"><a class=\"zemanta-pixie-a\" title=\"Enhanced by Zemanta\" href=\"http:\/\/www.zemanta.com\/?px\"><img decoding=\"async\" class=\"zemanta-pixie-img\" style=\"border: none; float: right;\" alt=\"Enhanced by Zemanta\" src=\"http:\/\/img.zemanta.com\/zemified_e.png?x-id=f4bb7a80-c66b-4a3a-8ca7-f61092c1d283\" \/><\/a><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Yesterday&#8217;s Wall Street Journal posted an editorial reporting that Congressman Frank Wolf of Virginia has written a letter to House Speaker John Boehner requesting the creation of a bipartisan committee to investigate what actually happened in Benghazi on September 11, &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/www.rightwinggranny.com\/?p=18716\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[3947,5168,298,5526,1178,1413,238,211],"class_list":["post-18716","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-benghazi","tag-frank-wolf","tag-john-boehner","tag-select-committee","tag-united-states-department-of-state","tag-virginia","tag-wall-street-journal","tag-white-house"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rightwinggranny.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18716","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rightwinggranny.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rightwinggranny.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rightwinggranny.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rightwinggranny.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=18716"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.rightwinggranny.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18716\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":18718,"href":"https:\/\/www.rightwinggranny.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18716\/revisions\/18718"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rightwinggranny.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=18716"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rightwinggranny.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=18716"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rightwinggranny.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=18716"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}