Andrew Auernheimer, also known as “Weev”, was convicted of identify fraud and conspiracy to access a computer without authorization last week for using a script to collect the email addresses of 114,000 iPad AT&T left (albeit accidentally) unencrypted on the internet and available to anyone with a web browser. Auernheimer is the opposite of a traditionally sympathetic character: He’s a self professed troll and hacker who once headed a group with an incredibly racist and homophobic name, spouts anti-Semitic conspiracy theories, and comes across as a delusional fabulist in a recent profile by Gawker’s Adrian Chen.

 

And yet his conviction has spread a creeping chill through the cybersecurity community, largely due the possible threat it poses to its future. Many security researchers spend countless hours hunting for vulnerabilities to exploit in exchange for cred from their peers or bounty cash from vendors, living in delicate symbiosis with the companies whose flaws they uncover. Security researcher Matt Blaze sums up the situation nicely in an opinion piece about the Auernheimer case for Wired:

“Because computer science has yet to discover a systematic way to find and fix all the vulnerabilities in real-world systems before they get deployed, independent security researchers who discover and report weaknesses have become an essential part of the security ecosystem. Continually poking at systems to seek out hidden flaws is the only hope we have of staying ahead of the bad guys, and the software industry has largely come to recognize that the motley assortment of academics, consultants, and hackers who look for security holes are a community to be cultivated and encouraged – even if the proof of vulnerability they bring may sometimes be painful and embarrassing.”

Now, Auernheimer is by no means a pillar of responsibility in the hacker community. He went straight to the press with the vulnerability rather than notifying AT&T, and chat logs show him apparently gleeful at the prospect of making AT&T’s life difficult. But when anyone, even someone who has burned as many bridges as Auernheimer, is convicted for the same day-to-day activities members of the cybersecurity community do in their line of work, of course it raises concerns, particularly because Blaze and many others in the community credit AT&T’s pain and embarrassment over their security faux pas with Auernheimer’s conviction — not malice or wrongdoing on his part. After all, the information he was convicted for obtaining wasn’t actually secured in anyway, some experts have even compared it to the crawling of sites done by Google.

By going after Auernheimer, the government sent a signal to the hacker community that even if you don’t do anything nefarious in your exploits they can and will take you down — and that threat to the community is bad for security in the long term because if the “good guys” don’t feel they can ply their trade without the risk of prosecution, it leaves more vulnerabilities waiting for people who would rather exploit than expose them. Certainly, one of the last high profile cases involving someone being arrested for exposing a vulnerability, United States v. ElcomSoft and Sklyarov, didn’t work out well for anyone involved, including the company trying to protect its assets. Who knows how many security researchers will lay low this time, waiting to see how the Auernheimer case shakes out? They may not have to wait long, Auernheimer is appealing.

The list of former Israeli officials in support of direct negotiations between the U.S. and Iran on the nuclear issue continues to grow as Yoel Guzansky, a former Iran adviser for the Israeli Prime Minister, and Oded Eran, a former Israeli ambassador to the European Union, in an Israeli newspaper earlier this month endorsed bilateral talks.

In October, the New York Times reported on an agreement “in principle” for negotiations between Iran and the U.S. after the U.S. elections. Both the administration and Iran subsequently denied the agreement’s existence.

Yesterday, Al-Monitor translated Guzansky and Eran’s piece which originally ran on November 15, which highlighted the need for Israel to support a diplomatic approach:

“Israel can contribute to the efforts to solve the Iranian issue [via diplomacy] by reaching an understanding with the United States on the time frame for direct negotiations between Washington and Tehran, if indeed the opportunity arises for conducting such direct talks, as well as on the political elements of any agreement reached and on the room for maneuver allowed with respect to any of these constituent elements.”

Amos Yadlin, a former high-level Israeli military official, recently embraced Iran-U.S. talks, writing that it is significant that the Iranians are considering direct negotiations:

“This degree of backpedalling, a complete U-turn from its official policy, is indicative of the effectiveness of the pressure exerted on Iran, and a signal of its capacity to bring about real change in the country’s policy.”

Still others, like Israel’s current Deputy Foreign Minister Danny Ayalon, have indicated a willingness to back talks, saying earlier this month that there “could be direct negotiations with Iran.” Efraim Halevy, the former director of Israel’s intelligence agency, the Mossad, lent his support to negotiations as well:

“I realized that dialogue with an enemy is essential. There is nothing to lose. Although the claim was, if you talk to them, you legitimize them. But by not talking to them, you don’t de-legitimate them. So this convinced me, that we all have been very superficial in dealing with our enemies. Not everything you try succeeds. But you have to be willing to try.”

The Obama administration has pursued a diplomatic approach to Iran, believing that such a strategy provides “the best and most permanent” route to a solution to the nuclear issue. An attack on Iran, as some former Israeli officials have pointed out, could actually push Iran to obtain a nuclear weapon. Though the U.S. finds a nuclear armed Iran an unacceptable threat to global security, the opportunity for diplomacy remains as the U.S., Israel, and U.N. have repeatedly stated that Iran has not decided to build a nuclear weapon.

Emerging from talks with U.S. Ambassador to the U.N. Susan Rice, Senate Republicans have a new line of attack on Libya: if it was unclear what happened in Benghazi, why say anything at all in the aftermath?

The newest salvo comes from Sens. John McCain (R-AZ), Lindsey Graham (R-SC) and Kelly Ayotte (R-NH) after a very short-lived detente with the Obama administration on the response to the Sept. 11 assault in Libya.

The three met with Rice behind closed doors on Capitol Hill today and emerged with a new attack campaign, declaring that they only had “more questions” about what the administration knew and when.

“The American people got bad information on Sept. 16,” Graham said during a press conference today, referring to Rice’s Sept. 16 appearances on the Sunday talk shows. “And the question is ‘Should they have been giving information at all?’ If you can give nothing but bad information, isn’t it better to give no information?”

Rather than acknowledging that the intelligence community had vetted and aided in the drafting of Rice’s unclassified talking points that day, the senators in the post-meeting press conference instead chose to fault Rice for not only failing to be more critical of the assessment she was given but for not potentially revealing classified information:

AYOTTE: What troubles me also, the changes made to the unclassified talking points were misleading. But just to be clear, when you have a position where you’re Ambassador to the United Nations, you go well beyond unclassified talking points in your daily preparation and responsibilities for that job. And that’s troubling to me as well, why she wouldn’t have asked “I’m the person that doesn’t know about this, I’m going on every single show?” But in addition, it’s not just the talking points that were unclassified, but clearly it was part of her responsibility as Ambassador to the United Nations to review much more than that.

Ayotte’s determination echoes a growing belief among the right-wing that Rice should have “known better” than to take the talking points provided by the intelligence community at face value or that she should have divulged material that was classified at the time to the American people.

But this brand-new determination that Rice should have strayed from the talking points given to her on Sept. 16 has already spread among the GOP. Senate Minority Whip John Kyl (R-AZ) called Rice a “puppet” of the administration in an interview with National Review Online:

“Is she such a puppet that she had no questions about the information she was given?” Kyl asks, in an interview at Newseum, where he is participating in the Foreign Policy Initiative’s annual forum. “What she said was deceptive, misleading, and wrong.”

However, during the five interviews she gave on Sept. 16, Rice consistently made clear that what was being presented were only initial conclusions and could still change. While the facts continue to exonerate Rice and the Obama administration on this issue, in the face of continual shouting by conservatives that a conspiracy of some sort took place surrounding Benghazi, the majority of Americans believe that’s not the case.

Two of the Israeli government’s most reliable critics of an Iran strike were swept out of power during Monday’s Likud party primary, replaced by hard-right members of the Knesset (MKs) on both Iran and Israeli West Bank settlements. According to a Reuters report, the defeated members, Dan Meridor and Benny Begin, were staunch opponents of a strike on Iran, and “their likely ouster could point to a strategic shift closer to confrontation.” Israeli journalist Noam Sheizaf notes that hardliners now make up almost all of the MK candidates in Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s party:

All the so-called Likud “moderates,” except for Knesset Speaker Reuven Rivlin, were pushed out of the top seed and will probably be out of the Knesset; that includes ministers Benny Begin, Michael Eitan and Dan Meridor. The most vocal backbenchers – those behind attacks on the left, Arabs and human rights NGOs – won the day. The Likud looks right now like the Tea Party’s dream team.

Another analyst of Israeli politics, Michael Koplow, argues that the Likud primary “makes an Israeli strike on Iran a lot more likely” because the “security cabinet [may flip] from being divided down the middle to being nearly unanimous in favor of a strike.” Likud, which for the first time this year is forming a joint party with the conservative nationalist Yisrael Beiteinu party, is widely expected to be the big winners in Israel’s general election in January.

High-ranking Israeli officials have recently indicated that the pressure-and-negotiations approach currently employed by the Obama administration could lead to a successful diplomatic resolution of the nuclear crisis. There is some tentative evidence Iran might be open to a negotiated solution. Given the terrible consequences of war, the U.S. government believes diplomacy is “the best and most permanent” way to resolve the nuclear issue.

A new CNN poll has found that a majority of Americans do not think the Obama administration intentionally misled the public in explaining what happened in the immediate aftermath of the terror attacks on U.S. assets in Benghazi, Libya in September.

Republicans, led by Sen. John McCain (R-AZ), and Fox News have been engaged in an all out attack campaign against U.S. Ambassador to the U.N. Susan Rice and other Obama administration officials to try to convince Americans that the White House was trying to execute a Watergate-style cover up of the U.S. response to the Benghazi attacks. But the CNN poll has found that it failed:

On Libya, 54% of the country is dissatisfied with the administration’s response to the Benghazi attack, with only four in ten saying they’re satisfied with the way the White House handled the matter.

“But that dissatisfaction is not because Americans see a cover-up,” said CNN Polling Director Keating Holland. “Only 40% believe that the inaccurate statements that administration officials initially made about the Benghazi attack were an attempt to deliberately mislead the public. Fifty-four percent think those inaccurate statements reflected what the White House believed to be true at the time.”

News of the CNN poll comes as Rice will meet today with McCain and two other Republican senators who have been most vocal in attacking the U.N. ambassador on Libya, Lindsey Graham (SC) and Kelly Ayotte (NH).

McCain vowed to block Rice’s potential nomination as the next Secretary of State but has since backed away from that pledge after facts emerged to undermine his claim that Rice and Obama administration officials lied about Benghazi. McCain said on Sunday that he would give Rice the “benefit” of explaining her position. But the Washington Post reports that Ayotte is still holding out . “I would hold the [Rice] nomination until I got sufficient answers,” Ayotte said.

Fox News has a new reason to attack the United Nations: the U.N., under the leadership of Russia, China, and Iran, is dangerously close to taking over control of the Internet, stifling free speech around the world. Fortunately for Internet users, this is not actually the case.

Fox’s Megyn Kelly interviewed The Lawfare Project’s director, Brooke Goldstein, on the grave threat that the United Nations poses to the freedom of the Internet:

KELLY: [Countries like China and Russia] already crack down, they censor the Internet already to some extent in their respective countries. So how much more control do they want?

GOLDSTEIN: Well, they want legitimacy and they want coordinated control. What this is going to result in, people are predicting at the very worst, is a fractured internet. It is an Internet that changes depending on whose borders you’re in. What it’s also going to result in are high-levels of taxes for internet providers. So U.S-based companies like Google or Yahoo who want to provide their services to Russia, to China, are more taxed. And that’s going to be an incentive not to provide it. It will also provide a highly coordinated censorship, something that we’ve seen before, and again it will be legitimized by the United Nations.

Watch the full interview here:

Fox is correct in noting that next month will be the start of the World Conference on International Telecommunications in Dubai, hosted by the International Telecommunications Union, the oldest part of the U.N. system. They are also correct that states such as Russia and India are in fact in favor of the United Nations having more direct control over the governance of the Internet. That’s about where the accuracy ends.

As Kelly reluctantly admit during the segment, the United States is opposed to this proposal. That didn’t stop her from managing to critique the Obama administration for not leading the opposition towards the measure.

Despite Fox’s fretting, the real purpose of the conference is far more mundane than they let on. According to the Better World Campaign, a part of the United Nations Foundation, the conference is based primarily around such technical issues as “fair mobile roaming charges; how to prevent taxation on mobile users from two different countries when receiving an international call; how to prevent spam; and basic cyber-security.” The majority of time and effort will go into updating the International Telecoms Regulations, a process that requires consensus.

The fact is that Russia and other states have been trying for a decade to move control of the Internet from non-profits to intergovernmental organizations where they would have more control; they have failed to do so each time. What’s more, the stance of these states runs against adopted U.N. policy, with the U.N. Human Rights Council having declared free and open internet access a human right earlier this year. In addition, preparatory documents that leaked back in June showed no sign of anything on the agenda that would indicate that a takeover was even close to being at hand.

Rep. Peter King (R-NY) is reportedly stepping down from his chairmanship of the Homeland Security Committee. The New York Republican is well known for his Islamophobia and he famously spearheaded anti-Muslim House investigations like the hearing on “Radicalization In The U.S. Muslim Community.” The New York Daily News reports that GOP Reps. Mike Rogers (AL), Mike McCaul (TX), and Candice Miller (MI) are jostling to assume the committee’s chairmanship. But are any of these contenders likely to initiate anti-Muslim hearings of the kind King championed?

Dozens of House members and more than a hundred religious leaders opposed King’s hearings. The committee called on faux Islam experts like Dr. Juhdi Jasser, who narrated the anti-Muslim film “The Third Jihad.” Some of the witnesses King wanted to hear from were forced to back out after backlash because they were too anti-Muslim. At the hearings, King pushed false narratives about Muslim-Americans, for example claiming that “too many mosques…don’t cooperate with law enforcement.” In the past, King has said that “80 percent of the mosques in this country are controlled by radical Imams” and that “almost 90 percent of the terrorist crimes are carried out by the Muslim community.” The Southern Poverty Law Center said King’s hearings “demonized” Muslim-Americans.

McCaul could be the most likely candidate to carry on King’s anti-Muslim legacy should he take the committee gavel. He praised King’s investigations, claiming they set out to “end the era of political correctness.”

McCaul also suggested that Islam and terrorism are linked, saying King’s anti-Muslim hearing should not “overlook the correlation between Islam and national security.”

Rogers is just as likely to keep King’s anti-Muslim flame going. He not only supported the Muslim-American investigations, Rogers even criticized the Council on American-Islamic Relations for instructing Muslim-Americans to obtain a lawyer when law enforcement officials ask questions, even though they were being targeted. “I want to make it known that I don’t think they have to have an attorney present to talk with residents when they are just finding out how things are going,” he said.

It’s more uncertain what direction Miller will take the committee on this issue. While she called King’s anti-Muslim hearings “very, very important,” Miller added that Islam is a “peaceful” religion and that she didn’t know why the committee “never had any” hearings on other groups that might be a threat to America. She did, however, criticize the media for “prejudging” the investigation as targeting Muslim-Americans disproportionately.

The reality is that only 12 percent of terrorist incidents in America have been caused my Islamic extremists, while right-wing extremists have committed the majority of the incidents (56 percent). Furthermore, a Gallup poll last year found that 89 percent of Muslim Americans “reject violent attacks by individuals or small groups on civilians.” The poll also found that 92 percent of Muslim-Americans “have no sympathy for al-Qaeda.” And contrary to what King has said, a Duke University study published in 2010 found that American Mosques are “actually a deterrent to the spread of militant Islam and terrorism.”

While King’s departure as the House Homeland Security Committee chairman is bad news for Islamophobes, it presents an opportune time to transition the committee’s focus from Muslim-Americans to significant threats in America. Unfortunately, it doesn’t look like the candidates running to fill King’s role are likely seize that chance.

Tom Ricks, author and Pulitzer prize winner who has reported for the Washington Post, lambasted Fox News’s coverage of the Benghazi attacks in an interview with the conservative network on Monday. Ricks, who has written extensively on the American military, called the Fox an “operating as a wing of Republican Party” that “hyped” the Benghazi attack as a faux-scandal.

During the interview, which lasted only a minute and 45 seconds, Ricks responded to a loaded question with a remark that surprised the anchor:

JON SCOTT (HOST): Senator John McCain said in the past he would block any attempt to nominate Susan Rice to become U.N. — I’m sorry, Secretary of State. She’s currently the U.N. ambassador. He seems to be backing away from that. What do you make of it?

RICKS: I think that Benghazi generally was hyped, by this network especially, and that now that the campaign is over, I think he’s backing off a little bit. They’re not going to stop Susan Rice from being secretary of state.

After Ricks called Fox the “operating wing” of the GOP, Scott ended the interview. Watch it:

Ricks’ assessment of Fox’s role in what they themselves dubbed “Benghazi-gate” is accurate. Since the Sept. 11 attack that killed four U.S. citizens, Fox has pushed a constant stream of conspiracy theories and easily countered “facts” claiming that the Obama administration lied to the public in their response. Even Fox’s own personalities have had trouble accepting the push at times, but Ricks’ blunt statements caught the network off-guard.

The interview apparently didn’t sit well with Fox: a “news staffer” told Ricks that he was rude while he was on air. Ricks’ segment, according to an interview he gave with the New York Times, was about “half as long as planned.”

“I had told the producer before I went on that I thought the Benghazi story had been hyped. So it should have been no surprise when I said it and the anchor pushed back that I defended my view,” Ricks told Politico. Ricks also told the New York Times that he was going to discuss the “lack of combat readiness of some Army units” but he never got the opportunity,. “They seemed to lose interest in that,” he said.

Rep. Jeff Duncan (R-SC) today alleged that U.S. Ambassador to the U.N. Susan Rice has been “tainted” by the tragedy in Benghazi, preventing her from being qualified to become Secretary of State.

Duncan’s statement showcases that Republican members of the House of Representatives are not giving up yet on pillorying Rice for her role in the Obama administration’s response to the Sept. 11 assault in Libya that killed four American citizens. Duncan was the author of a letter, signed by over ninety House Republicans, urging President Obama to select anyone other than Rice to fill the role of Secretary of State in his second term.

On Fox and Friends this morning, Duncan stood by his denouncement of Rice when asked about her seeming willingness to answer questions related to her Sept. 16 statements explaining the administration’s knowledge of the attack at that time:

DUNCAN: Well, it comes down to her credibility now. Do we want someone as Secretary of State that is somehow tainted in this whole Benghazi issue. I don’t think so. I think the bigger question to ask is — you know, she should have known the information, should have all the talking points, the truth of the matter. The fact that she misled the American people, whether its intentional or unintentional, she is tainted in this issue.

Watch Duncan here:

Duncan would probably need to explain how Rice has been “tainted” from the Benghazi fallout seeing that every GOP attack on her as a result has been found to be false, misleading or baseless.

But while Rice is not the nominee yet, she is indicated to be the leading favorite for the job. Duncan and his cohorts ire would in no way affect a potential confirmation of Rice; only the Senate confirms the President’s nominees for Cabinet-level positions.

In the upper chamber, controlled by Democrats, cooler heads seem to be prevailing regarding the chance of a Rice nomination. Even Sen. John McCain (R-AZ), one of Rice’s harshest critics, has backed off from his attacks. Rice for her part has reached out to McCain, saying “I have great respect for Senator McCain and his service to our country. I always have, and I always will. I do think that some of the statements he’s made about me have been unfounded, but I look forward to having the opportunity at the appropriate time to discuss all of this with him.”

Shortly after news broke about a fatal attack on the American consulate in Benghazi, Libya, GOP presidential candidate Mitt Romney accused President Obama of “sympathiz[ing] with those who waged the attacks.” And Romney continued to make Benghazi-related attacks a centerpiece of his campaign even after his efforts were debunked and widely condemned.

Mitt Romney lost. But that has not prevented Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) from picking up this torch. Shortly after Romney conceded his loss earlier this month, McCain set his sites on UN Ambassador Susan Rice, a likely nominee to succeed Secretary of State Hilary Clinton. Pointing to several television appearances where Rice communicated the intelligence community’s as-yet imperfect understanding of what happened during the Benghazi attacks, McCain promised that “I will do everything in my power to block her from becoming Secretary of State.”

On Fox News Sunday this morning, however, McCain sang a much more conciliatory tune, backing off his hardline opposition to Rice:

HOST: You say that you will do everything in your power to block Susan Rice’s nomination if the President decides to name her to be secretary of state . . . . Is there anything that Ambassador Rice can do to change your mind?

MCCAIN: Sure, she can give everyone the benefit of explaining their position and the actions that they took. And I’ll be glad to have the opportunity to discuss these issues with her. Why did she say that al Qaeda has been decimated in her statement here on this program? Al Qaeda hasn’t been decimated. They’re on the rise. They’re all over Iraq.

Watch it:

If McCain isn’t sure why Rice said that al Qaeda has been decimated, he may want to ask Osama bin Laden. When he fails at that, he can then ask the National Counterterrorism Center, which found that “a 16 percent drop in successful attacks by the al Qaeda network; a 65 percent drop in successful attacks by the al Qaeda network outside Africa; and a 35 percent drop in casualties caused by al Qaeda” in just the period from May 2011 until May 2012. Twenty-two senior-level al Qaeda operatives and leaders were captured or killed in the same one year window.

Regardless, hopefully today’s more conciliatory statement is a sign that McCain will back off his efforts to inject partisan politics into our nation’s security.

Rep. Barney Frank (D-MA) challenged the GOP’s implications that the Obama administration or the FBI sat on the Gen. David Petraeus sex scandal until after the election, describing such claims underhanded and unsubstantiated.

During an appearance on CNN’s State of the Union on Sunday with retiring lawmakers Sens. Jon Kyl (R-AZ), Kay Bailey Hutchison (R-TX) and Joe Lieberman (I-CT), Frank pushed back against Hutchison’s claims that “top level officials,” including the President, may have known about the scandal before Election Day. He pressed her to define her accusations and identify whose integrity she was impugning:

HUTCHISON: I’m very worried about this. I’m very worried. I want to know a whole lot more about what these first emails really were and did it really trigger an FBI investigation of the CIA director and a low level and it wasn’t raised to a higher level? I mean, if anybody is investigating the director of the CIA, the President of the United States should know immediately, and I feel like a, we don’t know enough, and, b, I have great concerns about a lot of this. [...]

FRANK: Are you suggesting there was some coverup, that the FBI are playing games? I think we ought to be explicit about this. I’m troubled by the implication of your statement and are you suggesting that something wasn’t legitimate here? Because that would trouble me.

HUTCHISON: I’m suggesting that I have great concerns about the legitimacy of…

FRANK: Excuse me, “great concerns” is kind of a weasel word….

HUTCHISON: …It appears the President didn’t know until two months later? ….

FRANK: It seems to me frankly you’re kind of hinting at something bad, and I don’t see what that could be.

HUTCHISON: I’m hinting at something out of control and not with the proper authority.

FRANK: Do you distrust the FBI? Is [FBI Director Robert] Mueller lying? Who are you accusing of not having done the right thing?

HUTCHISON: I’ve always had great respect for him and great respect for General Petraeus.

Watch it:

There is no evidence to suggest that the public timeline of the Petraeus scandal is improper. Attorney General Eric Holder defended his department’s handling of the investigation last week, noting that standard protocol prohibits DOJ from sharing information about pending investigations with members of Congress or the president, so long as they do not undermine national security. The rule, which has been in place since 1993, is designed to prevent politics from contaminating the process.

Justice Department officials had known about the investigation since the summer, but were told that the matter did not affect national security. Petraeus’s boss, Director of National Intelligence James R. Clapper Jr, was notified about the affair on Election Day, after the FBI concluded its review. That night, Clapper advised Petraeus to resign.

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and Egyptian Prime Minister Mohamed Kamel Amr today announced a ceasefire between Hamas and Israel, ending eight days of violence that resulted in nearly 150 dead and more wounded. President Obama dispatched Clinton to the region yesterday and the nation’s top diplomat traveled to Jerusalem and Cairo today to help facilitate the deal.

But in a statement on the Gaza ceasefire today, Sens. John McCain (R-AZ), Lindsey Graham (R-SC) and Kelly Ayotte (R-NH) — one day after intelligence officials debunked their attacks on the Obama administration over Benghazi — didn’t have any kind words for the president and his team. In fact, the new “Three Amigos” attacked Obama, saying there needs to be “smarter American leadership” in the Middle East.

Yet the three Republicans did have praise for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Egyptian President Muhammad Morsi:

We commend Prime Minister Netanyahu and other Israeli leaders for the role they played in reaching today’s ceasefire. We also are encouraged by the responsible leadership role played by the President of Egypt and his government. President Morsi deserves credit for successfully bringing an end to the violence and preventing further loss of life on both sides. These actions are befitting the commitment to peace and security that Egypt has traditionally upheld as a leader of the Arab world.

Indeed, Netanyahu, Morsi and others involved ending the hostilities deserve credit — but so does the Obama administration. And given their embarrassing campaign to bring down the Obama administration on Libya, it’s not entirely shocking that McCain and his allies don’t see it that way.

The Republicans’ new focus of attack in the faux “Benghazi-gate” scandal is Director of National Intelligence (DNI) James Clapper, claiming that he lied about the source of changes to talking points on the Benghazi attack given to U.N. Ambassador Susan Rice.

Yesterday, a DNI spokesperson debunked accusations made by Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) and other Republicans that the White House changed Rice’s Benghazi talking points, saying that it was the intelligence community that made the “substantive” changes to the talking points. Moreover, former CIA head David Petraeus and other top intelligence officials have said there was no politicization of the process and that the talking points were not altered to minimize the role of extremists but to reflect the best intelligence at the time.

McCain appeared to accept the new information but wondered why Clapper and other DNI officials did not provide this information during closed door hearings last week. And now that all their earlier attacks on Rice have fell apart, Republicans and conservative media figures are directing their attacks at Clapper, a George W. Bush appointee:

– BILL O’REILLY: Now it’s James Clapper, President Obama’s national security guy who is saying, “Oh, it’s me. I sent Rice out there and I took out all the al Qaeda stuff.” I’m not buying it. None of this adds up. … All right so there’s a lot of lying going on here.

– CHARLES KRAUTHAMMER: I’m not buying it because the Chairman of the House Intelligence Committee said that a week ago in classified testimony that same Clapper said that they had no idea who changed the talking points and now a week later he seems to say he did? That’s kind of strange. I mean I’ve seen amnesia in my day in my clinical days and that one is pretty quick, one week.

– TUCKER CARLSON: I hate to think that the director of National Intelligence lied, is a liar. But I’m not sure I see an alternate explanation. Apparently, he’s contradicting what he testified to just last week. Is there another explanation for this?”

– FOX NEWS’ STEVE DOOCY: They did say it is out of the [DNI] office. It’s not him per se, so we’re supposed to believe that a Clapper aide changed what Petraeus had said? That’s very, very curious.

– REP. TREY GOWDY (R-SC): This is the head of our national intelligence and he changed his mind within the course of 24 hours. So how are you possibly going to have any confidence in what he says?

And while Rep. Phil Gingrey (R-GA) didn’t call Clapper a liar, he told Fox News’ Stuart Varney that he now might be involved in the alleged cover up:

GINGREY: Now have you got someone who basically can trump the CIA, especially if the president says to him — I am not suggesting that he did, but he could have — look, James, we need to kind of clean this up a little bit.. We are doing really well. We’re right about time for the election and we are doing very well on national security and this could blow our cover.

Watch the video compilation of the attacks against Clapper:

The right wing has spent months trying to bring down the Obama administration in politicization the attacks in Benghazi that left four Americans dead and after all of their conspiracy theories and baseless attacks have been debunked, the rabbit hole appears to have led to Clapper and who knows where it will end.

The President of Myanmar agreed to grant international inspectors unprecedented access to its nuclear material and facilities, signalling a major step forward for the reforming authoritarian pariah state. Right on the heels of President Obama’s visit (part of a broader American attempt to smooth the country’s path to democracy), Myanmarese leader Thein Sein issued a statement announcing his government’s intention to move towards greater nuclear transparency:

Myanmar announced it would sign an international agreement that would require it to declare all nuclear facilities and materials. Although it would be up to Myanmar to decide what to declare, it could provide some answers concerning its acquisition of dual-use machinery and its military cooperation with Pyongyang that the U.S. and other nations regard as suspect. …

David Albright and Andrea Stricker of the Institute for Science and International Security, a Washington-based nonproliferation group, said in an analysis it was a “remarkable decision.” “This latest move by Burma is extremely positive for its ongoing push for openness about the nuclear issue and for building confidence and transparency with the international community,” they wrote.

As recently as 2010, some analysts had worried that Myanmar was following in North Korea’s footsteps and attempting to insulate itself from foreign pressure to reform by acquiring a nuclear weapon. There is some evidence that Myanmar had plans to build a nuclear weapon in 2006. While this most recent agreement is not an ironclad guarantee that Myanmar is abandoning any nuclear ambitions, it is good evidence that the military junta that still controls most of the government is serious about reforming. It’s also a success for President Obama’s stated goal of limiting the spread of nuclear weapons worldwide.

Though the military government violently put down monk-led protests as recently as 2007, the government held parliamentary elections this April that brought long-suffering opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi into the legislature. The American sanctions-and-diplomacy approach is widely credited with playing a role in the military’s decision to take steps, however tentative, towards a more democratic political system. According to the New York Times, the Obama administration‘s “series of cautious [diplomatic] moves…have significantly eased tensions between the United States and Myanmar.”

Rep. Michael Burgess (R-TX) appeared on CNN Wednesday morning to press his case against U.N. Ambassador Susan Rice, the target of Republican criticism for initially claiming that the Sept. 11 attacks on Benghazi were inspired by spontaneous protests to an anti-Islamic video. Burgess joined 97 House Republicans in opposing Rice’s potential nomination to replace Hillary Clinton as Secretary of State, even though her public statements about the incident originated from unclassified talking points provided by the intelligence community.

Host Soledad O’Brien challenged Burgess’ opposition to Susan Rice, noting that Republicans had supported Condoleezza Rice’s nomination as Secretary of State in 2005, despite the Bush administration’s role in the massive intelligence failures that led to the Iraq war. Burgess struggled to explain the contradiction. He initially claimed that the media was far more critical of Bush’s intelligence failures than Obama, but when O’Brien laughed away that claim, he told her to take up the question with Sens. John McCain (R-AZ) and Lindsey Graham (R-SC), both of whom supported Condoleezza but now oppose Susan:

O’BRIEN: I have asked others before how this does not compare, the Susan Rice issue, to the Condoleezza Rice issue on weapons of mass destruction. She was also wrong when she was the national security adviser, right? … Fast forward three years in 2005 when she was up to be secretary of state, it was Lindsey Graham who was furious that the Democrats were pushing back. It was Sen John mccain who were furious that the Democrats were pushing back on Condoleezza Rice to be Secretary of State. She was wrong on weapons of mass destruction. How is this different?

BURGESS: The difference is the scrutiny provided by our free press in this country. Condoleezza Rice was exposed to withering criticism by the press. I don’t see that happening now. Maybe I’ve missed something in the talking points, but I don’t see that happening. ….

O’BRIEN: So you’re confusing me there for a moment. When you say the scrutiny on the press — are you saying five days after comments of weapons of mass destruction, you feel like the media was picking apart Condoleezza Rice? I don’t think that’s true, Sir. Most people say that’s not the case. It took a long time. …. Hey, I’m all about scrutiny. I guess I like consistency, too. You were not calling for more scrutiny and you weren’t saying that the fact that Condoleezza Rice was wrong on weapons of mass destruction was going to damage her credibility as secretary of state. Again, McCain and Lindsey Graham were supporting that. It seems contradictory to me.

BURGESS: You’ll have to take that up with Senator McCain and Senator Graham.

Watch it:

Indeed, the media largely accepted Bush’s argument that Iraq possessed weapons of mass destruction and rarely aired dissident voices or challenged the administration’s allegations.

The very same Republicans who advanced these false claims and remained silent after it became obvious that the Bush administration molded intelligence to substantiate war with Iraq, are now criticizing Susan Rice’s performance. The Obama administration has changed its assessment of the events that led up to the Libya incident as the intelligence evolved.