Depraved Sanctimony

  * Republicans owe America an apology for acts of depraved sanctimony.  Two examples:
  * 1)  Reacting to election of our first black president, Tea Party chapters sprang up across the country to deprive Obama of his mandate.  Under Carl Rove’s urging they applied for 501(c)(4) tax exemption, claiming that less than half their resources would be used for politics, contrary to their past.  Republicans sanctimoniously drove Lois Lerner from office for exercising due diligence to prevent tax fraud by those formerly purely political groups.   Last week DOJ declined to prosecute Lerner.  Actually, the fault was with Congress for establishing the 501(c)(4) category with its impossible-to-verify qualifications.
  * 2) After Libya’s revolution, we attempted to facilitate establishment of governing institutions by treating them respectfully.  We didn’t prepare for the rare combination: dereliction by law enforcers of duty to protect foreign missions plus a mob with deadly mortars, these developing in a matter of minutes.  Republicans sanctimoniously attacked Hillary Clinton for failing to protect our four personnel in the compound.  Such preparation was the responsibility of career State-Department professionals and CIA agents, not of Hillary Clinton.  The underlying fault was the Neocon/Vulcan doctrine of robust US presence in the middle east.  Benign neglect would be better.