Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) levied a series of wild accuastions Sunday morning when discussing the attack on the U.S. Consulate in Benghazi last September, accusing the Obama Administration of perpetrating a “massive coverup” and NBC’s David Gregory of not caring about the death of American diplomats.

McCain’s outburst came after Gregory asked McCain what, exactly, the Administration was covering up. Taking umbrage at Gregory’s skepticism, the Arizona senator grew confrontational:

MCCAIN: We have had a massive coverup on the part of the administration.

GREGORY: I’m asking you, a coverup of what?

MCCAIN: I’m asking YOU, do you care whether four Americans died? The reasons for that? And shouldn’t people be held accountable for the fact that four americans died — including a very dear man?

GREGORY: You said there is a coverup. A coverup of what?

MCCAIN: Of the information concerning the deaths of four brave Americans.

Watch it:

As Gregory suggests, it’s not exactly clear what McCain thinks is being covered up. Both the lack of immediate military response to the attack on the consulate and the matter of UN Ambassador Susan Rice’s “talking points” on the attack were clearly explained several months ago. Nevertheless, McCain’s colleague Lindsey Graham (R-SC) has threatened to put a hold on the confirmation of the President’s nominees for both Secretary of Defense and CIA Director until he gets “the truth” on Benghazi.

Republican Joe Scarborough is tired of his party’s mistreatment of Defense Secretary-nominee Chuck Hagel and its continuing, all-consuming focus on Benghazi.

The focus of Scarborough’s ire this morning on his MSNBC show Morning Joe was Sen. Lindsey Graham’s announcement on Sunday that he will place a hold on not only Hagel, but also CIA Director-nominee John Brennan until he gets further action from the White House on Benghazi.

Scarborough lashed out at Graham and his neoconservative cohorts, unable to believe how misguided their attacks on the Obama administration have been:

SCARBOROUGH: If you’ve got a working class guy who has voted Republican every four years and he turns on the Sunday shows and he’s flipping around the channels and he sees Republicans in February still talking about Benghazi, saying they’re going to hold up the picks for secretary of defense and CIA director for something that happened back in the fall, and they are continuing on this…to hold up this and talk about it on Sunday morning, it’s a colossal mistake.

Watch the takedown here:

Graham has been seeking out “the truth” on the attack in Benghazi, Libya that left four Americans dead for months now, despite an ample amount of facts already having been uncovered. A Cabinet nominee has never been filibustered by the Senate, leaving Graham’s threat in a position to make history.

Also at issue on Morning Joe today was former Vice President Dick Cheney at a speech in Wyoming referring to Obama’s second term national security team as being “second-rate.” Scarborough was unsurprised by Cheny’s statements, given his neoconservative stances. “You’d expect him to not like Chuck Hagel, for the same reasons I want a guy like Chuck Hagel in, because he’s more of a realist, and we’ll pull back a little from this neocon position,” Scarborough said.

Republicans have been lining up their kitchen-sink method of obstruction, full of procedural and “substantive” methods to block Hagel’s nomination from coming to a vote. That vote is currently delayed as Senate Armed Services Committee chair Sen. Carl Levin (D-MI) has yet to set a date. That is expected to be short-lived, though, as Levin has said GOP demands regarding Hagel “far exceed” that of past nominees and promised a vote soon.

Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) is threatening to place a hold on key administration national security nominations unless President Obama explains how the White House reacted to the Benghazi attacks and who “changed” the talking points used by U.N. ambassador Susan Rice during back-to-back appearances on the Sunday political talk shows in September.

Appearing on CBS’ Face the Nation, Graham insisted that Republicans shouldn’t “allow Brennan to go forward for the CIA directorship, Hagel to be confirmed to Secretary of Defense, until the White House gives us an accounting.” “Did the president ever pick up the pohne and call anyone in the Libyan government to help these folks,” Graham asked. “What did the president do?”:

BOB SCHIEFFER (HOST): I’m not sure I understand. What do you plan to do if they don’t give you an answer? Are you going to put a hold on these two nominations?

GRAHAM: Yes…How could Susan Rice come on to your show and say there’s no evidence of a terrorist attack when the Secretary of Defense and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs said they knew that night? I think that was a misleading narrative three weeks before our election.

SCHIEFFER: Let me just make sure, because you’re about to make some news here, I think. You are saying that you are going to block the nominations — you’re going to block them from coming to a vote until you get an answer to this? Now, John McCain has already said he doesn’t think the Republicans ought to filibuster this. What will you do? You’re just going to put a hold on it? [...]

GRAHAM: I want to know who changed the talking points. Who took the references to Al Qaeda out of the talking points given to Susan Rice? We still don’t know…. I want to know what our president did. What did he do as commander in chief? Did he ever pick up the phone and call anybody? I think this is the stuff the country needs to know.

Watch it:

Since Defense Secretary Leon Panetta and General Martin Dempsey testified before Congress last week, conservatives have seized on a portion of the testimony to argue that President Obama went “AWOL” the night of the Benghazi attack.

The GOP has touted a portion in the hearing during which Panetta said that he did not personally communicate with Obama, but ignore further testimony during which Dempsey stressed that the White House was focused on the Benghazi attack and Obama’s staff was engaged “pretty constantly through the period, which is the way it would normally work.” As Panetta put it, “The president is well-informed about what is going on; make no mistake about it.”

The unclassified talking points as presented by Rice were edited through an interagency process, wherein the CIA itself removed the references to al-Qaeda. Graham, along with Sens. Kelly Ayotte (R-NH) and John McCain (R-AZ) led the charge in attacking Rice, blaming her at times for not revealing classified information during her Sunday show appearances.

Senate Republicans appear to believe that the U.S. military has the ability to respond to any crisis, at any time, anywhere in the world, as evidenced by frequent questioning during a Senate hearing today why U.S. assets weren’t deployed to stop the Sept. 11, 2012 attack on the U.S. diplomatic missions in Benghazi Libya — despite repeated confirmation from top defense officials that there were none to be deployed in a timely manner.

Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Martin Dempsey appeared before the Senate Armed Services Committee to give their long-awaited testimony on Benghazi. Republicans have been attacking the Obama administration for the inability of U.S. troops to reach Benghazi in the seven-hour window of the two waves of attacks. Panetta insisted that “time and distance” were the factors most to blame, strongly quelling ideas of military omnipresence:

PANETTA: The United States military, as I’ve said, is not and frankly should not be a 911 service, arriving on the scene within minutes to every possible contingency around the world.

Despite this, Senate Republicans repeatedly asked why the U.S. military never swooped in to save the Ambassador Chris Stevens and his colleagues seeming to understand neither the process in which troops are deployed or the vastness of Northern Africa. The Republican Senators berated Panetta and Dempsey for alternately for providing satisfactory answers or outright lying. Senator John McCain (R-AZ) in particular hit Dempsey for providing “simply false” testimony on the time it took to move troops:

McCAIN: We didn’t take into account threats to that consulate. [...] We could have placed forces there. We could have had aircraft and other capabilities as short a distance away as Soudah Bay, Crete [in Greece].

Watch a small sample of the GOP’s off-base questions here:

If the Republicans had done their homework, or listened to the testimony given, they would have saved themselves a lot of time. For example, the air base McCain referenced is actually used primarily for NATO operations, and did not house forces that could have been used in response to attacks in Benghazi, requiring military personnel to be flown in from Central Europe and Spain to Sigonalla Air Base in Italy. Likewise the time and difficulty in moving those troops has been discussed by Panetta before.

The argument of Senate Republicans that the military ignored glaring warnings Benghazi has likewise been disproved. As Panetta said in his testimony, in the months leading up to Benghazi the National Counterterrorism Center logged 281 threats against embassies and their personnel. At no time was there an explicit threat flagged in the intelligence gathered that indicated that Benghazi was more threatened than other diplomatic locations in Yemen, Sudan, or Egypt.

Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) is still searching for the silver bullet, that one piece of testimony that will prove once and for all that the Obama administration lied during the aftermath of the Benghazi attack.

Appearing on Fox News last night, Graham made clear that he was unsatisfied with Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s testimony last week, saying, “I haven’t forgotten about Benghazi. Hillary Clinton got away with murder, in my view.” Graham’s quest for the truth has now led him to current Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta.

Panetta, who has not testified before Congress about the role he played during the Sept. 11 attack on a U.S. diplomatic mission in the Libya city, is due to step down from his position at the Pentagon in the coming weeks. Graham now insists that Panetta would have to provide answers on what happened that night to the Armed Services Committee, on which Graham is a member. What’s more, as he told Fox News host Greta Van Sustren, Graham now intends to place a hold on Panetta’s proposed replacement, Chuck Hagel, until he gets the answers he wants:

VAN SUSTEREN: Is Secretary Panetta going to testify?

GRAHAM: Well, I’m not going to — I’m going to block Hagel from going forward until he does.

VAN SUSTEREN: So you’re going to block him.

GRAHAM: Absolutely. Why would we not want to understand what happened during the attack itself? How could our secretary — what happened for seven hours? Why were there no military assets available on September the 11th.

Watch Graham’s threat here:

This is the second threat of a hold — an informal threat to filibuster a nomination or bill — that Graham has placed upon a new member of the Obama national security team over Benghazi. Earlier this month, Graham pledged to hold up the confirmation of White House Counterterrorism Director John O. Brennan — or anyone — to be the new CIA Director until he finds out who edited the infamous unclassified “talking points” on Benghazi. Graham was also key to scuttling a potential Susan Rice nomination to be Secretary of State in relation to Libya.

Graham’s dogged pursuit of “the truth” is undercut by the fact that many of the questions he’s asking have already been answered. Panetta and other administrations officials have repeatedly stated that due to the attack coming in two waves, and the distance between Libya and Sigonella Air Base in Italy, the U.S. was unable to send military forces to respond. Likewise, the question of the editing of Susan Rice’s Sept. 16 Sunday show statements has been previously identified as the result of an interagency process, in which the CIA itself removed references to Al Qaeda.

Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) is sticking with his belief that the Obama administration is covering up a vast conspiracy of arms smuggling out of Benghazi, Libya to jihadi rebels in Syria, despite a lack of evidence.

At the sometimes heated Senate hearings into the causes of the attack last Wednesday, Paul surprised many by using his time to ask Secretary of State Hillary Clinton whether the United States was shipping Libyan arms to Turkey. “To Turkey? I will have to take that question for the record. Nobody has ever raised that with me,” Clinton replied at the time.

That answer seems not to have satisfied Paul, who took his concerns to the World Net Daily website in an exclusive interview:

In an interview with WND, the senator said his “suspicion, although I don’t have any proof, is that guns were being smuggled out of Libya, through Turkey and into Syria.”

“And that may be what the CIA annex was doing there,” Paul said, “and the coverup was an attempt to massage and get over this issue without getting into the gun trade.”

Known for being a hub of the “birther” conspiracy against President Barack Obama, among other choice theories, WND is a natural choice to publish Paul’s baseless concerns. WND also was the source of a unverified report late last week that an explosion at an Iranian nuclear plant was being completely covered up. The Obama administration was forced to respond to that claim yesterday, with White House Press Secretary Jay Carney saying, “We have no information to confirm the allegations in the report and we do not believe the report is credible.”

While the New York Times has previously reported that U.S. agents are on the ground in the countries neighboring Syria to help investigate the recipients of arms from Gulf state allies, the charges that Paul are making are different. Instead, the theory Paul is peddling says that the CIA annex in Benghazi was involved in not only rounding up loose arms following the fall of Moamar Qaddafi, but secretly smuggling them to rebel forces in Syria. In the theory, the reason Ambassador Chris Stevens, who was killed in the attack, was in Benghazi on Sept. 11 was to help facilitate the movement of these arms.

Secretary of State Hilary Clinton forcefully pushed back against Republican theatrics during yesterday Capitol Hill hearings on the Benghazi attacks, compelling conservatives and right-wing media to — predictably — demonize her.

But one right-wing pundit saw it a bit differently. Fox News military analyst Lt. Col. Ralph Peters (ret.) — who has certainly not been known for his affection for progressives and liberalism — praised Clinton’s performance. “I came away with deeper respect for Hillary Clinton’s bureaucratic lawyerly brilliance,” Peters said. “I mean she was just tough and good and the Republicans looked like weenies:”

PETERS: Hillary mops floor with congressmen and senators. She was as James Rosen pointed out, she was prepared. She had it down. She had answers — anticipatory answers ready.

And the congressmen and senators didn’t do their homework. They made speeches again as James Rosen pointed out. They — their questions were ill focused. They went down the red herring road with Susan Rice as you pointed out.

Watch the clip:

Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-VT) issued a statement on Wednesday slamming House Republicans for removing an authorization for increasing embassy security funding from an emergency disaster relief bill.

Released on the same day as Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s testimony before Congress on the Benghazi attack, Leahy doesn’t hold back in his scorn for the House. “Since the Republican takeover of the House, House Republicans have proposed deep cuts for U.S. embassy operations and programs across the board, including for security,” Leahy said in his statement. “Now they have topped even that record of recklessness”:

“In preventing this transfer of unused funds appropriated earlier for Iraq – funds already appropriated and approved by Congress – [House Republicans] have hobbled the work that everyone agrees is needed to harden our embassy security efforts. [...] Many of our diplomats serve in dangerous places by necessity. We need to protect them as best we can, without turning our embassies into impenetrable fortresses that make it impossible for them to do their jobs.

“For Republicans to blame the Administration for failing to protect our diplomats, without acknowledging their own efforts to slash resources for embassy security, is pure, distilled hypocrisy.”

Secretary Clinton previously announced her intention to request the ability to transfer funds at the release of the Accountability Review Board’s findings in December. The Senate passed a bill approving $60 billion worth of funding to clean up from Superstorm Sandy in late December, to which Leahy attached an amendment authorizing the transfer from unused Iraq and Afghanistan funding to allow for increases in embassy security. Since then, the House has taken the lead in drafting the relief bills, each time leaving out Leahy’s provision.

Clinton repeated her call several times during her testimony before both houses of Congress on Wednesday, noting that the House had yet to act. House Republicans have still been reluctant to provide her request, despite continuing to attack the Obama administration’s commitment to security. House Foreign Affairs Committee Chairman Ed Royce (R-CA) this morning on CNN made clear that he believes that security failures in Benghazi were “not about the budget.” Likewise, Rep. Jason Chaffetz (R-UT) — a lead provocateur on Benghazi — once proudly declared that he “absolutely” cut funding to the State Department’s Diplomatic Security.