Well, there were those four
Presumptive Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton has so successfully scrubbed the Sept. 11, 2012, massacre at Benghazi from her brain that, in explaining the country's intervention in Libya on "PBS Newshour" last week, she said U.S. efforts there "did not cost a single American life."
"We know that you encouraged the president to intervene in Libya in 2011," host Judy Woodruff said. "Recently President Obama said his worst mistake in office was probably failing to plan for the day after what he thought was the right thing to do in intervening there. How do you see your responsibility in that?"
Clinton went on to discredit her influence and called it "a presidential decision." The president sometimes would follow her advice, she said, and sometimes not. After trying to further explain the events surrounded the decision, she said, "After due diligence, we came up with a way of supporting their efforts that did not cost a single American life. And we saved a lot of Libyan lives."
What she conveniently forgot was that in part of that intervention, U.S. Ambassador Chris Stevens, U.S. Foreign Service Information Management Officer Sean Smith, Tyrone S. Woods and Glen Doherty were killed in an attack on American facilities there.
It was the same attack she knew was caused by terrorists but repeatedly lied about, blaming it on the creation of a video, and about which she testified before a U.S. Senate committee, asking what difference it made what caused the attack.
Rules for racists
White people, says the social media associate for the United Church of Christ denomination and the editor of its official blog, will always be racist.
"You can't disconnect yourself completely from the racism from which you benefit," Marchaé Grair, who is black, wrote in a post recently for the progressive church, "and recognizing that is a large step in rejecting white privilege."
A "good starting point" for whites with "people of color," she said, is "to name that your privilege exists." Only identifying it within oneself, she said, is like "seeing a fire and never calling 911. It just doesn't do much."
In case that wasn't clear, Grair added a helpful list of 10 ways in which "anti-racism allies" can "confront the ways you may also be racist." They include: "Take up minimal space during anti-racism dialogues and protests"; "Stop contributing to gentrification and calling it 'urban development'"; "Never invite POC (people of color) to the table for the sake of claiming diversity"; "Stop lifting up non-confrontational POC as examples for what POC activism should be" and "Recognize that you're still racist. No matter what."
Irony lost on atheists
Evangelist Franklin Graham wondered if any of the thousands of atheists who gathered at the Lincoln Memorial for the recent Reason Rally recognized the irony.
The atheists, who claimed the event was political, said their focus is on secularism and the issues of climate change, reproductive rights and LGBT equality.
"Isn't it ironic," Graham wrote on a Facebook post, "that they met on the grounds of the Lincoln Memorial where these words are engraved in stone: 'We here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain - that this nation UNDER GOD shall have a new birth of freedom.' President Abraham Lincoln acknowledged the inherent role God plays in establishing our rights and freedoms and so did many of our founding fathers."
It's the atheists' intent, he said, to "strip God out of America's past, present and future." However, he added, "if you remove God, you remove God's hand of blessing. That's been shown over and over throughout history."
And while he said "this liberal godless kind of what they call 'reason' should concern every freedom-loving American," he suggested his followers keep the faith by continuing to share theirs.
Phoning it in
Taxpayers may be on the hook for a half billion dollars in fraudulent cellphone subsidies, the senior Republican commissioner of the Federal Communications Commission says.
Ajit Pai says that's because there are as many as 4.2 million duplicate recipients of federal Lifeline Assistance subsidies, which is known as the Obamaphone program.
Pai, in a letter to the chief executive of the Universal Services Administration Co. (USAC), requested an audit of how carrier sub-contractors vet the applications for new subsidies. The subsidies are supposed to be limited to one per household, but there is an exception for families living as "independent economic households" in group homes or homeless shelters.
"Unfortunately," he said, "this well-natured exception to the override process appears to be undermining the one-per-household rule."
And how! Between October 2014 and April 2015, more than 34.5 percent of all enrollees - 4,291,647 - in the Lifeline program joined through the loophole, according to the tracking National Lifeline Assistance Database.
Of course, it's not the government giveaway program's first time to be scammed. Two years ago, the FCC learned 32,000 fake accounts with fake Social Security numbers were receiving subsidies through carrier Total Call Mobile.
Once again, your federal government at work.