What Year Is It? 

The president has just won a landslide victory. He is looking forward to an aggressive second term agenda. Suddenly scandal strikes. What year is it -- 1973 or 2013? A lot of folks in Washington say it feels like 1973 all over again. It is astonishing how quickly fortunes can change. 

The front page of today's Boston Herald reads: "OBAMAGATE." Another headline declares: "Scandals Invoke Comparison To Nixon." For the past two days MSNBC's "Moring Joe" has even trotted out Watergate reporter Carl Bernstein. 

Less than week ago the president had a Benghazi problem. Now he still has a Benghazi problem plus a growing IRS scandal and a potential Justice Department scandal for spying on the Associated Press.And it's only Tuesday. Who knows what else might come out before the end of the week! 

Here are some brief updates on the Benghazi and the IRS scandals. 

• The Weekly Standard's Stephen Hayes, who has extensively covered the Benghazi scandal, said it was "stunning and very foolish" for President Obama to say, as he did yesterday, "There's no 'there' there," regarding Benghazi. 

  Unbelievably, Obama actually tried to make the case that the whole controversy was contrived and politically motivated by congressional Republicans. If Obama actually believes that, then he is engaged in Nixonian denial. 

  His administration misled the American people, spreading a false narrative about a terrorist attack that took the lives of four Americans, including the first U.S. ambassador to be killed in decades.

  Please share the Benghazi video American Values produced with your friends and family. Help me put this ad on TV! 

  Obama's claim that he and others in his administration were calling the attack "an act of terrorism" within a day or two is absurd. In fact, the Washington Post Fact Checker gave Obama's statement its worst rating of Four Pinocchios. 

  Meanwhile, the momentum for a select committee to investigate Benghazi is picking up steam. To date 146 House Republicans -- 63% of the entire GOP caucus -- have co-sponsored Rep. Frank Wolf's legislation calling for a select committee. 
   

• In acknowledging that it had wrongly targeted conservative groups, the IRS tried to downplay and distance the administration from the scandal by noting that the offenses were limited to low-level employees in an Ohio office. 

  Today's Washington Post reports that the IRS's Washington, D.C., headquarters was also involved in scrutinizing conservative organizations. 

  The detail demanded was incredible, including, "The names of the donors, contributors, and grantors." Now what do you suppose some overzealous IRS bureaucrats might do with that kind of information? 

  Just when you think the scandal is bad enough, it gets even worse. 

  The IRS provided "confidential" information on a number of conservative organizations to the left-wing, progressive media outfit ProPublica. According the Washington Post, "That revelation contradicts previous statements from the agency and may represent a violation of federal guidelines."

  President Obama said he only learned about the trouble at the IRS on Friday from the same news reports as the rest of us. But the White House counsel's office apparently learned about it last month! So the IRS was about to publicly acknowledge targeting conservative organizations and no one in the counsel's office thought to tell the president? Call me skeptical.

"Just The Beginning" 

In an interview with Breitbart News yesterday, Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell said that this was "just the beginning" of the IRS scandal. McConnell also suggested that there is pattern of abuse. Consider this excerpt: 

Yesterday we reminded our readers about Frank VanderSloot, a conservative businessman who supported Mitt Romney and was targeted by the IRS and the Labor Department. It appears as though the IRS was also unleashed on a local Missouri reporter who dared to ask the president a few tough questions. 

The AP Scandal 

The latest scandal to erupt has seriously offended a core left-wing constituency -- Big Media. 

News broke yesterday that the Justice Department had seized two months of phone records from 20 phone lines at three Associated Press offices as well as the AP's phone line in the House of Representatives' press gallery. These lines were used by more than 100 reporters. 

The Associated Press blasted the move as a "massive and unprecedented intrusion." Members of Congress from both parties are condemning the seizure of phone records, as are members of the press. 

On "Morning Joe" today, veteran journalist Andrea Mitchell said the IRS scandal was "one of the most outrageous excesses that I've seen in all my years in journalism." She quickly added, "I think thisAssociated Press investigation just rises to that standard, as well." 

National Journal's Ron Fournier writes that the "unprecedented seizure of telephone records … sends a chilling message to whistle-blowers armed with information that might embarrass the president: 'We're watching you.'" 

The Obama Administration may soon find itself with few defenders. Even the left-wing ACLU is lambasting the administration for its "unacceptable abuse of power." 

I know many conservatives won't be shedding a tear for the liberal media, but we should not take pleasure in it. A government so out-of-control that it targets local reporters and seizes massive amounts of data from even the most influential news organization should concern everyone. 

Gosnell & Obama 

Yesterday abortionist Kermit Gosnell was convicted on three counts of first-degree murder for killing babies born alive in his Philadelphia abortion mill. The intention of the women was to abort their unborn children, but the babies were born alive. Gosnell finished the job by "snipping" their spinal cords. 

In Illinois, babies were being born alive after botched abortions and their little bodies were set aside, left alone to die slowly. One can argue that was even worse. Yet as an Illinois state senator Barack Obama was unwilling to require a doctor to save those babies. 

Society rightly recoils in horror at the notion of killing little babies outside the womb. A jury in Philadelphia found Kermit Gosnell guilty of infanticide. Obama may not have blood on his hands, but his support of after-birth abortion is no less offensive.