After Eric Holder blasted Darrell Issa yesterday for his “shameful” demeanor, former Amb. Thomas Pickering and former Joint Chiefs Chairman Adm. Mike Mullen sent Issa a letter asking to testify publicly to combat his public contentions about them.

They write, per CNN: “Having taken liberal license to call into question the Board's work, it is surprising that you now maintain that members of the committee need a closed-door proceeding before being able to ask ‘informed questions’ at a public hearing.” 

Mark Sanford was sworn in yesterday, completing his comeback from the public spotlight to the Appalachian Trail and back to Congress. NBC’s Jessica Taylor reports.

NPR: “Democratic Senator Kirsten Gillibrand of New York will be introducing legislation with other lawmakers Thursday that would change how the military handles sexual assault cases. The proposal would let military prosecutors — rather than commanders — decide whether to bring serious military crimes to trial. It's the latest high-publicity move for a senator who was virtually unknown four years ago when she was appointed to fill Hillary Clinton's senate seat. Now, she's on some lists for possible candidates for vice president — even president.”

Chip Somodevilla / Getty Images

Speaker of the House John Boehner, left, greets Peggy Sanford, right, mother of U.S. Rep. Mark Sanford, second from right, Sanford's fiancee, Maria Belen Chapur, center, and members of Sanford's family before a ceremonial swearing-in at the U.S. Capitol May 15, 2013, in Washington, D.C.

Mark Sanford’s comeback story is complete.

The former South Carolina governor is now officially a congressman again, sworn in Wednesday on the House floor after winning last week’s competitive special election in the state's 1st District.

As Sanford took his official oath late Wednesday afternoon, he echoed the same themes of redemption he used in his winning campaign.

“I stand before you with a whole new appreciation for the God of second chances,” Sanford said.

The Republican’s return nearly 13 years after he left Capitol Hill is all the more remarkable for his having overcome the scandal that derailed his governorship.

In 2009, Sanford disappeared from the state, telling his office he was hiking on the Appalachian Trail, only to reveal in a teary press conference that he had actually been having an affair in Argentina. Sanford and his wife divorced, and he is now engaged to that same Argentinian woman, Maria Belen Chapur.

After he left the governor’s office following his second term, Sanford's political career appeared to be finished.  But when Gov. Nikki Haley tapped Rep. Tim Scott to fill an open seat in the U.S. Senate, Sanford was presented with an opportunity to reclaim the district he once represented.

Sanford won the special election primary and runoff with relative ease, but soon news leaked that his ex-wife had accused him of trespassing at her home earlier this year. Many Republicans began to distance themselves from Sanford, and the National Republican Congressional Committee pulled funding from the race.

Sensing an opportunity, Democrats poured money into the race, hoping that Democrat Elizabeth Colbert Busch, the sister of comedian Stephen Colbert, could pull the upset. Though polls showed the race was close, Sanford won by nine points on May 7.

But on Wednesday, as he began his first official day back on the Hill, Sanford said there were no hard feelings for House Republicans who spurned his campaign and said he'd been welcomed by the state's congressional delegation and by many current members, some of whom he had served with in his first stint.

Related:

• Once disgraced, Sanford victorious in SC special election
• Sanford challenges questions with spontaneous poll of women
• More on Mark Sanford

"If there's anybody who believes in putting the past behind them, it's me," a smiling Sanford told reporters outside his new congressional office before a noon lunch for supporters. In the afternoon, more than 50 supporters walked with him across Independence Avenue to the Capitol steps for a photo and filed into the gallery to watch his swearing-in at 5:30 p.m. on the House floor.

Chapur, his fiancée, was with him throughout Wednesday’s events. His two oldest sons were also present for his swearing-in, along with his mother, sister and brother-in-law and nephews.

Sanford said he and Chapur haven’t yet set a date for their wedding “that you know,” he joked with reporters.

The famously frugal governor, who slept in his office for his first six years in Congress, says he hasn’t decided whether he’ll bunk in his Cannon House office this time as he did before, but did laugh that he brought a futon with him.

Before his swearing-in, Sanford said he had to go through the same formalities any new member has to do, like getting his new member pin and congressional license plates.

“To a degree it’s deja vu; to a degree it’s a brand new experience,” said Sanford, noting the heightened security around the Capitol since the 1990s.

After being a chief executive for eight years, Sanford said he didn’t care whether he might experience some of the same frustrations with the slow legislative process many other former governors have. For Sanford, he’s just happy to be here, given the bumpy road that brought him back to D.C.

“Everybody travels their own path. Given the path I’ve traveled, it’s a chance to serve in the Congress of the most powerful country on Earth, to deal with financial issues that were really the reason I ran for office in the first place,” said Sanford. “It’s a chance to come back and work on the issues I’ve long cared about, long talked about, long been an advocate on.”

Democrats, however, weren't so ready to forgive and forget. Even though they may have lost the heavily Republican Charleston-based district that voted for Mitt Romney by 18 points last fall, they quickly worked to continue to hang Sanford’s scandals on him.

“Today when Mark Sanford raised his right hand, he became the newest face of a Republican Congress already struggling with women voters,” said Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee spokesman Emily Bittner. “Good luck with that.”

This story was originally published on Wed May 15, 2013 5:01 PM EDT

There’s never been much love lost between Attorney General Eric Holder and Republican Rep. Darrell Issa of California – who heads the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee.

The tension between the two men was on full display Wednesday, when Holder flatly labeled Issa’s conduct during a hearing of the House Judiciary Committee “shameful.”

The charge came after an aggressive exchange about Labor Secretary nominee Tom Perez, whom Republicans say acted inappropriately during his time at the Justice Department.

“I am not going to stop talking now," Holder countered as Issa objected to the attorney general’s attempts to interject.

"It is inappropriate and too consistent with the way in which you conduct yourself as a member of Congress," Holder said. "It is unacceptable. It is shameful."

This story was originally published on Wed May 15, 2013 3:33 PM EDT

Under fire for secret subpoenas of Associated Press phone records, the Obama administration has asked a key senator to revive legislation that would enhance protections for journalists trying to protect their sources.

A White House official called Sen. Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., on Wednesday to ask him to reintroduce the media shield law that he supported in 2009 but that never received a vote on the Senate floor. The push comes in the wake of Department of Justice subpoenas of a broad swath of AP's phone records, including several main numbers used by more than 100 reporters.

"This kind of law would balance national security needs against the public's right to the free flow of information. At minimum, our bill would have ensured a fairer, more deliberate process in this case," Schumer said in a statement.

The shield law would insulate journalists from fines and prison time when they refuse to reveal their sources in court cases. It allows journalists to appeal to a federal judge when they don't want to give up their sources to subpoena -- and let the judge decide whether public interest in the journalist's story outweighs the interests of the government.

But the bill also says that in some national security matters, this "balancing test" wouldn't be applied.

That's in part because of White House concerns about the law. In 2009, the White House objected to the shield law's use in national security situations -- like the one the AP believes triggered the secret subpoenas. The wire service reported in 2012 that a double agent had foiled a bomb plot in Yemen.

Attorney General Eric Holder on Tuesday called that leak "a very, very serious leak."

"This is among the top two or three serious leaks that I’ve ever seen," he said.

House Republicans debuted a new line of attack against Democrats on Wednesday, calling the GOP the party of "accountability and trust in government" in the wake of several recent controversies involving the Obama administration.

Armed with new uproars involving the IRS's admission that it had targeted conservative advocacy groups, the release of more emails involving the administration's response to last year's terrorist attack in Benghazi and the Justice Department's having monitored the phone record of AP journalists, the House GOP leadership said that they would emphasize transparency in the coming weeks, and hope to make it a central issue in the 2014 midterm elections.

"The public is beginning to raise questions in their mind as to is this government accountable? We are going to work here in the House to restore the trust in government," said House Majority Leader Eric Cantor, R-Va.

House GOP Conference Chairwoman Cathy McMorris Rodgers, Wash., added: "What the American people expect from their government is accountability."

The new line of attack comes amid a terrible, five-day stretch for the White House. Republican aides told NBC News that the trifecta of controversies had breathed new life into the GOP conference, which recently had been riven my internal disagreements, especially as most legislative action plays out in the Democratic-held Senate.

Democrats, of course, took issue with Republicans' efforts to seize the mantle of transparency.

"Members of both parties want to exercise the appropriate oversight role of Congress into these matters, but the idea that this Republican leadership has been interested in doing anything to the federal government other than destroying it, would be a thorough rewrite of the last two years," said Drew Hammil, a spokesman for House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif.

Republicans would have another opportunity to drive their new message on Wednesday afternoon, when Attorney General Eric Holder appears for a House committee for a general oversight hearing. There, he'll he’ll be peppered with questions about why the Justice Department went after reporter’s phone records. And next Wednesday, the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee will hold a hearing on the political targeting by the IRS. Aides say also to expect more hearings related to Benghazi throughout the year.

For his part, House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio, stressed the party would still push the economy as an issue but would also uphold their “responsibility under the Constitution to provide oversight over the Executive Branch."

As the White House faces a trio of burgeoning controversies that have put the administration and agencies throughout Washington on the defensive, Attorney General General Eric Holder reiterated before a House panel Wednesday that he was not involved in the Justice Department's decision to seize two months of phone records from Associated Press journalists as a part of a leak probe.

LIVESTREAM: House Judiciary Committee hearing

The Justice Department has also opened an investigation into revelations that the Internal Revenue Service targeted conservative groups applying for tax-exempt status for additional scrutiny. In testimony before the House Judiciary Committee, Holder said that prosecutors are looking at several different statutes in the investigation of those actions. 

He said those potential violations could include an IRS statute that requires employees to do their jobs without favoritism, civil rights laws, the Hatch Act that restricts a federal employee's political activities, or the law against making false statements to investigators.

“The facts will take us wherever they take us,” he added, promising a nationwide investigation. 

Asked about the leak probe, Holder confirmed that Deputy Attorney General James Cole authorized the subpoenas on AP reporters' phone records after Holder recused himself from the matter.

Brendan Smialowski / AFP - Getty Images

Attorney General Eric Holder is sworn in during a hearing of the House Judiciary Committee on Capitol Hill May 15, 2013 in Washington, DC.

Holder first announced Tuesday that he had recused himself from the AP leak probe because he had previously been questioned by the FBI about the intelligence breach.

He added Wednesday that he also turned over his own phone records as a part of that questioning. 

He told the committee that he recused himself because he was one of the “relatively limited number of people” who had first-hand knowledge of the leaked information – and also because he had more regular communication with reporters than Cole.

“I was a possessor of the information that was ultimately leaked,” he added. “And the question then is, who of those people who possessed that information – which was a relatively limited number of people  within the Justice Department – who of those people actually spoke in an inappropriate way to the Associated Press,” he added.

In response to questions, he said that he did not know the date of his recusal for certain and that there was not a written record of it.  He also said that the White House would not have been informed of the recusal. 

Holder has been widely criticized by Republicans for DOJ's handling of the matter, scrutiny Holder noted at the beginning of his remarks.

"The head of the [Republican National Committee] called for my resignation in spite of the fact that I was not the person who was involved in that decision," he said.

The routine Justice Department oversight hearing became a hot ticket after two scandals – the DOJ probe and the revelations about the IRS – erupted since the end of last week. The Obama administration also continues to be dogged by lingering questions over its administration’s response to the Sept. 11, 2012 attack on a diplomatic outpost in Benghazi.

In opening remarks he was set to deliver before the House Judiciary Committee, Holder says the Justice Department “has taken critical steps to prevent and combat violent crime, to confront national security threats, to ensure the civil rights of everyone in this country, and to safeguard the most vulnerable members of our society.”

NBC's Pete Williams contributed to this report. 

This story was originally published on Wed May 15, 2013 1:07 PM EDT

The top elected Republican in Congress says he's looking for prison sentences for those associated with IRS efforts to single out conservative advocacy groups applying for tax-exempt status.

House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio, stoked conservative ire toward the Obama administration on Wednesday in the wake of an IRS inspector general report chastising agency employees for subjecting conservative and Tea Party groups to additional scrutiny.

"My question isn't about who's going to resign," Boehner said at a weekly press conference on Capitol Hill. "My question's about who's going to jail."

While the IRS report suggested that the employees' actions were not prompted by any outside influence, Republicans have nonetheless seized on the controversy, and openly suggested that the administration was deliberately targeting conservatives through the IRS.

"“Basically all we’ve gotten from the IRS, on the other hand, is an attempt to scapegoat some folks out in Cincinnati and a laughable attempt to move past this whole issue with a ridiculous op-ed claiming ‘mistakes were made,'" Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., said Wednesday morning on the Senate floor.

McConnell and the other 44 Senate Republicans all signed a letter to the administration demanding that IRS witnesses and materials be fully made available to congressional investigators.

"There are laws in place to prevent this type of abuse," Boehner said. "Someone made a conscious decision to harass and hold up these requests for tax exempt status. We need to know who they are, and whether they violated the law. Clearly, somebody violated the law."

This story was originally published on Wed May 15, 2013 10:34 AM EDT

Controversies sidetrack the White House, Congress, and the press… The danger for the White House: This could imperil Obama’s second-term legislative agenda… But there’s also a danger in over-analyzing the past seven days… Krauthammer’s warning to Republicans… Obama, Treasury respond to IG report on IRS… On that Ben Rhodes email… Mark Sanford’s first day back on Hill… And Planned Parenthood hits Cuccinelli.

Kevin Lamarque / Reuters

White House Press Secretary Jay Carney pauses while speaking to reporters in the briefing room of the White House May 14, 2013.

*** Sidetracked: The Benghazi/IRS/AP stories over the past week have had this additional impact for the Obama White House: They’ve sidetracked the other issues that President Obama has wanted to discuss. (Frankly, they’ve also sidetracked us in media, too.)  Last Thursday, Obama was in Austin, TX to talk about the economy; on Friday, he was selling implementation of his health-care law; on Monday night, the president traveled to fundraisers in New York, where expressed his desire to still work with Republicans (even as he raised money for Democrats for the ’14 midterms); and today at 11:00 am ET, he delivers remarks at a national peace officers memorial. Oh, there was another piece of news from yesterday the White House would have enjoyed to tout -- the budget deficit, according to the Congressional Budget Office, is estimated to fall to its lowest level since 2008. But what are the stories still being discussed in Washington today? The IRS targeting conservative-sounding groups. The Justice Department getting the AP’s phone records in a national-security leak investigation. And the Obama administration revising those Benghazi talking points.

*** The danger for the White House: NBC’s Kasie Hunt also notes that the controversies have sidetracked Congress, too. For instance, a weeks-long markup of a major Senate immigration bill received little attention yesterday; Attorney General Eric Holder testifies at a 1:00 pm ET oversight hearing, which will likely focus on the department's seizure of AP phone records and other thorny issues. Moreover, the top Republican on the Senate Finance Committee (Orrin Hatch) wants the IRS investigation to take priority over dealing with tax reform. And get this: Fully a third of House committees are now focused on investigating the Obama administration. As NBC’s Mike O’Brien writes, all of this COULD imperil the Obama White House’s second-term legislative agenda. “The fact of the matter is House and Senate Republicans have done very little legislating so far this year. This certainly isn't going to help things,” Jim Manley, a former senior Democratic Senate aide, told O’Brien. “Now they're going to feast on investigation after investigation for the rest of the year, while throwing red meat to their base and forgetting about the divisions in their own caucus.”

*** A temporary distraction or a long-term one? So is this a temporary distraction or the beginning of the end of Obama’s second term? Remember the warning we issued months ago about second terms. Legislatively, in the best of times, they last about 18 months. The last four presidents to win second terms saw their ability to drive a legislative agenda get stopped in its tracks in 18 months or less. For Nixon, it was about six months before Washington gave up; Reagan got tax reform done and then Iran-Contra came; Clinton got a year until Monica broke in Jan. 98; and George W. Bush’s second term legislative push ended before Labor Day of that first year

*** Yet the danger in over-analyzing: Despite all the controversies facing the administration -- and how they have sidetracked its agenda -- there is a danger in over-analyzing what has occurred in the past week. After all, the White House has faced even more trying times over the past four and a half years (the U.S. economy in free-fall, the BP spill, the debt-ceiling debacle of 2011), and all of those stories now seem like distant memories. And while some are saying that Washington has turned on Obama, we have this question: When has Establishment Washington ever been a fan of how Team Obama has responded to crises and controversies? (The current issues, and the White House’s stubbornly passive way of handling them, are serving as an excuse for the president’s frenemies to pile on and re-air old grievances, like he’s terrible at personal outreach or he’s or why the person who promised to “turn the page” can’t change Washington.) Politico’s Jonathan Martin puts it well: Will all of these investigations and controversies result in a 2010 (when the public worried about the federal government’s excesses, albeit in a time of 9.0%-plus unemployment) or in a 1998 (when the GOP faced backlash for the Lewinsky investigation)? Right now, we don’t have an answer, but you can begin making a case that everything out there (talk of scandal and investigations, the Dow reaching new highs, the budget deficit declining) looks a whole lot like the 1990s.

*** Krauthammer’s warning to Republicans: Conservative columnist Charles Krauthammer warns Republicans not to overplay their hand. “The one advice I give to Republicans is stop calling it a huge scandal. Stop saying it's a Watergate. Stop saying it's Iran Contra. Let the facts speak for themselves. Have a special committee, a select committee. The facts will speak for themselves. Pile them on but don't exaggerate, don't run ads about Hillary. It feed the narrative for the other side that it's only a political event. It's not. Just be quiet and present the facts.”

*** Obama, Treasury respond to IG report on IRS: On “TODAY” this morning, NBC’s Lisa Myers reported on inspector general’s report into the IRS, and the IG concluded that the agency was targeting conservative-sounding groups in their application for tax-exempt status, that the IRS unit responsible was a mess, and that some employees were actually ignorant about tax laws. But the IG also concluded that the targeting didn’t originate OUTSIDE the IRS. “We asked the Acting Commissioner, Tax Exempt and Government Entities Division; the Director, EO; and Determinations Unit personnel if the criteria were influenced by any individual or organization outside the IRS. All of these officials stated that the criteria were not influenced by any individual or organization outside the IRS,” the report said. President Obama released a statement after the report’s release: “[T]he report's findings are intolerable and inexcusable… I've directed Secretary Lew to hold those responsible for these failures accountable, and to make sure that each of the Inspector General's recommendations are implemented quickly, so that such conduct never happens again.” And Treasury Secretary Jack Lew responded with his own statement: “I strongly agree with the President about the need for accountability at the IRS, and I expect the IRS to implement the Inspector General's recommendations without delay.” That said, the IG report will do NOTHING to satisfy members of Congress who still have lots of questions.

*** On that Ben Rhodes email: Regarding those Benghazi talking points, First Read has now seen the email from Deputy National Security Adviser Ben Rhodes, and it appears to differ from the earlier portrayal that the Obama White House wanted the State Department’s concerns to be addressed. In fact, what Rhodes seemed to want is for all the information to be as accurate as possible. "There is a ton of wrong information getting out into the public domain from Congress and people who are not particularly informed. Insofar as we have firmed up assessments that don't compromise intel or the investigation, we need to have the capability to correct the record, as there are significant policy and messaging ramifications that would flow from a hardened mis-impression,” he said. But it’s important to note that this Rhodes email, via a government source, is a SELECTIVE leak -- just as the earlier portrayal of the email chain was a SELECTIVE leak. This only puts pressure on the White House to release ALL of these emails. You can’t start showing some of them without showing all of them.

*** Sanford’s first day back on Capitol Hill: In other news, “Rep.-elect Mark Sanford (R-S.C.) will be sworn in Wednesday as the new representative of South Carolina’s 1st district, his spokesman announced Tuesday,” the Washington Post writes. “In the House chamber, Sanford will be sworn in approximately 5:15 p.m. Wednesday, spokesman Joel Sawyer said. The Republican will rejoin Congress a week after he defeated Democratic nominee Elizabeth Colbert Busch by nine points, even as he was barraged by Democratic outside spending.”

*** Planned Parenthood hits Cuccinelli: In Virginia’s gubernatorial contest, Planned Parenthood Action Fund is launching a web advertisement hitting Ken Cuccinelli on social issues in advance of this weekend’s Virginia GOP convention in Richmond. “That Ken Cuccinelli -- he’s running for governor, and he keeps showing up where he doesn’t belong. He’s trying to put himself in the middle of our most personal decision,” the ad goes. He sponsored legislation to end funding for Planned Parenthood, and Ken Cuccinelli wants to make abortion illegal, even in cases of rape, incest, or when the health of the woman is in danger.” The web ad, which targets women voters, will run through this weekend.

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“The most potent illustration that Republicans have shifted their attitudes on immigration came Tuesday morning when all GOP members of the Senate Judiciary Committee rejected an amendment from Sen. Jeff Sessions, R-Ala., to severely limit the number of legal immigrants allowed into the country,” National Journal writes. “The committee’s overwhelming ‘No’ vote shows that the battle for Republicans’ souls on immigration has shifted away from groups that want to reduce the influx of foreigners, like the Heritage Foundation, NumbersUSA, and Fairness for American Immigration Reform (FAIR), toward free-market groups that applaud increased immigration, such as Americans for Tax Reform and the CATO Institute.”

By the way, Mark Sanford will be sworn in at 5:15 pm today.

Republicans will again try to repeal ObamaCare today, for what NBC’s Frank Thorp reports is the 38^th time.

Then there were three controversies for the Obama administration… The latest: AP says Justice Department secretly obtained two months of phone records in possible leak case… Latest developments with the IRS story… Why did the IRS focus on the small fish -- but not the big ones?... Obama outraged by IRS story, as well as Benghazi “sideshow”… Some perspective, per Charlie Cook: Much of the outrage right now is selective outrage… Dems put changing the filibuster back on the table?... Rubio PAC airs TV ad defending Ayotte … And Christie goes negative.

Saul Loeb / AFP - Getty Images

President Barack Obama speaks at a Democratic fundraiser in New York City, May 13, 2013.

*** Then there were three: Finding itself already under siege on two different fronts -- the Benghazi and IRS stories -- the Obama administration now encounters a third controversy, and this one features one of the most influential news organizations in the world. The Associated Press revealed yesterday afternoon that the Justice Department “secretly obtained two months of telephone records” of AP reporters and editors “in what the news cooperative's top executive called a ‘massive and unprecedented intrusion’ into how news organizations gather the news.” Per NBC’s Michael Isikoff, DOJ confirmed that it obtained these phone records without notifying the news organization, saying the step was needed to avoid "a substantial threat to the integrity" of an ongoing leak investigation. When it rains, it pours, as the conservative Drudge Report gleefully notes. While this Justice Department move is sweeping, chilling for journalists (why didn’t DOJ attempt to negotiate?), and an apparent attempt to intimidate future leakers, let’s don’t forget that Congress asked the Obama administration to investigate all the national-security leaks. “Republicans accused the administration of deliberately leaking classified information, jeopardizing national security in an effort to make Mr. Obama look tough in an election year — a charge the White House rejected. But some Democrats, too, said the leaking of sensitive information had gotten out of control,” the New York Times says.

*** Three makes it harder: While the president’s defiant tone on Benghazi probably would have been enough to quell things under normal circumstances, the times aren’t normal right now. The rule of three (toss in IRS and AP) means the president’s credibility is truly on the line right now with the public. No amount of denial or outrage will be as persuasive to the public right now and the president’s political foes know it. And that’s why you saw some senators yesterday going even further, hitting the White House on the implementation of health care or Mitch McConnell who attempted to use the IRS news to connect the dots and claim a concerted effort was taking place all over the government to target conservatives or limit freedoms. Many of these charges are baseless but the environment right now for the White House is a mess and they are in a position where it’ll be a lot easier for issues to stick to them. The Teflon is wearing off. 

*** Latest developments with the IRS story: The IRS controversy is only growing as more organizations come forward about exactly how the IRS went about investigating conservative groups. The Washington Post: “Internal Revenue Service officials in Washington and at least two other offices were involved with investigating conservative groups seeking tax-exempt status… IRS officials at the agency’s Washington headquarters sent queries to conservative groups asking about their donors and other aspects of their operations.” (However, it’s unclear in the story if these Washington employees were only targeting conservative groups or if they were scrutinizing a wider scope of groups applying for tax-exempt status.) What’s more, Politico notes That the IRS’s acting commissioner “first learned about the agency’s targeting of conservative political groups more than a year ago, the agency revealed Monday.” As for the White House, the president claimed he only heard about the IRS story when it went public on Friday. Jay Carney later said, the White House Counsel’s office was made aware of the IG investigation in late April but that the president was NOT informed at the time and that the Counsel’s office wasn’t told many specifics about the report.   

*** Focusing on the small fish -- but not the big ones: Also regarding the IRS story, the New York Times’ Confessore makes a great point: While the IRS scrutinized relatively small conservative-sounding groups in their application for tax-exempt 501c4 status, the agency has hardly lifted a finger when it comes to the bigger political players. “The I.R.S. has done little to regulate a flood of political spending by larger groups — like Crossroads Grassroots Policy Strategies, co-founded by Mr. Rove, and Priorities USA, with close ties to President Obama… ‘We’ve complained about a few big fish and we’ve heard nothing from the I.R.S.,’ said Paul S. Ryan, senior counsel at the Campaign Legal Center, which filed many of the complaints with the agency. ‘We would far rather see scrutiny of these big fish — the groups that spent hundreds of millions of dollars to influence elections — than to see the resources spent on hundreds of small groups that appeared to spend very little on elections.’” One of the unintended consequences of this IRS story: It probably will set back any effort to close the loopholes that allow overtly political organizations to obtain tax-exempt status and to shield their donors.

*** Obama outraged by IRS actions and Benghazi “sideshow”: In his news conference with British Prime Minister Cameron yesterday, President Obama called the IRS story “outrageous,” saying: “If, in fact, IRS personnel engaged in the kind of practices that had been reported on and were intentionally targeting conservative groups, then that's outrageous and there's no place for it. And they have to be held fully accountable.” But in the outrage department, the president got a lot more animated when the topic turned to Benghazi, making it clear he believes it’s nothing more than a partisan sideshow. “The whole issue of talking points, frankly, throughout this process has been a sideshow. What we have been very clear about throughout was that immediately after this event happened we were not clear who exactly had carried it out, how it had occurred, what the motivations were. It happened at the same time as we had seen attacks on U.S. embassies in Cairo as a consequence of this film. And nobody understood exactly what was taking place during the course of those first few days.”

*** Dems put changing the filibuster back on the table? Largely lost by all the Benghazi/IRS/AP coverage has been this fact: Senate Republicans have used procedural tactics to so far block many of Obama’s nominees, including his picks to head the Labor Department and EPA. That has spurred Democrats and their allies to reconsider ways to change the Senate’s 60-vote threshold, which has been used for even the most routine of measures. The Hill: “Senate Democrats frustrated with the GOP’s blocking of a string of President Obama’s nominees are seriously weighing a controversial tactic known as the ‘nuclear option.’ The option — which would involve Democrats changing Senate rules through a majority vote to prevent the GOP from using the 60-vote filibuster to block nominations — was raised during a private meeting Wednesday involving about 25 Democratic senators and a group of labor leaders.” Remember, it was that same “nuclear” option threat that spurred Senate Democrats and Republicans to reach the “Gang of 14” compromise to approve some of George W. Bush’s judicial nominees.

*** It’s the eye of the beholder: That said, political analyst Charlie Cook provides an important historical perspective: Right now, much of the controversy the White House is facing is selective outrage. “Whether the White House is in Democratic or Republican hands, we have to put up with a degree of selective outrage from one side and the turning of a blind eye from the other,” Cook writes. “Democrats who were quick to pounce on any possible transgression during George W. Bush’s presidency are noticeably quiet these days. At the same time, one wonders whether the same Republicans who are frothing over Benghazi would have been quite as vigilant had they been in Congress after the bombing of the Marine barracks in Beirut in October 1983, which killed 220 U.S. Marines, 18 sailors, and three Army soldiers.” And that selective outrage makes many of the “Nixon” comparisons seem VERY premature right now. Regarding Nixon, Watergate, and that administration’s cover-ups, the condemnation -- of activity that went straight to the top -- was bipartisan.

*** Rubio PAC airs TV ad defending Ayotte: We’ve been covering politics for a while, but we don’t think we’ve ever seen this -- a possible presidential candidate’s PAC airing a TV ad to help a COLLEAGUE who represents an early-nominating state. “Sen. Marco Rubio's political action committee is going up with a TV ad defending New Hampshire Sen. Kelly Ayotte's votes on gun control. ‘Safety, security, family - no one understands these things like a mom, and no one works harder for them than this one,’ the ad says, showing a photo of Ayotte. ‘A former prosecutor, Kelly Ayotte knows how to reduce gun violence.’”

*** Christie goes negative: And it’s rare you see this, too: A political candidate who’s leading his opponent by 30-plus points is going negative. But that’s exactly what New Jersey Chris Christie is doing with this new TV ad. As Politico writes, “Sky-high approval ratings be damned — New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie is going on air next week with an ad that paints his Democratic rival Barbara Buono as a tax-hiker who is yoked to unpopular former governor Jon Corzine, POLITICO has learned.The spot, which begins running Monday, is part of an $800,000 ad buy over the course of roughly a week.” Per last week’s NBC/Marist poll, Christie was leading Barbara Buono 60%-28% among registered voters.

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