Seven things we learned. Too bad we couldn’t learn it before the election.
[Update a few minutes later]
And the Pentagon continues to stonewall.
[Update a few more minutes later]
The Benghazi patsy:
A violation of probation, though, usually produces a court summons and doesn’t typically lead to more jail time unless it involves an offense that would be worth prosecuting in its own right under federal standards. Not for Nakoula.
This wasn’t a case of nailing Al Capone on tax evasion. As Nina Shea of the Hudson Institute points out, Al Capone’s underlying offense was racketeering and gangland killings. Nakoula Basseley Nakoula’s underlying offense wasn’t an underlying offense. He exercised his First Amendment rights.
His case has symbolic significance in the ongoing battle over whether the Muslim world will embrace modernity, and the panoply of freedoms associated with it, or whether it will continue to slide backward by adopting blasphemy laws punishing expressions deemed offensive to Islam. The administration has been dismayingly willing to accommodate the latter tendency. Nakoula’s jail time appears indistinguishable from what the 56-nation Organization of Islamic Cooperation, devoted to pushing blasphemy laws around the world, calls “deterrent punishment” for “Islamophobia.”
His video, which did spark violent protests in the Muslim world by the kind of people who are looking for an excuse to protest, should have been an object lesson in freedom. Obama should have explained that our culture is full of disreputable film directors and producers. Some of them are even honored by the Academy.
Instead, Nakoula ended up the patsy in a tawdry coverup.
They had to maintain the narrative. As Glenn says, House investigators need to subpoena any communications between Washington and the local law enforcement in LA. Maybe we can find a whistleblower in the sheriff’s office.