We begin today's roundup with The Courier-Journal's take on the confirmation of Loretta Lynch as attorney general:
Loretta Lynch made history Thursday by becoming the first African-American woman to lead the U.S. Justice Department as the nation’s attorney general.
Her confirmation by the U.S. Senate is long overdue and comes after weeks of inexcusable gridlock — the vote obstructed by partisan bickering over unrelated matters, chiefly whether a bill to aid victims of human trafficking should include restrictions on abortion.
Seriously. Only in the hyper-partisan atmosphere in Congress could a vote on a highly qualified career prosecutor bog down in a an unrelated spat over abortion.
The Washington Post:
SENATORS VOTED Thursday to confirm Loretta Lynch as the next attorney general by an embarrassingly thin margin of 56 to 43. It was embarrassing not to Ms. Lynch, who clearly deserved confirmation, but to the Republicans who voted against a nominee who should have breezed through.
For more on the day's top stories, head below the fold.
Philip Bump at The Fix previews the next act in the GOP's never-ending Benghazi obsession -- an attempt to get Hillary Clinton to testify about the email controversy and Benghazi (two in one!):
[Rep.] Gowdy explains this in a press release that accompanied the letter. "[T]he House Resolution that established the Select Benghazi Committee gave the committee purview to examine all aspects of State Department’s compliance with previous Benghazi investigations," it reads, "which now includes State’s failure for two years to notify any of the previous investigative committees it did not have possession or control of Clinton’s email public records." You'll notice that the final seven questions above deal with the record-keeping questions as they pertain to the Benghazi committee, not the attacks themselves.
On Wednesday, a spokesman for Gowdy indicated that the investigation might continue into 2016, which surprised only the least cynical of political observers. The committee has been trying to get Clinton to testify again for some time; the letter was part of that process. But the delay can also be explained by the shift in attention to the meta-investigation of Benghazi, which clearly has put enough gas in the committee's engine to power for a few more miles.
Jay Bookman:
The House Oversight and Reform Committee has investigated it.
The House Armed Services Committee has investigated it.
The House Committee on Foreign Affairs has investigated it.
The Senate Foreign Relations Committee has investigated it.
The Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs has investigated it.
The Senate Intelligence Committee has investigated it.
The Senate Armed Services Committee has investigated it.
The State Department’s Accountability Review Board has investigated it.
The State Department’s Inspector General has investigated it.
And yet according to Gowdy and House Speaker John Boehner, the Select Committee on Dead-Horse Flogging won’t be able to complete its report this year because, as Boehner puts it, “the administration has made it virtually impossible to get to the facts surrounding Benghazi.”
They truth is that they have the facts. They just don’t like the facts.
Jonathan Bernstein argues that the Benghazi obsession will backfire for the GOP in 2016:
For those who listen to conservative talk radio, Benghazi is a huge scandal that will bring down Barack Obama (and Hillary Clinton) any day now. But no one outside this bubble thinks that way: Remember the trap Mitt Romney got caught in when he tried to score points on Benghazi in a 2012 presidential debate?
It is unlikely but not impossible that the scandals involving the Clinton Foundation will move votes in 2016. We’ll have to see what the evidence says. But Benghazi? By delaying the report until next year, Republicans might think, Wile E. Coyote-like, that they’re finally going to get Clinton. But all the House maneuvering will do is force the Republican nominee to have to disassociate himself from the party's nuts-and-kooks crowd.
Matt Taibbi at Rolling Stone examines the GOP in disarray:
The Republican Party is a paradox. It has enjoyed tremendous success at the local level in recent years, but that success has come at a time of historically low voter turnout. With the demographic picture changing so fast in this country and the party's own youth rapidly changing their minds on key social issues, the Republicans seemingly have a choice to make.
The first choice would be to embrace a different future right now, and start a long-term rebuild based around the changing consensus on these social issues.
The other plan would be to forestall the passage of time for a few more election cycles, and try to squeeze a few more White House runs out of the party's aging, Fox-devouring, ideologically anachronistic base.
Neither strategy offers too much long-term excitement politically.
The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel breaks about Gov. Scott Walker's shifting positions on immigration:
So just what exactly is Gov. Scott Walker's position on immigration policy?
That is very hard to say, based on the governor's meandering comments on the issue in recent weeks as his presidential ambitions have fully enveloped him. [...]
Here's what the governor should do: He should find the courage of his convictions and support smart policy that gives the millions of illegal immigrants already here a chance to come out of the shadows. He should listen to what other, thoughtful Republicans have had to say on the issue — people such as Florida Sen. Marco Rubio (who backed reform before himself backing away) and U.S. Paul Ryan (R-Wis.).
Perhaps Walker will find his sea legs on this issue eventually. Or maybe he'll keep flopping about the deck as he tries to persuade voters that he really, truly believes whatever it is that he believes.