Blumenthal, Benghazi And The Difference It Makes

Dick Blumenthal, the nation’s first full time consumer protection senator, has now weighed in on merchants who “may be selling lower quality items produced specifically for outlet stores without properly informing consumers,” according to a Philadelphia television station.

The Senator has asked the Federal Trade Commission to examine claims that merchants have misled consumers in their ads. “There’s a lot of evidence,” Blumenthal breathlessly told the television consumer protection watchdog in Philadelphia, “that people shopping at outlet malls or at outlet establishments have no idea that goods and merchandise are made specifically for outlet malls.”

Naturally, preventive legislation is needed.

On foreign policy issues of national importance, Benghazi for instance, the senator has been less voluble. But that is because Mr. Blumenthal is not interested in regulating foreign affairs – just outlet malls. In fact, political consumers may be unaware that U.S. Congresspersons generally are uninterested in regulating foreign policy or budgets or administration officials who deprive Congress of the data the greatest deliberative body on earth needs to satisfy its Constitutional obligations or, of equal importance, its own ungovernable appetite for regulating everything that moves and breathes outside Congressional precincts. Mr. Blumenthal’s own Congressional site carries only a brief pro forma, seven line expression of “outrage and sadness” issued the day after the attack on the U.S. Consulate in Benghazi.

And you thought you sent your senator to Washington to hold responsible high administration officials who failed to protect or come to the aid of an ambassador to Libya murdered by – dare it be said? – Islamic terrorists.

Silly you.

In High School, your civics text – if you had the advantage of a civics text – mentioned a division of powers as a check on presidential presumption. The Constitution, an ancient but never-the-less useful document dating from 1787, invests the President with war powers and assigns to Congress auxiliary powers that also shape foreign policy. Constitutionally, Congress is the voice of conscience perched on the shoulder of any president who has Napoleonic ambitions.

Chris Stevens, the ambassador murdered in Libya by Islamic terrorists, was the personal representative of the President of the United States, as are all ambassadors.

Following the murder of the personal representative of President Barack Obama and the brave military personnel who came to his aid -- Sean Smith and two Navy Seals, Tyrone Woods and Glen Doherty, all slaughtered by militant Al-Qaida connected terrorists -- members of the administration fanned out to spread the lie that those who led the assault on the annex in Benghazi were “protestors” agitated by a film that had insulted, peace be upon him, the prophet Muhammad.

Persistent investigations by oversight Congressional committees and a cache of e-mails  secured by Judicial Watch on a Freedom of Information demand has now shown that the Obama/Rice stage show was an elaborate pantomime designed to convey the message during a presidential campaign that Mr. Obama had dealt a death blow to Al-Qaida. As such, the deception was much more wicked – and deadly – than the ads that recently have excited the interest of Mr. Blumenthal.

Among the 41 documents pried loose from the Obama administration, is an e-mail from deputy national security adviser Ben Rhodes that presents to then U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Susan Rice four goals that were to be accomplished during Ms. Rice’s numerous television appearances days after militant Islamic terrorists murdered the ambassador and other Americans in Benghazi.

According to the e-mail, Ms. Rice was to: “… convey that the United States is doing everything that we can to protect our people and facilities abroad; To underscore that these protests are rooted in an Internet video, and not a broader failure of policy; To show that we will be resolute in bringing people who harm Americans to justice, and standing steadfast through these protests; To reinforce the President and Administration’s strength and steadiness in dealing with difficult challenges.”

Only the last goal had been accomplished – temporarily – in the weeks following the terrorist attack. The attack on the U.S. Consulate did not arise from a spontaneous protest; it was not rooted in an internet video; the successful assault did point to a broader policy failure; the United States was and remains irresolute in bringing to justice people who harm Americans, particularly if they are associated with the Obama administration; and Mr. Obama’s strength and steadiness in dealing with difficult challenges – in Libya, Syria, Egypt, Iran and, most recently, Russia -- is very much in question.

Mr. Blumenthal, however, appears to be blithely unconcerned with the foreign policy mishaps of the Obama administration, preferring to focus his attention on misleading representations issued by Mall vendors. Unless he refocuses his attention pronto, history will hit him like a speeding passenger train. Mr. Blumenthal lately has devoted some of his attention to passenger trains.

Murphy Gets McCained

In Hungary, of all placed, novice U.S. Senator Chris Murphy got McCained.

U.S. Senator John McCain made a pit stop in Budapest on his way to Munich where he led a large congressional delegation to the Munich Security Conference, a catch basin for “defense ministers, international arms dealers, oil sheiks and angry Ukrainians,” according to Jeffery Goldberg of Bloomberg News.

Mr. Goldberg suspects that Mr. McCain met the press in Hungary “so that the delegation would be asked questions about a woman named Colleen Bell,” a soap opera producer chosen by President Barack Obama to serve as U.S. ambassador to Hungary.

Ms. Bell’s creds are much weaker than those of the late Chris Stevens, the U.S. Ambassador to Libya who was murdered, according to a whimsical notion peddled by the White House, by a crowd of “protesters” dissatisfied with the quality of a brief film made by a relatively unknown auteur.  All ambassadors are the personal representatives of the president. A short time after the embassy in Benghazi was attacked, then Secretary of State Hillary Clinton told the mother of one of the victims of the putative “spontaneous demonstration” that she was on the case. The filmmaker was arrested in due course and, Mrs. Clinton being unavailable, then U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Susan Rice was dispatched to various new outlets to commiserate with collateral victims of the attack and to point an accusing finger at the quickly imprisoned filmmaker. Ms. Rice has been taken off the U.N. beat and now serves as President Barack Obama's national security adviser, a bump upwards as anyone who knows anything about the tower of Babel in the Hudson will testify. Mrs. Clinton retired shortly after the American consulate in Benghazi was sacked and burned by non-spontaneous al-Qaida connected terrorists. Mrs. Clinton has been urged by leading Democrats to run as president

So, ambassador-wise, one would think Mr. Obama might be a little cautious. But, noooo… Ripe ambassadorships are still sold to the highest bidder, and Ms. Bell’s bids, in the form of campaign contributions, were more than adequate. A month ago, she found herself facing Mr. McCain at a confirmation hearing, which went like this:

McCain: What are our strategic interests in Hungary?

Bell:  Well, we have our strategic interests, in terms of what are our key priorities in Hungary, I think our key priorities are to improve upon, as I mentioned, the security relationship and also the law enforcement and to promote business opportunities, increase trade. ”

McCain: (Cynicism ripping like a wave over his outsized jaw) Great answer.

In Budapest, a reporter asked Mr. McCain about the producer of “The Bold and the Beautiful.”

“We’re very fortunate to have with us today the chairman of the committee that holds the hearings that these nominees come before,” Mr. McCain said, “and that is Senator Murphy, and he is very knowledgeable about these issues.”

But let Mr. Bloomberg tell it:

“Three things then happened. First, most everyone at the press conference laughed. Second, one of the people who didn’t laugh, the aforementioned Senator Chris Murphy, a freshman Democrat from Connecticut, approached the podium as if it were covered in rat poison. Third, McCain winked -- not at all subtly -- at the three American journalists sitting in the front row.”

Flourishing the usual ambassadorial pabulum, the knowledgeable Mr. Murphy told the reporters, “I think Hungary and the bilateral relationship is going to be very well served by Colleen Bell’s arrival. Ms. Bell has had an extensive history of involvement with a number of very important causes in the United States. She has visited Budapest and Hungary, and I think she is going to be a very strong ambassador, and we look forward to coming back and working with her in the very near future.”

It was a bit of a set-up, a senior member of the Senate flicking a towel at a junior member of the club in the locker room. Mr. Bloomberg was impressed:  “Watching John McCain set-up a fellow senator like a bowling pin is a rare Washington pleasure. Even when he does it in Budapest.”

But there is a serious point. At some point, the third strike ought to be called a strike out, and Mr. Obama recent choice of ambassadors has been inept.  If an ambassador is the personal representative of the president – and he is – shouldn’t the president be a trifle more discriminating? Hungary, to be sure, is no Libya. In the post-Soviet period, it may take a while for the Russian bear to maul into submission one of its former satellite countries. Ukraine is now being ripped, as Mr. Murphy well knows. In the post--Benghazi era, perhaps brains and experience rather than campaign contributions should purchase ambassadorships.