Republican Rogues' Gallery

What is that animal on her head?

Representative Susan Brooks really thought she had Hillary Clinton:  She had this tall pile of paper which she said was the stack of emails Hillary Clinton had sent about Benghazi or something before a certain date and then a tiny stack which was what she had sent after that date, which, she said showed very clearly how Secretary Clinton had simply stopped thinking about her exposed Ambassador in Benghazi, because she stopped emailing about Benghazi.  

Ms. Clinton responded emails were a poor measure of her concern about Benghazi because the State Department actually deals mostly in secure diplomatic cables, secure phone lines, personal conversations and a whole set of lines of communications which had not been piled on the Congresswoman's desk, thus demonstrating Ms. Clinton actually knows what she is talking about when it comes to how the State Department functions, unlike Ms. Brooks, who is not really interested in details like that. 

Undeterred, Ms. Brooks asked whether Secretary Clinton had given Ambassador Stevens her personal email, her home phone number, her personal cell phone, Bill's cell phone, or had him over for tea at her house.  Well, no, Ms. Clinton had to admit, that's not the way she communicated with the 270 ambassadors she had to deal with, although every ambassador has a fail safe direct cable to State and this gets bumped up to her as dangers arise. 

Ms. Brooks announced Secretary Clinton ignored Ambassador Stevens as he was fighting for his life because the Secretary didn't care about her Ambassador or any of her people, as you could clearly see from those two stacks of paper and from the fact she had never given him her personal email, her cell phone number, or ever had him over to dinner. How inaccessible can you get. Just build a wall between you and every ambassador in the line of fire! In fact, building a wall is a Republican specialty. Republicans like walls, when they are built across the Mexican border, but they abhor them when built around Ms. Clinton.

Ms. Brooks was just outraged at the callous indifference so plainly manifest in the imperious Secretary Clinton, who even now, before the committee had not shed a single tear for the Ambassador while Ms. Brooks burned with righteous indignation at the abandonment of a brave American sent into the fray and left for dead by his faithless Secretary of State. Indignation quavered in the Congress woman's voice, just thinking about those two stacks of paper on her desk.

They wouldn't let me wear my wrestling singlet to the hearing

Next up was representative Jimmy Jordan, who does not wear a jacket but always appears in his shirtsleeves, just to remind everybody he was once a  NCAA wrestling champion, which was the biggest accomplishment in his life, and surely is a big deal. Personally, I would have liked to see him in his wrestling singlet, the one he wore when he won the championship, but there is a dress code in the House of Representatives and you can only push that so far and a tie with the singlet would have looked a bit off putting. 
Mr. Jordan  leaned forward with a pasted on "Gottcha" leer pointing out all the discrepancies between things she had said in March and things she said in August, something about saying she had not sent any classified information in her emails then saying she hadn't sent any information "marked classified." This seemed to be an important distinction in Mr. Jordan's mind. 
I didn't quite follow all this because I was thinking if anybody ever pointed out all the discrepancies between what I said this morning and what I said this afternoon,  it would probably fill a stack of papers which would be higher than both stacks Ms. Brooks had on her desk combined.
Mr. Jordan is a pugnacious questioner. Who can forget his interrogation of the head of Planned Parenthood about why she did or did not apologize for something after those videos surfaced. Mr. Jordan is strongly antiabortion and if he could just shoot a single leg take down on some of those abortion doctors, he could settle this whole issue mano-a-mano. He is particularly manly when questioning women, because he wears only shirt sleeves, so they can get the musky aroma of his testosterone drifting across the hearing room toward them. That really unsettles them. You can just see them shifting in their chairs.

It was curious however, that nobody ever seemed to have an issue with what was said in those stacks of emails, which, apparently, none of these Republicans has ever read.
Ms. Clinton pointed out the system of designating what is "classified" in the government security systems is quite complicated and arcane and she had not to her knowledge or, to this date, to anyone else's knowledge violated security with her emails or in any other way.  Again, she knew more about State secrets than her interrogator.

Look Ma! I can rip paper!

The least appetizing of this trio, however, has to be Peter Roskam, who used some of his personal injury lawyer skills to dramatically illustrate just how little Secretary Clinton cared about all the frantic emails and faxes coming from the abandoned Ambassador at Benghazi, by holding up a piece of paper and saying, "This is the fax from the Ambassador and this is how you handled it!" And with that, he ripped the paper in half, from top to bottom. 
 What moment of high drama! What a brilliant move in the halls of Congress. Oh, a letter from the Ambassador, a cry for help, ripped in half!  This is sure to make Fox News and maybe even CBS or NBC.  It's one of those moments sure to be seared into the memory of the electorate.

I could really use a Starbucks latte about now. 

Secretary Clinton had not listened, was inaccessible, went home from the Department of State, leaving her dismayed, hard working staff leaderless, after hearing of the death of her Ambassador,  the night of Benghazi. The ambassador was dead and she did not organize a wake, or sit shiva or do any of the things people do for the dead. Gone home... 

Gone home,  to...whom?  Was she leaving because she had a late night assignation planned?

Tune in for the next episode when  Congresswoman Martha Roby asks Secretary Clinton if Ms. Clinton spent the night....ALONE!

"As the World of the State Department Turns," will go on and on, longer than "General Hospital" or any soap opera ever.

Or just read about it on the front page of the National Enquirer, available at your supermarket counter later today!!!

Really, can we not do better with the hair?

But really, we have to work on that hair ladies and gentlemen. From Ms. Brooks to Ms. Roby to Mr. Roskam to, especially, Mr. Gowdy, we really have an array of frightful coifs. 
 The Tea Party wears wigs. Think about it.

He played in a high school band

But he's all grown up now!